Upgrade to vCenter 6.5 questions

[mmaus]

I am currently running vCenter 6.0 on a VM in my environment.  My update manager server has crapped out on me and it looks like I will have to rebuild it.  I was told the update manager is now native to 6.5 if installed as a server appliance and no longer needs a secondary server to run this feature.

My thought is to move the vCenter off the current VM and just do a fresh install of 6.5 on to this bare metal machine since I have to rebuild it anyway.  This will still allow me to access all my VMs even when I have to reboot their host machines...as of now if I have to reboot the host machine the vCenter 6.0 resides on...I loose all accessibility to all VMs until it comes back up...which was a pain in the neck once I came to the realization that the "auto-start on boot" feature was not enabled when it was setup last time...  😕

Anyway,  I have downloaded the 6.5 software and burned the .iso to a disc, but there does not appear to be any boot info on the .iso.  Do I need to install Linux on this box first and then install vCenter on top of that?  To run this as a server appliance and have the native update manager feature included, does it have to run on Linux or can it run on a Windows Server machine?
I was expecting the cd to load that and then install vCenter, but I am new to the whole VMWare world and just getting my feet wet. 

Thanks for any help, guidance, and or suggestions.

[virtualg_uk]

No need to install Linux manually.

Please mount the ISO to your PC and follow this guide

VMware vSphere VCSA 6.5 Installation - VirtualG.uk - YouTube

[mmaus]

Perhaps I need to rephrase my question.  What do I need to preinstall on a bare metal server to install vCenter 6.5 on it? 
Your video starts with a mounted image on a Windows based server, and I am not sure if it does a remote installation with all the IP addresses that are used in the wizard, but I would not have an IP address of the new server to use in the wizard if this is the case... so this video seems a little useless for this question.

[Kahonu84]

​Windows 2k8/12

[Mattallford · Accepted solution]

What do I need to preinstall on a bare metal server to install vCenter 6.5 on it?

OK, so the vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) is a virtual machine that runs on top of ESXi.

On a bare metal server, you first need to download and install VMware ESXi. Once ESXi is configured with networking, storage and is ready to host VMs, it is then time to deploy the VCSA onto the host. You do this by mounting the VCSA ISO onto a different machine (such as a windows laptop / desktop / jump host) and then during the deployment of the vCenter Server Appliance, you need to choose the target of where to deploy the appliance. The target in your example is the ESXi host that you configured earlier.

Cheers, Matt.

[mmaus]

Thank you Matt for the detailed answer.  This definitely helps me understand how it all works and the answer I needed.