How To Install vCDA On-Premises appliance

Overview

This short manual guide is designed to help HI GIO users navigate

Before installing the VMware Cloud Director Availability On-Premises Appliance, verify that the on-premises site meets the deployment requirements. Also, allow the network communication within the on-premises site and to the cloud site
vCenter Requirements. 6.5U3, 6.7U3, 7.0 (GA-U3), 8.0 (GA, U1). (We also support vCenter 6.0U3, 5.5U3 only for migration purpose)
Network Requirements. To get a list of the required firewall ports to be opened, see VMware Cloud Director Availability Network Ports.

Link: https://ports.esp.vmware.com/home/VMware-Cloud-Director-Availability

Hardware Requirements. From a hosting perspective, the VMware Cloud Director Availability On-Premises Appliance is a virtual machine with the following hardware requirements
- 4 vCPUs
- 4 GB RAM
- 10 GB Storage
Deployment Requirements. In ESXi hosts, a VMkernel interface can be dedicated for the replication traffic. By default, ESXi handles the replication traffic through its management VMkernel interface. As a best practice, you can separate the management traffic from the replication traffic by creating a dedicated VMkernel interface. Use following tags when creating a VMkernel interface for the replication traffic

Use the vSphere Replication tag to configure the ESXi host for the Outgoing Replication Traffic

Use the vSphere Replication NFC tag to configure the ESXi host for the Incoming Replication Traffic

Configure the replication VMkernel interface in its own IP subnet and connect the VMware Cloud Director Availability On-Premises Appliance to the same virtual port group. Using this configuration, the replication traffic between the ESXi hosts and the VMware Cloud Director Availability On-Premises Appliance stays in the same broadcast domain. As a result, uncompressed replication traffic avoids crossing a router and saves the network bandwidth

The tenant deployment process is similar to all typical VMware OVF deployments. The tenant must install the vCloud Availability On-Premises Appliance OVA into the vCenter.
Please download OVA file from this link

Select an OVF template. Install from a local file. Browse to the location of the previously downloaded OVA. Select the vCDA OVA file and click Next

Select a name and folder. Type in your desired virtual machine (appliance) name. Next, select a location for your virtual machine

Select a compute resource. Choose a host or a cluster for the appliance. Click Next

Review details. This is a chance for you to evaluate and verify the template

License agreement. Check the I accept all license agreements checkbox and click Next

Select storage. Configure optional storage options for the deployment and click Next

Select networks. Choose a destination network for every individual source network

Customize template. During this step of the wizard, customize the deployment

Root Password. Defining a root password is mandatory. However, you will need to change it when you log in to vCDA for the first time. So, you don’t need to define a very strong password at this point
Enable SSH. Select the Enable SSH checkbox
NTP Server. Enter the NTP server address the vCDA appliance will use. vCenter Server, ESXi, vCloud Director, Platform Services Controller, and the vCloud Availability appliance MUST all use the same NTP server
Hostname. The hostname of VM
IP. IP address ( e.g. 192.168.1.186/24 )
Gateway. Gateway address
MTU. MTU ( e.g. 1500 )
DNS Server. IP DNS Server. It needs to resolvable the domain name of vCenter Server and Service Endpoint
Search Domains. List of search Domains ( e.g. abc.local )
Ready to complete. Review the settings. You can also select Power on after deployment. Click Finish to deploy the Appliance

Log in to your vCDA appliance at https://your-appliance-IP/ui/admin. Use the root/password defined during OVA deployment
Change the root password. Set and confirm a new password. Create a strong password with at least eight (8) characters. Make sure to use lowercase, uppercase, numeric, and special characters.
To get started, you will need to configure a Lookup Service Endpoint. To do so, select Run Initial Setup Wizard

Lookup Service. Enter your connection details to set up the lookup service along with SSO admin credentials
- Lookup service address. Type in the following URL, adding the IP address of your vCenter: https://Ip-of-your-vcenter:443/lookupservice/sdk
- Enter SSO admin account credentials in the Username and Password field

Site Details. In it, type your Site Name and optionally, a short Description about the site. Click Next

Proceed to the configure Cloud Details by pairing up your vCloud and vCDA sites

Service Endpoint Address, Organization Admin and Organization Password is provided by HI GIO Support
Configure your organization’s credentials for logging in to the cloud site. Type in Organization Admin (user@org) and Organization Password
- Optional: Select Allow Access from Cloud. If you select this feature, the cloud provider and organization administrators can access and perform certain operations through the vCloud Availability Port
- If you leave this feature deselected, configuring new replications will only be accessible to users authenticated to the on-premises vCloud Availability Portal. Additionally, no existing replications will be reversed from the Portal
- Service Endpoint Address, Organization Admin and Organization Password is provided by HI GIO Support

Click Next and accept the SSL certificate of the vCenter Server Lookup to continue

Move on to Ready to Complete. It shows the details you have provided in the previous steps. Verify that everything is accurate
- Check Configure local placement now to enable cloud to datacenter replications. Leaving the box unchecked requires additional set up to configure the replications

End.