I’m a big fan of Oracle Ravello Cloud and I have been working with this to deploy some VMware infrastructure. I wrote an article regarding the VCSA deployment previously and this is the second part of that article. My initial thought was to deploy this appliance directly on the Ravello cloud and unfortunately it was not able to accomplish due to the limitation of the Ravello Cloud infrastructure.
Below limitations have been identified:
- VMware has changed the VCSA deployment format from OVF/OVA to ISO and VCSA files cannot be accessed from the Ravello Cloud Library
- Ravello Cloud VM HBAs only support up to 7 VMDKs and VCSA consists with 12 Hard Disks
Yes, you might get a thought of deploy the VCSA in a somewhere else and import it as a OVF/OVA format to the Ravello Cloud. That’s where this 7 disks HBA constraint comes from. You might be able to see this on your screen
Emad Younis has written a great article to come across with this and deploy the VCSA on the Ravello Cloud. In my case I wanted to deploy my appliance in a ESXi host which I placed in the Ravello Cloud. So what did I do?
As you may aware VCSA 6.5 installation has two stages and at the first stage it deploys the Appliance and do the VCSA Configuration at the second stage. I deployed this VCSA in one of the ESXis in my datacenter and powered down after the completion of the stage 1. I exported the deployed appliance in to the OVA format, uploaded to the Management server in the Ravello Cloud and deployed as a generic OVA/OVF deployment in to the ESXi which is in the Ravello Cloud.
Once it completed the deployment, did the nested Virtualization hack which explained in my previous post. I powered on the VM and hit Enter in the Photon OS screen and let the VM to boot as usual.
So almost done! Next task is to complete the Stage 2 installation. I accessed the VCSA Appliance using the assigned IP in the deployment Stage 1
https://<IP_ADDRESS>:5480
completed the stage 2 configuration after that. So I have a VCSA in the Ravello Cloud.
My Previous Articles :
- Nested Virtualization: VCSA 6.5 deployment on Oracle Ravello Cloud
- https://www.techcrumble.net/2017/04/vcenter-server-appliacnce-vcsa-6-5-deployment/
- Build your Lab with Ravello Cloud – Experience the true benefit as a vExpert
