vcac 6.0 identity appliance installation

In these series of blog posts we will be discussing the implementation and configuration of VMware’s latest release of vCloud Automation Center (vCAC), 6.0.

The series will include

Part 1 – Deploy and configure the Identity Appliance.
Part 2 – Deploy and configure the vCloud Automation Center Appliance.
Part 3 – Installing the IaaS Components.

So lets begin by looking at the pre-requisites while we prepare for installation.

vCloud Automation Center requires the system administrator to identify hosts using their fully qualified domain names (FQDN)
Resources that are needed to deploy the VM’s
- Identity Appliance: 1vCPU, 2GB of RAM, 2GB of Disk storage
- vCAC Appliance: 2vCPU, 8GB of RAM, 30GB of Disk storage
- IaaS Server components (Windows 2008 R2 SP1 or Windows 2012): 2vCPU, 8GB RAM, 30GB of Disk storage
These are the general requirements for the IaaS Database (SQL Server).
- TCP/IP protocol enabled for MS SQL Server
- Microsoft Distributed Transaction Coordinator Service (MS DTC) enabled on all SQL nodes in the system
- No firewalls between Database Server and the Web server or IaaS Server, or ports opened as described in Port Requirements.
- If using SQL Server Express, the SQL Server Browser service must be running.
Port requirements can be found here
User accounts and privileges can be found here
Make sure time synchronization is taken care across all the servers( I faced a lot of issues because of this)

Lets begin with the steps involved in vcac 6.0 identity appliance installation.

Prerequisites
■ Verify that the Identity Appliance was downloaded from the VMware website.
■ Log in to the vSphere client as a user with system administrator privileges.

In the vSphere client, select File > Deploy OVF Template.

Browse to the Identity Appliance file with the .ova or .ovf extension and click Open.

Click Next.

Click Next on the OVF Template Details page.

Accept the license agreement and click Next.

Type a unique virtual appliance name according to the IT naming convention of your organization in the Name text box, select the datacenter and location to which you want to deploy the virtual appliance, and click Next.

Follow the prompts until the Disk Format page appears.

Verify that there is enough space to deploy the virtual appliance on the Disk Format page and click Next.

Choose the network to deploy the machine on.

Follow the prompts to the Properties page. The options displayed depend on your vSphere configuration.

Configure the values on the Properties page.

Type the root password to use when you log in to the virtual appliance console in the Enter password and Confirm password text boxes.

Type the fully qualified domain name of the virtual machine in the Hostname text box, even if you are using DHCP.

Configure the networking properties.

Click Next.

If the Power on after deployment option is selectable on the Ready to Complete page, select it and click Finish.

Restart the machine.

Verify that the fully qualified domain name can be resolved against the IP address of the Identity Appliance by opening a command prompt and pinging the FQDN.

Navigate to the Identity Appliance management console by using its fully qualified domain name (https://identity-hostname.domain.name:5480/). Here in my case its https://vcac-ia.vpirate.com:5480. The username will be root and the password that we’ve set during the deployment.

Navigate to Admin > Time Settings.And change the settings to use Time Server. And enter the NTP server IP and Apply settings.

Go to the System Tab, then go to Time Zone and select your current time zone. Click on Save Settings.

Verify that the value in Current Time is correct.

Configuring the Identity Appliance:

Click the SSO tab. The default domain name in System Domain is vsphere.local. Type the password you want to assign to the system administrator (administrator@vsphere.local) in the Admin Password and Repeat password text boxes. Click Apply.

Click the Host Settings tab. Append the SSO port :7444 to the host name in the SSO Host Name text box. Here in our case it would be vcac-ia.vpirate.com:7444. Click Apply.

Click on SSL. If you want to import a certificate, choose PEM. I will be creating a self-signed certificate. Choose the Generate Self-Signed Certificate dropdown.
a. Type a common name for the certificate in the Common Name text box. You can use the fully qualified domain name of the virtual appliance.

b. Type in a company name or organization name

c. Type in your organizational unit

d. Type in your country code

e. Click on Replace Certificate.

To use Native Active Directory, click the Active Directory tab.

a.You must also specify an Active Directory identity store when you configure tenants, even if you specify Native Active Directory settings here.
b.Type the Active Directory domain name that contains the pool of users you want to create as vCloud Automation Center administrators in Domain Name.
c.Type the name of the Active Directory domain name user for the identity store in Domain User.
Click Join AD Domain.