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DellEMC PowerEdge R750 – Review & Benchmarks

by Tommy Grot
written by Tommy Grot 8 minutes read

I have gotten my hands on a DellEMC PowerEdge R750. I have been grateful to collaborate with Express Computer Systems to get access to try out and create an awesome review of this hardware. This enterprise rack mount server is a powerful workhorse being powered by the 3rd Generation Intel Xeon Scalable Processors, is a dual socket/2U rack mount server. Of course, I have racked and installed it in my Home Lab 😊. During the initial unboxing, I was amazed on how this server is built from DellEMC, I mean all DellEMC Servers are built to be tough and reliable and a cool feature to see within Dell line up of servers is Water Cooling!! Yes, the DellEMC PowerEdge R750 support an optional Direct Liquid Cooling for keeping up with the increasing power and thermal workloads.

Need Enterprise Hardware? Contact Parker at Express Computer Systems

Now, lets get into the deep dive of the DellEMC PowerEdge R750!

When I first opened the top cover of the chassis, I was amazed. The modular architecture that DellEMC is implementing into their new 15th Generation Servers. PCIe Risers are now much more modular than before, the tool less design – allows the riser card to be removed and install your choice of PCIe card and install it back into the server without any tools.

Specifications

  • 2x Intel® Xeon Gold 6342 2.80GHz 24 Core
  • 4x Dell 2.5” U.3 1.92TB PCIe Gen4 NVMe SSD
  • 2x Dell PERC H755n NVMe RAID Controllers
  • 8x Hynix 128GB DDR4 PC4-3200AA DIMMs
  • 2x Dell 1400W Hot swap EPP PSU
  • 1x Dell/Intel E810 Quad Port 10/25

Front View with Security Bezel

Picture of the DellEMC PowerEdge R750 next to my DellEMC PowerEdge R740.

Now, we will start breaking down the review and we will get into all aspects of the server.

Processors

Intel® Xeon® Gold 6342 Processor (36M Cache- 2.80 GHz)

The Processors installed within the DellEMC PowerEdge R750XD, consist of 2 Intel® Xeon® Gold 6342 Processor (36M Cache- 2.80 GHz). These CPUs are very efficient power consumption for the core/watt ratio. We will get in more depth on the Power Usage in the Power / Efficiency section of the blog. Below are the Specifications from Intel’s Website, there are more features these CPUs offer, if interested check Intel’s website – here.

  • Status Launched – Launch Date Q2’21
  • Lithography 10 nm
  • Total Cores 24
  • Total Threads 48
  • Max Turbo Frequency 3.50GHz
  • Processor Base Frequecny 2.80GHz
  • Cache 36MB
  • Intel® UPI Speed 11.2GT/s
  • Max # of UPS Links 3
  • TDP – 230W
  • Max Memory Size – 6TB
  • Memory Types DDR4-3200
  • Maximum Memory Speed – 3200MHz
  • Max # of Memory Channels 8
  • ECC Memory Supported – Yes
  • Intel® Optane™ Persistent Memory Supported – Yes
  • Sockets Supported – FCLGA4189
  • TCASE 81°C
  • Intel® Speed Select Technology – Core Power – Yes
  • Intel® Speed Select Technology – Turbo Frequency – Yes
  • Intel® Deep Learning Boost (Intel® DL Boost) – Yes
  • Intel® Speed Select Technology – Base Frequency – Yes
  • Intel® Resource Director Technology (Intel® RDT) – Yes
  • Intel® Speed Shift Technology – Yes
  • Intel® Turbo Boost Technology ‡ 2
  • Intel® Hyper-Threading Technology ‡ + Yes
  • Intel® Transactional Synchronization Extensions – Yes
  • Intel® 64 ‡ – Yes
  • Instruction Set Extensions – Intel® SSE4.2 | Intel® AVX | Intel® AVX2 | Intel® AVX-512

CPU Benchmarks – pulled from CPUBenchmark.net

CPU Average Results
  • Integer Math
  • Floating Point Math
  • Find Prime Numbers
  • Random String Sorting
  • Data Encryption
  • Data Compression
  • Physics
  • Extended Instructions
  • Single Thread
  • 193,556 MOps/Sec
  • 111,134 MOps/Sec
  • 233 Million Primes/Sec
  • 87 Thousand Strings/Sec
  • 37,043 MBytes/Sec
  • 666.5 MBytes/Sec
  • 3,820 Frames/Sec
  • 52,433 Million Matrices/Sec
  • 2,453 MOps/Sec

Memory Features

The memory, that is installed is SK Hynix 128GB DDR4 PC4-3200AA DIMM, total of 8 DIMMS. I have attached below a table of the memory specifications.

Capacity128GB
SpeedDDR4 3200 (PC4 25600)
CAS Latency13
Voltage1.20 Volts
Load ReducedLoad Reduced
Rank4Rx4

Storage

The server has 4 Dell 2.5” U.3 1.92TB PCIe Gen4 NVMe SSD. These NVMe PCIe disks have shown outstanding performance runs. I have compiled some benchmark tests with Crystal Disk Mark, below are few pictures I have taken of the Disks. The Controller that is backing these NVMe U.3 Gen4 SSDs are two PERC H755N Front NVMe.

Crystal Disk Mark – Benchmark Tests.

The speeds that are shown below are tested on a virtual machine on VMware ESXi 7.03f with specifications 6vCPUs, 16GB Memory, 90GB VMDK Disk.

I was shocked, when I saw these results of a single server being able to offer these kind of speeds. I cant imagine having a RDMA setup with a vSAN Cluster with 4 of these Dell PowerEdge R750 servers. RDMA = Remote Direct Memory Access

Test on the left – 9 x 1GB Temp Files

Test on the right -9 x 8GB Temp Files

There are few configurations of the DellEMC PowerEdge R750 Series –
  • Front bays:
    • Up to 12 x 3.5-inch SAS/SATA (HDD/SSD) max 192 TB
    • Up to 8 x 2.5-inch NVMe (SSD) max 122.88 TB
    • Up to 16 x 2.5-inch SAS/SATA/NVMe (HDD/SSD) max 245.76 TB
    • Up to 24 x 2.5-inch SAS/SATA/NVMe (HDD/SSD) max 368.84 TB
  • Rear bays:
    • Up to 2 x 2.5-inch SAS/SATA/NVMe (HDD/SSD) max 30.72 TB
    • Up to 4 x 2.5-inch SAS/SATA/NVMe (HDD/SSD) max 61.44 TB
PERC H755N Front NVMe

If you would like to read up more on the Storage Controller, here is the website to DellEMC’s website.

Power

I was shocked on the power consumption, at peak I have seen 503 watts consumed, where at idle workloads the server sits around 360-390 watts with two beefy Intel Xeon Scalable CPUs and 1TB of Memory and 4 NVMe SSDs.

Below is the current power reading as the server is operational and there is workload running on it.

I have pulled a snippet of the Historical Trends from iDRAC. As you can see the power usage for the performance per watt is a great ROI on any investment where datacenters need consolidated designs where power and space are limitations.

This DellEMC PowerEdge R750 that I have up and running has two 1400watt power supplies. I have both of these connected n two seperate PDUs with Eaton UPS Systems.

Detailed Info about the Power Supplies (DellEMC)

Power Supply Units(PSU) portfolioDell’s PSU portfolio includes intelligent features such as
dynamically optimizing efficiency while maintaining availability
and redundancy. Find additional information in the Power
supply units section.
Industry ComplianceDell’s servers are compliant with all relevant industry
certifications and guidelines, including 80 PLUS, Climate
Savers, and ENERGY STAR
Power monitoring accuracyPSU power monitoring improvements include:
● Dell’s power monitoring accuracy is currently 1%, whereas
the industry standard is 5%
● More accurate reporting of power
● Better performance under a power cap
Power cappingUse Dell’s systems management to set the power cap limit for
your systems to limit the output of a PSU and reduce system
power consumption.
Systems ManagementiDRAC Enterprise provides server- level management that
monitors, reports, and
controls power consumption at the processor, memory, and
system level.
Dell OpenManage Power Center delivers group power
management at the rack, row, and
data center level for servers, power distribution units, and
uninterruptible power supplies.
Rack infrastructureDell offers some of the industry’s highest- efficiency power
infrastructure solutions, including:
● Power distribution units (PDUs)
● Uninterruptible power supplies (UPSs)
● Energy Smart containment rack enclosures

Cooling & Acoustics

I have pulled Temperature statistics, as of writing this review. The CPUs are staying very cool, which the new “T” shape cooler design spreads the heat out evenly and which allows the CPUs to cool down quicker than the older traditional tower heat sinks where the heat had to rise up through the copper pipes.

Direct Liquid Cooling – New 15G PowerEdge platforms will offer CPUs with higher power than ever before. Dell is introducing new Direct Liquid Cooling (DLC) solutions to effectively manage these growing thermal challenges. Dell DLC solutions cool the CPU with warm liquid which has much greater (~4x) heat capacity versus air. Thus, DLC is a higher performance cooling solution for managing the CPU temperature while also enabling higher performance and better reliability more info at (DellEMC)

Thermal Statistics & Fans

High-performance fan (Gold grade) fans – Power Specifications 6.50A 12 Volts.

Disclaimer! Mixing of STD, HPR SLVR, or HPR GOLD fan is not supported.

Front & Rear I/O

In the front, the Dell PowerEdge R750 offers:

  • 1x USB
  • 1x VGA
  • 1x Maintaince port
  • 1x Power Button
  • 1x iDRAC Locator & iDRAC Sync

In the rear, the Dell PowerEdge R750 offers:

  • 2x DellEMC Boss Card Slots
  • 2x 1Gb LOM
  • 6x Large PCIe Slots
  • 4x 10/25Gb NDC
  • 1x iDRAC
  • 2x USB 3.0
  • 1x VGA

The Riser topology that DellEMC has started using within the Dell Line up of 15Generation servers is really neat, I like how easy and quick it is to take out a PCIe riser. No Tools are needed! Within minutes I was able to take apart the server and have all the risers out, there is two cables that are connected to Riser 1 which is the Dell Boss NVMe/SSD card which is labeled “0,1” once you disconnect those two cables it’s a breeze!

Dell BOSS S2 module – They are now hot swappable! Before when you needed to swap out a boss card, you had to migrate off your workloads, and shut down the server and pull the top cover, then pull out the PCIe Dell Boss card from the riser and unscrew the NVMe / SATA SSD from it. Which that would impact workloads to business continuity. Now, with Dell 15th Gen Dell PowerEdge R750. You can HOT SWAP! This will improve efficiency of replacing failed boot disk and bringing workloads back up in matter of minutes rather than hours!

Dell PowerEdge R750 – Racked and Powered on! Beautiful Lights!!

References to Websites – in direct links in each section with any content from DellEMC / VMware etc.

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Cloud

VMware Cloud Director 10.3.3: Creating a Tenant

by Tommy Grot
written by Tommy Grot 3 minutes read

A little about what VMware Cloud Director is – it is a CMP or also known as a cloud managment plane which supports, pools and abstracts the VMware virtualization infrastructure as (VDC) Virtual Data Centers. A provider can offer many different flavors and specifcations of a Tenant to a customer, it could be a Gold, Silver or Bronze types of capacity and tiering which allows a good allocation model depending on a customer that needs a higher guarenteed resource usage or allocation where as a lower tier customer wants to test few software solutions they could use a bronze tier and be able to save costs.

Once you are logged in, then you will want to create few things first! But my previous blog post already explains on how to add a vCenter Server and NSX-T integration here at this post.

Well lets begin! First we will want to create a Network pool which is a VXLAN that will reside within the tenant environment will run ontop of Geneve on the overlay!

  • Login into the Provider portal of VCD with the administrator account
  • https://<vcd-ip>/provider/

Go to Network Pools

The network will be Geneve backed to ride the NSX-T overlay

Select the NSX-T Manager

The network pool which is backed by NSX-T Transport Zone we will want to select the transport zone that you have created for your edge nodes during the NSX-T setup.

Once you have your Network Pool setup and followed the steps you should see something like this!

Network Pool has been successfully created as shown below

After a network pool has been created, next we will create the Provider VDC ( Virtual Data Center)

Select the Provider vCenter you have configured within the Infrastructure portion

Select the Cluster, for me – I have a vSAN Cluster

Once you select the vSAN or Cluster you have in your envirnonemnt, you may proceed but the Hardware Version should be left as default since this is the maximum hardware version VCD can run and accept.

Select vSAN Storage Policy if you have vSAN if not then select the proper storage policy your storage platform is using
The network pool we created earlier, this is where we get to consume it and we let NSX-T manager and Geneve network pool run out VCD environment
  • Next, we will create an organization for us to be able to attach a VDC to
    it, which for this walk through my org is Lab-01. That will be the same name
    you use when you login as a tenant into VCD.
  • An organization is just a logical group of resources that are presented to customers, where each organization has its own isolation/security boundaries and their own Web UI which they can use an identity manager to integrate such as LDAP for seamless user management.

Once a New Organization has been created, next we will create a Organization VDC (Virtual Data Center)

Click on Organizations VDCs and Create “NEW” Organization

Type a name of the organization you wish to create

Attach that organization to the provider virtual datacenter we created earlier

Select the allocaiton model, I have seen the Flex model be the most flexible to have the ability to have better control over the resources even at the VM level. More information is here on VMware’s website

For this demonstration, I am not allocating and resource I am giving my Tenant unlimited resources from my vSAN Cluster, but for a production environment you will want to use the proper allocation model and resources.

Select the Storage policy along with i like to enable Thin provision to save storage space!

Each organization will have its own Network Pool but it will run ontop of the Geneve overlay

About to finish up the setup of a VDC!

We have logged into the new Tenant space we have created! 🙂

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Cloud

Upgrading VMware Cloud Director to 10.3.3

by Tommy Grot
written by Tommy Grot 4 minutes read

Upgrading VMware Cloud Director from 10.3.2.1 to 10.3.3, primarily to fix a Security Vulnerability.

Also, there are some enhancements which follow:

What is New?!

The VMware Cloud Director 10.3.3 release provides bug fixes, API enhancements, and enhancements of the VMware Cloud Director appliance management user interface:

  • Backup and restore of VMware Cloud Director appliance certificates. VMware Cloud Director appliance management interface UI and API backup and restore now includes VMware Cloud Director certificates. See Backup and Restore of VMware Cloud Director Appliance in the VMware Cloud Director Installation, Configuration, and Upgrade Guide.
  • New /admin/user/{id}/action/takeOwnership API to reassign the owner of media.
  • Improved support for routed vApp network configuration of the MoveVApp API.

This release resolves resolves CVE-2022-22966. For information, see https://www.vmware.com/security/advisories.

There are also lots of fixes, if your VCD is having issues there is a possibility this upgrade could fix lots of issues!

All the Fixes are listed on this site : https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-Cloud-Director/10.3.3/rn/vmware-cloud-director-1033-release-notes/index.html

First things first, lets download the newest release for VMware Cloud Director 10.3.3 – File Name: VMware_Cloud_Director_10.3.3.7659-19610875_update.tar.gz

Then shutdown your VCD Cells if you have multiple of them. Once they are turned off take a snapshot of all of them, along with the NFS Transfer Service Server usually it is a VM, take a snapshot of it too just in case you want to roll back if any issues occur.

Next we will want to upload the tar.gz file via WINSCP to the primary VCD Cell if you have a HA VCD topology, then the secondary get upgraded after the primary is finished.

I have logged into the VCD appliance with root account

Then open up a Putty session to the VCD appliance login as root,

Then change directory to /tmp/

Once in the directory:

Make Directory with the command below:

mkdir local-update-package

Start to upload the tar.gz file for the upgrade into /tmp/local-update-package via WINSCP

File has been successfully uploaded to the VCD appliance.

Then next steps we will need to prepare the appliance for the upgrade:

We will need to extract the update package in the new directory we created in /tmp/

tar -zxf VMware_Cloud_Director_v.v.v.v–nnnnnnnn_update.tar.gz \ -C /tmp/local-update-package

You can run the “ls” command and you shall see the tar.gz file along with manifest and package-pool

After you have verified the local update directory then we will need to set the update repository.

vamicli update – -repo file:///tmp/local-update-package

Check for update with this command after you have set the update package into the repository address

vamicli update – -check

Now, we see that we have a upgrade that is staged and almost ready to be ran! But, we will need to shutdown the cell(s) with this command

/opt/vmware/vcloud-director/bin/cell-management-tool -u <admin username> cell –shutdown

Next is to take a backup of the database, so if your cloud director appliance was orginally version 10.2.x initially and you have upgraded it throughout its life span, then your next command will be little different which is /opt/vmware/appliance/bin/create-backup.sh – (which i have noticed it gets renamed during a upgrade process from 10.2.x to 10.3.1)

But if your appliance is 10.3.x and newer then /opt/vmware/appliance/bin/create-db-backup will be your backup to run.

I changed directory and went all the way down to the “bin” of the backup file and now i executed the script.

Backup was successful! Now, time for the install 🙂

Apply the upgrade for VCD, the command below will run will install the update

vamicli update – -install latest

Now, the next step is important, if you have any more VCD Cell appliances you will want to repeat first few steps and then just run the command below to upgrade the other appliances:

/opt/vmware/vcloud-director/bin/upgrade

Select Y to Proceed with the upgrade

After successful upgrade, you may reboot VCD appliance and test!

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Cloud

VMware Cloud Director 10.3.2 Installation / Configuration

by Tommy Grot
written by Tommy Grot 1 minutes read

Installing VMware Cloud Director, this walkthrough will guide you on how to deploy VMware Cloud Director 10.3.2. My next blog post will be on how to configure tenants and different network toplogies within vCD.

Download the OVA from VMware’s website login will be required to gain access to the installation medium

Login into vCenter, then right click on the Cluster, Deploy OVF Template

Select the VMware Cloud Director OVA and then click Next

Chose the naming convention of your vcd instance

Select the Compute Cluster that you wish to deploy VCD on

Review the details

Accept that lovely EULA! 🙂

Select the Configuration of the VCD instance. Each confiruation has different resouce allocations.

Select the Storage you wish to deploy the VCD instance too, for mine i chose my vSAN Storage

Select the Networks that VCD will utilize, for my setup I am using two NSX-T overlay backed Segments with the Database segment being isolated and the vcd segment being routable

Verify all settings before hitting Finish!

After the deployment is completed you can integrate VCD with NSX-T and vCenter

Login via https://x.x.x.x/provider (this will allow you to login into VCD as the provider)

Once logged in, go to Infrastructure Resource

Click ADD – to add vCenter server

Once you accepted the SSL Certificate from vCenter, then you will enable tenant access and click finish. After vCenter has been added you will see an overall vCenter Info, like in the screenshots below

After vCenter has been added, you may add NSX-T managers

Click on ADD – fill in the NSX-T Manager(s) URL/IP and user account

Trust the certificate from NSX-T Managers, then you are all set!

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VMware vCenter

VMware vCenter 7 Update 1 – Installation Walkthrough

by Tommy Grot
written by Tommy Grot 3 minutes read

 

To Install vCenter 7.0 Update 1 with Embedded Platform Service Controller – Download the ISO from VMware (login will be required) Once downloaded, open the VMware VCSA.iso

  • Select vcsa-ui-installer folder
  • Then select choice of operating system (This tutorial is completed via Windows 10)
  • After going to win32
  • Then click on installer.exe

During this install we will be installing fresh new instance of VCSA.

  • Select Install

This installation now only offers Embedded Platform Services Controller. The External Platform Service Controller topology is depreciated model per VMware

Click Next

  • Accept EULA

Specify the VMware ESXi Host or vCenter IP Address – Example – 10.0.0.100 or DNS Name – esxi01.virtualbytes.io ; vcenter.virtualbytes.io

( VMware recommends to operate its platform with DNS names, this allows easier management and IP address modifications )

  • After all proper information is configured / documented – Click Next
  • Accept the Certificate Warning from the ESXi Host
  • Setup the appliance –
    • Specify a name for your vCenter Server (ex. vCenter, VCSA, etc)
    • Specify the VCSA root password ( If you do lose this password there is a step by step procedure to recover access)
  • During this Stage 1 – Here you can specify the VCSA installation to the specified datastore. Enabling Thin Disk Mode – will per-allocate the actual used storage of the virtual machine on the datastore (This saves storage from being filled)
  • VMware recommends to install vCenter under a FQDN (Fully Qualified Domain Name) with a FQDN – this allows you to change the IP address of a VCSA.
    Be cautious of filling the “Configure network settings” page – This will lead to a inoperable vCenter instance.
  • Recommendation – Setup an ‘A’ Record on your local network DNS server or Domain Controller to point to the fresh new vCenter Server Appliance

VERIFY! VERIFY! VERIFY! – If you do not verify your appliance deployment configuration and you mis-configure a setting – You will be reinstalling VCSA from scratch again. (BE CAREFUL!)

After you have verified all information – Click Next

  • This stage will take few minutes – Grab a coffee or water! 🙂
  • Once the Deploy vCenter Server Appliance is completed – You will see another window to “Continue” – Click Continue and this will lead you to the next window.
  • Stage 2 – This stage you will get to configure the Appliance configuration such as (SSH, SSO, CEIP)
  • SSH – is recommend to be turned off for security reasons, unless you are setting up more than one vCenter server and setting up vCenter High Availability
  • SSO – the single sign on, the default is vsphere.local, if you have a on premise domain controller, make sure you do not use the same domain name, this will prevent you from adding vCenter to the Active Directory domain forest.
  • Most recommended option is to synchronize the time with the ESXi Host – Also making sure that the NTP Service is running on the ESXi Host and is up to date with a relative time server.
  • During this option – SSO ( Single Sign On ) If you plan to join your vCenter to a Active Directory Domain – Make sure to specify a different domain or keep vsphere.local (You cannot use same AD domain as SSO domain on VCSA)

VERY IMPORTANT! Make sure the password you specify in this configuration window is accurate. If not you will be repeating the installation all over again – due to a password mis-configuration

  • Your choice to Join the CEIP Program ( This is recommend to join CEIP to get the Skyline Alerts and Health Updates)
  • Verify the finalization stage – this stage will configure your vCenter Server Appliance.

VERY IMPORTANT! Make sure the password you specify in this configuration window is accurate. If not you will be repeating the installation all over again due to a password mis-configuration

  • Once you confirm the final confirmation – There is no going back! Unless you took a snapshot of the vCenter Server Appliance prior to starting the vSphere SSO domain portion.
  • Enjoy your coffee or water – and wait patiently (This takes around 10-20 minutes, depending on the hardware)
  • You’ve installed vCenter Server Appliance! Now you may log into it URL to your server will be a – DNS A Record you configured in your local DNS Server.

https://your_vcenter_dns_name

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VMware vCenter

VMware vCenter 6.7 – Installation Walk-through

by Tommy Grot
written by Tommy Grot 3 minutes read

To Install vCenter 6.7 with Embedded Platform Service Controller – Download the ISO from VMware (login will be required) Once downloaded, open the VMware VCSA.iso

  • Select vcsa-ui-installer
  • Then select choice of operating system (This tutorial is completed via Windows 10)
  • After going to win32
  • Then click on installer.exe

During this install we will be installing fresh new instance of VCSA.

  • Select Install
  • Click Next
  • Accept EULA
  • During this installation – we will choose Embedded Platform Services Controller. The External Platform Service Controller topology is depreciated model.
  • Specify the VMware ESXi Host or vCenter IP Address – Example – 10.0.0.100 or DNS Name – esxi01.virtualbytes.io ; vcenter.virtualbytes.io
    ( VMware recommends to operate its platform with DNS names, this allows easier management and IP address modifications )
  • Accept the Certificate Warning from the ESXi Host
  • Setup the appliance –
    • Specify a name for your vCenter Server (ex. vCenter, VCSA, etc)
    • Specify the VCSA root password
  • During this Stage 1 – Here you can specify the VCSA installation to the specified datastore. Enabling Thin Disk Mode – will per-allocate the actual used storage of the virtual machine on the datastore (This saves storage from being filled)
  • VMware recommends to install vCenter under a FQDN (Fully Qualified Domain Name) with a FQDN – this allows you to change the IP address of a VCSA.
    Be cautious of filling the “Configure network settings” page – This will lead to a inoperable vCenter instance.
  • Recommendation – Setup an ‘A’ Record on your local DNS server or Domain Controller to point to the fresh new vCenter Server Appliance

VERIFY! VERIFY! VERIFY! – If you do not verify your appliance deployment configuration and you mis-configure a setting – You will be reinstalling VCSA from scratch again. (BE CAREFUL!)

  • This stage will take few minutes – Grab a coffee or water! 🙂
  • Once the Deploy vCenter Server Appliance is completed – You will see another window to “Continue” – Click Continue and this will lead you to the next window.
  • Stage 2 – This stage you will get to configure the Appliance configuration such as (SSH, SSO, CEIP)
  • SSH – is recommend to be turned off for security reasons, unless you are setting up more than one vCenter server and setting up vCenter High Availability
  • SSO – the single sign on, the default is vsphere.local, if you have a on premise domain controller, make sure you do not use the same domain name, this will prevent you from adding vCenter to the Active Directory domain forest.
  • Most recommended option is to synchronize the time with the ESXi Host – Also making sure that the NTP Service is running on the ESXi Host and is up to date with a relative time server.
  • During this option – SSO ( Single Sign On ) If you plan to join your vCenter to a Active Directory Domain – Make sure to specify a different domain or keep vsphere.local

VERY IMPORTANT! Make sure the password you specify in this configuration window is accurate. If not you will be repeating the installation all over again – due to a password mis-configuration

  • Your choice to Join the CEIP Program
  • Verify the finalization stage – this stage will configure your vCenter Server Appliance.

VERY IMPORTANT! Make sure the password you specify in this configuration window is accurate. If not you will be repeating the installation all over again due to a password mis-configuration

  • Once you confirm the final confirmation – There is no going back! Unless you took a snapshot of the vCenter Server Appliance!
  • Enjoy your coffee or water – and wait patiently (This takes around 10-20 minutes, depending on the hardware)
  • You’ve installed vCenter Server Appliance! Now you may log into it URL to your server will be a – DNS A Record you configured in your local DNS Server.

https://your_vcenter_dns_name

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