[vRA 7 Installation] Part 03: Prepare IaaS Host I

User Permissions And Local Server Settings

This article will demonstrate the process of establishing the necessary requirements on the IaaS host for the use with vRealize Automation 7. As a prerequisite, we expect you to have a Virtual Machine configured and running one of the following operating systems:

• Windows Server 2008 R2
• Windows Server 2012
• Windows Server 2012 R2

Please note: Not all of the following steps may be necessary. The new Installation Wizard offers the opportunity to check if required prerequisites are met and to fix them automatically. The decision, to focus on describing how to establish the requirements manually, is based on my personal preference and the fact, that it’s never a bad idea to know a bit more about what’s going on within your infrastructure. Additionally, I don’t trust wizards generally. Except Gandalf. Gandalf is awesome.

1. Create A New User

First, you have to create a new user which will later be used by the Appliance for installing and accessing the IaaS components.

That user must meet the following requirements:

• Administrator rights
• “Log on as a batch job” user rights assignment
• “Log on as a service” user rights assignment
• Full access to registry key HKLM/System/CurrentControlSet/Services/EventLog/Security

1.1 Create a new user to which you assign administrator rights

1.2 To assign the required user rights, open Local Security Policy and navigate to User Rights Assignment.
Double-click “Log on as a batch job” and ensure that the user you have created in step 1.1 is listed:

Proceed likewise for “Log on as a service”.

1.3 To grant your user full access to the required registry key, open regedit and browse to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE → SYSTEM → CurrentControlSet → Services → EventLog.
Expand EventLog, right-click Security and choose Permissions. Ensure that Full Control is allowed for your user:

From now on, proceed with the newly created user, in my case vra_iaas.

2. Local Server Settings

Requirements:

• Microsoft Internet Information Services 7.5
• Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5.2 or later
• Microsoft PowerShell 2.0 (included with Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 and later)
  or Microsoft PowerShell 3.0 on Windows Server 2012 R2
• Java installed

2.1 Open the Server Manager, select Local Server in the the left side navigation and change the following settings:

• Disable Windows Firewall
• Disable IE Enhanced Security Configuration

2.2 From the top right navigation, select Manage → Add Roles and Features and choose Role-based or feature-based installation

2.3 In this step, select your local server

2.4 In step Server Roles, make sure to have the following components installed.
Not all may be necessary, but the following combination worked fine:

2.5 In step Features, choose the following and proceed with the installation:

After the installation has completed, restart the Virtual Machine.

In part four, you will read how to configure time sync and Internet Information Services.