With the release of vSphere 6.5 VMware has introduced a new method for creating a backup of the vCenter Appliance. This method is available from the vCenter Appliance web management interface on port 5480 (https://applianceaddress:5480).
Tip: Starting with vSphere 6.7 scheduling functionality has been added as a native feature in the appliance, eliminating the need for this workflow. It still applies to vSphere 6.5.
When using the vCenter 6 appliance as an Autodeploy server you can also use the appliance as your TFTP-server. But for that to work you need to start that service and enable access to it via a firewall rule.
Of course you also need to enable the Autodeploy service itself, which can be done from the vSphere Web Client under Home - Administration - Deployment - System Configuration - Services.
This problem might occur with your vCenter Server Appliance. But it could also happen with other Linux-servers. It might happen when you move the virtual machine, clone it, restore it, recover it from replication or perform any other action where the MAC Address of the virtual machine changes. This is what you would see on the console of the virtual appliance:
After deploying the vCenter Linux Appliance with a default and embedded Single Sign-On configuration you can login to vCenter with two user accounts: root and Administrator@vsphere.local. If you have Active Directory in your environment you might want to add that to your vCenter-server as an identity source for Single Sign-On.
When you need to import a vCenter Linux-based appliance there are two clients that you can use to perform this task. Your best choice is the vSphere Web Client but that will only be available if you already have vCenter running. So that will only be possible for a second or more vCenter server. When you need to import your first vCenter appliance the client you must use is the vSphere Client on Windows. (How to do that is explained here.)
In this article I will explain how to import the vCenter Linux Appliance and customize it with a fixed name and IP-address.
Theme by Danetsoft and Danang Probo Sayekti inspired by Maksimer
