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VSC for VMware vSphere installation overview

Although the basic installation of the Virtual Storage Console for VMware vSphere software is simple, you must decide how you want to handle certain options, including whether you need a special software license and, if you use role-based access control (RBAC), whether you have the correct RBAC privileges.

Installation guidelines

To install VSC, you must have 64-bit Windows server and the vCenter Server must be running vSphere 5.5 or later. For information about which versions of Windows and other features are supported, see the Interoperability Matrix, which is available online at mysupport.netapp.com/matrix.

Note: Do not install this software on a client computer.

The following are some guidelines for installing the VSC software:

Software licenses that might be needed

The following software licenses might be required for VSC depending on which features you use:

RBAC access to VSC required for users

VSC supports vCenter Server and Data ONTAP role-based access control (RBAC). As a result, you must provide users with the appropriate RBAC permissions. The vCenter Server permissions determine whether a user has or does not have access to certain VSC tasks for certain vSphere objects. The Data ONTAP privileges provide the credentials used by the storage systems.

To simplify the process of creating vCenter Server user roles, VSC provides several standard VSC roles for key tasks. These roles contain all the VSC-specific and native vCenter Server privileges required for the tasks. As an administrator, you can assign these roles to users.

Note: You should not edit the standard roles that VSC provides. These roles return to their default settings each time you restart the VSC service. This means that any changes you made to these roles will be lost if you modify or upgrade your installation. If you need a privilege that these roles do not provide, you can create a role containing that privilege and then use the Groups feature to combine that role with the appropriate standard VSC role. However, you can clone the standard VSC role and then modify the cloned role to meet your needs.

Unless your company's security policies require more restrictive permissions, it is a good practice to assign permissions on the root object (also referred to as the root folder). Then, if you need to, you can restrict those entities that you do not want to have permissions.

All VSC users must have the View privilege correctly assigned

The VSC-specific View privilege is read-only and enables users to see the menus, tabs, and other elements of the VSC interface. This privilege must be included in all VSC roles, or the user will not be to view the VSC interface.

When you are working in an environment that has multiple VSC-vCenter Server instances and you are not an administrator, you must have the View privilege across all the vCenter Servers in that environment. Otherwise, the VMware vSphere Web Client will not load VSC.

The View privilege is used in the standard VSC Read-only role to the user. If you want to limit a user to read-only access to VSC, you can assign that user the VSC Read-only role.

It is a good practice to assign the permission containing the View privilege to the root object.

Confirm that the storage systems and their credentials are available

VSC provides centralized management for storage discovery and credentials. All VSC features use the credentials entered during the initial setup and discovery process.

If you are upgrading from VSC 4.1 or earlier, you should check the storage systems to ensure that there are no issues with credentials, especially in regard to backup and recovery operations, after you install the backup and restore features.

Make sure the times are synchronized when installing VSC on a different server

If you are not installing VSC on the vCenter Server, you must make sure that the times on the VSC installation server and the vCenter Server are synchronized.

The vCenter Server will not accept the certificate of the VSC installation server when the times differ on the servers.

For information about synchronizing the server times, see your operating system documentation.