Deploying the vCAC (now renamed to vRealize Automation) appliance is only the first step towards getting your Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) up and running.  The next step is to get the IaaS components installed on a Windows machine.  There are a number of prerequisites but luckily there is a powershell script that can take care of most of it for you.  Find the script here.  I must mention first that for vCAC 6 (at the time of this writing) .Net 4.5 is required.  This does not mean that .Net 4.5 or higher needs to be installed.  .Net 4.5 sp1 does not work with the IaaS components which also means that Server 2012 R2 is not a candidate to install the IaaS components on.  Use a Server 2008R2 or Server 2012 with .Net 4.5 installed.  (vRealize 6.1 fully supports .Net 4.5.1 according to the VMware rep I spoke with at VMworld)

Run the script.  This script will check for your prerequisites and if they are not met, will attempt to install them for you.  Notice that it also tells you your .Net version as well.

Now that the prerequisites are met, you can run the component installer.  You can find this by going to the URL of the vRealize appliance you deployed previously.  Click the “vCloud Automation Center IaaS installation page’ hyperlink to take you to the installers.

Here you can now download the setup file by running the setup.exe.  NOTE:  If you decide to download the installer, do not rename it.  The name of the installer is important to the setup.

Run through the installer.

Read all of the EULA select the “I accept” checkbox and then click next.

The appliance host name should be provided for you assuming that you didn’t change the name of the setup.exe file as mentioned previously.  You’ll then need to enter the username and password of the vCAC appliance.  The username should be root.

Since this is for a lab environment I’ve selected the complete install.  If this is for an enterprise deployment, these pieces of the IaaS may be split up across multiple machines for high availability and performance reasons.

Check the prerequisites.  My prerequisites list looked like the one below.  I selected “bypass” and then can click next.  If you have more concerns feel free to fix all of the PreReqs and continue.  My SQL Server will be on a different machine and I decided to turn off the Windows Firewall on this machine.

Now you must enter an account name that the services will run as.  You should probably use a service account for this.  The next box is a passphrase which is only used as an encryption key for data at rest in the database.  Lastly, you need to setup your SQL database.  Enter a server name or IP Address, the database name and a set of credentials with access to modify the database.

Two of the agents used to do the work of the IaaS components need to be entered here.  I’ve chosen to leave the defaults of “DEM” and “DEO”.  Also, you’ll configure a vSphere Agent as well.  This is what will talk to your vCenter server.  I would not change the name of the Endpoint here, but do take note of it, including the case.  It will be used again later and must be spelled exactly as it is shown here. vCenter

Now we need to setup the information for registration.  Enter the name of the vCAC appliance that you deployed previously.  Once this is done, you can click the “Load” button to automatically grab the correct SSO Default Tenant from the appliance.  Then click “Download” in order to grab a certificate.  Check the box to accept the certificate.

Now we need to enter some credentials that can authenticate with the SSO server.  By default “administrator@vsphere.local” is used.  Enter the password and click “test”.  If it works you’ll see a “passed” message.  Enter the DNS name of your IaaS Server and click “test” again to be sure that DNS resolves properly.

Review the install.

Wait for the installation routine to finish.

If everything is successful, click next.

Click Finish.

Summary

This is a long process but the fun is just starting here.  Now you should have the vCAC appliance deployed and your IaaS Server setup.  We can now start some of the configuration, and yes this will take some time, but remember that a transition to IT as a Service is about taking your time to setup automation which will save time in the future.  This is a change of mindset that may take a bit to get used to.