Installing VCM - three-tier deployment

So far, we have covered installing VCM on single and two-tier systems. There will be times when these are not sufficient, and you have a larger infrastructure to manage. To provide services to such large infrastructures, we can share the load across three tiers, namely, the database, web, and collector servers. In this recipe, we will install VCM on three different servers.

This is how the three-tier deployment will be configured:

Getting ready

We will need three different servers to install the database, web, and collector components of the VCM server to.

We need all the prerequisites installed on all three servers. We should have all the mentioned service accounts ready, and firewall ports should be open wherever required.

IIS needs to be configured on the web server only.

SQL Server must be installed and SSRS configured as per previous recipes.

How to do it...

Even though this is a three-tier installation, we don't need to do much on the SQL Server; in addition to installing SQL Server 2012, we need to install the SQL Native Client, SQL Command Line Utilities, and SQLXML 4.0 SP1.

We will look at the web and collector servers in detail.

Let's cover the web server first.

Installing web components

We need to log in to the web server with a domain account that has local administrative privileges. Mount the VCM ISO and double-click on setup.exe on the installer disk. Follow the steps in the wizard to install the web component of VCM, as follows:

1. Select Advanced Installation, as this is a three-tier installation.
2. Click on Next for the introduction page.
3. Click on Next for the patent information page.
4. Read and accept the license agreement and select "I am an authorized agent and/or representative of the customer/end user" and "I have read the terms and conditions stated above".
5. Under Select Installation Type, select the following:
   • VMware vRealize Configuration Manager
     • VCM Web Console
   • Tools
     • VMware VCM Package Manager for Windows
     • VMware VCM Package Studio
   
6. Accept that you have intentionally chosen to split the installation by clicking on OK in the dialog box that pops up.
7. The installer will perform a prerequisite check and present the results. If the check is successful, click on Next; if there are failures, click on View Results, remedy any errors and warnings, and perform a recheck. Do not proceed further until there are zero errors.
   
8. On the next page, enter the serial key.
9. On the Configure Components page, provide the hostname of the SQL Server and enter VCM as the database name; click on Validate.

   If the validation is successful, you will be provided with a path for the data and logfiles, along with the Size and Auto Grow options. You can go with the defaults.

   
10. On the next page, provide the Tomcat service account details and its password.
11. On the next page, provide the URL in WebService URL. Credentials to validate the details include the Domain, User Name, and Password. Click on Validate. Accept the SRS insecure warning as we had configured it with port 80.
12. Provide the path to install the web console to.
13. Provide the URL to the application; it's okay to use the default value.

    We can provide an SMTP address. The default is the collector server. If you don't know it now, it can be configured in the VCM console.

14. Provide the credentials for the Virtualization Client plugin.
15. On the next page, provide the path to install the package manager components to.
16. On the next page, provide the path to the local package cache.
17. On the next page, provide the path to the software repository and local cache.
18. Provide the name of the virtual directory.
19. Provide the path for the Package Studio components.
20. After this, you'll reach the summary page. Check the options and click on Install.
    
21. Click on Finish to exit the wizard.

This completes the web component installation; now, we have to perform similar steps on the Collector server.

Installing Collector server components

Once you are finished with the web server, log in to the Collector server with a domain account that has local administrative privileges. Copy the ISO of the VCM installer from the downloaded location and mount it.

Double-click on the setup.exe file from the installer media mounted, and follow these steps to complete the wizard.

1. Start with Advanced Installation.
2. Click on Next for the introduction page.
3. Click on Next for the patent information page.
4. Read and accept the license agreement and select "I am an authorized agent and/or representative of the customer/end user" and "I have read the terms and conditions stated above".
5. Under Select Installation Type, select the following:
   • VMware vRealize Configuration Manager
     • VCM Collector Components
   • Tools
     • ImportExport Utility
     • Foundation Checker
     • VMware VCM Package Manager for Windows
   
6. Accept that you have intentionally chosen to split the installation–click on OK.
7. The installer will perform a prerequisite check and present the results. If the check is successful, click on Next; if there are failures, click on View Results, remedy any errors and warnings, and perform a recheck. Do not proceed further until there are zero errors.
8. On the next page, enter the serial key.
9. Provide the path to install the collector component to and accept the SSL3 warning.
10. Specify the same database server and database name used when you installed the web components.
11. Provide details of a Collector service account; this account will be given rights to log in as a service; accept the corresponding dialog box.
12. Provide details of network authority accounts. We can add as many accounts as we want later, but we need at least one for the time being. More details about this can be found in the Service accounts subsection of this chapter's introduction.
13. The next page is for certificates; click on Generate and click on Next.
14. On the next page, in order to select domains to run the discovery, select Specific NetBIOS and AD domains.

    Note

    If you have multiple AD or NetBIOS domains, it will take more than 24 hours to detect all the domains, and the installation could eventually fail. To avoid such a scenario, select a few domains to start with and add the rest of them once VCM is ready.

15. On the next page, provide the path to install package manager components to.
16. On the next page, provide the path to the local package cache.
17. You will now reach the summary page; check the options and click on Install.
    
18. On the final page of the wizard, click on Finish to close it and launch the VCM console.
19. Once connected to the console, you will be able to notice the difference in single and two-tier deployments versus a three-tier deployment.

    Earlier, our collector and web server were the same, but now, the Collector is different from the web server. Of course, this is expected as we just finished installing them separately.

    

How it works...

For larger environments, such as where we need to manage more than 2,000 machines, it is recommended to have a three-tier deployment. Here, the Collector acts as middleware between the frontend IIS web component and the backend SQL database component. This distributes load between all the three components.

In a three-tier installation, when you want to connect to the VCM console, you need to use a web server and not a collector server. So, the link will be something like this:

https://<Web Server IP/Hostname>/VCM