vCAC 6 series – Part 2 – Prepare for deployment

1. First component is Identity Appliance – The Identity Appliance is a pre-configured virtual appliance that provides single sign-on capabilities. It is delivered as an open virtualization format (OVF) template.
2. Second component is vCloud Automation Center Appliance – The vCloud Automation Center Appliance is a pre-configured virtual appliance that deploys the vCloud Automation Center Appliance server and web console (the user portal) delivered in OVF format.
3. Third component is Windows server (or more servers depends deployment method) with installed IaaS

Besides above 3 virtual machines other infrastructure components such as:

• Active Directory or OpenLDAP for authentication services
• DNS
• vCenter server with at least one of the ESXi hosts – it will be used later on as a target resources pool

My POC or homelab, you call it, environment will use:

1. vCloud Identity appliance. NOTE: if you have vSphere 5.5b you can point you vCAC appliance to vCenter server SSO.
2. vCloud Automation Center Appliance
3. Windows 2008 R2 with installed all vCAC IIS components.
   • Distributed Execution Managers
   • Proxy agents
   • Website
   • Manager Service
   • Model Manager
4. AD 2008 R2 Sp1 as authentication services on the same machine along with DNS and NTP services.
5. On second VM vSphere 5.5 vCenter with all services:
   • SSO,
   • Web Client
   • Inventory services
6. 2 ESXi servers
7. separate SQL server for both vCAC DB and vCenter DB.
8. vCO appliance
9. all machines will run within flat network behind PfSense firewall appliance.

Hardware requirements:

Note: in brackets are values which I used for POC deployment.

1. Identity Appliance
   • 1 vCPU
   • 2 GB RAM
   • 2 GB HDD
2.  vCloud Automation Center Appliance
   • 2 vCPU (1 vCPU)
   • 8GB RAM (4GB)
   • 30GB HDD
3. IaaS Components (Windows Server)
   • 2 vCPU (1 vCPU)
   • 8GB RAM (6GB)
   • 30 GB HDD

Windows Server requirements:

1. IaaS Database Server Requirements:
   • These are the general requirements for the IaaS Database (SQL Server).
   • TCP/IP protocol enabled for MS SQL ServerMicrosoft Distributed Transaction Coordinator Service (MS DTC) enabled on all SQL nodes in the system
   • No firewalls between Database Server and the Web server or IaaS Server, or ports opened as described in Port Requirements.
   • If using SQL Server Express, the SQL Server Browser service must be running.
2. Prerequisite Server ConfigurationThe following components must be installed on the host before installing IaaS:
   • Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5
   • Microsoft PowerShell 2.0 (included with Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 and later) or Microsoft PowerShell 3.0 on Windows Server 2012
   • Microsoft Internet Information Services 7.5

IIS Components:

1. Internet Information Services (IIS) modules installed
   • WindowsAuthentication
   • StaticContent
   • DefaultDocument
   • ASPNET
   • ISAPIExtension
   • ISAPIFilter
2. IIS Authentication settings
   •  Windows Authentication enabled
   • AnonymousAuthentication disabled
   • Negotiate Provider enabled
   • NTLM Provider enabled
   • Windows Authentication Kernel Mode enabled
   • Windows Authentication Extended Protection disabled
3. IIS Windows Process Activation Service roles
   •  ConfigurationApi
   • NetEnvironment
   • ProcessModel
   • WcfActivation (Windows 2008 only)
   • HttpActivation
   • NonHttpActivation

IaaS Manager Service

1. These are the general requirements for the IaaS Manager Service.
2. .NET Framework 4.5
3. Microsoft PowerShell 2.0 (included with Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1
4. and later) or Microsoft PowerShell 3.0 on Windows Server 2012
5. SecondaryLogOnService running
6. No firewalls between DEM host and Windows Server, or ports opened as described in Port Requirements.

[box type=”info”] NOTE: On IaaS server download the latest security updates for Windows but make sure .NET 4.5.1 is excluded from installation.[/box]

Simple deployment – diagram

Simple deployment – overview

Deployment IP and role matrix

vCloud Automation Center 6.0 series

• vCAC 6 series – Part 1 – Architecture
• vCAC 6 series – Part 2 – Prepare for deployment
• vCAC 6 series – Part 3 – Deploy VMware Identity Appliance
• vCAC 6 series – Part 4 – Deploy VMware vCAC Appliance
• vCAC 6 series – Part 5 – Installing IaaS components
• vCAC 6 series – Part 6 – Initial Configuration
• vCAC 6 series – Part 7 – Post Installation Tasks
• vCAC 6 series – Part 8 – Installing vSphere Agent
• vCAC 6 series – Part 9 – Configuring IaaS for vSphere
• vCAC 6 series – Part 10 – Prepare for provisioning
• vCAC 6 series – Part 11 – Create Blueprint