After installing vRA 8, one of the first steps is to connect it to vCenter. VMware made this really easy in vRA 8. Once you login to the
interface with the account you used during the installation you get a quick setup option that takes you through the setup in a jiffy.
You should have a few things handy before starting:
- vCenter fqdn
- Datacenter info from vCenter
- administrative user
- NSX info in case you want to use NSX-V or T (This part is not mandatory, you can skip through it if you don’t have this software).
- at least one vRA ready template
- Know if you are using static or dynamic IP addressing
- Any basic idea about template naming and lease time (if applicable)
So lets do this.
First login to vRA:
Next you get a bunch of options, choose the “launch quickstart”:
Select VMware vCenter Server from the Cloud account types:
Enter the vCenter information requested and verify the connection to the vCenter (Accept the certificate in the dialog that pops up):
On the next screen you can enter NSX information. I don’t have NSX running currently so I selected none and moved on to next step.
For the Blueprint screen, select the vCenter and Datacenter you want to deploy to. Then select the Template and after this select Datastore
and cluster.
Select Network and then IP Assignment type. DHCP is probably a good idea here unless you have some customization going on with the
template.
Next Select what kind of Project you want to create, I went with the default quickstart project for now. Select a lease time and select a
machine naming convention.
On the next creen it gives you a summary and you can select to deploy the new template or not. I went with it because it gave me a chance
to see if all was ok. Once you are satisfied with your choices select “Run Quickstart”:
That takes you through the quick step guide, which should complete within a few moments:
After it has run you will be able to see that the template deployment has started:
After a few minutes it should be done and you should see the vm in the vCenter and also you should see it as completed in the deployments
That’s it, you have configured the vCenter connection from vRA.