Automated Deployment of vCSA 6.5/6.7 with Ansible

Take a look at the automated deployment of vCSA by deploying it on an ESXI host using Ansible and a JSON configuration file.

Tarik Naeem

Updated May. 15, 20 · Tutorial

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We use VMware vSphere to manage internal infrastructure. We can create and manage virtual machines very efficiently, but how can we deploy the vCenter Server automatically?

We can use our favorite tool Ansible for this. I am an Ansible expert and here I am going to show you the deployment of vCSA 6.5 on ESXI host. I am going to use ESXI 6.5 host and a JSON configuration file to pass the parameters required for the deployment. You need to download the ESXI 6.5 installer and vCSA 6.5 ISO file.

I will use lab environment created on VMware Workstation and have manually deployed the ESXI Host. You can follow this link as well.

After the successful deployment of ESXI on one of our lab virtual machines, we will use it to deploy the vCSA 6.5.

I have used another Ubuntu 18.04 VM to use as Ansible Controller to save and run playbooks on it. We need to have /etc/ansible/hosts file modified as:

     Plain Text 
   
          x 
         
[localhost]
127.0.0.1 ansible_connection=local ansible_user=xyz Ansible_password=abc

We need to check the connectivity as:

     Plain Text 
   
xxxxxxxxxx
 
root@ubuntu:/etc/ansible/roles# ansible -m ping localhost
127.0.0.1 | SUCCESS => {
    "changed": false, 
    "ping": "pong"
}

Then we need to create a JSON file to pass the parameters required for deployment.

Here is one sample config.json file that will be useful.

     JSON 
   
 
 
      
    
 
      
 
     
 
      
 
     
 
     
 
    
xxxxxxxxxx
 
          
 
         
 
          
 
         

              
          
{
  "__version": "2.3.0",
  "new.vcsa": {
    "esxi": {
      "hostname": "xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx",
      "username": "root",
      "password": "Vmware@123",
      "deployment.network": "VM Network",
      "datastore": "datastore1"
    },
    "appliance": {
      "thin.disk.mode": true,
      "deployment.option": "tiny",
      "name": "vcsa"
    },
    "network": {
      "ip.family": "ipv4",
      "mode": "static",
      "ip": "xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx",
      "dns.servers": [
        "xxx.xxx.xxx.x"
      ],
      "prefix": "24",
      "gateway": "xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx",
      "system.name": "xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx"
    },
    "os": {
      "password": "Vmware@123",
      "ssh.enable": true
    },
    "sso": {
      "password": "Vmware@123",
      "domain-name": "vsphere.local",
      "site-name": "Default-First-Site"
    }
  },
  "ceip": {
    "description": {
      "__comments": [
        [
          "++++VMware Customer Experience Improvement Program (CEIP)++++",
          "VMware's Customer Experience Improvement Program (CEIP) ",
          "provides VMware with information that enables VMware to ",
          "improve its products and services, to fix problems, ",
          "and to advise you on how best to deploy and use our ",
          "products. As part of CEIP, VMware collects technical ",
          "information about your organization's use of VMware ",
          "products and services on a regular basis in association ",
          "with your organization's VMware license key(s). This ",
          "information does not personally identify any individual. ",
          "",
          "Additional information regarding the data collected ",
          "through CEIP and the purposes for which it is used by ",
          "VMware is set forth in the Trust & Assurance Center at ",
          "http://www.vmware.com/trustvmware/ceip.html . If you ",
          "prefer not to participate in VMware's CEIP for this ",
          "product, you should disable CEIP by setting ",
          "'ceip.enabled': false. You may join or leave VMware's ",
          "CEIP for this product at any time. Please confirm your ",
          "acknowledgement by passing in the parameter ",
          "--acknowledge-ceip in the command line.",
          "++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++"
        ]
      ]
    },
    "settings": {
      "ceip.enabled": true
    }
  }
}
 
      
 
     

You need to create a Ansible playbook vcsa-deploy.yml for this deployment. You need to use the URL of the vCSA ISO file to be used.

     YAML 
   
xxxxxxxxxx
 
---
- hosts: localhost
  vars:
    name_iso: VMware-VCSA-all-6.5.0-8307201.iso
    vcsa_iso_url: #needs to provide the url path
  tasks:
     - name: Creating a Directory to download the iso file
       become: yes
       file:
         path: /vcsa-iso/
         state: directory
         mode: 0777
    - name: Download the vCSA 6.5 U2 iso to /vcsa-iso
      get_url:
        url: {{vcsa_iso_url}} 
        dest: /vcsa-iso/{{name_iso}}
        mode: 755
 
     - name: Creating a Directory to mount the iso file
       become: yes
       file:
         path: /mnt/iso
         state: directory
         mode: 0777
    - name: Mount vCSA6.5 U2 iso to /mnt/iso directory
      mount:
        path: /mnt/iso
        src: /vcsa-iso/{{name_iso}}
        fstype: iso9660
        opts: ro,noauto
        state: present
     - name: Creating a Working Directory
       become: yes
       file:
         path: /vcsa
         state: directory
         mode: 0777
     - name: Copying contents to working Directory
       template:
         src: /mnt/iso/*
         dest: /vcsa
    - name: deployment of vcsa
      shell: ./vcsa-deploy install --no-esx-ssl-verify --accept-eula --acknowledge-ceip /vcsa/vcsa-cli-installer/lin64/config.json
      args:
        chdir: /VCSA-new/vcsa-cli-installer/lin64/

You need to have the ESXI host details and the deployment type and other required parameters as mentioned in the above config.json configuration file and copy it to the vcsa-cli-installer/lin64/ folder. and then run the playbook as:

     Plain Text 
   
xxxxxxxxxx
 
root@ubuntu:/etc/ansible/playbooks# ansible-playbook vcsa-deploy.yml

and after a successful execution you should see this.

Successful execution

vCSA Deployed with Embedded Replication controller

And can login to the vCSA with the above-mentioned URL and the provided username and password. https://{{vc-hostname}}

vCSA login

Ansible (software) Plain text

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