why vCenter is mandatory for onprem CWMS deployement?

[Nirmal Joshi]

Hi Experts,

I am not able to understand why vcenter is mandatory for installing CWMS.

The CWMS planning guide says it woun't install without vcenter, and the latest release of this product does not support DRS, Vsphere HA, Vsphere clustering, vmotion and storage vmotion. If none of these features are not available then why make vcenter mandatory?

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/collaboration/CWMS/b_planningGuide_chapter_00.html#reference_39CA21773C2B4CC795075FD7DCFCA25B

If it comes as a OVA then I guess it can be installed using vsphere client.

I understand for mnagement purpose it becomes easy to manage VMs, I beleive it should have been optional not manadatory.

Please share if anyone happens to know why is vcenter mandatory?

Regards,

Nirmal

[tandonm01]

Hi Dejan,

Thanks for sharing the docs. I have 3 B440 UCS servers and have installed Esxi on 1st UCS server on which I have Vcenter running. I am using SAN for storage. I am currently installing a 800 user system in HA environment. Can you help me understand how do I use my Vcenter running on 1st UCS to install Admin vm and media vm on other two UCS servers?

I login to the Vcenter using Vsphere client and install the CWMS OVA file but how would I ensure that it is installed on the 2nd UCS server?

Thanks for your help.

Thanks and Regards,

Manav Tandon

[dpetrovi]

Hi Manav,

In order to manage your remaining UCS servers (ESXi hosts), you need to add the to vCenter.

As on this first server, you need to install ESXi on the remaining UCS servers. Once you installed ESXi hosts and configured basic network parameters (IP addresses, Default GW, DNS, etc.) and 'root' credentials, you can then in vCenter got to Inventory > Hosts and Clusters, if you don't have it already, create a Datacenter and then select this data center and right click and select Add Host. You can then use IP address of the ESXi host and the 'root' credentials to add this host and make it managed by vCenter. Repeat this for all other ESXi hosts until you have all the servers added to your vCenter.

Then you can proceed with deploying the OVA file based on the documentation. For more details about managing ESXi hosts and VMware machines in general, you can refer to VMware documentation:

https://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-51/index.jsp#com.vmware.vsphere.doc/GUID-1B959D6B-41CA-4E23-A7DB-E9165D5A0E80.html

I hope this will help you.

-Dejan

[tandonm01]

Hi Dejan,

Thanks for your reply. I will try these steps and update you.

Appreciate your help.

Thank you.

Thanks and Regards,

Manav Tandon