The steps below are to install and configure the vCenter Server Appliance, configure SSO to lookup users in a specific OU in Active Directory, add an Administrator, add your first host, and configure email server settings.
Prerequisites:
- Download the latest version of the vCenter Server Appliance (5.5.0.5201 for this writing) and place it some where that is accessible by the client hosting the vSphere client
- Have the vSphere Thick client installed
- Have a datastore created for the appliance (VM_Appliances for this writing)
- Identify the Fully Qualified Domain name and IP address of the server ahead of time
Steps
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- Enter the following information and click “Next”
- Hostname = Name of Appliance
- Default Gateway = IP of the gateway of the Destination Network
- DNS = IP of the DNS Server (Separate each DNS server with commas, though it didn’t seem to apply these settings)
- Network 1 IP Address = IP address of the vCenter Server Appliance
- Enter the following information and click “Next”
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- Click on the “SSO” tab
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- Log back in (if necessary and continue with the next step)
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- Click on the “Admin” tab
- Enter the current administrator password (default is “vmware”)
- Enter the new administrator password and immediately save it (I use keepass for my passwords)
- Click “Yes” for administrator password expiration
- Enter the password validity time in days
- Enter a group account for email expiration warning
- Click “Submit”
- Click on the “Admin” tab
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- Once the settings are saved, click on “System” tab then choose “Reboot”
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- Choose the following for setting up Active Directory Auth for a specific group using a service account
- Choose “Active Directory as a LDAP Server”
- Enter the name (Just a reference name)
- Enter the Distinguished name of the OU where users will be located
- Enter the Domain name
- Enter the Domain alias
- Enter the Distinguished name for groups (for us, it’s the same as for users)
- Enter the primary server URL (Format: ldap:\\Dcname.domainname.com:389)
- Enter the secondary server URL (same format as above)
- Username: A domain account in the OU above (do not use a users account, make it a service account)
- Password: Password for domain account
- Press “Test Connection” to ensure it all works and then click “OK”
- Choose the following for setting up Active Directory Auth for a specific group using a service account
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- Click the “+” button to add a new administrator.
- When the “Add Permission” box appears, click the “Add” button at the bottom
- Change the Domain to Domain added earlier
- Search for the same users/groups added as vCSA admins, select each one and click “Add” followed by “OK” when completed
- Under “Assigned Role” change from “No access” to “Administrator”. Ensure “Propogate to children” is selected and click “OK”
- Click the “+” button to add a new administrator.
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- Scroll down to that key and enter the IP address of the vCenter Server appliance and click “OK” (Without this entry, in the event of a DNS failure, the hosts will not be able to check in with the vCenter server and could become disconnected. Thanks to Virtual Barker for pointing this out)
- Scroll down to that key and enter the IP address of the vCenter Server appliance and click “OK” (Without this entry, in the event of a DNS failure, the hosts will not be able to check in with the vCenter server and could become disconnected. Thanks to Virtual Barker for pointing this out)
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- Follow these steps to add a host to your newly created datacenter
- Enter the fully qualified domain name of your host
- Click on the destination datacenter and then click “Next”
- Enter the username and password for the “root” account then click “Next” (Click “Yes” for the security alert)
- Review the details of the Host then click “Next”
- Assign a license key (if available) and click “Next”
- Make sure “Enable lockdown mode” is unchecked and click “Next”
- Click “Next” through “VM location” as we haven’t created a new tag yet
- Click “Finish”
- Follow these steps to add a host to your newly created datacenter
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- Click on “vCenter” button towards the top left
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At this point you are ready to start adding more hosts, creating clusters and deploying virtual machines. Before you are ready for production, ensure that you create alerts for monitoring VM and Host health such as CPU and memory usage, CPU ready latency, storage latency and VM snapshot size. I’ll address the common alerts I create in each new build in a later post.