With the announcement of VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 I thought this would be a great opportunity to deploy a fresh install of ESXi 9.0 and vCenter 9.0 using the UI, as part of a foundation to install full stack VCF 9.0.0.0.

The ESXi deployment and install was straight forward, with no surprises or changes so I will skip over that and save it for another time, so in this blog I’ll cover how I installed VCF vCenter 9.0.

Start off by preparing the host(s) for a vCenter installation. There are many ways to set this up, but for this lab environment I have one ESXi 9.0 host running and configured with multiple disks, and one of those disks is a single NVME 1TB disk running a single VMFS6 datastore specifically created for this new VCSA to land on.

Also make sure all DNS entries, forward and reverse are in place for your vCenter FQDN and IP. Subnet mask and DNS will be required as well, so have those handy.

Last, know your NTP server IP. It’s optional but is important for VCF 9.0 and ESXi hosts.

Now go get the ISO – login to the Broadcom support portal using your credentials.

Go to the VCF 9.0 download area and download the VMware vCenter Appliance ISO.

I’ll run this install from a workstation…I’m using Windows and I’ll mount the ISO.

I’m using the UI installer, so I’ll click into the vcsa-iu-installer folder

Again, I’m on Windows, so I’ll navigate to the win32 folder, and run installer.exe. Maybe not required, but I chose to run this .exe as Administrator…

After running the exe, you’ll be presented with the install menu. Click on Install…

From here I’ll walk through the install options and configuration on each page…

Accept the EULA…

Input the ESXi host IP/FQDN or vCenter server – this is the target location, meaning wherever you are going to install and run this vCenter. I’m installing and running this initially on a single standalone host. Username and password are needed to connect and install on the ESXi host.

View the self signed cert and Accept…

The installer will validate, then will being to ask for additional configuration detail. Input the VM name and root password…

Select the deployment size. This is lab, will have less than 100 VM’s and less than 10 hosts, so I’ll select Tiny…

Select the datastore to install the vCenter onto. As mentioned previously, I have a specific VMFS 6 datastore setup for this VCSA. I chose not to use thin disk mode…

Fill out the **FQDN (optional), IP and network information…

**I’ve seen a higher firstboot failure (Stage 2 failed) with the FQDN field filled out, so I would recommend leaving the FQDN field empty at this point in time with the Stage 1 installer…

Scroll down, verify DNS and Common Ports…

Verify all the information and click Finish to start 🙂

vCenter will being to deploy in stages.

Stage 1 is the Deployment and install/startup stage

After that completes, begin Stage 2, which is the configuration stage…

Start the Install – Stage 2…

Input NTP and SSH. Both are optional, but I recommend setting up NTP now. SSH I leave deactivated at install.

Setup and configure SSO. This is a new SSO domain, and I’ll use the default vsphere.local and enter in the SSO password for the default administrator user…

Configure CEIP – I recommend enabling this, as the telemetry it collects really does seem help improve the quality and reliability the product, as stated in the description.

And with that, hit Finish to start (again)…

Just a pop up, from here there’s no return and if there’s a failure then typically it’s best to redeploy…FYI DNS is probably the biggest issue here…be sure to have forward and reverse records setup correctly.

Hit OK and Stage 2 will run…

At the end, all will be setup and the message will be “You have successfully setup this vCenter Server.” YAY!

Now you can then click on the link and log into your new vCenter!

From here, you can create a new datacenter, add hosts and create clusters and continue your journey with VCF 9.0!

That’s all for this blog! If you learned something or I helped you out in some way, please make a comment and let me know. Thanks!