Before you can access the Automation Orchestrator content and services, you must download and deploy the Automation Orchestrator Appliance.

Prerequisites

  • Verify that you have a running vCenter instance. The vCenter version must be 6.0 or later.
  • Verify that the host on which you are deploying the Automation Orchestrator Appliance meets the minimum hardware requirements. See Hardware requirements.
  • If your system is isolated and without Internet access, you must download the .ova file for the appliance from the VMware website.

Procedure

  1. Log in to the vSphere Web Client as an administrator.
  2. Select an inventory object that is a valid parent object of a virtual machine, such as a data center, folder, cluster, resource pool, or host.
  3. Select Actions > Deploy OVF Template.
  4. Enter the file path or the URL to the .ova file and click Next.
  5. Enter a name and location for the Automation Orchestrator Appliance, and click Next.
  6. Select a host, cluster, resource pool, or vApp as a destination on which you want the appliance to run, and click Next.
  7. Review the deployment details, and click Next.
  8. Accept the terms in the license agreement and click Next.
  9. Select the storage format you want to use for the Automation Orchestrator Appliance.
    Format Description
    Thick Provisioned Lazy Zeroed Creates a virtual disk in a default thick format. The space required for the virtual disk is allocated when the virtual disk is created. If any data remains on the physical device, it is not erased during creation, but is zeroed out on demand later on first write from the virtual machine.
    Thick Provisioned Eager Zeroed Supports clustering features such as Fault Tolerance. The space required for the virtual disk is allocated when the virtual disk is created. If any data remains on the physical device, it is zeroed out when the virtual disk is created. It might take much longer to create disks in this format than to create disks in other formats.
    Thin Provisioned Format Saves hard disk space. For the thin disk, you provision as much datastore space as the disk requires based on the value that you select for the disk size. The thin disk starts small and, at first, uses only as much datastore space as the disk needs for its initial operations.
  10. Click Next.
  11. Configure the network settings and enter the root password.
    When configuring the network settings of the Automation Orchestrator Appliance, you must use the IPv4 protocol. For both DHCP and Static network configurations, you must add a fully qualified domain name (FQDN) for your Automation Orchestrator Appliance.

    If the host name displayed in the shell of the deployed Automation Orchestrator Appliance is photon-machine, the preceding network configuration requirements are not met.

  12. (Optional) Configure additional network settings for the Automation Orchestrator Appliance, such as enabling SSH access.
    Note: When configuring a Kubernetes network, the values of the internal cluster CIDR and internal service CIDR must allow for at least 1024 hosts. Because of this requirement, the network mask value must be 22 or less. Network mask values higher than 22 are invalid. The Kubernetes network properties have to following default values:
    Kubernetes network property Default value Property description
    Kubernetes internal cluster CIDR 10.244.0.0/22 The CIDR used for pods running inside the Kubernetes cluster.
    Kubernetes internal service CIDR 10.244.4.0/22 The CIDR used for Kubernetes services inside the Kubernetes cluster.
    Note: You can also change the Kubernetes CIDR network properties after deployment. See Configure Automation Orchestrator Kubernetes CIDR.
  13. (Optional) To enable FIPS mode for the Automation Orchestrator Appliance, set FIPS Mode to strict.
    Note: FIPS 140-2 enablement is supported only for new Automation Orchestrator environments. If you want to enable FIPS mode on your environment, you must do so during installation.
  14. Click Next.
  15. Review the Ready to complete page and click Finish.

Results

The Automation Orchestrator Appliance is successfully deployed.

What to do next

Log in to the Automation Orchestrator Appliance command line as root and confirm that you can perform a forward or reverse DNS lookup.
  • To perform a forward DNS lookup, run the nslookup your_orchestrator_FQDN command. The command must return the Automation Orchestrator Appliance IP address.
  • To perform a reverse DNS lookup, run the nslookup your_orchestrator_IP command. The command must return the Automation Orchestrator Appliance FQDN.
Note:

If you have not enabled SSH during deployment, you can also perform DNS lookups from the virtual machine console in the vSphere Web Client.