VCP 5 Objective 1.1 – Install and Configure vCenter Server
For this objective I used four documents:
- VMware vSphere 5.0 – Licensing, Pricing and Packaging White Paper
- vSphere Availability
- vCenter Server and Host Management
- vSphere Installation and Setup
Objective 1.1 – Install and Configure vCenter Server
Knowledge
Identify available vCenter Server editions
- vCenter Server Essentials – Provides the same features as vCenter Foundation, integrated with the Essentials and Essentials Plus kits
- vCenter Server Foundation – Provides powerful management tools for smaller environments (up to 3 vSphere hosts) looking to rapidly provision, monitor, and control virtual machines
- vCenter Server Standard – Provides large scale management of VMware vSphere deploymentsfor rapid provisioning, monitoring, orchestration, and control of virtual machines
Further details see page 8 of the VMware vSphere 5.0 Licensing, Pricing and Packaging white paper
Deploy the vCenter Appliance
- As an alternative to installing vCenter Server on a Windows machine, you can download the VMware vCenter Server Appliance. The vCenter Server Appliance is a preconfigured Linux-based virtual machine optimized for running vCenter Server and associated services. Microsoft SQL Server and IBM DB2 are not supported for remote databases with the vCenter Server Appliance. The vCenter Server Appliance does not support Linked Mode configuration nor does it support IPv6.
For further information see page 201 of the vSphere Installation and Setup document and pages 41 thru 48 of the vSphere Server and Host Management document
Install vCenter Server into a virtual machine
- When installing vCenter Server on a virtual machine the “hardware” recommendations and software prerequisites do not change. The following are advantages when doing so:
- Rather then dedicating a separate server to the vCenter Server system, you can place it in a virtual machine running on the same host where your other virtual machines run
- You can provide high availability for the vCenter Server system by using vSphere HA
- You can migrate the virtual machine containing the vCenter Server system from one host to another, enabling maintenance and other activities
- You can create snapshots of the vCenter Server virtual machine and use them for backups, archiving, and so on
Size the vCenter Server Database
- The size of your vCenter Database is dependent on how many host you have, have many VM’s you have, and the level of statistics you are using. From within vCenter Server under Administration -> vCenter Server Settings-> Statistics there is a section for Database Size. You can plug in your environments specifics and get a DB size. Also, on VMware’s website there is a Database Sizing Calculator. Currently available is the calculator for vSphere 4.
Install additional vCenter Server components
- Besides vCenter Server there are several additional components you may wish to install. Full details on pages 204 thru 211 of the vSphere Installation and Setup document.
- vSphere Client- Windows program that you can use to configure the host and to operate its virtual machines
- vSphere Web Client – Allows you to connect to a vCenter Server system to manage an ESXi host through a web browser
- Update Manager Server – Allows for the patching of ESXi hosts as well as virtual machines. Can be installed on the same computer as vCenter Server or a different computer.
- vSphere ESXi Dump Collector – ESXi can be configured to dump its vmkernel memory to a network server instead of writing it to disk when the system has had a critical failure
(Purple Screen of Death). ESXi Dump Collector can be used as the network server - vSphere Syslog Collector – Allows ESXi hosts to be configured for their system logs to be captured on a network server
- vSphere Auto Deploy – Allows for the deployment and customization of ESXi hosts by loading the ESXi image into the hosts memory
- vSphereAuthentication Proxy – Enables ESXi hosts to join a domain without using Active Directory credentials. Enhances security for PXE-booted hosts and hosts that are provisioned using Auto Deploy, by removing the need to store Active Directory credentials in the host configuration.
Install/Remove & Enable/Disable vSphere Client plug-ins
- After the server components of a plug-in is installed and registered with vCenter Server, its client component is available to vSphere clients. Client component installation and enablement are managed through the Plug-in Manager dialog box. The Plug-in Manager lets your perform the following actions:
- View available plug-ins that are not currentl installed on the client
- View installed plug-ins
- Download and install available plug-ins
- Enable and disable installed plug-ins
See page 27 of the vCenter Server and Host Management document for step by step
License vCenter Server
- To license a single vCenter Server 5.0, you need a vCenter Server 5.0 license key with a capacity for one instance. If you have vCenter Server systems in Linked Mode group, you can purchase a vCenter Server license key with a larger capacity and assign the key to all vCenter Server systems in the group.
See pages 70 thru 97 of the vCenter Server and Host Management document for additional information and procedures.
Determine availability requirements for a vCenter Server in a given vSphere implementation
- Obviously you want as little down time as possible for your vCenter server. Just be aware of the options to allow vCenter Server to highly available:
- Run vCenter Server in a VM to take advantage of VMware HA/DRS
- vCenter Server Cluster Heartbeat
- Cold standby vCenter Server (virtual or physical)
Determine use case for vSphere Client and Web Client
- vSphere Client – As VMware Administrators we are quite familiar with the traditional vSphere Client. It is the one stop shop to configure and maintain your entire environment. Using this client may not be suitable for non-administrators (think VM owners or Operations staff).
- Web Client – Better suited for your non-administrative users. Uses a java based web page to allow for the basic tasks of managing VM’s.
See page 17 of the vCenter Server and Host Management document for further details
Tools
- VMware vSphere Basics Guide
- vSphere Installation and Setup guide
- vCenter Server and Host Management guide
Jason, good review of this objective, look forward to seeing more in the future. The HA options for vCenter, were those your options, or options layed out in one of the guides/papers your referenced? What about using MSCS to make vCenter highly available (obviously this wouldn’t apply to the vCenter appliance)?
Hey Josh,
Thanks for the comment.
Some of the options I mentioned are listed in the VMware documentation. Using a cold standby server is something that I have done in the past, and can’t comment on if it is mentioned in the current VMware docs (still gong through them all). I do know that using MSCS is not supported for vCenter since at least vCenter 4.0.
-Jason
Great information Jason!! Do you plan on cramming for this an taking your VCP5 before November in order to take advantage of the vmworld discount?
Mike,
Thanks for the feedback! Not sure if I am going to go for it by November for the discount, but most definitely by February so I don’t have to sit the “Whats New” class. At least thats the goal.
-Jason
Any idea if the vCenter Server Appliance will work with Essentials or Essentials plus, or does it support Standard versions only?
“You can create snapshots of the vCenter Server virtual machine and use them for backups, archiving, and so on”
That kind of funny considering they say never to use snapshots to backup it up.. cloning myabe but never snapshots… that is a bit shocking .. was that actually in the document? Maybe they are talking about another snapshot.
Cwjking,
I am not aware of any issues of taking snapshots of a virtual vCenter server. We do it quite often when installing OS patches or prepping for upgrades as well as using vDR. I did a quick search and also located the following VMware KB article, KB10087 that outlines this as well.
Thanks for the comment,
-Jason
The issue Cwjking is referring is that a VMware snapshot is NOT a backup. In its most basic sense a snapshot is merely a list of changes that have occurred since the snapshot was taken, without the base vmdk file a snapshot is useless. It is highly recommended not to have a VM running as a snapshot more than 2-3 days tops. As for issues of running on snapshots in general – theres a limit to the number of snapshots you can have, a snapshot can run your datastore out of space, you can get corrupted snapshot chains. The wording quoted above in the document is accurate but is misleading. The kb article states it a bit better with “Provides the ability to use snapshots for VM-level backup utilities (such as VMware Data Recovery) and for restore points before installing update packages.”
What the document is trying to say is that when the vcenter is installed as a VM you can perform a snapshot so that backup software can backup the base vmdk while the VM remains running. VDR, vranger, veam, symnantec all rely the VM ability to take a snapshot just prior to performing a backup. The second part of what the snapshot is good for is take a a snapshot then apply a patch,upgrade,change to the VM. If you are happy with the results after applying the change then you commit the snapshot and move on. If the change does something horrible to the system then you rollback and dont commit the snapshot. Hopefully that sheds a bit more light on the previous comment.
Thanks TSE for clearing that up
and just to add to TSE – it should be “backout” not really a backup. When go though the training courses the instructors WILL make a point to say never to use Snapshots for backups…
Wanted to see really great work Jason, Love the resources… going for the test Jan. 31 got a lot of studying to do.
Thx Cwjking and good luck on your exam! Let me know how it goes.
-Jason
Your gonna hate me but I hate to point out something else:
“Update Manager Server – Allows for the patching of ESXi hosts as well as virtual machines. Can be installed on the same computer as vCenter Server or a different computer.”
Update manager no longer updates VM Guest OS’es? I have seen this outlined several times in blog post in documentation… Is this from another source?
Cwjking,
That was pulled directly from the vSphere Installation and Setup documentation on page 200, “vCenter Server component that provides security monitoring and patching support for hosts and virtual machine”. You are correct however that it no longer supports the patching of guest VM operating systems. But you could view the new versions of VMware Tools as well as updating virtual hardware versions as updates/patches, which it will do.
Thanks for the comment,
-Jason
Okay so it update hardware on virtual machines? If seems the wording is misleading.. because it does “patch” VM guest machines. It almost sounds like VMware should change that. Kind of confusing.
Thanks Jason for sharing the information. About the Vcenter appliance, As per the comment, on that was “Microsoft SQL Server and IBM DB2 are not supported for the vCenter Server Appliance”. But IBM DB2 comes along with the vcenter appliance and it is supported. Could you please check and confirm.
Thanks and Regards
Ram
Ram,
Thank you for your comment.
You are correct, the vCenter Virtual Appliance does come with an internal DB2 database. However the documentation is referring to using an external MS SQL or DB2 database. I will update my notes above to reflect that.
TIA,
-Jason
TSE,
Thank you for expanding on the comments.
-Jason