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Installing a New Vblock: Part 1

On July 8, 2014, VCE delivered a Vblock to our system.

Configure the ESXi Hosts as NTP Clients

We found that the clocks on the ESXi hosts were several hours off; our first order of business was to configure our 7 ESXi hosts as NTP clients.

[Fixme: Insert procedure here]

Network: 3 days

We needed 3 days of our network techs time to iron out the kinks in the networking. FIXME: describe in greater detail.

Replacing the vCenter Server (Windows) with the vCenter Appliance

After 2 days of struggling to change the hostname, in the middle of upgrading the certificates, our vCenter Server could no longer browse its inventory. When we logged in with the vSphere Client, we were greeted with, "blahblah" [Fixme: paste screenshot here]

We re-configured the vCenter Server to a different IP address and began the process of installing a new vCenter. This time we went with the Appliance—we were quite familiar with the appliance, and have had good luck installing it in the past.

VMware vCenter

1. Initial Install

  1. We do the following on the Windows vSphere client:
    • Connect to the ESXi server that hosts the vCenter VMs.
      • IP address / Name: esxi.vcenter.....com
      • User name: root
      • Password: the password VCE gave us
    • File → Deploy OVF Template…
    • Click Browse…
    • Browse to the downloaded vCenter .ova file (e.g. VMware-vCenter-Server-Appliance-5.5.0.10200-1891314_OVF10.ova) (make sure it has the .ova extension and not the .ovf extension; Chrome appends the wrong extension to the .ova when downloading, and when you attempt to deploy it you will receive The OVF descriptor is too large error message. Rename the .ovf to .ova to fix); select it and click Open; click Next
    • (OVF Template Details) Click Next
    • (default name of "VMware vCenter Server Appliance") Click Next
    • (Thick Provision) Click Next
    • Check Power on after deployment; Click Finish

2. Root Password, Network Configuration

Root Password

We do the following on the Windows machine, in the VMware vSphere Client.

  1. In the left-hand navbar, click the "+" next to esxi.vcenter.....com to expand the inventory list of VMs
  2. In the left-hand navbar, select VMware vCenter Server Appliance, Make sure it's powered on (click Power on the virtual machine).
  3. Click Console tab
  4. Click inside the Console tab (your mouse pointer will disappear)
  5. When Prompted with "NO NETWORKING DETECTED", press Enter
    login: root
    Password: vmware
  6. change password: passwd
    New password: some-new-password
    (you can ignore the warning, "BAD PASSWORD: is too simple")
    Retype new password: some-new-password
Networking

In this section, we configure the networking for the vCenter server. This is vital.

We also change the hostname from "localhost.localdom" to "vcenter.....com" for æsthetic reasons.

  1. /opt/vmware/share/vami/vami_config_net
  2. 3
    vcenter.....com
    6
    n (IPv6) (unless you have IPv6, in which case go ahead.)
    y (IPv4)
    n (no DHCP)
    10.x.y.z
    255.255.255.0 (netmask)
    y (correct)
    2 (default gateway)
    0 (eth0)
    10.x.y.1
    press Enter (IPv6)
    4 (DNS)
    8.8.8.8
    8.8.4.4 (DNS server 2)
    0 (review changes)
    1 (exit)
    ping -c 2 google.com # check net settings

We reboot the vCenter VM because we are superstitious; perhaps this step is not necessary:

shutdown -r now Ctrl-D (logout)

  1. Press Ctrl-Alt to liberate your mouse pointer

3. First Time vCenter Set-Up

The following can be done on any machine; it does not need to be done from the Windows machine.

  1. Browse to the vCenter client, port 5480 (in our example, https://vcenter.....com:5480 (if you see a No data received or The connection was reset message, you're probably using http instead of https)
    User name: root
    Password: the-vcenter-password
    check Accept license agreement
    click Next
    Select Configure with default settings; click Next
    Click Start
    Click Close

The next portion is important, at least it will be important 90 days from now when the root password expires and we're locked out of our vCenter. To avoid lock-out, we do the following:

  1. Click on the Admin tab
  2. Administrator password expires: Select No
  3. Click Submit