ESXi disk size requirement?

I was just building a vCD Lab and thought I would document the process. I know Hany has done something similar recently but mine is slightly different. I wanted to have a slim config from a memory perspective and virtual machine count perspective. Before I start, let’s give a warning… ***this is totally unsupported***

Pre-requisites:

We will be creating multiple VMs but for the sake of simplicity will be combining functionality where possible. First you will need to install multiple ESXi hosts and a vCenter server. I am assuming all of you know how to do this so I won’t go into detail here. If you don’t drop me a comment. I did list some of the recommendations/requirements:

vCenter / DNS / ESXi

Create a VM with 1 vCPU and 1 GB of memory. I used a 20GB thin disk, which should be more than sufficient as we will not be using VUM.
Connect the Windows 2008 – 64 Bit ISO and walk through the standard installation process. I will not describe every step, as all of you should be able to install an OS. However the following is recommended:
- Fixed IP Address
- I changed the host name to “vcenter”
- Install DNS
  - pre-populate DNS with records for your two esxi hosts, vShield Manager and your vCD server.
I will not tell you how to install ESXi or vCenter for that matter. Just ensure you have two ESXi hosts with shared storage in a DRS enabled cluster, those are the requirements. Preferably with some memory resource. I gave both my ESXi hosts 3GB. There are a couple of options for shared storage:
- You could use Openfiler as your iSCSI target for ESXi hosts (preferred), if you don’t know how to set it up read this excellent this article by Kiwi_Si.
- You could enable NFS on your CentOS which also hosts your vCD and Oracle database
- If you are using VMware Workstation enable “clustering” of disks… I haven’t tested this in a while though.

Result: vCenter Server, 1 Cluster containing at least 2 ESXi hosts with DRS enabled.

vShield Manager

You could run vShield Manager as a VM within your virtualized ESXi host, but from a performance perspective that is probably not the smartest thing to do. So we are going to import it into Fusion. For those using Windows VMware Workstation is also fine, or even Player.

I guess this is the most tricky part of the whole setup, you will need to convert the vShield OVA to a VM. Now this is not a must, you can also run the vShield on your virtual ESXi hosts, but I like to avoid this for performance reasons. So this is how I converted it:

Go to the folder which contains the OVA and go into the OVA and copy all files included into a separate folder
Download the OVF Tool to convert the vShield Manager OVF Files to a format that Fusion supports
- Open a terminal window and “cd” to the folder which contains “VMware-ovftool-2.0.1-260188-mac.i386.sh”
- Make the script executable by typing the following:
  chmod +x VMware-ovftool-2.0.1-260188-mac.i386.sh
- Run the installer script by typing the following:
  ./VMware-ovftool-2.0.1-260188-mac.i386.sh
- Confirm the installation with “yes”
- Accept the EULA with “yes”
- Confirm the path by pressing enter/return
- The install should complete literally within seconds
- Go to the folder that contains the “OVF” file and type the following:
  /opt/vmware/ovftool/ovftool.bin “VSM.ovf” .
- Accept the EULA by typing “yes”
- The conversion should now start and when it is completed a new folder should be created which contains your VMX file and your VMDK files. These can be imported into Fusion.
- Copy the VSM Folder to the place you store your local VMs and open the VM within Fusion and fire it up
Now that you have VSM running on your Laptop/Macbook you will need to configure it. These steps are pretty straight forward, but they will need to happen in order for VSM to function correctly:
- Open the vShield Manager console and login with user “admin” and password “default”
- Type “enable”, enter the password “default” again and type “setup” to configure your VSM
- Enter your IP, Subnet, Gateway and DNS details and exit to ensure these are active
That is it! Now you can use your internet browser to see if you can login to your VSM “https://<ipaddress”

Result: vShield Manager running within Fusion.

vCD VM

Create a VM with 1 vCPU and 1 GB of memory. I used a 20GB thin disk, which should be more than sufficient.
Connect the CentOS 5 – 64 Bit ISO and walk through the standard installation process. I will not describe every step, as all of you should be able to install an OS. However the following is recommended:
- Default partitioning scheme
- Fixed IP Address
- Disable IP v6
- Server GUI install
After the install is done you will need to reboot the VM and configure the OS. I recommend the following:
- Disable the Firewall
- Disable SELinux
- Enable NTP
- Create an additional user
Now that the VM has rebooted again we will need to upgrade all packages to the latest version and install VMware Tools all the required packages:
- Install VMware Tools (extract the files from the archive and run the installer via a terminal window by going to the path where you extracted it and type:
  ./vmware-install.sh
  use all the default settings
- Open a terminal window and type the following:
  yum update
  yum upgrade
- Now install all the Oracle and vCD required packages:
  yum install alsa-lib bash chkconfig compat-libcom_err coreutils findutils glibc grep initscripts krb5-libs libgcc libICE libSM libstdc libX11 libXau libXdmcp libXext libXi libXt libXtst module-init-tools net-tools pciutils procps sed tar which
Install Oracle 10g Express (again note that this isn’t officially supported):
- Copy the Oracle RPM file to your vCD VM
- Open a terminal window and go to the path where you copied the Oracle RPM file
- rpm -i oracle-xe-10.2.0.1-1.0.i386.rpm
- /etc/init.d/oracle-xe configure
- Use the default ports (8080 and 1521)
- Enter the password twice
- Select “y” to ensure the database daemon is started when the VM restarts
After the Oracle 10g Express server has been installed test if you can actually access it by opening a web browser. Try http://<ipaddress>:8080/apex
I would recommend to create a new user for the vCD environment:
- Click “Administration”
- Go to “Database Users” and click “Create User”
- I would recommend to give it the name “vcloud” and an easy to remember password. Also make sure you tick the “DBA” tick box.
- Click “Create”
Now it is time to install vCD (copy the bin file to your vCD VM)
- First we need to create a virtual interface so that we have two IP addresses that vCD can use. Of course you can also add a second NIC, but I use this method to keep the VM configuration as simple as I possibly can:
  - Open a terminal windows and type the following:
    nano /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0:1
  - Add the following to the file you just opened, of course add the approriate IP address and net mask!
    BOOTPROTO=static
    DEVICE=eth0:1
    IPADDR=<ip address>
    NETMASK=<net mask>
    ONBOOT=yes
  - Save the file and restart the network by typing the following:
    service network restart
  - When you do an “ifconfig” it should show you two devices…
- Open a terminal window and go to the path where you copied the vCD BIN file and make the bin file executable:
  chmod +x vmware-cloud-director-1.0.0-285979.bin
- type the following to do the install
  ./vmware-cloud-director-1.0.0-285979.bin
- It will ask you if you want to run the installer on an unsupported distro, type “y”
- It will ask you if you want to run the configuration script, type “n”
- Next we will create self signed certificates, open a terminal window and do the following:
- Go to /etc and copy and paste the following:
  /opt/vmware/cloud-director/jre/bin/keytool -keystore certificates.ks -storetype JCEKS -storepass password -genkey -keyalg RSA -alias http -dname “cn=vcloud, ou=vmware, o=vmware, c=US” -keypass password
  /opt/vmware/cloud-director/jre/bin/keytool -keystore certificates.ks -storetype JCEKS -storepass password -genkey -keyalg RSA -alias consoleproxy -dname “cn=vcloud, ou=vmware, o=vmware, c=US” -keypass password
- Now you should have a file called “certificates.ks” in /etc
- Next we will need to configure vCD, type the following to start the configuration:
  /opt/vmware/cloud-director/bin/configure
- Select your first IP address, this will be the IP address which is used for vCD Portal access
- Select your second IP address, this will be the IP address which is used for the VM Remote Console
- Type the path to your certificates store, which is “/etc/certificates.ks
- Type the password, which is password
- Press enter to skip the “syslog server”
- Enter the host (or IP address) for the database
  127.0.0.1
- Press enter/return to use default database port (1521)
- Type the database service name
  xe
- Type the database username, in my case:
  vcloud
- Type the database password, in my case:
  vmware
- Now the database will be initialized and the vCD install will be completed
- Type “y” to start the vCD service
- You can monitor the progress of the vCD service start up as follows
  tail -f /opt/vmware/cloud-director/log/cell.log
- It will show you the percentage of the initialization of the application that has completed. Of course it should say “Application Initialization: Complete. Server is ready in” at some point.

Result: VM with both Oracle 10g Express and vCloud Director 1.0.

Final Steps

That is it for the command-line stuff… All we need to do now is configure vCD through the web interface… here we go:

Open a browser and point it to “https://<vCloud Director Address>/cloud/
Click “Next” on the welcome screen
“Accept” the License Agreement
Type your license key and click “Next”
Create an Administrator account and type a password and click “Next”
Give the system a name, I called it “vCD”, and click “Next”
Review your settings and click “Finish” if they look okay

Now you should be presented with the following screen and you should be good to go!

So what’s next? Hany has listed a nice set of videos in his article that will describe how to create a Provider vDC, how to attach a vCenter server etc. Go ahead play around, have fun… enjoy the vCloud!