Installing the Appliance is a relatively simple process, though I will go through it because there are a few caveats that differs from most other times where I setup appliances.
Prerequisites
I prefer tend to setup the vSphere replication Appliance in the same network as the vSphere Server. This takes care of communication between the two.
You need to have IP and DNS records setup, because vSphere and vSphere Replication work together via a plugin.
Speaking of DNS, you should check that the VirutalCenter.FQDN is set up on both vCenters.
To check this click on the vCenter in the vCenter Client and go to “Configure” and then “Advanced Settings”
Filter for “VirutalCenter.FQDN” and verify that your vCenter has a FQDN entered.
Appliance deployment
When you downloaded the vSphere Replication, it came as an ISO file. Mount this file in your Operating system before starting.
In the vSphere Web client go to the site where you want to deploy the appliance, rightclick on the cluster and select “Deploy OVF Template”.
Press Next and you are asked to select the file you want to use to deploy.
For this to work you need 5 files, which are located in the bin folder of the ISO. The only three files you don’t need are the _AddOn_OVF10.* files.
Once these are selected click on Next. Select a vCenter display name for your appliance.
Click on Next and select a compute Resource.
Review that all details are OK so far on the next screen. If yes, click on Next
Accept the EULA and click Next.
Select how many CPUs to use. 4vCPUs is for more performance. 2 is if you don’t know how much resources you have or you want a test environment. So I went with 2.
Next you should select what storage to use and if you want to use thin or thick storage provisioning.
Next you select network. I tend to put the Replication appliance close to the vCenter, so in my case, same VLAN.
Almost there, now you need to enter some entities.
- Appliance Password (for user root)
- NTP Servers
- Hostname (FQDN)
- Ipv4 or ipv6 (I went with IPv4)
- Decide if you want to enable file integrity check.
- Default gateway
- Domain Name (FQDN) of appliance
- Domain Search Path
- DNS Servers
- IP of the Appliance
- Subnet Mask
Once that is all entered press next to check service bindings. Verify that you have a checkmark that the provider binding status is ok.
Press next and check that all details are as they should be on the ready to complete. If yes, press finish to deploy the appliance. The appliance is small so this should go fairly quick.
Repeat the procedure for the target system.
Once it is done you can power on the appliance and continue the installation here.