Automating VCSA 5.5 Configurations including SSO Administrator password

As many of you know, I am a huge fan of the VCSA (vCenter Server Appliance), not only for its ease of deployment and setup but also the fact that I can easily automate the entire deployment in just under a couple of minutes. I have written about this topic in the past using the vpxd_servicecfg command to automate both VCSA 5.0 and VCSA 5.1. I figured it was probably a good idea to update this for latest VCSA 5.5 which includes several new enhancements to vpxd_servicecfg command such as the VMware Customer Experience Improve Program configuration (vTelemtry) among other options that you can explore by simply running the vpxd_servicecfg on the VCSA.

The other reason I wanted to update this for the latest VCSA 5.5 is that I was working with Engineering last week on a project and several of them did not know about this capability of being able to automate the VCSA configuration. Instead of providing them with the raw commands, I thought I would create an updated script that can be shared with the community so that others could also benefit from it. Lastly, I also did this for myself as I deploy a large amount of VCSA for all sorts of testing that I am doing on a regular basis and this would allow me to quickly speed up my deployment by simply going to my own blog 🙂

Below is a shell script that contains several variables that can be edited based on your environment setup and you can run this script over SSH using something like: ssh root@[VCSA-IP] < configureVCSA.sh

#!/bin/bash
# William Lam
# www.virtuallyghetto.com
# Script to automate VCSA 5.5+ Configurations

# User Configurations

# SSO Administrator password (*protected email*)
SSO_ADMINISTRATOR_PASSWORD=VMware1!

# Join Active Directory (following 5 variables required)
JOIN_AD=0
AD_DOMAIN=primp-industries.com
AD_USER=administrator
AD_PASS=mysupersecurepassword
VCENTER_HOSTNAME=vcenter51-1.primp-industries.com

# Enable NTP
ENABLE_NTP=0
NTP_SERVERS=192.168.1.1

# Enable VMware Customer Experience Improvement Program
ENABLE_VC_TELEMTRY=1

################ DO NOT EDIT BEYOND HERE ################
 
echo "Accepting VMware EULA ..."
/usr/sbin/vpxd_servicecfg eula accept

if [ ${JOIN_AD} -eq 1 ]; then
        echo "Configuring vCenter Server hostname ..."
        SHORTHOSTNAME=$(echo ${VCENTER_HOSTNAME} |  cut -d. -f1)
        /bin/hostname ${VCENTER_HOSTNAME}
        echo ${VCENTER_HOSTNAME} > /etc/HOSTNAME
        sed -i "s/localhost/${SHORTHOSTNAME}/g" /etc/hosts
 
        echo "Configuring Active Directory ..."
        /usr/sbin/vpxd_servicecfg ad write "${AD_USER}" "${AD_PASS}" ${AD_DOMAIN}
fi

echo "Enbaling Time Synchronization ..."
if [ ${ENABLE_NTP} -eq 1 ]; then
	/usr/sbin/vpxd_servicecfg timesync write ntp ${NTP_SERVERS} 
else
	/usr/sbin/vpxd_servicecfg timesync write tools 
fi 

echo "Configuring vCenter Server Embedded DB ..."
/usr/sbin/vpxd_servicecfg db write embedded
								 
echo "Configuring vCenter Server SSO w/custom *protected email* password ..."
/usr/sbin/vpxd_servicecfg sso write embedded ${SSO_ADMINISTRATOR_PASSWORD}

echo "Starting the vCenter Server Service ..."
/usr/sbin/vpxd_servicecfg service start

if [[ -e /var/log/vmware/phonehome ]] && [[ ${ENABLE_VC_TELEMTRY} -eq 1 ]]; then
	echo "Enabling vCenter Server Telemtry ..."
	/usr/sbin/vpxd_servicecfg telemetry enable
fi