The purpose of this document is to go through the installation of the Platform Services Controller PSC version 6.5, as part 1 of the vCenter Server (Appliance) deployment with an external PSC.

vCenter Server and the vCenter Server components are deployed on one system, and the services included in the Platform Services Controller are deployed on another system.

The following components are included in the vCenter Server and vCenter Server Appliance installations:

• The VMware Platform Services Controller group of infrastructure services contains vCenter Single Sign-On, License service, Lookup Service, and VMware Certificate Authority.
• The vCenter Server group of services contains vCenter Server, vSphere Web Client, vSphere Auto Deploy, and vSphere ESXi Dump Collector. vCenter Server for Windows also contains the VMware vSphere Syslog Collector. The vCenter Server Appliance also contains the VMware vSphere Update Manager Extension service.

For more information about vSphere 6.5 please refer to the official VMware vSphere documentation here.

For What is Νew in vSphere 6.5 click here.

Let’s start with the installation of the external PSC.

Download the VMware vCenter Server Appliance 6.5 ISO from VMware downloads.

You will see below that the VCSA installer has changed dramatically, it’s a lot cleaner, simpler, and many deployment options (install, upgrade, migrate, restore) are bundled into the same one installer.

Let’s do it.