Installing vCenter Appliance 6.5 & Enhancements
vCenter appliance 6.5 is the latest & greatest release of vCenter so far I could say. vSphere 6.5 adds an X-Large deployment size, the update manager and a fully supported migration assistant to the appliance. So it’s time to migrate your Windows based vCenters to appliance with vSphere 6.5.
VCSA 6.5 Enhancements
Supports up to 2000 ESXi Hosts and 35.000 Virtual Machines
Guided Installer (Interactive Installer, instead of OVF Template)
Robust deployment (Separate Deployment and Configuration to prevent failed deployments
Migration Assistant (Migrate vCenter Server 5.5 or 6.0 for Windows to vCenter Server Appliance)
Native High Availability
VMware Update Manager
Built-In Backup+Restore
Improved Appliance Management
HTML5-based vSphere Client
Photon OS (Replaces SUSE Enterprise 11)
Let’s see how to deploy vCenter appliance 6.5
Download the VMware VCSA 6.5 ISO from MyVMware
Mount the ISO or extract it and depending upon the system (Linux, Windows or Mac) you’re using to start the deployment locate the installer folder under ‘vcsa-ui-installer’
Create A record & PTR for the vCenter
Launch the installer.exe
Follow the assistant
Accept the EULA & select the deployment model for your vCenter
Enter the details of ESXi host or vCenter server where you wish to deploy the VCSA. In my case I’m using standalone host for deployment
Accept the certificate prompt and enter the name of VCSA VM and root password
Now choose the deployment size and storage size
Choose a datastore where to deploy the VM
And then finally configure the networking
After this review the configuration and start the deployment.
Post on VCSA configuration to follow, stay tuned!
