vCD 9.7 Installation Issues

[KFM]

I'm reaching out to the community because I'm at my wits end at deploying the vCD 9.7 OVA using all the methods available. Some info:

• I have deployed a NFS server and can confirm the permissions, etc are all correct (more on this later)
• I have deployed a RabbitMQ server
• Am using VMware_vCloud_Director-9.7.0.4343-14046945_OVF10.ova
• Am testing all this in a nested VMware ESXi installation on VMware Workstation
• Am attempting to deploy the first primary small appliance with embedded DB
• I have forward and reverse DNS resolution entries for the vCD cell

So I've tried the following:

• Deploying the OVA to my vESXi host simply by following the bouncing ball and supplying all required information when deploying a VM from OVF/OVA file. All seems fine and I can login to the VAMI on port 5480 however I get the dreaded "no nodes found in the cluster" error in the vCD Database Availability tab.

When I login to the console, and view the setupvcd.log file I get the following:

And the contents of the update-appliance-type.log file

Both log files imply that I have not selected a valid cell type yet I am 100% certain that I chose "primary small" during the OVA deployment.

I can confirm that the vCD cell can reach the NFS transfer server, has mounted the NFS share and that it has successfully written to the directory.

I can also confirm that the user and group ownership are correct.

• Getting sick and tired of typing the same thing over and over again during the UI OVA wizard, I tried deploying the OVA to my vESXi host using the ovftool using the same parameters. Now, after powering on I get the following start job which never succeeds and I am left with a non-functioning vCD instance.

This times out and eventually I get to the VAMI screen saying the networking is not configured. Basically the vCD appliance is useless at this point. I cannot even login using the credentials I used during the OVA deployment. Nothing much can be done besides deleting the appliance and starting again.

Here's a copy of the ovftool syntax I'm using. It reflects the same properties I'm using during the UI deployment.

ovftool \

--noSSLVerify \

--acceptAllEulas \

--datastore='Datastore1' \

--allowAllExtraConfig  \

--net:"eth0 Network"="VM Network" \

--net:"eth1 Network"="VM Network 2" \

--name=vCD \

--diskMode=thin \

--prop:"vami.ip0.VMware_vCloud_Director"="192.168.32.51" \

--prop:"vami.ip1.VMware_vCloud_Director"="10.0.0.51" \

--prop:"vami.DNS.VMware_vCloud_Director"="192.168.32.30" \

--prop:"vami.domain.VMware_vCloud_Director"="kfmlab.local" \

--prop:"vami.gateway.VMware_vCloud_Director"="192.168.32.2" \

--prop:"vami.netmask0.VMware_vCloud_Director"="255.255.255.0" \

--prop:"vami.netmask1.VMware_vCloud_Director"="255.255.255.0" \

--prop:"vami.searchpath.VMware_vCloud_Director"="kfmlab.local" \

--prop:"vcloudapp.enable_ssh.VMware_vCloud_Director"="True" \

--prop:"vcloudapp.expire_root_password.VMware_vCloud_Director"="False" \

--prop:"vcloudapp.nfs_mount.VMware_vCloud_Director"="192.168.32.61:/storage" \

--prop:"vcloudapp.ntp-server.VMware_vCloud_Director"="0.au.pool.ntp.org" \

--prop:"vcloudapp.varoot-password.VMware_vCloud_Director"="Password01!" \

--prop:"vcloudconf.db_pwd.VMware_vCloud_Director"="Password01!" \

--prop:"vcloudconf.admin_email.VMware_vCloud_Director"="admin@kfmlab.local" \

--prop:"vcloudconf.admin_fname.VMware_vCloud_Director"="vcdadmin" \

--prop:"vcloudconf.admin_pwd.VMware_vCloud_Director"="Password01!" \

--prop:"vcloudconf.admin_uname.VMware_vCloud_Director"="administrator" \

--prop:"vcloudconf.inst_id.VMware_vCloud_Director"="1" \

--prop:"vcloudconf.sys_name.VMware_vCloud_Director"="vcd01" \

--deploymentOption="primary-small"

Any help/assistance/ideas would be greatly appreciated!

[kapilanandani]

Can you add nfs as datastore in one of ESxi ?

[KFM]

I can confirm I can mount the NFS point to any other server.

I wasn't able to solve this one yet when I tried the same deployment in production it worked. Go figure.

[suhaakin]

deploying vCloud Director through ESXi is not supported. Please deploy it from vCenter.

You can deploy the vCloud Director appliance as an OVF template by using the vSphere Web Client (Fle...

[KFM · Accepted solution]

With all due respect, your answer is (a) not correct; and (b) not helpful.

Nowhere is it mentioned that deploying vCD through ESXi is not supported. When you apply some logic to it, why would it not be supported? What would the resultant VM run on? Why the ESXi host itself! Whether I deploy through ESXi or vCenter, it should not make a difference.

Anyway, I finally got around to resolving this myself. So for those who may be stuck deploying any OVA/OVF directly to an ESXi host, this official VMware ovftool document says:

"If you are deploying with the ovftool command targeting an ESXi host, you must “inject” the parameters into the resulting VM when it is powered on. This is because the ESXi host lacks a cache to store the OVF parameters, as with vCenter Server. Therefore, you must use the --X:injectOvfEnv debug option with the --poweron flag in the command line"

The direct link is here: Online Documentation - OVF Tool User's Guide (U2) - VMware {code}

So once I added the two additional parameters, everything worked a treat.