vCenter Server Appliance 7.0 Command Line Installer

One of my favorite features in vSphere is command line install of vCenter Server. It first appeared with vCenter Server 6.0. It is based on a JSON file input and can be use to do a fresh install of vCSA 7.0, upgrade an existing vCSA 6.5 or 6.7 installation to 7.0 or migrate a Windows vCenter Server 6.5 or 6.7 to vCSA 7.0.

The installer can be run from Windows, Linux or Mac. To access it, you need the vCSA iso file and locate folder vcsa-cli-installer\win32 (Windows users). JSON templates are found in templates folder. You need to modify the JSON template that fits your use case. I will do a fresh install of vCSA 7.0 in my lab so I will be using the template embedded_vCSA_on_VC.json which deploys the new vCSA inside an existing vCenter Server. The template is commented very well, however I will post here an example of what a simple configuration looks like. Please be aware that this is just a snippet of the actual template and some parts have been left out for ease of reading.

    "new_vcsa": {
        "vc": {
            "hostname": "vcsa67.mylab.com",
            "username": "administrator@mylab.com",
            "password": "",
            "deployment_network": "VM Network",
            "datacenter": [
                "VDC-1"
            ],
            "datastore": "DATASTORE-1",
            "target": [
                "CLUSTER-1"
            ]
        },
        "appliance": {
            "thin_disk_mode": true,
            "deployment_option": "small",
            "name": "vcsa70"
        },
        "network": {
            "ip_family": "ipv4",
            "mode": "static",
            "system_name": "vcsa70.mylab.com",
            "ip": "192.168.100.1",
            "prefix": "24",
            "gateway": "192.168.100.254",
            "dns_servers": [
                "192.168.1.10"
            ]
        },
        "os": {
            "password": "",
            "ntp_servers": "0.ro.pool.ntp.org",
            "ssh_enable": true
        },
        "sso": {
            "password": "",
            "domain_name": "vsphere.local"
        }
    }

As you can see, once you create the template it can reused a lot of times. What for you may ask and one answer is nested labs. If you are unsure what size the vCSA should be, the installer will tell you:
.\vcsa-deploy.exe --supported-deployment-sizes

The installer takes different parameters besides the JSON file:
.\vcsa-deploy.exe install --accept-eula [--verify-template-only|--precheck-only][file_path_to_json] 

If you want to automatically accept SSL certificate thumbprint, you can add --no-ssl-certificate-verification parameter.

As seen above, the installer comes with 2 options that enable you to check that everything is fine before actually starting the install:

• verify-template-only - will run a JSON file verification to validate the structure and input parameters (e.g. password strength, IP address, netmask). The final check result is displayed along with the path to the log file. The log file contains all required details. For example if you typed an IP address that does not exist, the following message is displayed in log file:

2020-03-27 19:44:06,232 - vCSACliInstallLogger - ERROR - The value '192.268.100.1' of the key 'ip' in section 'new_vcsa', subsection 'network' is invalid. Correct the value and rerun the script.

• precheck-only - will do a dry run of the installer. This time it will connect to vCenter server and check that the environment values are actually correct: for example that you don't have another VM with the same name, vCenter objects are correct (datacenter, datastore, cluster or host). It also does a ping test to validate the IP/FQDN entered for the new vCSA are available.

================ [FAILED] Task: PrecheckTask: Running prechecks. execution

Error message: ApplianceName: A virtual machine with the name 'vcsa70' already

exists on the target ESXi host or cluster. Choose a different name for the

vCenter Server Appliance (case-insensitive).

Of course, you don't have to run both checks or even any check if you are confident enough. For me, precheck-only helped since I didn't understand how to fill in the JSON file from the first time (I will blame it on a barrier language). One very important aspect of installing is to have DNS records setup and working. If you don't, even if the prechecks and the actual install will work, first boot of vCSA will most likely fail.

Having all setup up and checked, you  just run the install command and that's it. I like the CLI installer because it is simple, powerful and repeatable. No more filling in fields in a GUI and waiting for the lines on the screen.