With the release of VCF 9 (Official What’s New blog can be found here) I wanted to get my lab environment upgraded so I can try out all of the new features.

To get started we need to download the VMware Cloud Foundation Installer from the VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.0.0 page found here. In this post we will cover only the deployment. The configuration is available in another post.

Deploy the VMware Cloud Foundation Installer appliance

Once the appliance is downloaded we need to get the ova deployed.

  1. Log in to an existing vCenter with an user that has enough permissions to deploy an ova
  2. Right click on an existing cluster and click on Deploy from OVF Template

Select “mgmt-cluster-01” and click “Deploy OVF Template” in the vSphere Client.

  1. Select the installer file that was downloaded
  2. Click Next

Select local OVF file, then click Next.

  1. Give the appliance a name
  2. Select a deployment location
  3. Click Next

Enter appliance name and select deployment location, then click Next.

  1. Select a compute resource
  2. Click Next

Select compute resource: mgmt-cluster-01; click Next.

  1. Review the deployment details
  2. Click Next

Reviewing VMware VCF SDDC Manager Appliance deployment details. Click Next to proceed.

  1. Read the License agreements
  2. Accept the license agreements
  3. Click Next

License agreements page with checkbox and Next button.

  1. Select a datastore for the deployment
  2. Click Next

Selecting storage for VMware Cloud Foundation deployment, then click Next.

  1. Select a destination network
  2. Click Next

Select “sddc-vds01-mgmt” for Network 1, then click Next.

  1. Provide the required information ex: passwords, network configuration etc.
  2. Click Next

Customize template step shows password fields for root and local users. Click Next to proceed.

  1. Review the information
  2. Click Finish to start the deployment.

Review selections, then click Finish to deploy.

Once the appliance is deployed we can navigate to https://ip_address/ui or https://hostname/ui of the appliance.

If the following appears there is no reason to worry, the appliance is still starting services, try again in a few minutes

VMware Cloud Foundation is initializing…

Once the appliance has finished starting services we will be presented with the following login screen

  1. For username we will use admin@local
  2. For password enter the password provided in the previous steps.
  3. Click Log in

Username: admin@local, Password: entered, Click Log in.

I will be covering the configuration in one of the next blogs