If you’ve followed the guide this far, you’ve deployed 3 esxi hosts nested on your baremetal esxi install. This guide takes it a step further by deploying vcenter and creating a vSAN cluster on the esxi hosts.
Table of Contents
Download vCenter Server
Login to your account at https://my.vmware.com/ and go to Products and Accounts ->Products -> All Products
Select VMware vSphere. View Download ComponentsSelect your version and download the vCenter Server. I’m using VMware vCenter Server 7.0U2b with Enterprise Plus Download the VMware vCenter Server Appliance (7.5GB) VMware-VCSA-all-7.0.2-17958471.iso
Mount the ISO and use the install wizard to configure vCenter 7
I’m using windows 10, and it was relatively easy to mount the ISO. In Windows explorer, I just navigated over to the downloads directly where the ISO was, and double clicked it. Open the directory vcsa-ui-installer -> win32 -> installer.exe.
Stage 1
You should see a popup like this. Go ahead and click InstallClick Next to deploy vCenter serverAccept the EUL.Put the IP/fqdn of the first esxi host, and the credentials.Select Yes to accept the warning.Specify a name for the vm, and set the root passwordFor deployment size I chose Tiny since it more than met my needs. If you need more, select Small.Select “Install on a new vSAN cluster containing the target host” Feel free to modify the names.We’re going to claim all the 200GB disks as capacity tier, and the 20GB disk as cache tier. The other disk we will not use. Additionally, I selected “Enable Thin Disk Mode” and “Enable Deduplication and compression” Since it’s a lab, i’m not too worried about a vSAN failure. Worst case, i’ll just rebuild the entire lab and get more practice.Set the fqdn for vcenter, IP address and mask, default gateway, and dns server. vCenter is very picky about dns.. Make sure that the fqdn resolves and the ip address reverse lookup resolves as well.Here’s the summary page. Go ahead and hit Finish then grab some coffee. This step takes a while.Congratulations! It’s installed. Now onto stage 2 for some additional configuration. Click Continue
Stage 2
Into the setup wizard for stage 2. Click NextYou’re welcome to sync with a public ntp server (or private), I just selected the host for mine. Additionally, it’s a lab and ssh access to vCenter is very handy when troubleshooting issues later.Set the SSO domain, I chose the default “vsphere.local” and enter your password.Choose whether you want to join the CEIP.Summary page. If all looks right, click Finish.Stage 2 Completed. Vcenter is all setup. You can now access the UI:
vSAN Initial Setup
Launch vCenter in the browser.Login with the administrator@vsphere.local account and password.You’re going to see lots of alarms and warnings, don’t worry.. we’re going to fix it all in the next few steps.
Step 1: Cluster Basics
Navigate to the vSAN Cluster and select Configure. Then under Configuration click Quickstart. This provides a easy to use wizard for deploying HA and vSAN.Step 1: Click Edit under Cluster Basics and make sure that all the options are turned on. vSphere DRS, vSphere HA, and vSAN.
Step 2: Add Hosts
Step 2: Under Add hosts, click ADD. Then add in the IP or fqdn of each of the other 2 esxi hosts. Then the user and passwords for each.Select the hosts and click OK to accept the certificate security warning.Summary of the hosts. Click NextReady to add them, click Finish. After you click finish, this will take some time. Just be patient.Hosts are added, now on to step 3.
Step 3: Configure Hosts
Step 3: Click Configure under Configure cluster. I left all these settings default.Set the vmnics as shown above. We will use this to setup vSAN and vMotion. Click Next.I am using vlan20 (10.10.2.0/24) for my vmotion traffic. So I configured 3 interfaces for this traffic, 1 per esxi in the cluster. Also i’m not using vlans, so I have unchecked that box. Click Next.Similarly, the vSAN vlan is vlan30 (10.10.3.0/24) and I configured 3 IP addresses on this network. Uncheck vlan if not in use. Click Next.I left all of these settings default. You can turn on “Virtual Machine Monitoring” if you want. Everything else is fine as default. Click Next.For the disks, select the “Group by:” as Host, and expand the hosts. You will see all the volumes that we created on the esxi setup.Go through and claim the following: 200GB Claim as capacity tier 20GB Claim as cache tier 4GB do not claim Click Next.Skip this step, since we have already configured internet access.Summary page. Review everything and click Finish. This step takes a while.. be patient.Eventually everything will normalize and look like this. You can ignore those yellow alerts. As long as nothing is red, you will be fine.
Licensing vCenter
Click the Menu and navigate to Hosts and Clusters. Right click the vcenter1 instance, and select Assign License. Select the appropriate vCenter license and click Ok.
Licensing the ESXi hosts in vSAN cluster
Enter your licenses separated out by a new line. Click Next. Then you have the option to name your licenses, Next. Summary page. Save.After adding the licenses, you will see them available here.Select the Menu at the top and navigate to Hosts and ClustersRight click on one of the ESXi hosts in the vSAN cluster and select Assign License. Then in the popup that will appear, you select the appropriate license. Repeat this steps for the other 2 ESXi hosts.
Set vSAN as default storage policy
Right click on the vCenter vm, and navigate to VM Policies, and select Edit VM Storage PoliciesAt the top select vSAN Default Storage Policy from the drop down and click Ok.
Comments
thank you for this, its really great. is Production VLAN 5 included in the distribution switch? I followed your instruction and when sniping off new VM’s i get .4 IP address and not .5.
If you’ve configured vlan5 in pfsense you should be able to get DHCP ip addresses. I left it optional since most home labs don’t really need 5 /24s. I ended up configuring it initially in my lab, then removing it later on.
thank you for this, its really great. is Production VLAN 5 included in the distribution switch? I followed your instruction and when sniping off new VM’s i get .4 IP address and not .5.
If you’ve configured vlan5 in pfsense you should be able to get DHCP ip addresses. I left it optional since most home labs don’t really need 5 /24s. I ended up configuring it initially in my lab, then removing it later on.