Running vCenter Server Appliance 6.0 in Fusion

I am doing some simple tests at home and I am running the vCenter Server Appliance 6.0 in Fusion. In order to get it working there are a couple of tricks I have to perform, I find myself resorting to the same blogs over and over again so I figured I would just put it all on my own blog in a single location so I can simply copy/past where needed and don’t need to hit multiple sources.

First, deployment of vCenter Server in Fusion:

• Download the vCenter Server Appliance ISO
• Mount the appliance in OSX
• Copy the file “vmware-vcsa” from the folder “vcsa”
• Add “.ova” to the file by renaming it
• Open fusion go to “File” and “Import” the OVA but don’t start it
• Edit the “vmx” file of the VM you just created
  • Typically stored under Documents –> Virtual Machines
  • I edit them using vi through the terminal as that is what I’ve used for the last decade or so. The path for me looks something like this:
  • /Users/depping/Documents/Virtual Machines.localized/vmware-vcsa-2800571.vmwarevm
• You will need to add a bunch of entries, I lifted these from William’s site of course… Thanks William
  guestinfo.cis.deployment.node.type = “embedded”
  guestinfo.cis.vmdir.domain-name = “vsphere.local”
  guestinfo.cis.vmdir.site-name = “vsphere”
  guestinfo.cis.vmdir.password = “VMware1!”
  guestinfo.cis.appliance.net.addr.family = “ipv4”
  guestinfo.cis.appliance.net.addr = “192.168.1.5”
  guestinfo.cis.appliance.net.pnid = “192.168.1.5”
  guestinfo.cis.appliance.net.prefix = “24”
  guestinfo.cis.appliance.net.mode = “static”
  guestinfo.cis.appliance.net.dns.servers = “192.168.1.1”
  guestinfo.cis.appliance.net.gateway = “192.168.1.1”
  guestinfo.cis.appliance.root.passwd = “VMware1!”
  guestinfo.cis.appliance.ssh.enabled = “true”

Now I want to update vCenter Server, 6.0 in this instance, was described by Ryan Johnson recently, I tweaked it to meet my own needs

• Download the patch: https://my.vmware.com/group/vmware/patch#search
  • Note that this isn’t the regular ISO file, the filename should look something like this: VMware-vCenter-Server-Appliance-6.0.0.10000-3018521-patch-FP.iso (6.0U1)
• Mount the ISO through Fusion
• SSH in to the vCenter Server:
  • ssh [email protected]
• Now from the command run the “software-packages” command and let it use the ISO you just mounted
  • software-packages install –iso  –acceptEulas
• This upgrade  will take a couple of minutes usually, in my case it took about 7 minutes to complete, next you will need to reboot the vCenter Server:
  • shutdown reboot -r updates

That’s it… easy right.