Create a VMWARE VSphere Data Center in a Box Part 1

I have been working with VMWARE for almost 20 years. Started with Workstation and GSX versions back in the early 2000s. Over the years I have administered small to medium size Clusters based on VMWARE's Hypervisors and VCenters. Every time I have been in charge of setting up and administering these for companies, it was a struggle to create "test" versions. This is because as we all know, installing and testing in production can be risky. Another reason I wanted to do it was so I could keep up with the technology and keep my certifications current. The answer always was to scrounge together enough old hardware (previous generation) and create one. This was, and is, time-consuming, costly, and not always necessary.  

My idea was to create a virtual data center inside a virtual environment using VMware Workstation. I tried this first 10 years ago when I was trying to get my VCP certification. I installed it all on a Thinkpad T21. After installing Workstation, I created two Hypervisors. I also created three virtual machines: Domain Controler, Windows 7, and another Server to install VCenter (with SQL) - the appliance was not a choice for me then. The results were extremely slow but I was just trying to study for my VCP. I remember the day: Started all the VMs - albeit, slow running but they were working - then, POOF! The laptop could not cool itself enough and just died. I still got my VCP certification without the test system. 

Over the years I have tried a few times but never really had good success. Either my software was out of date or I did not have the proper hardware. Keep in mind that for this to work my hardware needed to support virtualization. Also, the version of Workstation needed a certain level.

I did not want some big honky system(s) taking up space and power at home. I started exploring the possibility of using a NUC (Small form factor Next Unit of Computing). I wanted to keep the price around $500 and saw that INTEL's NUC one gen back was available on Amazon but when I was about to buy it - the new-gen was on sale for really about $160 more - could not resist and to buy it. 

One of the items you need if you are going to build this is: "memory" - lots of memory. So the other two things I needed to buy for my Virtual in a Virtual were memory and storage. These two items were the technology my original attempt on the Thinkpad T21 lacked. The ability to be able to buy SSD and fast memory was not available to me. I bought 32 Gig RAM kit and 500 Gb SSD.

Software and Operating System. Any structure you build you need a foundation. I had my hardware foundation and now I need to build on top of that. For Operating System I wanted to use Linux. I know VMware has a Linux version of Workstation which I had successfully run on some of my previous Linux laptops. My distro of choice was Mint or Ubuntu - but neither of those seems to install very well. I tried both and could not get them to boot clean from USB distros. Now I am not saying they would not work but at this time I did not want to get sidetracked into figuring out what the issues were.

Yes, I threw in the towel quicker than I normally do. Out came Windows 10 USB install. It installed with no issues. With 32 Gigs of RAM and a smoking SSD, it flies. After doing all the necessary updates. Installing all my other favorite software I was ready to begin.

First VMware Workstation version 15. If you are buying it new it can set you back a bit, but if you had already bought previous versions, the upgrade price is a little more tolerable. I also want to mention here that you might be able to do some of this with the Player version, but I think it might be more difficult with the Network part of the installation.

To create a real-life Data Center you need Active Directory, so you need a copy of Windows Server. I used Windows Server 12R2, but a previous version should work if you have an older copy of say 2008 you can try. Remember you can run in trial mode on all these software packages. You have time to play before they all time out. This might seem like a drawback, but if you install them over and over, and you are trying to learn, it is a good thing. So one VM running Windows Server 2012R2.

I also want an admin machine. I created another VM with Windows 10. On the VM I will run all admin utilities as I would normally in my day job as an admin.

You don't need this, but I also created a Linux Mint VM for doing non-Microsoft tasks - just to have something different in the mix.

I had versions fo VMware Hypervisor 6.0 and the Virtual Center Appliance version 6.5 from my day job. I wanted to use older versions that are currently available because one of my goals is to test "upgrades".  

You are also going to need an FTP program if you want to test backing up VCU. I always use FileZilla.

I am going to pause here and do a summary of all items:

1. Base System: Intel Mini PC Kit NUC8i7HVK
2. Intell Core i7 8th gen
3. Radeon Rx VEGA M
4. Two thunderbolt ports
5. Two HDMI ports
6. Two mini DVI ports
7. Five USB 3 ports
8. One High Charge USB port
9. One media slot
10. Two Ethernet ports
11. Intell dual-band wireless
12. Audio ports
13. Memory: Crucial 32 Gb DDR4 - 2400 SODIMM
14. Storage: Samsung 500 Gb V-NAND SSD 970 PRO NVME M.2
15. Base System: Microsoft Windows 10 (latest build)
16. VMware: Workstation version 15 (latest build)
17. VMware Hypervisor: ESXi version 6
18. VMWARE Vcenter Appliance version 6.5
19. Virtual machines:
20. Windows Server 2012R2
21. Windows 10 (latest build)
22. Linux Mint (latest build)

Network Build

Like I mentioned above the first VMs I created were: Windows Server, Windows 10 and a Linux Mint. But a critical part of the build is the Network part. VMware Workstation allows you to use out of the box the following network topologies:

1. Vmnet1 Host-only (VMS attached to this network can only communicate with each other and the Host Machine ( that would be my NUC)
2. Vmnet8 NAT (This is the default when you create a VM and it uses Network Address Translation) - This works in reality for just about everything, and if you left it, you will notice that your VMS will work but this is not exactly what I wanted.
3. Vmnet0 Bridged (You can only see this if you select "Change Settings" in the Virtual Network Editor). This is what I want.

I want "Bridged" because when you are bridging on a network, you are basically telling a "router", in this case, the routing is being done by the software, that the devices attached to this port should be treated as they were on the "local area network". In this case, your NUC is on your "local area network". By being on my local area network I can assign static IP addresses to my VMs that are part of my home network. This will my management network.  

 All my VMs for this project I set to bridged (Except the Linux Mint):

1. In Workstation select menu "Edit"
2. Select "Virtual Network Editor"
3. In Virtual Network Editor select "Change Settings" (You might get a prompt here - but I set it not to ask me again).

Notice how you can see the Vmnet8 Bridged network. Also notice that you have the choice of what network interface you want to bind this too. By default, it is set to auto. That would be OK if your interfaces were always on the same network, or if you are OK with changing the IP addresses of your VMS all the time, but that would not work very well in this case. Think about it. In a real data center, if your servers would change IP addresses all the time, you would have nothing but chaos. So I selected one of the EtherNet Ports available on my NUC. I even could have selected the wireless adapter, but I have my NUC connected to the network with EtherNet. In the drop-down, I chose the Ethernet Port my Nuc was connected to. Select Ok.

In each of the VMs that I create I leave the default of NAT until I am ready to make it part of my test system. In this way, I can pull down updates and install software that I need off the internet. Mind you, in my setup, I will still be able to access the internet but at first, I make sure VMs are all working OK.

Here is a summary of the management network setup

1. Home Network 192.168.1.x/24 (an even better setup would be if you can use the 10.x.x.x. which gives you a huge network to play with)
2. Gateway 192.16.1.1
3. All my devices at home are on a DHCP range in that subnet - but I have a range I can use static.
4. Domain Controller 192.168.1.2
5. Windows 10 management 192.168.3
6. Hypervisor1 192.168.1.4
7. Hypervisor2 192.168.1.5
8. VCA (Virtual Center Appliance) 192.168.1.6
9. Linux Mint I left at NAT for now

The Domain Controller

The domain controller is crucial. I am not going to go through the steps on how to convert your Windows Server into a domain controller. I am going to assume that is something the person reading this can do. But you need to do it as you will need Active Directory to use your VCA in Active Directory/LADAP for authentication. You also need the DNS service in Windows Server for FQDN names for all your Virtual Machines.

Once you have the Domain Controller and the DNS service working properly, add all the A records for the hypervisors and VCA. You want to do this because during and after installing them, it will ask you for FQDN. Also, the Virtual Center Appliance is going to need this to be part of the Domain and properly do LDAP authentication.

Management workstation

On the management machine, you might want to install the Windows Management Tools, but it is here where I installed FileZilla Server. I want an FTP server so I can do backups of the Virtual Center Appliance. Along with all those tools, I also will use this as my PowerShell programming machine. This pretty much mimics my day job production environment.

Hypervisors one and two

I will remind briefly that when you create a new VM in Workstation, you just point it to the ISO for that contains the Hypervisor install. VM Workstation will recognize it, and I just took the defaults. Upon completion, you will have the ability to configure the network settings. Before you do change the Network to "Bridged" from "NAT" in the Edit, settings for the Virtual Machine.

Virtual Center Appliance

Here is where you have more to think about. In a normal environment, you would run the installation program. This is the more lengthy approach but would be the right way, in my opinion, to install in a normal production environment, and it is what I have done before. In this case, though, there is an option to "import" a Vcenter Appliance using the OVA way of importing previously created VMs. You will find this in the \vcsa folder.

1. Mount the ISO, in my case it was: VMware-VCSA-all-6.5.0-14836121
2. Once mounted, browse to \vcsa
3. Right-click and select open with VMware Workstation.
4. This will walk you through the wizard.

Here are a few lessons I learned:

• Download whatever version you want fresh. Do not use one that you have had for a while. It seems like the default password for root is timed. No matter what you do it will not work. There is a workaround to enter into single-user mode and change it there, but 
• I found it works better if you download a fresh copy, AND, do not enter a password for root.

Once you have done all this you will a working environment - now the real work begins of configuring your VMware Vsphere DataCenters.