ESX Installation Best Practices

This is an interesting post Leo Raikhman wrote about the ESX / VC installation best practices:

I get asked this all the time: what is best practice installation procedure?

I don’t know that there is such a thing - every environment is slightly different but here’s my general outline for ESX 3.5 + VirtualCenter 2.5 attached to Fibre SANs.

Installing VirtualCenter 2.5:

• Install SQL 2005 + SQL Native Client
• Patch SQL 2005 to SP2 + associated updates
• Enable SQL clustering if relevant.
• Create SQL DB with SQL-authenticated user as db_owner for the msdb and newly created databases (for VMware VirtualCenter and VMware Update Manager)
• Create an ODBC connection with above information on targeted VC server
• Install VirtualCenter
• Add VirtualCenter server IP to Exchange Relay Access rulesets
• Configure VirtualCenter SMTP settings, alarm definitions and Message of the Day
• Copy/install sysprep/deployment tools files
• Create required customizations
• Create a datacenter object
• Create a cluster object
• Configure HA + advanced HA with VM HA monitoring
• Configure DRS + separation rules
• Install Update Manager - sync ESX host updates with VMware downstream servers
• Configure VirtualCenter certificates as per this article from the excellent VM/ETC

Read the full post here.

Posted by Gabriel Maciel