VMware vSphere Installation

The ISO installation method creates a new virtual machine manually and boots it from the Plakar Control Plane ISO image. This method is used when you want to configure the virtual machine hardware yourself instead of importing the pre-built OVA appliance.

Upload the ISO to a datastore

Before creating the virtual machine, upload the Plakar Control Plane ISO to a datastore that can be accessed by the host or cluster that will run the appliance.

In the vSphere HTML Client, open the datastore where you want to store the ISO, then open the Files view. Create a folder for ISO images if needed, then upload the Plakar Control Plane ISO from your workstation.

Create a new virtual machine

In the vSphere HTML Client, open Hosts and Clusters (first column on the sidebar), right-click the datacenter that will contain the appliance, and select New Virtual Machine.

Select a creation type

Select Create a new virtual machine and click Next.

Specify a name and target location

Enter a name for the virtual machine and select the datacenter as the target location.

Select a compute resource

Select the destination compute resource for the datacenter. This will typically be your cluster, for example Cluster1.

Select storage

Select the datastore that will hold the virtual machine configuration and disk files.

Select compatibility

The compatibility setting determines the virtual hardware version available to the virtual machine. Leave this at the default, ESXi 8.0 U2 and later (hardware version 21), which provides the best performance and access to the latest features supported by your vCenter environment. Click Next.

Select a guest OS

Set the guest OS family to Linux, then select the closest modern 64-bit Linux profile available in your vCenter. On many vSphere 8 environments, this option is Other 6.x or later Linux (64-bit). Click Next.

Customize hardware

Set the CPU, memory and hard disk of the virtual machine according to Appliance Sizing. The hard disk is the data disk, which stores the database, logs, and all Plakar state. Backups themselves are stored wherever you configure using apps.

For the CD/DVD Drive, select Datastore ISO File, then browse to the Plakar Control Plane ISO that you uploaded earlier. Enable Connect At Power On so that the virtual machine boots from the ISO when it starts.

Attach the network adapter to the network segment you prepared for the appliance, such as your NSX-backed segment or another destination network in your vCenter environment. Select Browse then select your network, for example plakar-network.

Other hardware settings can be left at their default values.

For multiple NICs, static routes, or to bundle every setting into one document, use guestinfo.userdata instead of the flat keys.

Cloud-init via guestinfo.userdata

The document below sets every key. Remove the ones your environment does not need, each key is optional.

#cloud-config
ssh_authorized_keys:
  - ssh-ed25519 AAAA...

proxy:
  http: http://proxy.corp.example:3128
  https: http://proxy.corp.example:3128
  no_proxy: .corp.example

registry:
  mirrors:
    docker.io: harbor.corp.example/dockerhub-proxy
    ghcr.io: harbor.corp.example/ghcr-proxy
  insecure: false

releases:
  url: https://dist.corp.example/plakar/enterprise
  version: v1.1.2

ntp:
  servers:
    - 10.20.0.1
    - ntp.corp.example

network:
  ethernets:
    eth0:
      addresses: [10.0.1.5/24]
      gateway4: 10.0.1.1
      nameservers:
        addresses: [10.0.1.53]

Each key, including the network options and their rules, is described in Appliance Configuration.

The network configuration can come from several places on vSphere. The appliance uses the first one that defines at least one network interface, and ignores the others:

1. An OVF property set during the Deploy-OVF wizard’s Customize Template step, if the deployed OVA defines one
2. The guestinfo.plakar.* parameters, from the Basic tab
3. The network: key inside guestinfo.userdata
4. DHCP

The guestinfo.userdata field holds a single line, so line breaks are lost when a YAML document is pasted into it. Encode the document in base64 instead, and set guestinfo.userdata.encoding to base64:

base64 -w0 < user-data.yaml

Alternatively, the OVF property plakar.userdata can carry the same document through the Deploy-OVF wizard’s Customize Template step, instead of Advanced Parameters. Its value is always base64-encoded, and it needs no encoding parameter. When both guestinfo.userdata and plakar.userdata are set, the appliance uses guestinfo.userdata.