Tips, Tricks, and Gotchas

Tips and Tricks

Here are some tips and tricks for working with Photon Controller.

Having trouble installing Photon Controller 1.1?

• Are you sure that your ESXi version is 6.5 and using the right patch? Photon Controller 1.2 requires VMware ESXi 6.5 Patch 201701001 (ESXi650-201701001), which you can find by searching for patches for ESXi 6.5.0 on the My VMware Product Patches web site at https://my.vmware.com/group/vmware/patch. The patch's build number is 4887370.
• Photon Controller's authentication requires Lightwave. During installation, Photon Controller configures your ESXi host with an extra DNS server that points to Lightwave. ESXi can have only three DNS servers; make sure there are no more than two configured before you start the installation, or the installation will fail. If there are three DNS entries, you can delete one of them by running the following commands with the ESXi command-line interface. First, list the DNS entries: esxcli network ip dns server list. Second, remove one of them: esxcli network ip dns server remove --server <IP-address>.

Permitting Root Login During Installation

The Photon Platform installation guide explains how to modify the SSH configuration file to permit root login over SSH so that you can connect to the Lightwave VM to manage the system's security.

For VMs other than Lightwave, however, there's a shortcut: In the YAML deployment template, you can specify that a VM being deployed by the Photon Platform installer allow root login. The trick is to add the enable-ssh-root-login key and set it to true. Here's an example for a controller VM named pc-1:

controllers:
    pc-1:
      appliance:
        hostref: "esxi-3"
        datastore: "datastore1"
        memoryMb: 8192
        cpus: 4
        enable-ssh-root-login: true
        credential:
          username: "root"
          password: "MySecret1!"
          ...

When you add the enable-ssh-root-login key and set it to true, the installer configures the VM to permit root login over SSH.

The enable-ssh-root-login setting works for all the VMs that you specify in the YAML deployment file except for Lightwave VMs. For each Lightwave VM, you must access its console through ESXi and manually modify the SSH configuration file to permit root login; see the installation guide for instructions.

Minimal Lightwave YAML Section When Lightwave Is Already Installed

If you are installing Photon Platform in a situation where Lightwave is already installed, the Photon Platform installer detects the pre-installed instance of Lightwave if you include its information in the Photon YAML deployment template. Make sure that the IP address and other information of the existing Lightwave instance is correct in the YAML file. In such a case, the installer skips installing Lightwave and proceeds to install the other components of Photon Platform.

Here is the minimal set of information for a pre-installed Lightwave server that must appear in the YAML deployment file to integrate the other system components with the existing Lightwave server:

lightwave:
  domain: "party.local"
  credential:
    username: "administrator"
    password: "VMware1!"
  controllers:
    lightwave-1:
      site: "partylab01"
      appliance:
        network-config:
          hostname: "lightwave.party.local"
          ipaddress: "10.4.2.51"

Gotchas

Here are some gotchas to avoid as you work with Photon Controller.