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Ultimate automation guide to deploying VCSA 6.0 Part 0

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With vSphere 6.0, there is a new deployment model for vCenter Server which is comprised of following two core components:

  • Platform Services Controller (PSC) Node - Provides VMware Infrastructure services such as vCenter Single Sign-On, vSphere Licensing and VMware Certificate Authority Management (VCMA)
  • vCenter Server Management Node - Provides vCenter Server Service, Inventory Service, vSphere Web Client, vPostgres DB, vSphere Syslog Collector, vSphere Auto Deploy, and vSphere Dump Collector Services

From these two components, there are three deployment types (also shown in the diagrams below):

  1. Embedded Node - Both the Platform Services Controller and vCenter Server Management Node reside on a single system, this is true for both the Windows vCenter Server and the VCSA
  2. External Platform Services Controller Node - You can deploy multiple PSC's and configure them with independent SSO Domains or have them all joined to a single SSO Domain, replicating between each other
  3. vCenter Server Management Node - This requires that you have deployed an external PSC which the vCenter Server can point to

vcsa-6.0-deployment-options-new-2There are currently two supported methods of deploying the VCSA 6.0 Appliance which is using the new HTML based UI (Supported only on Windows) or a new scripted installer method (supports Windows, Mac & Linux). Both of these methods today require direct access to an ESXi host for deployment, which may not work for everyone. What if you want to deploy the new VCSA 6.0 using an existing vCenter Server or running it on top of VMware Fusion or Workstation? Luckily, I spent quite a bit of time going through all these "alternative" deployment methods and documenting the process so that you have a choice on how you would like to test and evaluate vSphere 6 and the new VCSA in your environment.

These alternative methods will be using the VCSA OVA which is actually included in the VCSA ISO. You will need to extract the contents of the VCSA ISO and you can find the OVA in the following path after extraction: VMware-VCSA-all-6.0.0-2562643->vcsa->vmware-vcsa where vmware-vcsa is the VCSA OVA file. Depending on the deployment method you are using, you may only need to just extract the contents of the ISO or possibly rename the vmware-vcsa with .ova extension to deploy. Please refer to the articles below for more details.

Disclaimer: Though these alternative deployment options work, they are however not officially supported by VMware. Please use at your own risk.

In the upcoming days, I will be sharing a 4-part blog series for automating the deployment of the new VCSA 6.0 with the following deployment options:

In each article, I will provide resources on how to deploy to an existing vCenter Server or directly to an ESXi host using ovftool via a shell script as well using PowerCLI, deploying to VMware Fusion and deploying to VMware Workstation. Stay tune for Part 1 ...

Handy VCSA (vCenter Server Appliance) Operational KB Resources

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I am a huge fan of the VCSA (vCenter Server Appliance) for anyone that knows me. From time to time, I see interesting VMware KB articles that contain what I think are valuable tidbits of "Operational" information that could come handy in the future. I normally would bookmark these in my browser since you never know when you might need it. I figured for customers who are currently using the VCSA, having some of these operational tidbits would definitely be helpful, especially during troubleshooting or helping them build out a list of resources they could reference when they need to update, increase capacity or change the configurations for the VCSA. Instead of just keeping this list for myself, I thought I can share what I have for the latest VCSA 5.5.x as well comb through our VMware KB site looking for other handy operational KB's to include.

I have categorized the VCSA KB's into four categories that I felt made the most sense, I am sure you could break it down further but I thought this would make it easier to process. In addition, I have also included articles from virtuallyGhetto (subset from this page) that may also apply to these areas which I have listed at the very bottom in case you were interested in those as well. Hopefully this will be helpful for anyone managing VCSA(s) and if there are any that I have missed or you would like to see get added, feel free to leave a comment.

Deployment:
Configurations:
Logging & Troubleshooting:
Backups & Recovery: 

virtuallyGhetto VCSA Operational Resources

Deployment:
Configurations:
Logging & Troubleshooting:
Backups & Recovery:
Tips/Tricks:

Quick Tip - Start & Stop order for vCenter Server Services

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A couple weeks back I had worked on something that required me to shutdown all the vCenter Server Services on a VCSA (vCenter Server Appliance). There is no high level service that can be stopped which would properly shutdown all the different services in the appropriate order. Luckily, one can easily derive the start and stop order by just taking a look at the runlevel scripts (S* for start and K* for Kill scripts). I have extracted the order in which the vCenter Server Services must be stopped and started which is shown below:

Stop Order:

  1. vmcad
  2. vmdird
  3. vmkdcd
  4. vmware-inventoryservice
  5. vmware-logbrowser
  6. vmware-netdumper
  7. vmware-vpxd
  8. vsphere-client
  9. vmware-stsd
  10. vmware-sts-idmd

Start Order:

  1. vmcad
  2. vmdird
  3. vmkdcd
  4. vmware-netdumper
  5. vmware-sts-idmd
  6. vmware-stsd
  7. vmware-inventoryservice
  8. vmware-logbrowser
  9. vmware-vpxd
  10. vsphere-client

Note: Although I mention the VCSA, the ordering also applies to a vCenter Server for Windows which has the exact same services.

Here is a simple shell script snippet that can be used to stop all vCenter Server Services in the appropriate order:

VMWARE_SERVICE_STOP=(
vmcad
vmdird
vmkdcd
vmware-inventoryservice
vmware-logbrowser
vmware-netdumper
vmware-vpxd
vsphere-client
vmware-stsd
vmware-sts-idmd
)

for i in ${VMWARE_SERVICE_STOP[@]};
do
  /etc/init.d/$i stop
done

}

Here is a simple shell script snippet that can be used to start all vCenter Server Services in the appropriate order:

VMWARE_SERVICE_START=(
vmcad
vmdird
vmkdcd
vmware-netdumper
vmware-sts-idmd
vmware-stsd
vmware-inventoryservice
vmware-logbrowser
vmware-vpxd
vsphere-client
)

for i in ${VMWARE_SERVICE_START[@]};
do
  /etc/init.d/$i start
done