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You are here: Home / Automation / Unattended Deployment of vCenter Infrastructure Navigator

Unattended Deployment of vCenter Infrastructure Navigator

02.06.2012 by William Lam // 2 Comments

I deployed VMware's new vCenter Infrastructure Navigator in my lab over the weekend and just like the rest of the other virtual appliances (vCloud, vCO, vCC, vShield), here is how you can automate the deployment of VMware vIN.

Here are the ovf parameters that are available to deploy vCenter Infrastructure Navigator:

  • vm.password
  • vami.gateway.vCenter_Infrastructure_Navigator
  • vami.DNS.vCenter_Infrastructure_Navigator
  • vami.ip0.vCenter_Infrastructure_Navigator
  • vami.netmask0.vCenter_Infrastructure_Navigator

To see these properties before deploying, you can query using the ovftool which can help you identify the name of the ovf variables using the following command:

ovftool --hideEula Navigator-1.0.0.49-592384_OVF10.ova

Note: Before deploying vIN, ensure that you have the vCenter advanced setting VirtualCenter.ManagedIP configured as it is needed by the vService in vIN. For more details, take a look at this blog post on how you can easily automate this.

Here is an example of the ovftool command to deploy vIN Server:

ovftool --acceptAllEulas --skipManifestCheck '--net:Network 1=VM_Network' --datastore=iSCSI-4 --diskMode=thin --name=vin --prop:vami.DNS.vCenter_Infrastructure_Navigator=172.30.0.100 --prop:vami.gateway.vCenter_Infrastructure_Navigator=172.30.0.1 --prop:vami.ip0.vCenter_Infrastructure_Navigator=172.30.0.150 --prop:vami.netmask0.vCenter_Infrastructure_Navigator=255.255.255.0 --prop:vm.password=vmware123 Navigator-1.0.0.49-592384_OVF10.ova 'vi://root:*protected email*/?dns=vesxi50-3.primp-industries.com'

Of course, I wrote a simple shell script deployvIN.sh to help with the deployment. The script assumes you have ovftool installed and the OVF files located in the same directory as the script. You will need to edit the following variables if you wish to deploy vIN:

Note: There are many ways of using the ovftool to deploy an OVF. In this simple example, it requires you to specify an ESX(i) host, but you can modify the locator to deploy to a VM folder or datacenter path. For more examples and options, please take a look at the ovftool documentation.

Here is an example of the script in action:

Once the vIN virtual appliance has been deployed, you can also have it automatically power on by specifying the following parameter --powerOn.

If everything was successful, you should be able to license vCenter Infrastructure Navigator using the vSphere Client C# client and then login to the vSphere Web Client to enable the discovery process for your virtual machines. Shortly after, you should start seeing some application dependency within your vSphere environment like this:

More from my site

  • Extracting VIN (vSphere Infrastructure Navigator) information using PowerCLI & vROps REST API
  • Configuring vSphere Infrastructure Navigator (VIN) To Manage An Alternate vCenter Server
  • How To Configure vCenter Server 5.0 To Work With VIN 2.0?
  • How to Update vSphere Infrastructure Navigator (VIN) After Changing vCenter Server IP Address
  • VIN 2.0 Supports New Export to CSV & Maps Feature

Categories // Automation, OVFTool Tags // infrastructure navigator, ovftool, vIN

Comments

  1. jasper9 says

    09/29/2014 at 8:06 pm

    Hi William, You wrote this post in 2012, apparently before they added this new required property below. Any idea the specific syntax to satisfy this?

    Output from 'ovftool path_to_ova'
    ...snip...
    VService Dependency:
    ID: installation
    Name: vCenter Extension Installation
    Type: com.vmware.vservice.extension
    Required: true
    Description: This appliance requires a binding to the vCenter Extension
    vService, which allows it to automatically register as a vCenter
    Extension at runtime.
    ...snip...

    Reply
    • William Lam says

      10/01/2014 at 4:54 pm

      Take a look here 🙂 http://www.virtuallyghetto.com/2014/10/how-to-configure-the-vcenter-extension-vservice-using-ovftool.html

      Reply

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William Lam is a Senior Staff Solution Architect working in the VMware Cloud team within the Cloud Infrastructure Business Group (CIBG) at VMware. He focuses on Cloud Native technologies, Automation, Integration and Operation for the VMware Cloud based Software Defined Datacenters (SDDC)

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