Install the virtual appliance using the vSphere API

The virtual appliance can be installed using the vSphere API.

ISAM provides a sample Python script that utilizes the vSphere API to deploy the appliance. This script can be obtained from the appliance File Downloads page. We can examine this script to determine the steps for deploying the appliance.

At a high level, the script has two main functions:

• Create a template on the vSphere server. This step involves uploading an ISO image of the appliance, performing a silent install, and converting this new VM to a template.

• Deploy a template. This step involves cloning this template into a new VM. This step can make use of a silent configuration ISO to configure the networking. This ISO can also be generated by this script. After the silent configuration ISO image has been generated, the script instructs the user to manually upload the image to a datastore of the vSphere environment.

Steps

1. In the local management interface of the appliance, select System > Secure Settings > File Downloads.
2. Expand Common > Sample > Deploy.

3. Select the deploy_isva_to_vsphere.py file.

4. Click Export to save the file to your local drive.
5. Examine the script to determine the steps to deploy and run the virtual appliance. Help on the script can be obtained by running the following command:

   python deploy_isva_to_vsphere.py --help

   • Supported Python versions are 2.7 and 3.4.

   • In Python versions 2.7.9, 3.4.3, or later, unverified SSL connections are disabled. Ensure the vSphere server certificate is present in the keystore that Python uses.
   • Supported vSphere versions are 4.1, 5.0, 5.1, and 5.5.
   • The pyVmomi library is required. It can be installed from the pip tool or from https://github.com/vmware/pyvmomi.

   • To run the script, we must have the genisoimage or mkisofs tools in the path.

6. Modify the script as needed.

Parent topic: Virtual appliance tasks