WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.640 Welcome back to vSphere 8 in the real world. Now we're going to discuss vCenter server installation. 00:00:07.280 --> 00:00:13.760 So when you have an ESXi host that you want to manage with vSphere, you need a vCenter server. 00:00:13.760 --> 00:00:19.360 That's one of the first things you're going to need to deploy. So vCenter is going to be the 00:00:19.360 --> 00:00:25.040 place where you're going to manage all your different resources that are in your vSphere 00:00:25.040 --> 00:00:30.400 environment. Now if you have Horizon, you have a different management interface for Horizon. If you 00:00:30.400 --> 00:00:35.040 have NSX, you have a different management interface for NSX. When it comes to the core of vSphere, 00:00:35.040 --> 00:00:41.520 meaning DRS, and HA, and vMotion, and storage vMotion, and fault-tolerant VMs, and all those 00:00:41.520 --> 00:00:45.759 different types of things, vCenter is where you're going to go to do all that management for those 00:00:45.759 --> 00:00:53.759 core vSphere components. So you're going to deploy your vCenter server on an ESXi host. 00:00:53.759 --> 00:01:00.320 It's a virtual appliance that is deployed onto one of those hosts. It's a central platform, like I 00:01:00.320 --> 00:01:04.480 said, for management, for all your operations. If you want to get performance, there's performance 00:01:04.480 --> 00:01:10.480 charts and tuning you can get in there. You can view logs through there. You can configure things 00:01:10.480 --> 00:01:16.959 like NTP, and logging, and your syslog servers. All that kind of stuff is managed through your 00:01:16.959 --> 00:01:23.599 vSphere server. Provisioning resources. This is where you're going to configure and 00:01:23.599 --> 00:01:27.519 deploy virtual networking. This is where you're going to provision storage and create data stores. 00:01:27.519 --> 00:01:31.599 This is where you're going to create virtual machines for your environment. It's all going to 00:01:31.599 --> 00:01:34.959 be done through your vCenter server. Then, of course, any kind of testing for your VMs and 00:01:34.959 --> 00:01:40.080 hosts and things like that will be done through vCenter as well. Some of the functions of your 00:01:40.080 --> 00:01:46.639 vCenter server appliance. Authentication. Your authentication can be done. Now, you can configure 00:01:46.639 --> 00:01:53.360 the vCenter server to use your AD accounts for logging into the vCenter server. You can also 00:01:53.360 --> 00:01:58.320 create accounts on vCenter directly itself. Most of the time, you're probably going to use your AD 00:01:58.320 --> 00:02:02.559 accounts. That's probably the most common type of little sign-on that I've seen. But it does have 00:02:02.559 --> 00:02:06.639 its own single sign-on service that you can use, and you can create accounts right on there if you 00:02:06.639 --> 00:02:11.440 want to as well. You can do authentication. Even if you're signing against Active Directory, 00:02:11.440 --> 00:02:15.839 it still does that authentication against Active Directory for you. You manage all your certificates 00:02:15.839 --> 00:02:21.279 in there. Tags. You can do all your tagging through vCenter. A lot of backup applications 00:02:21.279 --> 00:02:25.839 can use tags. You can go in there. You can add tags to VMs and all your backup software. I want 00:02:25.839 --> 00:02:30.479 all the VMs that have this certain tag to be backed up every hour, and all these VMs that have 00:02:30.479 --> 00:02:34.639 this other tag to be backed up once every four hours. All backup applications have functionality 00:02:34.639 --> 00:02:41.600 like that that can use tags. NSX also uses tags. You can use tags within NSX for creating ACLs and 00:02:41.600 --> 00:02:47.119 things like that within NSX. And then all your licensing is also going to be managed and 00:02:47.119 --> 00:02:51.520 configured. You're going to add licensing to vCenter through your vSphere client, 00:02:52.559 --> 00:02:57.039 and that license is going to enable features. It'll allow you to have a certain number of posts, 00:02:57.039 --> 00:03:03.360 a certain number of CPUs, actually. It will also allow you to use certain features. So, 00:03:03.360 --> 00:03:08.080 if your license includes DRS, then you can configure DRS and manage DRS in vSphere, 00:03:08.080 --> 00:03:16.080 things like that, HA, all that kind of stuff. So, the vCenter Server Appliance, it is a virtual 00:03:16.080 --> 00:03:19.759 appliance, okay? So, it's going to be a virtual machine that you're going to deploy. There's a 00:03:19.759 --> 00:03:25.360 wizard you're going to run through. I'll show you that in just a moment to deploy that appliance. 00:03:25.360 --> 00:03:28.960 Most of the time, you can deploy it from a Linux box. You can deploy it from a Windows box. 00:03:28.960 --> 00:03:33.600 Most of the time, I've seen it deployed. People log into a Windows box, and they run a setup 00:03:33.600 --> 00:03:40.320 wizard. It actually has an OVF, so you can actually just go in and import the OVF directly. 00:03:40.320 --> 00:03:45.759 I've seen people do that. That's not really the VMware-recommended, suggested way, but it 00:03:45.759 --> 00:03:50.800 does also still work. You can still do it that way, too. Most people, though, that I've seen 00:03:50.800 --> 00:03:54.800 most of the time are going to just use the setup wizard through a Windows server, okay? 00:03:55.839 --> 00:04:01.279 So, the virtual appliance itself, it runs on VMware's own proprietary 00:04:02.240 --> 00:04:07.600 Photon OS, which is a version of Linux, all right? All the authentication services that you'll use 00:04:07.600 --> 00:04:13.600 for vSphere are going to be included with that. It has a Progress SQL database for all the logging 00:04:13.600 --> 00:04:18.239 and configurations and all that stuff gets stored in the database. Obviously, Lifecycle Manager for 00:04:18.239 --> 00:04:24.239 managing the vSphere environment for patching your hosts and that kind of stuff. You can also patch 00:04:24.239 --> 00:04:30.000 vCenter through there. So, once we deploy vCenter, you can actually log into the vSphere web 00:04:30.000 --> 00:04:36.000 interface for managing the vSphere application or the virtual appliance. So, you have your vSphere 00:04:36.000 --> 00:04:41.359 client for managing vSphere, but it also is a web interface for managing that appliance directly, 00:04:41.359 --> 00:04:45.679 for doing things like configuration of networking and that kind of stuff, as well as backups, 00:04:45.679 --> 00:04:51.200 as well as updating or patching the virtual appliance, and we'll see that. 00:04:53.760 --> 00:04:57.440 This slide is just kind of showing some of the maximums. The maximums haven't changed from seven 00:04:58.079 --> 00:05:03.119 to eight. So, it does support only the HTML5 client, right? We also have our Lifecycle 00:05:03.119 --> 00:05:11.519 Managers in here. So, host per server is 2,500. Powered on VMs per server is going to be 40,000. 00:05:11.519 --> 00:05:19.119 Registered DBMs per server, 45,000. Hosts in a linked vCenter server, okay, that's 15,000. 00:05:19.119 --> 00:05:25.119 So, host in a number of hosts in a linked vCenter servers, we can actually have multiple vCenter 00:05:25.119 --> 00:05:31.279 servers, and we can link them so that when I log in, I see all the different vCenter servers that 00:05:31.279 --> 00:05:37.440 I have linked together, and then in there, I can see all the data centers, I can see all the hosts, 00:05:37.440 --> 00:05:43.760 I can see all the VMs, and I'll see them under their relevant vCenter server in there, right? 00:05:43.760 --> 00:05:50.160 So, registered VMs in a linked vCenter server is going to be 150,000. So, a huge number of VMs 00:05:50.160 --> 00:05:53.920 that we can link together and manage them all through one panel class, through one interface. 00:05:56.000 --> 00:06:01.040 So, different ways we can deploy a vCenter server. We have a GUI deployment. So, again, 00:06:01.040 --> 00:06:05.760 we can log into, like I mentioned, into a Windows server, for example, and we can run a setup, 00:06:05.760 --> 00:06:10.000 and it'll run through this wizard. It's a two-phase wizard. The first one is going to deploy 00:06:10.000 --> 00:06:14.959 the virtual appliance with just, you know, the base settings, like what size do you want it. 00:06:14.959 --> 00:06:20.480 It gets an IP address, so you can manage it in the next part of setup, and some basic questions 00:06:21.359 --> 00:06:26.320 get answered there. Then the second phase of that setup is going to be more specific to actually 00:06:26.320 --> 00:06:31.040 configuring the virtual appliance, and we'll see that in a moment. You can also deploy the virtual 00:06:31.040 --> 00:06:35.279 appliance. You want to do more of a hands-off approach from the CLI, and we'll show you how 00:06:35.279 --> 00:06:42.480 to do that also. So, GUI installation. Here's where you can go, and you can download the ISO 00:06:42.480 --> 00:06:46.239 to do a GUI installation. You might want to double-check that because it might be a little 00:06:46.239 --> 00:06:50.480 different now with the Broadcom acquisition. I'm sure it's going to be different. You're going to 00:06:50.480 --> 00:06:57.040 mount the ISO on one of your virtual machines, okay? So, a VM, you know, a Windows VM, for 00:06:57.040 --> 00:07:01.920 example, that's running on there. Then run the installer. So, here it's showing you, for example, 00:07:01.920 --> 00:07:07.119 if you're running a Windows host that you're going to deploy the OVF from. You're going to go to 00:07:07.119 --> 00:07:12.480 Windows from the ISO, go to Windows, the Win32 subdirectory, and then there's going to be a 00:07:12.480 --> 00:07:18.799 vcsa-ui, which, you know, user interface installer, and then you're going to run these 00:07:18.799 --> 00:07:23.440 installer.exe. And Beth is going to go through this installation wizard, which will, again, 00:07:23.440 --> 00:07:27.839 ask you a bunch of questions. It's going to be a two-phase wizard, one for just deploying the 00:07:27.839 --> 00:07:31.760 virtual appliance and then one for configuring that virtual appliance once you have deployed. 00:07:34.079 --> 00:07:37.119 So, let's go ahead and take a look at what the installer wizard looks like. 00:07:38.000 --> 00:07:42.959 So, first thing is the intro, right? This kind of welcomes you there. You're going to go ahead 00:07:42.959 --> 00:07:47.600 and the first option for deploying the vCenter server is chosen. You're going to go ahead and 00:07:47.600 --> 00:07:52.160 say next. It's going to ask you to accept the end user license agreement. Of course, 00:07:52.160 --> 00:07:56.799 you're going to deploy that, or you accept that. Then where do you want to deploy to? 00:07:56.799 --> 00:08:02.959 You can give it the name or the IP address if DNS is configured for either a vCenter server 00:08:03.920 --> 00:08:09.600 that you want to choose to deploy at the target or an ESXi host. Now, of course, if you choose 00:08:09.600 --> 00:08:12.959 vCenter, one of the next things it's going to ask you is what host in vCenter do you want to choose 00:08:12.959 --> 00:08:19.040 to deploy this to, all right? And then you're going to use the default port number 443 unless 00:08:19.040 --> 00:08:23.600 for some reason you've changed that in the configuration, and then the name and the 00:08:23.600 --> 00:08:29.040 password so you can authenticate. If you're saying a host, you might use the name root and the root 00:08:29.040 --> 00:08:34.320 password. If you're saying a vCenter server, then you might use your AD credentials or your 00:08:34.320 --> 00:08:38.159 admin, domain admin AD credentials, whatever you use to authenticate into vCenter, 00:08:38.799 --> 00:08:43.200 you would enter in there, all right? Of course, probably a certificate warning, right? 00:08:46.880 --> 00:08:51.359 So here, you're going to say what you want the name of your vCenter server to be, 00:08:52.320 --> 00:08:58.400 okay? And of course, you're going to set a root password. And here, they just chose the IP address 00:08:58.400 --> 00:09:02.640 as being for the name. So you're going to choose the root password and confirm that and the VM's 00:09:02.640 --> 00:09:10.159 name. So now, it's going to ask what size vCenter do you want to deploy? You can choose a tiny, 00:09:10.159 --> 00:09:15.359 a small, medium, large, or extra large. And obviously, the smaller it is, it has fewer 00:09:15.359 --> 00:09:21.280 resources assigned to it, fewer virtual CPUs, smaller hard disks, and it's designed for a 00:09:21.280 --> 00:09:25.919 smaller number of hosts running a smaller number of virtual machines. If you choose a larger 00:09:25.919 --> 00:09:30.559 configuration, then you're going to assign it more virtual CPUs, it's going to use more disk space, 00:09:30.559 --> 00:09:35.280 and you can configure and manage more hosts running more virtual machines. 00:09:35.280 --> 00:09:40.159 And it's just showing you like, you know, the tiny is for up to 10 hosts running 100 VMs, 00:09:40.159 --> 00:09:45.280 and the extra large is, you know, 2,000 hosts and what's that, 350,000 VMs. 00:09:45.919 --> 00:09:47.919 So obviously, a pretty large environment. 00:09:50.799 --> 00:09:54.640 So once you have selected where you want to deploy the host to, you got to select the 00:09:54.640 --> 00:09:58.559 datastore you want to be deployed on. So, you know, a lot of environments will have 00:09:58.559 --> 00:10:03.440 multiple datastores available to them. Just select the datastore you want this to be deployed to. 00:10:07.119 --> 00:10:09.679 So configuring your network settings. So one of the things you're going to do 00:10:09.679 --> 00:10:13.280 with this virtual appliance when you're deploying it, most of the configuration is done 00:10:13.280 --> 00:10:18.239 on the second step. The first step, though, you do name it and you do give it an IP address, 00:10:18.239 --> 00:10:23.760 right? So you're going to go ahead and give it an IP address, subnet mask, default gateway, 00:10:23.760 --> 00:10:28.400 and DNS servers so they can function on the network because that's how you're going to 00:10:28.400 --> 00:10:34.559 connect to it when you do your configuration. Whatever name you assign it, and for the IP 00:10:34.559 --> 00:10:38.320 address you gave it to it earlier, you're going to want that to be in DNS. You're going to want 00:10:38.320 --> 00:10:43.919 that to already be configured to resolve the name that you gave it to the IP address. That'll be 00:10:43.919 --> 00:10:48.479 pretty important as you move forward. You can also choose the port numbers you want to use for HTTP 00:10:48.479 --> 00:10:55.280 and HTTPS from here. And it'll say, okay, so here's all the options you configured. 00:10:56.400 --> 00:10:59.599 Are you ready to deploy this? Are you happy with those settings? Do you want to go back and change 00:10:59.599 --> 00:11:05.039 anything? If you're happy, you can go ahead and say finish and expect this to take you a while. 00:11:05.039 --> 00:11:11.760 This is not going to be a quick five-minute little thing. This could take you not so much 00:11:11.760 --> 00:11:15.200 because you can go get a sandwich or something, but it will take a while for this to deploy. 00:11:15.200 --> 00:11:18.960 So just go ahead and prepare for that. Have a cup of coffee, have a sandwich ready, 00:11:18.960 --> 00:11:24.239 and let it go through its process. If it takes a little bit, don't worry about it. If it takes you 00:11:24.239 --> 00:11:29.679 30, 40 minutes, don't worry about it. The faster your network is and the faster your storage is, 00:11:29.679 --> 00:11:34.719 the faster this will go, but it's still going to take a while. If you're deploying to slow storage 00:11:35.440 --> 00:11:41.599 to a single hard drive on some storage somewhere for some reason, if you're deploying over a one 00:11:41.599 --> 00:11:46.080 gig network, if you haven't really got into configuring data storage yet and you haven't 00:11:46.080 --> 00:11:50.239 got all your virtual networking configured and you're just using a single one gig NIC 00:11:50.239 --> 00:11:54.479 to access this first host and you want to get vCenter deployed first and then configure all 00:11:54.479 --> 00:11:58.320 these other options like storage and networking and stuff, it's going to be slow. It's going to 00:11:58.320 --> 00:12:03.919 take you a while. Give it some time. Give it, like I said, 30, 40 minutes, an hour. Don't be 00:12:03.919 --> 00:12:10.719 surprised. If you did take the time to configure some fast storage and you took the time to set up 00:12:10.719 --> 00:12:14.640 NIC teaming and you've got some 10 gig NICs configured and things like that, then it obviously 00:12:14.640 --> 00:12:22.320 can be a lot quicker. And so here, I'll show you that your stage one configuration is completed. 00:12:22.320 --> 00:12:26.080 Once it's gone through that, again, it'll take a bit. So you can go ahead and say, 00:12:26.080 --> 00:12:31.119 do you want to continue? Because when you continue, now you do the stage two configuration. 00:12:31.119 --> 00:12:35.119 And the stage two configuration is where you go through the vCenter server configuration. 00:12:35.119 --> 00:12:43.599 You configure a single sign-on. Do you want to engage in the feedback program with VMware to 00:12:43.599 --> 00:12:47.679 let them know about anything going on with your environment to help them improve the product 00:12:47.679 --> 00:12:52.479 going forward? And then you can go ahead and click on finish there. So vCenter configuration. 00:12:52.479 --> 00:12:56.719 So here, you're going to go in there and configure basically like you want to configure NTP 00:12:56.719 --> 00:13:00.799 servers for synchronizing time. That's generally considered a pretty good idea. Hopefully, 00:13:00.799 --> 00:13:05.840 you have a time server on your network or you have access to the internet to use something like 00:13:05.840 --> 00:13:11.919 ntp.org or something like that. Do you want to – you have SSH access enabled on this? 00:13:11.919 --> 00:13:15.280 You don't want to leave it enabled all the time, but maybe you want to enable when this 00:13:15.280 --> 00:13:18.000 installation is finished so you can go in there and do some maintenance or some 00:13:18.000 --> 00:13:22.400 investigation or something like that. You're going to configure the single sign-on service. 00:13:23.760 --> 00:13:27.599 So you're going to give it a single sign-on domain name. You're going to give it a username, 00:13:27.599 --> 00:13:31.520 and you're going to want to set up like passwords on there. All right. Those are the big things 00:13:31.520 --> 00:13:36.320 there is what's going to be the single sign-on domain name, username, passwords, or do you want 00:13:36.320 --> 00:13:40.799 to join an existing single sign-on domain? You'll still want to configure a local one on there as 00:13:40.799 --> 00:13:44.400 well just in case, for example, you can't connect to Active Directory or something like that. You 00:13:44.400 --> 00:13:52.960 want something to fall back to. So here is the optional. You can choose to engage or not engage 00:13:52.960 --> 00:13:58.640 with the feedback program for VMware. And then once you're done with all that, 00:13:58.640 --> 00:14:05.520 you can review your setup. You can say finish, and it'll say are you ready to go. You do not 00:14:05.520 --> 00:14:09.119 want to interrupt this. You don't want to corrupt that virtual machine. You can say okay, and it'll 00:14:09.119 --> 00:14:14.239 go through and deploy all those options you just configured for things like your single sign-on 00:14:14.239 --> 00:14:19.520 and your NTP servers and all that kind of stuff will get configured on that vCenter. And when it's 00:14:19.520 --> 00:14:24.159 done, it's going to go through and reboot. It will take a little bit, but once it's all done, 00:14:24.159 --> 00:14:30.159 you can log into the vCenter client through the web interface and add any ESXi host you have ready 00:14:30.159 --> 00:14:36.960 for and things like that. So here you can see it went through, and it completed successfully, 00:14:36.960 --> 00:14:44.799 and you can close that, and then you can log into your host. Okay? So that's how you do it through 00:14:45.760 --> 00:14:52.559 the GUI. Obviously, it's pretty simple. It does sometimes get a little buggy. I've seen it for 00:14:52.559 --> 00:14:58.320 some reason. You go through, you put all your options in, and you click finish, and it fails. 00:14:58.320 --> 00:15:02.320 It tells you to go ahead and complete, and it fails. And there's not really necessarily, 00:15:02.320 --> 00:15:07.039 sometimes there's a real clear message like oh, I forgot to configure this in DNS or something 00:15:07.039 --> 00:15:11.840 like that. But sometimes it's not really clear why, and I've gone through, try it again, 00:15:11.840 --> 00:15:15.520 and it failed, and I try it again, you know, with the exact same settings every time, 00:15:15.520 --> 00:15:19.359 maybe even screenshot it to make sure I could verify, and then that's how it works, 00:15:19.359 --> 00:15:23.760 and there's not really a clear message of why it didn't work the first couple of times. 00:15:24.719 --> 00:15:28.719 I don't know if things are just timing out or what, but again, if you're using like a single 00:15:28.719 --> 00:15:35.760 one gig adapter and a slow disk and things like that, if it does fail, check all your settings, 00:15:35.760 --> 00:15:39.760 verify everything's correct, verify you have, you know, your DNS configured correctly, 00:15:39.760 --> 00:15:44.479 and you're entering in the right IPs and names, and that, you know, network connectivity's working, 00:15:44.479 --> 00:15:49.679 verify your settings, don't just, you know, try it over and over again. But you might just end up, 00:15:49.679 --> 00:15:53.520 after you've verified everything, change nothing, try it again, and it succeeds. 00:15:55.919 --> 00:16:02.479 So, you can also do it from the CLI. So, here's just showing you that you'll create this JSON 00:16:02.479 --> 00:16:07.119 file, and if the JSON file looks familiar to you when you look at it, it's because it's all 00:16:07.119 --> 00:16:13.039 the same things you would have answered had you done through the GUI wizard setting up that way. 00:16:13.039 --> 00:16:16.000 So, it's going to want to know all the same things. It's going to want to know network settings and 00:16:16.000 --> 00:16:21.840 names and passwords and NTP servers and all that same stuff. You'll have a configuring here, 00:16:21.840 --> 00:16:25.280 what single sign-on domain do you want to use, what name are you going to use, all that kind 00:16:25.280 --> 00:16:29.760 of stuff you'll put into this JSON file, and then once you configure this JSON file, 00:16:30.719 --> 00:16:38.239 you can just go in and, from the command line, do your VCSA deploy, you're going to do an install, 00:16:38.239 --> 00:16:43.760 you're going to accept the EULA from here, right, and then you also are going to need to give it 00:16:43.760 --> 00:16:49.840 the path to this file that has all the answers for what you're trying to deploy, right. So, 00:16:51.119 --> 00:16:55.919 you can either do it through, you know, a GUI through Windows, or you can do it from the command 00:16:55.919 --> 00:17:00.080 line on your Windows or your Linux or your Mac systems.