Let’s go back to the basics today. In this post, I would like to show you how to do the vCenter installation in VMware workstation. The same procedure can be used for vCenter 6, 6.5, or 6.7 also.
I have downloaded VMware workstation 16 and vCenter 7 from here and here.
Step 1
VMware Workstation Installation
The first step would be to install a VMware workstation, which is a very straightforward procedure. You can follow this link. This link contains detailed information about how to download and install the workstation.
Step 2
VMware Workstation network configuration
The next step would be to configure VMware workstation networking. You can go to the edit and then the virtual network editor.
Network configuration – I am using the NAT setting to run my VCSA for the demo purpose. You can choose the method which you like. The VMware Workstation networking configuration documentation can be found here.
Step 3
Mount VCSA ISO
The next step would be to mount the VCSA ISO which you downloaded from the VMware website. Go to the folder where ISO is downloaded and right-click on it and select Mount.
Then go to the below path (for your system the mount path may be different). You will find the VCSA OVA here, which we will be using to import in VMware Workstation.
D:\vcsa
Step 4
Import VCSA OVA
Our next step would be to go back to the VMware Workstation and Click on File –> Open
Select the OVA file (shown in Step 3) and click on the Open.
Step 5
Accept the VCSA license
Once you import the OVA, it will ask you to accept the licenses. You can read it if you want or accept it and move forward. (Reading a license is like talking to your wife, you will agree on everything even if you don’t want 🙂 🙂 Just kidding, we need some humor also right?? )
Step 7
VCSA name
In this step, please specify the name of the virtual machine you want to set and location of the its file. If you don’t want to change, leave it to default and click on the next.
Step 8
VCSA deployment settings
Here, please select the deployment size you want to use. Since this is just for a demo, I have selected the first option.
Step 9
VCSA settings configurations
This step is very much important for a successful VCSA deployment. Here you have to specify all the option like
Network configuration
SSO configuration
System configuration
Network Properties
I have attached few screenshots for your reference
This is optional, you can leave it blank if you want.
Once all settings are specified, click on the Import and it will take few minutes to import.
Once imported, you can go to the settings of the virtual machine and select the network adapter.
I have vmnet 1 virtual configured for NAT, as mentioned in Step 2. You can choose a different adapter name while configuring the setting in Step 2.
In the production environment we can easily deploy VCSA on ESXi hosts but in LABs (Especially local LABs like on a laptop, where resources are limited it would be difficult to run VCSA on virtual ESXi.) If you power off that virtual ESXi hosts directly then the VCSA file system may get corrupted.
Hope you enjoyed this article about vCenter installation in VMware Workstation !!. Feel free to comment with your ideas, suggestions, etc. Happy Reading 🙂