Install vCenter Server onto a virtual machine

How to Install vCenter Server 6.5 for Windows

Despite VMware’s stride to push for the adoption of vCenter Server Appliance (vCSA) instead of its Windows based twin, the latter is still an integral part of vSphere 6.5. In this short how-to post, I’ll guide you through the steps required to install the latest incarnation of vCenter. To keep matters simple, I went for an embedded Platform Services Controller and PostgreSQL database solution. This setup will suffice for most SMBs out there. Broadly speaking, most SMB VMware based environment will fall under the Tiny or Small categories as per VMware’s literature.

The table shows the different types of environments, their respective capacity in terms of the number of ESXi hosts and deployed VMs and the compute resources that need to be allocated to vCenter Server.

Type	ESXi Hosts	VMs	VC RAM (GB)	VC CPUs
Tiny	10	100	10	2
Small	100	1000	16	4
Medium	400	4000	24	8
Large	1000	10000	32	16
X-Large	2000	35,0000	48	24

Note: vCenter Server for Windows 6.5 runs on Windows Server 2008 SP2 or better. As per earlier versions, installing vCenter on an Active Directory Domain Controller IS NOT supported.

A complete list of requirements is available on the VMware vSphere 6.5 documentation site.

Getting on with the installation

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Step 1: Prepare a VM or physical server. The specifications should reflect the environment you expect to be managing. Remember to allocate at least 10GB of RAM, 2 CPUs and 17GB of disk space over and above what’s required for the Windows OS and other installed software. Also keep in mind that in time, the vCenter database will grow in size, so factor in this as well when allocating disk capacity.

Step 2: Decide on a hostname for vCenter (ex. vcw65). Create the corresponding A and PTR records on a DNS server and make sure that the records resolve correctly.

Figure 1 – Creating the DNS records for the vCenter Server for Windows instance

Step 3: Install Windows Server as you would normally do. After the install, apply all pending updates and patches.

Step 4: Make sure the Windows computer name matches the vCenter hostname i.e. vcw65. Reboot the server.

Figure 2 – Setting the vCenter Server Windows computer name

Step 5: Download the latest vCenter Server 6.5 ISO from my.vmware.com.

Step 6: When deploying vCenter to a VM, you can mount the ISO image as a DVD drive directly from a datastore or from local disk. If a physical machine is used instead, you can copy the ISO image to a folder on the Windows server and then mount it as a drive from the OS itself; right-click on the file and mount!

Figure 3 – Mount the ISO image on a VM from a local disk

Step 7: Log in as administrator on the Windows box.

Step 8: Double-click on the DVD drive just mounted. This launches the VMware vCenter Installer .

Figure 4 – The mounted ISO image in Windows Explorer

Step 9: From here on, the installer takes you through a series of screens and options, most of which are self-explanatory. Regardless, I listed the whole lot in a sequential order each accompanied by a brief note as follows.

Click on Install to start the installation wizard.
Click Next to proceed.
Tick the EULA agreement box at the bottom and press Next.
Select Embedded Deployment on the PSC options screen. Press Next.
Type in the fully qualified name (FQDN) for the vCenter Server. This must match the DNS A record created. Press Next.
Type in a password for the administrator@vsphere.local account. Leave everything else as set. Press Next.
Since we’re using the embedded database, the Windows Local System account will do just fine. Press Next.
Select the embedded database option and press Next.
Leave the default port selection as is and press Next. Note: If you’re planning on or have already installed additional software that performs network port binding, make sure that there are no port conflicts. As a rule of thumb, you should avoid installing anything else unless absolutely necessary.
Specify the installation folder for vCenter. You can either stick to the default settings or specify your own.  Press Next. Note: For live servers, I personally prefer a dedicated disk for the installation, more so if I’m virtualizing the vCenter server.
Here you can opt to join CEIP. Press Next.
And finally, press Install to launch the installation process.
Installation progress … it may take a while so grab a cup of coffee!
Once the installation is done, you are presented with this screen.

The process is 100% identical to installing vCenter Server 6.0 for Windows as described in my somewhat old post How to set up a nested vSphere 6 nested environment. So really, very little has changed from an installation perspective. Under the hood, however, there have been some changes as explained here.

Figure 5 – The vCenter Server web landing page

Conclusion

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Installing vCenter Server 6.5 for Windows is pretty straight forward provided you prepare the groundwork first. Compared to earlier versions, very little has changed except that vCenter is now a little bit more resource hungry. The thick (C#) vSphere client is, officially, no longer supported. This means that getting used to the vSphere Web client (or HTML5 client) is no longer optional.

I would also have loved to see the Web client laid to rest once and for all but since its new HTML5 alternative is still not up to par, I guess we will all have to wait until vSphere 7 is released!