With the news of vCloud Director to be phased out, I wanted to try its replacement: vCenter Automation Center. From the demo all over the web you can already see the user interface to be “friendly” compared to the daunting technical configurations of vCloud Director. To be fair, once you have the hang of vCD its concept is fairly simple.
To have a firm grasp how vCAC fair – I’ll try to install it on my home lab.
.. so how does the installation went?
After spending the whole day, the setup is painful. First off, the application is Windows Based and with this comes nuances from the OS. Sometimes it would work – then the other it would stop.
One good example: the setup requires .Net 4.5 to proceed so I install it first based on the guides admin guide I’m following. After this, I went and did Windows Update which updated .Net Framework to 4.5.1 – seems fairly okay. NOPE. Now, it won’t even let me execute the setup executable complaining I needed 4.5 or higher .Net to proceed.
The only solution was to uninstall the .Net 4.5.1 that came from Windows Update and just install the Stand Alone package. so note to self: DO NOT update .Net using Windows Update.
With a myriad of advance configurations and components you need to change it’s a good thing VMware included a Pre-checker tool. This will save alot of head-ache in installing the application.
… and I was able to install it. Will provide feedback once I’m done configuring it.
This is just the 2nd iteration of the product so it will be awhile before improvements on the setup arrives. Either way, I’m looking forward for VMware release a vApp to save installation time (and windows license).
This is the guide I used:
http://www.virtualjad.com/2013/07/vmware-vcloud-automation-center-52.html
