the birdhouse in my soul

Updating the VCSA is easy when it has internet access or if you can mount the update iso. On a private network, VMware assumes you have a webserver that can serve up the updaterepo files. In this article, we'll look at how to proceed when VCSA is on a private network where internet access is blocked, and there's no webserver available. The VCSA and PSC contain their own webserver that can be used for an HTTP based update. This procedure was tested on PSC/VCSA 6.0. Follow these steps: First, download the update repo zip (e.g. for 6.0 U3A, the filename is VMware-vCenter-Server-Appliance-6.0.0.30100-5202501-updaterepo.zip )  Transfer the updaterepo zip to a PSC or VCSA that will be used as the server. You can use Putty's pscp.exe on Windows or scp on Mac/Linux, but you'd have to run "chsh -s /bin/bash root" in the CLI shell before using pscp.exe/scp if your PSC/VCSA is set up with the appliancesh.  chsh -s /bin/bash root "c:\program files (x86)\put...

The vCenter Server Appliance in vSphere6 can be deployed as "tiny", "small", "medium", and "large". The deployment wizard gives info about the vCPU and vRAM consequences of this choice, and about the total disk size of the appliance. But as there's 11 (eleven!) disks attached to the VCSA appliance, it's worth looking into which disks get a different size. Tiny Small Medium Max hosts 10 100 400 Max VMs 100 1000 4000 vCPU 2 4 8 vRAM 8 16 24 Disk size 120 150 300 disk0 / and /boot 12 12 12 disk1 /tmp/mount 1,3 1,3 1,3 disk2 swap 25 25 50 disk3 /storage/core 25 50 50 disk4 /storage/log 10 10 25 disk5 /storage/db 10 10 25 disk6 /storage/dblog 5 5 10 disk7 /storage/seat 10 25 50 disk8 /storage/netdump 1 1 10 disk9 /storage/autodeploy 10 10 25 disk10 /storage/invsvc 5 10 25 N.B. I currently don't have the config data for "large". This table can help if your environment is growing slightly or wildly beyond th...

Found out the hard way: don't use underscores in hostnames. It's not allowed by DNS, and it breaks things. In this case: joining vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) in an Active Directory doesn't work if the hostname of the appliance contains an underscore (_). It also doesn't work if the hostname is "localhost". If your appliance uses DHCP, the appliance gets its hostname through reverse DNS. So in that case, it _is_ a freaking DNS problem.