VMware vSphere Installation

The ISO installation method creates a new virtual machine manually and boots it from the Plakar Control Plane ISO image. This method is used when you want to configure the virtual machine hardware yourself instead of importing the pre-built OVA appliance.

Before creating the virtual machine, upload the Plakar Control Plane ISO to a datastore that can be accessed by the host or cluster that will run the appliance.

In the vSphere HTML Client, open the datastore where you want to store the ISO, then open the Files view. Create a folder for ISO images if needed, then upload the Plakar Control Plane ISO from your workstation.

In the vSphere HTML Client, open Hosts and Clusters (first column on the sidebar), right-click the datacenter that will contain the appliance, and select New Virtual Machine.

Select Create a new virtual machine and click Next.

Enter a name for the virtual machine and select the datacenter as the target location.

Select the destination compute resource for the datacenter. This will typically be your cluster, for example Cluster1.

Select the datastore that will hold the virtual machine configuration and disk files.

The compatibility setting determines the virtual hardware version available to the virtual machine. Leave this at the default, ESXi 8.0 U2 and later (hardware version 21), which provides the best performance and access to the latest features supported by your vCenter environment. Click Next.

Set the guest OS family to Linux, then select the closest modern 64-bit Linux profile available in your vCenter. On many vSphere 8 environments, this option is Other 6.x or later Linux (64-bit). Click Next.

Configure the virtual machine with the recommended Plakar Control Plane sizing:

• CPU: 4vCPU
• Memory: 16 GB
• Hard disk: 1 TB

These are recommendations for a production deployment. For evaluation or testing, you can reduce CPU, RAM, and storage. The data disk stores the database, logs, and all Plakar state. Backups themselves are stored wherever you configure using apps.

For the CD/DVD Drive, select Datastore ISO File, then browse to the Plakar Control Plane ISO that you uploaded earlier. Enable Connect At Power On so that the virtual machine boots from the ISO when it starts.

Attach the network adapter to the network segment you prepared for the appliance, such as your NSX-backed segment or another destination network in your vCenter environment. Select Browse then select your network, for example plakar-network.

Other hardware settings can be left at their default values.

For multiple NICs, static routes, or to bundle every setting into one document, use one of these two YAML channels instead of the flat keys.

The appliance evaluates the sources in order. As soon as one source successfully defines at least one network interface, it is used and all remaining sources are ignored.

1. guestinfo.metadata (this channel)
2. An OVF property set during the Deploy-OVF wizard’s Customize Template step, if the deployed OVA defines one
3. The flat guestinfo.plakar.* keys, from the Basic tab
4. A network: key inside guestinfo.userdata, below
5. DHCP fallback

A netplan v2 YAML document, under a top-level network: key or a bare ethernets: key:

network:
  ethernets:
    eth0:
      addresses: [10.0.1.5/24] # CIDR suffix is mandatory
      gateway4: 10.0.1.1
      nameservers:
        addresses: [10.0.1.53, 10.0.1.54]
    eth1:
      addresses: [10.20.0.5/24]
      routes: # reach sources behind a router on this segment
        - to: 10.50.0.0/16
          via: 10.20.0.1
    eth2:
      dhcp4: true

Only a subset of netplan is supported: addresses (first entry, CIDR required), gateway4, routes ({to, via}, with to: default as an alias for gateway4), nameservers.addresses, dhcp4: true, and match.macaddress to select a NIC by MAC address instead of its kernel name. A MAC match survives adapter reordering, unlike the PCI-order eth0/eth1 kernel names:

backup-a:
  match: { macaddress: "00:50:56:aa:bb:cc" }
  addresses: [10.20.0.5/24]

The Advanced Parameters field is single-line, so base64-encode the document before pasting it in:

base64 -w0 < netplan.yaml

A single cloud-config document can carry proxy:, registry:, network:, and ssh_authorized_keys: together, so include only the keys you need:

#cloud-config
proxy:
  http: http://<proxy-ip>:<proxy-port>
  https: http://<proxy-ip>:<proxy-port>
  no_proxy: .corp.example,10.0.0.0/8 # optional

registry:
  mirrors:
    docker.io: <harbor-host>/dockerhub-proxy
    ghcr.io: <harbor-host>/ghcr-proxy
  insecure: false # true: skip TLS verification for the mirror hosts

network:
  ethernets:
    eth0:
      addresses: [10.0.1.5/24]
      gateway4: 10.0.1.1
      nameservers:
        addresses: [10.0.1.53]

ssh_authorized_keys:
  - ssh-ed25519 AAAA...

network: accepts the same netplan subset described above.

For VMware, we recommend the equivalent single-line YAML format instead: the guestinfo.userdata field is single-line, so line breaks are removed when the value is entered, and the compact form is easier to copy and paste:

{ proxy: { http: "http://<proxy-ip>:<proxy-port>", https: "http://<proxy-ip>:<proxy-port>", no_proxy: ".corp.example,10.0.0.0/8" }, registry: { mirrors: { docker.io: "<harbor-host>/dockerhub-proxy", ghcr.io: "<harbor-host>/ghcr-proxy" }, insecure: false } }

Alternatively, the OVF property plakar.userdata can carry the same document, base64-encoded, via the Deploy-OVF wizard’s Customize Template step, instead of Advanced Parameters.