Homelab: LCM & vRA setup

After installing vCenter, it was time to install LifeCycle manager and vRA. And I’m going to start directly with a note to myself => Make sure you download the latest version :-D.
I was so enthusiastic to deploy LCM, that I just downloaded the first version I’ve encountered, which was 8.2. But the actual version I needed was 8.3.
Instead of downloading the newer version and start from scratch, I decided to upgrade to 8.3 later. What’s the point of a homelab, if you don’t use it to learn from. Right?

1. Install LCM

So in this chapter you will find the steps to deploy LCM / vIDM & vRA. Mount the ISO you downloaded and go to D:\vrlcm-ui-installer\win32 and run the installer

Click on Next.

Accept the License Agreement and choose if you want to join the CEIP program. Click on Next.

Here you can choose to create a specific user to give to your LCM appliance. The necessary rights are described in this vmware link

Accept your certificate

Choose where you want to drop your VM’s and click on Next

Choose the cluster where you want to deploy your machines and click on Next.

Select your storage and click on Next. Because I have a homelab I’ve chosen to enable “Thin Disk Mode”.

Fill in your network configuration and click on Next.

This is the password that will be used for all 3 appliances!

The account that is here mentioned as “Default Configuration Admin” is the account you will need to use to connect to your vRA environment.

Now sit back, relax, and wait till the installation is done

2. Check your deployment

Now we’re going to connect to our freshly deployed vRA instance. Go to the fqdn of your vRA appliance in my case https://vra8.vkasaert.local and connect with the default configuration admin you configured in step 10 of your deployment. The password is the one you configured in step 8.

Once connected you can launch quickstart for a quick config of your environment.

I only have a vCenter server environment. So click on start next to it.

Fill in the information of your vCenter and validate your config. Once done Go to the next step.

I had already deployed an NSX-T instance, so I added the configuration for that and validated the credentials. After that go to the Next Step.

I didn’t have any templates yet in my vCenter so I’ve skipped this step.

Create a Project for your deployments and click on Next Step.

I left the policies default. If needed I could always change these afterwards.

Run quickstart and once it’s done you can click on close.

3. Closing off

Now that you deployed your vRA instance you’re ready to start your automation journey with vRA. Happy automation 🙂

Extra: Troubleshooting LCM deployments

In case you need to troubleshoot your LCM deployment, have a look at the log on the LCM appliance. This log can be found in /var/log/vrlcm/vmware_vrlcm.log

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