Hello,
I am fairly new to the VMware product and the installation of vCenter.
- I have followed all VMware documentation, links, discussion posts, and YouTube videos on how to install and configure the vCenter Server appliance on a Windows machine.
- I currently have a Windows 2016 64-bit test virtual machine stood up in our ESXi Host environment.
- I downloaded the vSphere / vCenter Server ISO trial version 7.0 update 1 to that test Windows 2016 machine.
This is my current workflow process of this installation/configuration:
1. Have configured and enabled the ntpd in the ESXi host to run + configured in my Windows 2016 machine to point to the NTP server under Date and Time settings > Internet Time.
2. Created a DNS A-record of the hostname and IP I want to use for the appliance.
3. Mounted the ISO onto the Windows machine's C:\ drive and open the directories to the ui-installer folder.
4. Located the installer.exe file and ran the installer.
5. Selected the option for "Install a new vCenter Server" + accepted the EULA.
6. Entered our ESXi host target server name/IP, HTTPS port, root credentials.
7. Then Accepted the certificate warning for our ESXi host.
8. Enter the VM name, set the root password + confirmed the password for the appliance.
9. Selected Tiny for deployment size and storage size as default.
10. We only have one datastore present in our ESXi host, so it selected the datastore by default and I proceeded to the next step.
11. For the network settings for the appliance, chose VM network, IPv4, static, entered the FQDN of what the appliance will refer to, set an IP address that was correlated to the DNS A-record I created at the beginning, set the subnet mask and default gateway, left the default HHTP and HTTPS ports.
12. Verified the information I put in on the "Ready to complete stage 1" step then click Finished.
13. The loading bar had appeared and I was able to see that at 80% the VM created for vCenter was created and starting up.
However it stalled at 80% on the "Waiting for RPM installation. This may take several minutes..." till I saw the appliance prompt the home screen/menu screen to navigate to the management console via IP address or FQDN:5480.
14. I added the IP and hostname of my vCenter on my local machine's etc/hosts file so that I can browse to the vCenter console.
15. Opened a web browser to the FQDN I had setup (https://[vCenterFQDN]:5480) and got prompted the security risk page and proceeded on.
16. Next, I entered the root credentials that I configured during the Stage 1 installation wizard.
17. I got prompted on the "Getting Started - vCenter Server" screen that Stage 1 was complete and ready to proceed to Stage 2.
This is where I am having issues...
18. On the vCenter Server configurations page, it pulled the configurations that I set on Stage 1 deployment wizard. I changed nothing of the fields so the IP version, system name, IP address, subnet mask, default gateway, DNS server, time synchronize mode were NOT changed or affected.
19. Now when I click "Next" to try to proceed to the next step, the small pop ups - "saving time synchronize..., saving hostname..., saving domain name servers..., saving IP address with prefix.." appeared and went away...
** Then I scroll to the top of the screen/wizard and receive the error message: "Unable to save IP settings." **
- Also want to note that on my Windows 2016 machine, the deploy server appliance wizard is still stuck on 80% with it's waiting on RPM installation message. Not sure what effects it has.
? Should the installation for Stage 1 and 2 all be completed in that installer.exe?
? Should I not configure the appliance for Stage 2 on the web browser, granted Stage 1 is still on 80%?
? Or to counter the first two questions, what is the best method for installation to follow for this installation to be successful?
? Is this a bug with version 7.0 Update 1 that is NOT allowing me to proceed to the next step in Stage 2 aka moving beyond the "unable to save IP settings" error?
? Is there a resolution or workaround for this? I have read some posts and comments that state there is no workaround at this time or people insisted on going into the vCenter shell and configuring the appliance to fallback to DHCP instead of static. In this case, is the success rate of that change accurate to finish the installation/configuration?
Feedback would be very much appreciated! Thanks!
