Today, in part 4 we will create our ESX’es.
1. Go to the tab VMs. You need to click on the “+ sign” if you don’t see a list of available VMs to add.
2. Click on the “+ sign” next to the “Empty ESX”.
3. In the general tab we update the Name & Hostname
4. In the system tab I’m reducing the mem size to 4GB and changed the display to standard VGA, both are not a requirement. The reason why I’m reducing the memory to 4GB is because today I didn’t find a solution yet to deploy the VCSA appliance on the Ravello ESX’es, so I don’t need a lot of memory. This because my virtual center will be a separate windows deployed machine on which I install the vCenter role.
5. In the disks tab we will delete the disk of 100GB. Because we have the freeNAS that will give us the storage we need.
6. We will add a disk for the OS install of the ESX.
7. Adding a disk of 10GB is big enough
8. On the CD-ROM we will be adding the ISO for the ESX install
9. As I’m preparing for my VCAP for 6.5 I’m still installing 6.5
10. On the NICs tab I will be deleting the second NIC
11. On the remaining NIC I’m configuring a static IP.
12. In the services tab I delete the supplied services as I don’t require to make a SSH connection to my ESX’es from my computer.
13. If you removed the SSH connection you click on the save button.
14. Now we need to remove the error from the network. Go to the network tab => Click on your ESX => NICs and click on NIC1
15. Click on connect to switch
16. Connect to Switch2
17. Now repeat the same process to deploy a second ESX. As installing an ESX is straight forward I’m not going to explain this here. However I’m just adding a printscreen of the IP config. Make sure you configure the correct Default Gateway on Ravello it’s always .2 IP address
18. Disable IPV6
19. Configure your DNS to point to your DC and fill in the FQDN of your host.
Ok we reached the end of our deployment.
As I told earlier I’m going to deploy my vCenter as a Windows machine. If I figured out how to deploy the VCSA appliance on the ESX’es I’ll create a new post for that. For now, you’re good to go to start your lab.
Have fun and start experimenting!!!!
Kristof's virtual life 