How to install VMware vSphere Integrated Containers (VIC)

VIC enables you to run traditional and containerised workloads on your existing vSphere environment, without the need for re-tooling or re-architecting your environment. In this guide I will show you how to install VIC. I am using my home lab that is running vSphere 6.5 Update

Pre-requisites

You will need to download and install the VIC OVA, that you will then be able to template and deploy to your vSphere environment, from here http://www.vmware.com/go/download-vic

It is crucial that you make sure that there is a valid DNS entry for the appliance.

Install

First we need to create a new Distributed Port Group. To do this, navigate to your distributed switch in the vSphere Web Client. Right click the distributed switch and select Distributed port group > New distributed port group. Name it something simple such as VIC-DPortGroup

Next we want to deploy the VIC template we downloaded earlier. To do this we need to go into the vSphere Client VMs and Templates view, right-click the Workloads folder then select Deploy OVF Template.

Navigate to the OVA we downloaded earlier, and proceed through the wizard as shown below and you’re ready to begin.

Power on the VM and wait a few minutes for the appliance to configure itself. Once this is done, open your web browser and type in the ip address of your VIC machine to finish the installation.

VIC provides a plug-in with increased functionality for the vSphere Client. In our example we will install VIC Client Plugins from the OVA into vCenter by accessing https://192.168.1.36:9443/files/

Here you need to check that you can see the following files:

com.vmware.vic-v1.3.1.687.zip
com.vmware.vic.ui-v1.3.1.687.zip
open_source_license.txt
vic_v1.3.1.tar.gz

ssh into vcsa using putty or terminal depending on your machine, Windows or *nix/macOS

type>shell

export VIC_ADDRESS=192.168.1.36
export VIC_BUNDLE=vic_v1.3.1.tar.gz (in my example)

curl -kL https://${VIC_ADDRESS}:9443/files/${VIC_BUNDLE} -o ${VIC_BUNDLE}
tar -zxf ${VIC_BUNDLE}
cd vic/ui/VCSA

./install.sh

To complete the installation you now need to restart the following services, again from terminal or putty:

service-control --stop vsphere-ui
service-control --start vsphere-ui

service-control --stop vsphere-client
service-control --start vsphere-client

That’s you done! To verify the installation, log in to the HTML5 vSphere Client and click the vSphere Client logo in the top left corner. Under Inventories, click vSphere Integrated Containers.

You can read about a VIC use case here