VIRTUAL LAB – PART 4 – VCSA (vCenter) Setup in VMWare Workstation (Not Nested)

The first thing i’m going to do is add DNS entries for both ESXi Servers and the VCSA Im about to deploy.  I added Forward and Reverse Entries for the VCSA

And check Name resolutions works with PING and NSLOOKUP

The VCSA comes all packaged as an ISO (which contains the OVF) – I mounted the ISO using Virtual Clone Drive and extracted the OVF.

In VMware Workstation – select File, Open and select the OVF

Give your vCenter Server a name and select Import

Accept the EULA and the VCSA will Import.

Once the OVF has imported I need to change the Network Adapter to match my Internal Network

Now – before you Power the VCSA Machine on – You need to edit the VMX File – I didnt do this initially and just powered the VCSA on and started to configure via the device.

This kept causing me issues where I would use the Browser to try to log into the VCSA and receive Waiting for RPM Installation to finish and it would sit at 0%, 54% or 86% – This appeared to be issues with the installation of the RPM’s – in my Case VUM – as found in the VCSA Logs

 

Navigate to the VMX File of your VCSA and Open with a Text Editor like Notepad

At the bottom of the File, you need to enter the following lines – Editing to add your own details (And using a password instead of ******* )

guestinfo.cis.deployment.node.type = “embedded”
guestinfo.cis.appliance.net.addr.family = “ipv4”
guestinfo.cis.appliance.net.mode = “static”
guestinfo.cis.appliance.net.pnid = “192.168.100.11”
guestinfo.cis.appliance.net.addr = “192.168.100.11”
guestinfo.cis.appliance.net.prefix = “24”
guestinfo.cis.appliance.net.gateway = “192.168.100.2”
guestinfo.cis.appliance.net.dns.servers = “192.168.100.10”
guestinfo.cis.appliance.root.passwd = “************”
guestinfo.cis.appliance.ssh.enabled = “True”
guestinfo.cis.deployment.autoconfig = “True”
guestinfo.cis.appliance.ntp.servers = “pool.ntp.org”
guestinfo.cis.vmdir.password = “**************”
guestinfo.cis.vmdir.site-name = “london”
guestinfo.cis.vmdir.domain-name = “lab.com”
guestinfo.cis.ceip_enabled = “False”

Once you have saved the File, go ahead and Power of the VCSA.

Once this Powers up – Leave it for a while (another thing i did wrong was log in straight away and wonder why my settings hadn’t taken)

Eventually you will see the “”Main screen” which will appear like it hasn’t taken your config.  Leave this for 10 Mins + and it will eventually change to match your config:

Now access your VCSA from a browser using: https://<VCSA-IP&gt;:5480 or the DNS alias https://<VCSA-name&gt;:5480

Now log into the UI – everything looks up and the only thing I changed was the Timezone to GMT