vSphere5

Creating vSphere 5 ESXi embedded USB Stick

A very quick post on how to create an image that contains vSphere 5 ESXi Embedded with which you can use to quickly create USB sticks that have the ESXi hypervisor installed.  This is not the same as creating a bootable USB key that contains the installation files to install ESXi from the USB stick.  Use this in your lab environment, I wouldn’t recommend doing this in production environments.

In previous versions of vSphere ESXi, it was relatively straight forward to create a bootable USB key which already contained the ESXi hypervizor.  This was done by extracting the files from the ISO and then using ‘dd’ to image the directory structure to the USB stick.  With vSphere ESXi 5 however, this technique is no longer possible.  There is a workaround however.  ESXi is installed and configured in two steps, the installation is done to a disk with a vanilla installation of ESXi without configuration.  The server is then rebooted and the configuration of ESXi continues with the creation of the management network vmk0 or vmk1 (depending on your setup), hostname, DNS etc.

For this to work, we do not perform the second part, which is the configuration, but take an image of the USB key directly after the installation of the vanilla installation of ESXi without configuration.  This enables us to image this vanilla installation onto as many USB sticks, i.e., servers as we like without clashes in virtual MAC addresses and the like.

What you will need: VMware Workstation, 1 USB stick, the ESXi Installable ISO file VMware-VMvisor-Installer-5.0.0-469512.x86_64.iso, WinImage.

Quick steps

1. Create a new ESX virtual machine in VMware Workstation with CD-ROM drive, USB adapter, 2Gb RAM and 2vCPUs.
2. Mount the ESXi Installable ISO file to the CD Drive.
3. Insert the USB stick to your workstation (the same one that runs VMware Workstation).
4. Boot the VM and connect the USB stick to the VM.
5. Install ESXi as normal, making sure that you install onto the USB stick, when installation is complete, disconnect the USB stick from the VM and do not reboot the VM, just turn it off.  You no longer need this VM.
6. With the USB stick still connected to your workstation, open up Winimage.
7. Go to Disk | Creating Virtual Hard Disk image from physical drive and select the USB stick that you installed ESXi on.
8. Select a location where to save your image and change the file type to Image file (*.ima).
9. WinImage will now make a backup on your newly installed USB stick.

Creating vSphere 5 ESXi embedded bootable USB sticks

1. Now that you have an ESXi image, you can use this to build lots of USB sticks which are ready for ESXi deployment.
2. Insert a new USB stick into a spare USB port.
3. Launch WinImage and navigate to Disk | Restore Virtual Hard Disk image on physical drive.
4. Select the USB stick and click on OK.
5. Navigate to the image file that you created previously.  WinImage will now restore the backed up image to your new USB stick.
6. Repeat as necessary.

Configure ESXi

Once the stick is ready, just insert into a spare USB port on your server and ESXi will boot into the configuration screen ready for you to configure management network details.

You may need to log onto the local console once ESXi has finished booting and launch the ‘Restore Network Settings’.  This will reset the vmk0 or vmk1 (depending on your setup) interface.

VMware vCenter Server Virtual Appliance (vCSA) Feature Parity

In a previous article I wrote about the vCSA’s features and benefits.  A few readers have asked what works with the vCSA and what does not.

The vCSA supports all vCenter features – DRS, SDRS, HA, Host Profiles, dvSwitches, etc.

Secondary architecture features like supported DB, View Composer are not yet at feature parity with the Windows vCenter Server.

Not supported yet:

• Microsoft SQL as the database for vCenter – requires stable ODBC driver for Linux that can scale.
• vCenter Server Linked Mode – requires ADAM.
• vCenter Server Heartbeat – requires Windows.
• IPv6.
• Single sign-on using Windows session credentials.
• VMware View Composer (Linked Clones) – installed on Windows vCenter Server only.
• vSphere Storage Appliance – VSA Manager & VSA Cluster Server installed on Windows vCenter Server.
• VIX Plugin for vCenter Orchestrator – VMware Tools API only works with Windows vCenter Server.

Other VMware products that work with the vCSA:

• vCenter Operations.
• vCenter Orchestrator.
• vCenter CapacityIQ.
• SRM5.
• VMware View 5 (no Linked Clones).
• Auto Deploy.
• vCenter Update Manager.
• vMA.
• vSphere Client.
• vSphere Web Client.
• VMware vCloud Director.
• PowerCLI.
• vSphere Client for iPad & vCMA.

If I find anything else, I’ll update the article.

vSphere 5 vCenter Server Virtual Appliance Quick-Start Guide

The vCenter Server Linux Virtual Appliance (vCSA) is a preconfigured Linux-based virtual machine that is optimized for running vCenter Server and associated services.

This article provides a step-by-step guide on how to deploy the vCSA, configure networking, authentication, database and vCenter services.  For further information regarding the vCSA please refer to this post and this post.

Note: This article was written using the release candidate version of the software so your experience with the GA version may differ slightly.

The following table lists the required files that you will need, gather these files before proceeding.

Watch the 10-minute video (Optimised for iPad)

Deploy the vCenter Server Linux Virtual Appliance

1. Launch your vSphere Client and navigate to File | Deploy OVF Template.
2. Browse to the location of the vCenter Appliance .ovf file, then click on Open.
3. On the following screen click on Next.
4. Then click on Next again on the OVF Template Details page.
5. Under Name and Location, give your vCenter Appliance a name then click Next.
6. Choose a datastore then click Next.
7. Select a disk format on the next page then click on Next to continue.
8. Click on Finish to start deploying.

Configuring the vCenter Server Linux Virtual Appliance

1. Boot the appliance.
2. Open a vSphere Client console session to the virtual appliance and configure the network and timezone.
3. Now open up a browser and type https://<ip_of_appliance>:5480 to continue the configuration.
4. Accept the certificate error to continue.
5. Login as root, the default password is vmware.

1. Now read through every single word of the EULA and click on Accept EULA to continue. Please be patient whilst the vCenter is configured. If you look at the appliance remote console you’ll see the services being configured and started.

1. You can start using the web interface again once the console screen returns to default.

1. Next click on Status, and view the current status of the vCenter Server. The service should be on a Stopped state and the Database Type should show not configured.
2. Click on the tab, you will notice that there are no DNS Servers configured and the appliance’s hostname is the standard localhost.localdom, lets change this.
3. Click on and change to your relevant values and click on to complete the network configuration.
4. Now setup authentication by clicking on and then on either NIS or Active Directory. My lab environment uses AD.
5. Click on the tick box and then fill in your domain details and then click on Save Settings. You should receive an Operation is successful message to confirm that the authentication settings has worked.
6. We now need to configure a database for vCenter to use, for this article, let’s use the embedded DB2 database. Click on to continue.
7. When using the embedded database, there is no need to enter any details, just click on . This will take a while to complete, once done click on . After some time the database will complete configuration.
8. Now reboot the virtual appliance one last time. To reboot click on and then click on . Click Reboot again to confirm.
9. This time the vCenter Appliance will successfully start the vpxd daemon and initialize the database, eventually vCenter 5.0 will be ready for you to use.

Connecting to vCenter 5.0 for the first time

With all VMware vSphere Clients, when you start the vSphere Client and connect to either a vCenter Server or an ESX/ESXi host, it will check whether the vSphere Client is compatible. This is still the case with vSphere 5.0 and you will need to update your vSphere Client if you haven’t already done so. You can update by connecting to vCenter Server or ESX/ESXi or you can download the vSphere Client executable from the VMware Downloads website.

1. Launch the vSphere Client and connect to your newly configured vCenter Server.
2. You must use root | vmware to login, domain credentials will not work until the permissions are added to vCenter.

1. Update the vSphere Client as necessary.
2. Add an AD group into vCenter permissions and set the role as Administrator. [See video].
3. Now you will be able to log in with domain credentials.
4. You will need to enter your username in DOMAIN\Username or username@DOMAIN format.

It is also possible to just use the vSphere Web Client by opening up a browser session to https://<ip_of_vCSA>:9443/vsphere-client/