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vCSA 6.7U2 Install & Configure

VMware vCenter Server pools ESXi host resources to provides many feature sets delivering high availability and fault tolerance to virtual machines. The vCenter Server is a centralized management application and can be deployed as a virtual appliance or Windows machine. VMware vCenter server Appliance 6.7 U1 (VCSA) is a VM running Photon OS, which is hardened and optimized VMware Linux distribution. This blog covering installation and configuration vCSA 6.7.

Pre-requisites

  • You must use ESXi host with version 5.5 and higher.
  • The minimum hosts that can be connected as a part of the datacenter managed by VCSA 6.7 must be ESXi 6.0 and higher.
  • You can check version compatibility with other VMware products see the Product Interoperability Matrix.

VMware vSphere infrastructure strongly depends on DNS, before proceeding with the installation of the vCSA you must configure the A record in your DNS Server that points to the new vCenter Server like below

vxpertvc01.vxpert.in      –> 192.168.1.30

Once you make this entry please make sure both forward and reverse records is getting resolved before you begin installation

Deploying the vCSA

To begin with a new install of the vCenter Server Appliance (vCSA), download the latest version of the vCSA in .ISO format from VMware website. Mount the ISO and select the appropriate installer based on the OS from which the installation is executed. The installation can be launched from Windows, Linux, and MacOS.

On installation wizard, click Install to proceed with the installation of a new vCenter Server.

Click Next.

Accept the EULA then click Next.

Select the deployment type. You can deploy a vCenter Server with an Embedded PSC. The external Platform Services Controller (PSC) deployment is deprecated in this release of vSphere and will not be available in future releases.

For more information, see https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/60229

Specify the target ESXi host where to install the vCSA and enter the root credentials. Click Next.

Click Yes to accept the SSL certificate

Enter the VM name for the vCSA and type the password in the Set root password field. Click Next to continue.

Specify the Deployment size based on your environment and the Storage size then click Next.

Select the datastore to use and click Next.

Configure the network settings and click Next.

Click Finish to start the installation.

vCSA is deployed in the specified target ESXi host.

Once complete successfully, click Continue to continue the installation or you can also exit the wizard and continue the installation at any time by typing in below URL in image in browser.

Configure the vCSA

Click Next to begin the configuration process

To avoid configuration and authentication issues, specify the NTP Server and optionally enable the SSH access. Click Next.

Select the Create a new SSO domain option and type the SSO domain name. Specify the SSO password then click Next.

Optionally join the CEIP then click Next.

Click Finish to finalize the deployment.

Click OK to proceed.

The setup will continue the configuration.

Once setup complete, Click Close to exit the wizard.

You can verify the appliance console from ESXi host

To access the Appliance Management, type the address https://IP_vCSA:45480 in your browser and enter the root credentials. Click Login.

To access the vCSA through the vSphere Client (HTML5 based), type the address https://IP_vCSA/ui in your browser and enter the [email protected] credentials. Click Login.

When the vCSA deployment procedure has been completed, you can start configuring your environment by creating vSphere objects such as datacenters, clusters, Distributes Switches and so on.

Thanks,

If you have any comments, please drop me a line.
I hope this article was informative, and don’t forget to buy me a coffee if you found this worth reading.



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