Download and Mount the vCenter Server Installer

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VMware releases the vCenter Server appliance ISO image, which contains GUI and CLI installers for the vCenter Server appliance.

With the GUI and CLI executable files that are included in the vCenter Server installer, you can:

Deploy the vCenter Server appliance.
Upgrade the vCenter Server appliance.
Converge older versions of vCenter Server with an external Platform Services Controller to the current version of vCenter Server.
Restore a vCenter Server appliance from a file-based backup.

Prerequisites

Create a Customer Connect account at https://my.vmware.com/web/vmware/.
Verify that your client machine meets the system requirements for the vCenter Server installer. See System Requirements for the vCenter Server Installer.

Procedure

Log in to VMware Customer Connect.
Navigate to Products and Accounts > All Products.
Find VMware vSphere and click View Download Components.
Select a VMware vSphere version from the Select Version drop-down.
Select a version of VMware vCenter Server and click GO TO DOWNLOADS.
Download the vCenter Server appliance ISO image.
Confirm that the md5sum is correct by using an MD5 checksum tool.
Mount the ISO image to the client machine from which you want to deploy, upgrade, migrate, or restore the appliance.

Note: ISO mounting software that does not allow more than eight directory levels, for example, MagicISO Maker on Windows, is unsupported.
For Linux OS and Mac OS, Archive Manager is unsupported.

For Mac OS, you can use DiskImageMounter.

For Ubuntu 14.04, you can use Disk Image Mounter.
For SUSE 12 OS, you can use the terminal.
```
$ sudo mkdir mount_dir
$ sudo mount -o loop VMware-vCSA-all-version_number-build_number.iso mount_dir
```
Important: Due to a security change in MacOS Catalina, you must modify the security settings on your computer until the vCenter Server deployment completes. If you attempt to run the installer under MacOS Catalina without modifying the security settings, the vCenter Server installer reports the error: ovftool cannot be opened because the developer cannot be verified. For more information, see KB 79416.

What to do next

Open the readme.txt file and review the information about the other files and directories in the vCenter Server appliance ISO image.