We just have to know what properties the virtual appliance is expecting.To get those properties, we have to pull apart the OVA and examine its ovf xml file.
OVA files are tar archives with a specific set of constraints, so anything that can extract a tar can extract an OVA. This section is not always present, but if an OVF supports multiple deployment options they are defined here. In the case of the VCSA, there are a lot of deployment options to choose from. Most of the time for my homelab or nested lab scenarios the one I want is tiny. Expected values are usually explained by the text, which is what the OVF deployment UI in vCenter would present to a user performing this task interactively. Notice that the value of ovf:userConfigurable is not always true. In the case of the VCSA several properties are specific to upgrades, so Ill ignore those. If you ever need to flip userConfigurable to true for some property, the OVF file itself can be edited, but doing so invalidates the hashes in the.mf (manifest) file within the OVA. In this case just delete the.mf file and deploy the edited ovf file instead of the original ova file. Sometimes this is good enough, but the VCSA may take another 20 minutes or so before it is actually usable. To make sure it is at least ready to take API calls before continuing, I will run vmwareaboutfacts once a minute until it succeeds. This was developed on vCenter 6.7U1, but new versions may bring new properties, or existing properties may be renamed. By following the process outlined in this post, you can adapt the playbook as the VCSA evolves over time, or apply this approach to automating the deployment of other virtual appliances in your environment. Sean knew of Dave and had already been working on some Ansible Playbooks and pointed me to his blog. You can modify the properties of the playbooks to enhance and automate additional steps and thats what I did during my installation.
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