I have recently been spending some time exploring the latest release of Photon Controller (v0.8). One of the new features in this release is the ability to deploy Photon Controller using a new UI installer provided by a virtual appliance. Since I already have a vCenter Server running in my lab environment, I decided to deploy the Photon Controller Installer OVA using the vSphere Web Client. There are several OVF properties that you can configure as part of deploying the appliance, just like you would with any VMware/3rd Party based virtual appliance. Below is a screenshot of the available OVF properties when deploying the Photon Controller Installer OVA.
Slick way of deploying OVF/OVA directly to ESXi & vCenter Server using govc CLI
I have been meaning to write about this neat little feature that was added to the govc CLI late last year that allows you to easily deploy any OVF/OVA without the need of ovftool. You might ask, why not use ovftool? Well, if you just need to perform a very basic OVF/OVA deploy and prefer not to install anything on your desktop, this can be a nice alternative. govc is provided as a simple binary that is platform agnostic and supports Windows, Linux & Mac OS X. govc is built using govmomi which is also known as the vSphere SDK for Go and this also means you can consume this capablitity beyond just the CLI but also programmatically if you wish. Obviously, the CLI is the easiest method which I will demonstrate below.
Just to be clear, there is still a huge amount of value in using ovftool as it contains a large mount of functionality that is not found any where else. It is still the recommended tool for deploying OVF/OVA across all VMware based Hypervisors and is extensively used by other VMware's products for general OVF/OVA deployment.
Quick Tip - Silent installation of the VMware Client Integration Plugin (CIP)
After answering this question internally, I thought I would also share the details externally for anyone that might also be interested in automating the silent installation of the VMware Client Integration Plugin (CIP). Below are the commands to run for both Windows as well as Mac OS X (be sure to replace the filenames with the paths to your files).
Windows:
C:\Users\lamw\Desktop\VMware-ClientIntegrationPlugin-6.0.0.exe /s /v/qn /l C:\Users\lamw\Desktop\cip.log
Mac OS X:
hdiutil attach -nobrowse ~/Desktop/VMware-ClientIntegrationPlugin-6.0.0.mac64.dmg
sudo installer -pkg /Volumes/VMware-ClientIntegrationPlugin-6.0.0.mac64.dmg/VMware\ Client\ Integration\ Plug-in.pkg -target /
hdiutil detach /Volumes/VMware-ClientIntegrationPlugin-6.0.0.mac64.dmg
Someone had commented on Twitter that it would be great to have a public URL for the CIP installer for automation. In fact, such a URL does exists 🙂 If you open a browser to your vSphere Web Client login page and you do not have CIP installed, there is a link at the lower left hand corner. The URL provided is one that is hosted on VMware and always points to the latest version.
- http://vsphereclient.vmware.com/vsphereclient/VMware-ClientIntegrationPlugin-6.0.0.exe
- http://vsphereclient.vmware.com/vsphereclient/VMware-ClientIntegrationPlugin-6.0.0.mac64.dmg
You also have the option to download a specific version. For example, the download URL for Build 299404 would look like the following:
- http://vsphereclient.vmware.com/vsphereclient/2/9/9/4/0/4/1/VMware-ClientIntegrationPlugin-6.0.0.exe
- http://vsphereclient.vmware.com/vsphereclient/2/9/9/4/0/4/1/VMware-ClientIntegrationPlugin-6.0.0.mac64.dmg
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