Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
and then installing vCenter Server, you only need to deploy the virtual appliance. We discussed
the vCenter Server virtual appliance earlier in this chapter in the section “Choosing the Version
of vCenter Server.”
The vCenter Server virtual appliance comes as an Open Virtualization Format (OVF) tem-
plate. We'll discuss OVF templates in great detail in Chapter 10, but for now we'll simply explain
them as an easy way to distribute “prepackaged VMs.”
We'll assume that you've already downloaded the i les for the vCenter Server virtual appli-
ance from VMware's website at
www.vmware.com.
You'll need these i les before you can proceed
with deploying the vCenter Server virtual appliance.
Perform the following steps to deploy the vCenter Server virtual appliance:
1.
Launch the vSphere Client (not the vSphere Web Client) and connect to an ESXi host.
You could connect to a vCenter Server instance using the Web Client, but if you are
deploying the vCenter Server virtual appliance, you most likely do not already have a
vCenter Server instance up and running.
2.
From the File menu, select Deploy OVF Template.
3.
At the i rst screen of the Deploy OVF Template Wizard, click the Browse button to i nd
the OVF i le you downloaded for the vCenter Server virtual appliance.
4.
After you've selected the OVF i le, click Next.
5.
Review the details of the vCenter Server virtual appliance, as shown in Figure 3.12. Click
Next when you're ready to proceed.
Figure 3.12
h e vCenter Server
virtual appliance
comes preinstalled
with SuSE Linux 11
and vCenter Server.
