vCenter 5.1.0a - How to install the Inventory Service

Last week I have written the procedure to install vCenter Single Sign-On and its database. This week I will focus on deploying the Inventory Service as well as vCenter Server and a vCenter Web Client.

I have decided to keep the Inventory Service on the same VM that hosts the Single Sign-On application. My plan for the moment is to have three virtual machines:

• one for vCenter Signle Sign-On and its database + the Inventory Service,
• one which will host the vCenter Server DB,
• one for the main vCenter Server service.

I will then install the Web Client on my workstation and from there I will manage the whole infrastructure.

vCenter 5.1.0a - How to install a Single Sign-On server

The vCenter Server 5.1 release includes significant architectural changes. One of those major changes is the introduction of Single Sign-On (aka SSO) as a solution to manage all users authentications to the increasing number of third part products VMWare is putting into its bundle. By using SSO authorized vCenter Server, users will be able to access multiple vCenter Server systems with a single login. See this link for more on vCenter Single Sign-On.

As you might have heard through the forums, vCenter 5.1 had many major bugs which discouraged many system administrators from upgrading their infrastructure. I was one of those sysadmins.

Starting from october 25, 2012 a more stable release (named VMware vCenter Server 5.1.0a) has been published, and therefore I decided to upgrade my vCenter to it.

I didn't go far with this plan. In fact, when I read the support matrix, I discovered that ESX 3.5 was no more supported under vCenter 5.1, and I have still many of them out there which I cannot upgrade yet for several reasons.

What I decided is to install a completely new vCenter infrastructure to host all the newer ESX 4.1 and ESXi5. And the first step to pass to vCenter 5.1 is to install an SSO instance.