OK, the wait is finally over! In this final article, we will now walk through the process of getting access to this project as well as how to get this deployed in your own environment. For those that just want to see the code, you can find it at the Github project below:
Github Project: https://github.com/lamw/usb-to-sddc
Below are the details outlining the environment and software requirements as well as the instructions to consume this in your own home lab environment. The content below is a subset of what is published on the Github project, but this should get you going. For more details, please refer to the Github project and if you have any issues/questions, feel free to file a Github issue.
Environment Requirements:
- USB key that is at least 6GB in capacity
- Access to either macOS or Linux system as the script that creates the USB key is only supported on these two platforms
- No additional USB keys must be plugged into the hardware system other than the primary installer USB key
- Hardware system must have at least 2 disk drives which can either be 1xHDD and 1xSSD for running Hybrid vSAN OR 2xSSD for running All-Flash vSAN
- Both Intel NUC 6th Gen and Supermicro E200-8D and E300-8D have been tested with this solution. It should work with other hardware systems that meet the minimum requirements but YMMV
Software Requirements:
- ESXi 6.5a - VMware-VMvisor-Installer-201701001-4887370.x86_64.iso
- VCSA 6.5b - VMware-VCSA-all-6.5.0-5178943.iso
- DeployVM.zip
- UNetbootin (Required for Mac OS X users)
Note: Other ESXi / VCSA 6.5.x versions can also be substituted, this includes the latest ESXi 6.5d (vSAN 6.6) release which I have also verified myself.
UPDATE (04/17/18) - No changes are required to get vSphere 6.7 to work, the only minor thing to be aware of is that the vSphere Web Client customization has changed in 6.7 and so you need to set VCSA_WEBCLIENT_THEME_NAME="" as empty string or you will find that the UI will not load unless you delete the customization directory in the VCSA that was pulled down automatically.