HOWTO: Deploy a vSphere 6.5 vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA)



VMware vSphere Platform Services Controller PSC vCenter Server

Published on 8 January 2017 by Christopher Lewis. Words: 375. Reading Time: 2 mins.

In this post we will look to expand on my previous post HOWTO: Deploy a vSphere 6.5 External Platform Services Controller (VCSA) and deploy the VMware vSphere 6.5 vCenter Server Appliance so that it takes advantage of the external Platform Services Controller.

Prerequisites

Like with anything VMware Appliance related, you will need to have both Forward and Reverse DNS entries manually added to your DNS Server.

To install the VMware vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA), you first have to mount the ISO. In Windows 10 this is simple!

So first things first, double click on VMware-VCSA-all-6.5.0-.iso to mount it as a drive on your system. (In my instance on my Windows 10 machines, this was drive letter H:)

Installation Steps

Stage 1 - Deploy

Using Windows Explorer, navigate to the H:\vcsa-ui-installer folder and double click on installer.exe to load the new installer.

Select Install.

Click Next.

Check the I accept the terms of the license agreement checkbox and click Next.

Select the vCenter Server (Requires Platform Services Controller) option and click Next.

Enter the FQDN of the target ESXi host, and the root username and root password for the target ESXi host.

Click Next.

If prompted, at the Certificate Warning, click Yes.

Enter the VM Name (which is basically the display name in vCenter) and the password for the appliance root password.

Click Next.

Select the target Datastore and click Next.

Select the target Network IP Version and IP assignment from the relevant dropdown. Then enter the PSC’s FQDN along with the IP Address, Subnet Mask,Default Gateway and DNS Servers then click Next.

Click Finish.

After a few minutes, you will be prompted with the Stage 1 Complete, when ready to start Stage 2, click Continue.

Stage 2 - Configure

Click Next.

Either select Synhronize time with NTP servers or Synhronize time with the ESXi host (depending on your preference). Enter NTP servers (if required) and select Enabled from the SSH access dropdown.

Click Next.

Enter the FQDN of the (Previously deployed) Platform Services Controller along with the SSO Domain, and SSO Administrator Password.

Click Next.

Click Finish.

And there we have it, finally you have a simple VMware vSphere 6.5 vCenter Server Appliance with an External Platform Services Controller deployed. Now let the fun commence!

Published on 8 January 2017 by Christopher Lewis. Words: 375. Reading Time: 2 mins.