PSC

2. VMware vSphere 6.x – Platform Service Controller Deployment

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<- Index page – VMware vSphere 6.x Deployment Process

Following on from the previous article, lets now look at how we go about carrying out a typical enterprise deployment of vSphere 6 and first up is the deployment of PSC. (note that normally, the 1st thing to do is to deploy ESXi but since the ESXi deployment with 6.x is pretty much the same as its 2 previous iterations, I’m going to skip it, assuming that its somewhat mainstream knowledge now)

Given below are the main deployment steps involved in deploying the Platform Service Controller. Note the below notes regarding the PSC design being deployed here.

  • Single, external PSC appliance will be deployed with 2 vCenter server appliances associated with it (topology 2 of the recommended deployment topologies listed here by VMware) as this is likely going to be the most popular deployment model for most people.
  • Lot of people may wonder why no resiliency for PSC here. While PSC can be deployed behind a load balancer for HA, its a bit of an overkill, especially with vSphere 6.0 Update 1 which now supports pointing an existing vCenter Server to another PSC node if its in the same SSO domain. For more information, see this priceless article by William Lam @ VMware which also shows how you can automate this manual repointing if need be.

Lets take a look at the PSC appliance deployment steps

  1. Download the VMware vCSA appliance ISO from VMware and mount the ISO image on you workstation / jump host and launch the vcsa-setup.html file found on the root of the ISO drive. Since this has not specifically been mentioned, it should be noted that the PSC appliance deployment is part of the same vCenter Server Appliance (vCSA) but during the deployment, you specify you only want PSC services deployed) 1
  2. Now click install.                                                   2
  3. Accept EULA and next                                                  3. Ack
  4. You can deploy the appliance directly to an ESXi host or deploy through a vCenter. Provide your target server details here with credentials.  4. ESXi
  5. Type the appliance’s VM name & root password for the appliance’s Linux OS. Make a note as you’d need this later. 5. PSC01
  6. Select the appropriate deployment type. We are using the external PSC here.    6. External psc mode
  7. We are creating a new SSO domain here so provide the required details here. 7. SSO details
  8. Appliance size is not modifiable here as we’ve selected the PSC mode earlier (where the size is same for all).  8. PSC Appliance Size
  9. Select the destination datastore to deploy the PSC appliance on to.  9. PSC Disk Mode
  10. Now provide the IP & DNS details. Ensue you provide a valid NTP server and check that the time syncs properly from this source.
    1. Ensure the DNS entries are manually added to the AD for PSC before proceeding with this step as the PSC deployment may return errors if the FQDN cannot be resolved correctly.  10. PSC Network
  11. Review the deployment settings and click finish to proceed with the appliance deployment. 11. Summary
  12. Deployment progress and completion                                                                            12. Progress 13. Completion
  13. Once complete, ensure you can connect to the PSC web page using the URL http://<PSC FQDN>/websso 14 Verification
  14. You can also connect to the appliance configuration page using the port 5480 as is the case with most VMware products that ships as appliances. The URL is http://<FQDN of the PSC appliance>:5480 and the credentials are root and the password specified during deployment earlier. 15. ILO

Optional – Replace the VMCA root certificate

This is only required if you have an enterprise CA hierarchy already in place within your organisation, such as a Microsoft CA. However, if you are a WINTEL house, I would highly recommend that you deploy a Microsoft Enterprise CA using Windows Server as it is quite useful for many use cases, including automation tasks involved with XaaS platforms. (i.e. Running vRO workflows to create an Active Directory user cannot happen without an LDAPS connection for which the Domain Controllers need to have a valid certificate….etc.). So, if you have an Enterprise CA, you should make the PSC a subordinate certificate authority by replacing its default root cert with a valid cert from the Enterprise CA.
Note that this should ideally happen before deploying the vCenter server appliance, in order to keep the process simple.
  1. To do this, follow the steps listed out in this VMware KB 2111219, under the section “Replacing VMCA of the Platform Services Controller with a Subordinate Certificate Authority Certificate” (To be specific, if your deployment is greenfield and you are following my order of component deployment, which means vCenter server has not yet been deployed, ONLY follow the first 3 steps listed under the “Replacing VMCA of the Platform Service Controller with a subordinate Certificate Authority Certificate” section.  I’ve listed them below FYI.
    1. Creating a Microsoft Certificate Authority Template for SSL certificate creation in vSphere 6.0 (2112009)
    2. Configuring vSphere 6.0 VMware Certificate Authority as a subordinate Certificate Authority (2112016)
    3. Obtaining vSphere certificates from a Microsoft Certificate Authority (2112014)
  2. DO NOT follow the rest of the steps yet (unless you already have a vCenter server attached to the PSC) as they are NOT YET required.

 

PSC configuration

There is not much to configure on PSC at this stage as the SSO configuration and integration with AD will be done at a later stage, once the vCenter Server Appliances have also been deployed with the vCenter Server service.

 

There you have it. Your PSC appliance is now deployed and the default VMCA root certificate is also replaced with a subordinate certificate from your existing enterprise CA, so that your VMware vSphere components that receive a cert from VMCA will have the full organisational cert chain, all the way from the enterprise root CA cert, to the VMCA issued cert.

Next, we’ll look at the VCSA appliance deployment and configuration.

 

1. VMware vSphere 6.x – Deployment Architecture Key Notes

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<-Home Page for VMware vSphere 6.x articles

First thing to do in a vSphere 6.x deployment is to understand the new deployment architecture options available on the vSphere 6.0 platform, which is somewhat different from the previous versions of vSphere. The below will highlight key information but is not a complete guide to all the changes..etc. For that I’d advise you to refer to the official vSphere documentation (found here)

Deployment Architecture

The deployment architecture for vSphere 6 is somewhat different from the legacy versions. I’m not going to document all of the architectural deference’s  (Please refer to the VMware product documentation for vSphere 6) but I will mention few of the key ones which I think are important, in a bullet point below.

  • vCenter Server – Consist of 2 key components
    • Platform Service Controller (PSC)
      • PSC include the following components
        • SSO
        • vSphere Licensing Server
        • VMCA – VMware Certificate Authority (a built in SSL certification authority to simply certificate provisioning to all VMware products including vCenter, ESXi, vRealize Automation….etc. The idea is you associate this to your existing enterprise root CA or a subordinate CA such as a Microsoft CA and point all VMware components at this.)
      • PSC can be deployed as an appliance or on a windows machine
    • vCenter Server
      • Appliance (vCSA) – Include the following services
        • vCenter Inventory server
        • PostgreSQL
        • vSphere Web Client
        • vSphere ESXi Dump collector
        • Syslog collector
        • Syslog Service
        • Auto Deploy
      • Windows version is also available.

Note: ESXi remains the same as before without any significant changes to its core architecture or the installation process.

Deployment Options

What’s in red below are the deployment options that I will be using in the subsequent sections to deploy vSphere 6 u1 as they represent the likely choices adopted during most of the enterprise deployments.

  • Platform Services Controller Deployment
    • Option 1 – Embedded with vCenter
      • Only suitable for small deployments
    • Option 2 – External – Dedicated separate deployment of PSC to which external vCenter(s) will connect to
      • Single PSC instance or a clustered PSC deployment consisting of multiple instances is supported
      • 2 options supported here.
        • Deploy an external PSC on Windows
        • Deploy an external PSC using the Linux based appliance (note that this option involves deploying the same vCSA appliance but during deployment, select the PSC mode rather than vCenter)
    • PSC need to be deployed first, followed by vCenter deployment as concurrent deployment of both are NOT supported!
  • vCenter Server Deployment – vCenter Deployment architecture consist of 2 choices
    • Windows deployment
      • Option 1: with a built in Postgre SQL
        • Only supported for a small – medium sized environment (20 hosts or 200VMs)
      • Option 2: with an external database system
        • Only external database system supported is Oracle (no more SQL databases for vCenter)
      • This effectively mean that you are now advised (indirectly, in my view) to always deploy the vCSA version as opposed to the Windows version of vCenter, especially since the feature parity between vCSA and Windows vCenter versions are now bridged
    • vCSA (appliance) deployment
      • Option 1: with a built in Postgre SQL DB
        • Supported for up to 1000 hosts and 10,000 VMs (This I reckon would be the most common deployment model now for vCSA due to the supported scalability and the simplicity)
      • Option 2: with an external database system
        • As with the Windows version, only Oracle is supported as an external DB system

PSC and vCenter deployment topologies

Certificate Concerns

  • VMCA is a complete Certificate Authority for all vSphere and related components where the vSphere related certificate issuing process is automated (happens automatically during adding vCenter servers to PSC & adding ESXi servers to vCenter).
  • For those who already have a Microsoft CA or a similar enterprise CA, the recommendation is to make the VMCA a subordinate CA so that all certificates allocated from VMCA to all vSphere components will have the full certificate chain, all the way from your Microsoft root CA(i.e. Microsoft Root CA cert->Subordinate CA cert->VMCA Root CA cert->Allocated cert, for the vSphere components).
  • In order to achieve this, the following steps need to be followed in the listed order.
    • Install the PSC / Deploy the PSC appliance first
    • Use an existing root / enterprise CA (i.e. Microsoft CA) to generate a subordinate CA certificate for the VMCA and replace the default VMCA root certificate on the PSC.
      • To achieve this, follow the VMware KB articles listed here.
      • Once the certificate replacement is complete on the PSC, do follow the “Task 0” outlined here to ensure that the vSphere service registrations with the VMware lookup service are also update. If not, you’ll have to follow the “Task 1 – 4” to manually update the sslTrust parameter value for the service registration using the ls_update_certs.py script (available on the PSC appliance). Validating this here can save you lots of headache down the line.
    • Now Install vCenter & point at the PSC for SSO (VMCA will automatically allocate appropriate certificates)
    • Add ESXi hosts (VMCA will automatically allocate appropriate certificates)

Key System Requirements

  • ESXi system requirements
    • Physical components
      • Need a minimum of 2 CPU cores per host
      • HCL compatibility (CPU released after sept 2006 only)
      • NX/SD bit enabled in BIOS
      • Intel VT-x enabled
      • SATA disks will be considered remote (meaning, no scratch partition on SATA)
    • Booting
      • Booting from UEFI is supported
      • But no auto deploy or network booting with UEFI
    • Local Storage
      • Disks
        • Recommended for booting from local disk is 5.2GB (for VMFS and the 4GB scratch partition)
        • Supported minimum is 1GB
          • Scratch partition created on another local disk or RAMDISK (/tmp/ramdisk) – Not recommended to be left on ramdisk for performance & memory optimisation
      • USB / SD
        • Installer DOES NOT create scratch on these drives
        • Either creates the scratch partition on another local disk or ramdisk
        • 4GB or larger recommended (though min supported is 1GB)
          • Additional space used for the core dump
        • 16GB or larger is highly recommended
          • Prolongs the flash cell life
  • vCenter Server System Requirements
    • Windows version
      • Must be connected to a domain
      • Hardware
        • PSC – 2 cpu / 2GB RAM
        • Tiny environment (10 hosts / 100 VM- 2 cpu / 8GB RAM
        • Small (100 hosts / 1000 VMs) – 4 cpus / 16GB RAM
        • Medium (400 hosts / 400 VMs) – 8cpus / 24GB RAM
        • Large (1000 hosts / 10000 VMs) – 16 cpus / 32GB RAM
    • Appliance version
      • Virtual Hardware
        • PSC- 2 cpu / 2GB RAM
        • Tiny environment (10 hosts / 100 VM- 2 cpu / 8GB RAM
        • Small (100 hosts / 1000 VMs) – 4 cpus / 16GB RAM
        • Medium (400 hosts / 400 VMs) – 8cpus / 24GB RAM
        • Large (1000 hosts / 10000 VMs) – 16 cpus / 32GB RAM

In the next post, we’ll look at the key deployment steps involved.