VMware vCenter Server Appliance 6.7 (VCSA) is a VM running Photon OS, which is custom and optimized VMware Linux distribution. From vSphere 7 would be available as VCSA which is the preferred deployment method of vCenter Server. The windows based installation will be gone forever.
The vCenter Server Appliance reduces the deployment time of vCenter Server and the associated services and provides a low-cost alternative to the Windows-based vCenter Server installation. Now it’s oblivious that VCSA has a lot of savings in time and capital.
Component of vCenter Server Appliance
- Custom Linux based Photon OS 1.0
- The Platform Services Controller its all infrastructure services
- PostgreSQL, like a database.
- VMware vSphere Update Manager
vCenter Server Appliance is deployed with virtual hardware version 10, which supports 64 virtual CPUs per virtual machine in ESXi and uses the embedded PostgreSQL database that has the scalability of up to 2,000 hosts and 35,000 virtual machines. Also, we can update the components of vSphere from the VCSA management console itself. It provides VUM(VMware update manager for the same. Since VCSA 6.5, the vCenter Server Appliance supports native high availability. In the case of an active node goes down, another passive node becomes active and takes care of operations.
For installing VCSA, first, download it from the VMware site. Once you have the setup, go to the VCSA directory and click the application file to start the installation. The vCenter Server Appliance and Platform Services Controller appliance has the following default user names.
root – Use this username to log in to the appliance operating system and the Appliance Management Interface with the password you have set up while deploying.
administrator@domain-name – Use this for vCenter Single Sign-On login
We are using a GUI installer to perform an interactive deployment of a vCenter Server Appliance with an embedded Platform Services Controller appliance. Here is the workflow for the same.
The installation of the vCSA has a two stage process:
- Stage 1 – Deployment
- Stage 2 – Configuration
Stage 1 begins deploying the vCenter Server.
- Download the VCSA 6.7 from the VMware site.
- Navigate to the installer folder and run the file ‘vcsa-ui-installer.exe’.
This is the first screen we would see. Now there are four options available.
- Install – New Installation
- Upgrade – Just wanted to upgrade the VCSA version
- Migrate – You want to migrate your VCSA somewhere else
- Restore – For restoring VCSA from the backup
We are going to install the new VCSA to clicking on Install and accept the agreement. Click Next.
Enter the ESXi host or vCenter server name and password. Your username will be the same as above snap but if you want to change you can do it later. Click Next.
We have two deployment type and we are going with VCSA with PSC. Click Next.
The above step is showing you the option to select the compute resources from hosts/cluster. Choose one and click next.
In the above step, You need to select the appliance VM name and a password to login. The username will the default : root. Click Next.
Select the deployment size as per your need. We are going with Tiny the default one. You can see the different deployment sizes in the snap. Choose and click Next.
Next window will show the available datastore available with hosts/cluster, Choose and click next. It will prompt many input fields for asking network configuration details. Please fill out these as per your availability and proceed with the few click next.
This was stage 1 of 2 of VCSA installation. You have successfully completed it. Now let’s move on stage 2. Click on continue to go on stage 2: configuration of VCSA.
Click Next.
Enter the NTP server details and you also can enable SSH from here. Click Next to create SSO credentials.
Accept and join the VMware customer experience improvement program (CEIP) which helps VMware to improve its products and services, to fix problems, and to advise you on how best to deploy and use their products in the future. It’s up to you can ignore this program also.
In the next windows you will see the finishing window of VCSA 6.7 deployment after few next clicks.
And finally, you can see your VCSA management page here. This is the simple and GUI based VCSA 6.7 installation.
[Also read] Concepts For Cross VCenter Workload Migration In VMware