Fire up the vCenter Linux Appliance

Download the OVF and import it to your ESX host.

Power it on and accept the EULA, you will end up at this screen:

NOTE: VMware accidentally included the  Highly Confidential Beta Software EULA with the vCenter on Linux appliance.  I have confirmed with one of the beta program managers and product management that this is not a private beta.  After all, Dr. Stephen Herrod told everyone about it in his keynote today.

Next, configure networking via the menu option or determine the current DHCP IP address — log in as root/vmware and run ifconfig (or just look at the VI Client summary for the VM).

Download the two instant client packages from Oracle to your workstation, as specified in the install documentation.  Copy them to the vCenter VM, like this:

Prepare an Oracle Database

I’m not going to cover how to install Oracle.  Let’s just say it’s not a next-next-finish operation.  You can get the free Oracle Express Edition or use an existing instance already present in your environment.  What I will give you is a simple recipe to prepare your Oracle instance for hosting a vCenter database.

Save the following code as “vpxadmin.sql” on your Oracle server.

CREATE SMALLFILE TABLESPACE "VPX" DATAFILE '/u01/app/oracle/oradata/vcdb/vpx01.dbf' SIZE 100M AUTOEXTEND ON NEXT 10M MAXSIZE UNLIMITED LOGGING EXTENT MANAGEMENT LOCAL SEGMENT SPACE MANAGEMENT AUTO;
 
CREATE USER "VPXADMIN" PROFILE "DEFAULT" IDENTIFIED BY "secretpassword" DEFAULT TABLESPACE "VPX" ACCOUNT UNLOCK;
 
GRANT connect TO VPXADMIN;
GRANT resource TO VPXADMIN;
GRANT CREATE VIEW TO VPXADMIN;
GRANT CREATE any sequence TO VPXADMIN;
GRANT CREATE any TABLE TO VPXADMIN;
GRANT execute ON dbms_job TO VPXADMIN;
GRANT execute ON dbms_lock TO VPXADMIN;
GRANT unlimited tablespace TO VPXADMIN;

Then, just execute it:

$ sqlplus / as sysdba @vpxadmin.sql

This will create a tablespace and credentials for your vCenter database.

These four things are required in order to connect vCenter on Linux to Oracle:

1. Hostname or IP address
2. Instance name – by default in Oracle this is often “orcl” but you or your DBA may have changed it.  You probably need the fully-qualified version, which would be something like “orcl.whatever.yourcompany.com” — this likely is not the same as the FQDN/hostname of the server.  In the following example, I am using “vcdb.vmware.com” as my instance.
3. Login id: VPXADMIN
4. Password: secretpassword (please change this)

Configure vCenter on Linux Database Connection

Reboot the vCenter VM.  On next boot, the Oracle drivers are detected and installed automatically:

Enter your Oracle connection information and you are done:

Connect to vCenter on Linux with the VI Client

If you already have a recent VI Client installed, you should be able to use it — or download and install by pointing your web browser to your vCenter VM IP.  When you are ready, log in to your new vCenter on Linux (use the root account, not the database account), create a datacenter, add hosts, and try it out.

Related posts:

1. vCenter for Linux article disappointing
2. VMware vCenter really needs an agent
3. VMware vCenter Server 4 task and event retention
4. Hyper-V Linux integration components no longer Connected

I prefer the appearance of a traditional Linux (X11) console font.  To me, it makes text much easier to read.  A few years ago I came across a nice-looking Windows version of that font that works great with PuTTY.   Observe the difference:

If you like this better, simply download the MiscFixedSC613 font from April King and drop it into c:\windows\fonts.  When you configure PuTTY, remember that this is a 9-point font only.

While we are on the topic of PuTTY, here is another tip.  Although PuTTY has a sophisticated configuration dialog that allows storing of profiles for hosts, I’ve found that it is generally easier if I skip all that and launch it the same way I use ssh from a Linux machine.  To do this, make sure putty.exe is in your PATH, open the Run dialog and type in putty user@host, like so:

No muss, no fuss, no empty cans.

Related posts:

1. Better console for PowerShell and VITK
2. VI Toolkit (for Windows) 1.5 and the PowerShell prompt
3. Dear Red Hat…
4. Easy recovery from a full VMware ESX datastore