Part 1 : VMWare VCenter 6.7 : External PSC for LB Step-By-Step Installation

Having External PSC and load balancing them has become a common trend from vCenter 6.5. This post will cover the installation and configuration of 2 vCenter 6.7 PSC appliances, with one Single Sign On Domain and One site.

Contents of the Post

• Pre-requisites for this post
• First PSC installation and Configuration
  • Stage 1 of First PSC : PSC appliance installation and basic configuration
  • Stage 2 of First PSC : SSO Configuration
• Second PSC installation and Configuration
  • Stage 1 of Second PSC : PSC appliance installation and basic configuration
  • Stage 2  of Second PSC: Joining to SSO domain & Site
• Quick Links for vCenter 6.7 Installation Series

Pre-requisites for this post

As always having pre-requisites in hand any implementation is easy.

• vCenter 6.7 Installation ISO media
• 2 DNS records created with both forward and reverse lookup for First and Second PSC Nodes.
• DNS servers IP’s
• NTP server IP
• Necessary compute resources and a vCenter or ESXi host login details to deploy PSC appliances.

Note: the machine from which you are starting installation make sure you can resolve the fqdn of PSC else stage 2 will fail.

First PSC installation and Configuration

External Platform Services Controller installation will be done in stages.
Stage 1: PSC appliance installation and basic configuration.
Stage 2: PSC SSO configuration

Stage 1 of First PSC : PSC appliance installation and basic configuration

Open the ISO on your laptop or desktop, Open installer under vcsa-ui-installer folder

Click on Install

Next
Accept the agreement and click next
Select Platform services controller

Provide the destination ESXi host and credentials over which the PSC will be deployed.

Accept the certificate – YES

Provide the VM Name for First PSC and appliance root password, confirm the password

Provide below details for the First PSC

• Select VM Network used by PSC
• IPV4
• IP assignment : static
• FQDN : vcenter-psc01.sslab.com
• IP address: 192.168.1.211
• Mask: 255.255.255.0
• gateway: 192.168.1.1
• DNS Servers: 192.168.1.150

leave other defaults and next

Review the settings and info, click finish

Now the PSC appliance will be deployed on the ESXi host to complete stage 1.

With this the Stage 1 of Deploying First PSC appliance is completed. Click Continue for stage 2 to create SSO domain.
Note: If for some reason you want to do this later you can close this window and restart this stage using https://vcenter-psc01.sslab.com:5480 ( https://fqdn:5480)

Stage 2 of First PSC : SSO Configuration

Click Next

Select Synchronize with time NTP server, Provide NTP server IP or an external NTP server name as below. then click Next
Note: NTP server is very important when it comes to vCenter and PSC installation, any issues with NTP or DNS stage 2 will fail.

Provide the SSO details as below

• SSO Domain Name: vsphere.local
• password, confirm password for SSO:
• site name: site1

Next

Review and finish.

this process cannot be stopped or interrupted , so accept the warning.

Deploying first PSC and configuring SSO domain and site is successful.
Note: don’t start second PSC installation until first one is successful. Any issues faced during stage 2, check NTP, DNS and the machine from which you are running stage 2 can resolve PSC DNS records.

Second PSC installation and Configuration

Once the First PSC installation and Configuration is successful. External Platform Services Controller installation will be done in stages.
Stage 1: PSC appliance installation and basic configuration.
Stage 2: PSC Joining to SSO domain & Site

Stage 1 of Second PSC : PSC appliance installation and basic configuration

Deploy the Second PSC from ISO installer like the first one.
Select PSC – Next

Provide VM name for Second PSC and password for root account for PSC appliance.

Provide below details for the First PSC

• Select VM Network used by PSC
• IPV4
• IP assignment : static
• FQDN : vcenter-psc02.sslab.com
• IP address: 192.168.1.212
• Mask: 255.255.255.0
• gateway: 192.168.1.1
• DNS Servers: 192.168.1.150

leave other defaults and next
review and click finish

Once the stage one is completed click continue to move to stage 2. If for some reason you want to do this later you can close this window and restart this stage using https://vcenter-psc02.sslab.com:5480 ( https://fqdn:5480)

Stage 2  of Second PSC: Joining to SSO domain & Site

The second PSC i am doing with URL as shown below. https://vcenter-psc02.sslab.com:5480
Click Setup

Review the settings and Select Time sync mode as sync with NTP, Provide NTP server IP or URL. Maintain the same NTP server across all PSC and vCenter servers to avoid issues.

As this is the Second PSC will join to the SSO domain and Site created for First PSC node.

• External PSC: first PSC fqdn: vcenter-psc01.sslab.com
• port : 443
• SSO domain: vsphere.local
• SSO password: provide same password given for SSO

Select Join site : select site1 as this is going to be second PSC in site1

Next

Review and Finish

As always Stage 2 cannot be interrupted, so accept the warning.

the Stage 2 of Second PSC is successfully completed.

Now Both the PSC installation and configuration is completed. Next we need to install the certificate for PSC including the load balanced DNS name which will cover in below post.