VSphere 8.0 Install & Configuration

Shawn Timewell included in Virtualization System Administration VMware Tutorials How-to IT Infrastructure

2023-11-12 966 words 5 minutes

Contents

Prerequisites

VMware vSphere 8.0 ISO
- Sign-up on VMWare’s site here to download the evaluation copy
USB Drive
Hardware that meets VMware’s Compatibility Guide
VMware’s PowerCLI PowerShell module
- VMware Docs for installation

GUI Installation

Welcome To the VMware ESXi 8.0.1 Installation

Press Enter at this screen to continue

End User License Agreement (EULA)

Press F11 to Accept and Continue to progress

Select a Disk to Install or Upgrade

Choose which disk you want to install the OS. Here I chose the 278GB drive as the 1.09TB drive drive is going to be used for the datastore.

Write down the last 4 numbers of the other drive it will be used later.

Please select a keyboard layout

Press Enter to select the default layout, or you can select a new layout by using the up and down arrows.

Enter a root password

Create the password for the root account that you will use to manage the hypervisor. ESXi Password Requirements.

Error(s)/Warning(s) Found During System Scan

If there are any issues found, they will be listed here. As you can see my 2 Intel EXeon E5-2620 v4’s may no longer be supported by VMware in future releases, and that my BIOS is still currently in Legacy Mode, which I will be changing since I was not aware!

Press Enter to continue.

Confirm Install

Press F11 to confirm the installation.

Installation Complete

After the installation has completed, remove the installation media. Then press Enter to reboot.

After First Reboot

After the first reboot has happened, you’ll see the following screen. I have DHCP configured so the host was given 10.0.1.107. We’ll be using this in the coming sections.

Configuring with PowerCLI

We’re going to configure;

Static IPv4
Disable IPv6
Hostname
DNS
Datastore

Connecting to the host

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# Provide the credentials to the root account
$ESXiRoot = Get-Credential root

Enter the root password you used during the installation into the dialog box.

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# Command to connect to the host
Connect-VIServer -Server '10.0.1.107' -Credential $ESXiRoot

You’ll receive a Certificate warning. Press P to Accept the self-signed certificate Permanently.

After a successful connection you’ll see the output below.

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Name                           Port  User
----                           ----  ----
10.0.1.107                     443   root

Configuring a Static IP

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Get-VMHostNetworkAdapter | 
    Select-Object -Property Name,IP,SubnetMask

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Name   IP         SubnetMask
----   --         ----------
vmnic0
vmnic1
vmnic2
vmnic3
vmk0   10.0.1.107 255.255.255.0

Take note of the name of the interface you’re going to be changing, which for me it’s vmk0.

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# Select only the adapter you're altering
$vmk0 = Get-VMHostNetworkAdapter | 
    Where-Object {$_.Name -eq "vmk0"}

# Pipe the network adapter to the set command
$vmk0 | 
    Set-VMHostNetworkAdapter -IP '10.0.1.52' -SubnetMask '255.255.255.0' -IPv6Enabled $false

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Perform operation?
Performing operation 'Configuring VM host network adapter.' on network adapter with IP '10.0.1.107' and device name 'vmk0'.
[Y] Yes  [A] Yes to All  [N] No  [L] No to All  [S] Suspend  [?] Help (default is "Y"):

Press Enter to continue the operation.

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WARNING: The underlying connection was closed: A connection that was expected to be kept alive was closed by the server.
Set-VMHostNetworkAdapter : 2023-11-12 10:04:23 PM       Set-VMHostNetworkAdapter                Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
At line:1 char:9
+ $vmk0 | Set-VMHostNetworkAdapter -IP '10.0.1.52' -SubnetMask '255.255 ...
+         ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    + CategoryInfo          : NotSpecified: (:) [Set-VMHostNetworkAdapter], VimException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : Core_BaseCmdlet_UnknownError,VMware.VimAutomation.ViCore.Cmdlets.Commands.Host.SetVMHostNetworkAdapter

After the connection has been lost, check your management console and see if the IP address has been configured.

You have to disconnect your session with the only IP address 10.0.1.107.

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Disconnect-VIServer -Server 10.0.1.107 -Force

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Confirm
Are you sure you want to perform this action?
Performing the operation "Disconnect VIServer" on target "User: root, Server: 10.0.1.107, Port: 443".
[Y] Yes  [A] Yes to All  [N] No  [L] No to All  [S] Suspend  [?] Help (default is "Y"):

Press Enter to disconnect.

Reconnect the PowerShell session to the ESXi host with the new IP 10.0.1.52.

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# Provide the credentials to the root account
$ESXiRoot = Get-Credential root

# Command to connect to the host
Connect-VIServer -Server '10.0.1.52' -Credential $ESXiRoot

Press P to accept the certificate again.

Setting HostName, DNS, and disabling IPv6

Since we only have a basic network setup, we don’t need to specify a VMHostNetwork.

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Get-VMHostNetwork | 
    Set-VMHostNetwork -HostName TTE-ESX-02 -DnsFromDhcp $false -DnsAddress 10.0.1.2,10.0.1.3 -IPv6Enabled $false

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WARNING: Disabling IPv6 will take effect after host reboot.
HostName     DomainName   DnsFro ConsoleGateway  ConsoleGatewayD DnsAddress
                          mDhcp                  evice
--------     ----------   ------ --------------  --------------- ----------
TTE-ESX-02   AD.Timewe... False                                  {10.0.1.2, 10.0.1.3}

We will reboot the server later for IPv6 to be disabled.

Creating a New Datastore

Get the device path on which you want to create the new datastore.

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# Save to variable for later
$VMHostDisk = Get-VMHostDisk
# Output
$VMHostDisk

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DeviceName                                                      TotalSectors
----------                                                      ------------
/vmfs/devices/disks/naa.6d0946600a41e9002ca66ae9f0e32e0b          2339373056
/vmfs/devices/disks/naa.6d0946600a41e9002ca66c7708a11de7           584843264

If you wrote down the last 4 numbers from before, you can tell that the one with more sectors is the drive I’m going to be using for the new datastore.

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New-Datastore -Vmfs -Name 'data' -Path $VMHostDisk[0].ScsiLun.CanonicalName -VMHost '10.0.1.52' -FileSystemVersion 6

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Name                               FreeSpaceGB      CapacityGB
----                               -----------      ----------
data                                 1,113.827       1,115.250

Restarting the ESXi Host

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Get-VMHost | 
    Restart-VMHost -Force

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Confirm
Are you sure you want to perform this action?
Performing the operation "Restart VM host.: Force: True" on target "10.0.1.52".
[Y] Yes  [A] Yes to All  [N] No  [L] No to All  [S] Suspend  [?] Help (default is "Y"):

Press Enter to restart the host.

VMWare’s PowerCLI documentation can be found here.

Next Post I’ll be copying ISO’s and provisioning VMs for the home-lab.

Thank you for reading!