In this installment of the vCenter 5.1 installation series I'll show you a few vCenter SSO Configuration changes that you will likely want to make. These steps are optional, but probably nearly everyone will want to implement some form of these changes. The two tweaks are setting the default login domain for...
Now that vCenter Server installed, we need to proceed to getting the vSphere 5.1 Web Client installed and configured. In Part 7 of this series we installed vCenter Server 5.1, which is a pre-req. The vSphere 5.1 web client has come a long ways since vCenter 5.0. It is now the primary means to...
If you've made it this far, congrats! We are now ready to Install vCenter Server 5.1 Update 1! Yes in vSphere 5.1 there is A LOT of prerequisite work to do before you can start the vCenter Server installation. Part 6 of my series showed how to configure the vCenter and VUM...
If you want to create vCenter and VUM Databases for vSphere 5.1 Update 1, you have come to the right spot. Database creation must be done prior to starting the vCenter installation, as one of the first prompts is selecting the vCenter DSN, which must be tied back to a...
This is Part 5 of the 15-part vCenter 5.1 Update 1 installation series, and covers manually replacing the VMware inventory service SSL certificate. If you want to use the VMware vCenter Certificate Automation tool (highly recommended), then you can skip this part and go directly to Part 6. As a post-install process the...
The vCenter inventory service install is straight forward and only takes a few minutes. The inventory service caches queries from the Web Broswer to increase the perceived responsiveness of vCenter, and in large environments lets you offload the process to another VM or closer to your administrators. This installation is quick and pain...
Welcome to Part 3 of the 15 part vCenter 5.1 installation series, installing vCenter SSO SSL Certificates. IMPORTANT: Now that VMware has released the vCenter Certificate Automation Tool, I suggest you skip installing trusted SSL certificates during the install process and use the tool to do them post install. It's...
UPDATE: On Sep 18th Cisco released 2.0(4a), which you can download from Cisco support. For those of you that are Cisco UCS customers, word on the street is that a forthcoming firmware update 2.0(4) will be required for official vSphere 5.1 support. Cisco should have the updated firmware out by...
Welcome to Part 2 of the 15 part vCenter 5.1 Update 1 installation series. This post will guide you through the process of creating the vSphere 5.1 Update 1 vCenter SSL certificates. ALL production environments should use trusted SSL certs, not just "high security" environments. Key infrastructure services are probably running on vSphere, so security...
Welcome to the 15-part VMware vCenter 5.1 U1 installation series! Given all of the new components and architecture of VMware vCenter 5.1, I wanted to walk through the entire installation of vCenter 5.1, assuming a greenfield environment. These instructions are assuming you are using vSphere 5.1 Update 1, which was released in...
Today is the day! VMware has publicly released vSphere 5.1, and all of the associated software such as vCenter and vCloud director. You can download the full suite here. They also have a HP ProLiant customized ISO image, should you be using HP servers in your environment. To access all...
A few months ago I blogged about how to create your own custom Cisco UCS ESXi 5 U1 installation media, with the latest security patches and drivers. There was also an ISO image on VMware's web site, which magically disappeared for a while. Well, now it appears to be back....