So, I was handed new vlans last week. Need to spin up the first infrastructure vcenter on them in order to run services.
Currently, I have no routing, no dns, no dhcp, no ntp. Just a host, a datastore, a mgmt network, a switch, and my laptop directly connected to the switch.
Set up the host running ESXi6.7u2.
Trying to install VCSA 6.7u3, via the win32 gui from the installer ISO.
I don't put in a FQDN as it's optional - I've tried with a FQDN, and with it's IP as FQDN, doesn't work either.
Stage 1 installs fine.
Stage 2 takes 4 hours to get about 50% of the way through, very slowly starting up the services. At 50%, it's at starting vcenter service.
Then it times out and the installer quits. Sometimes it gives the 'internal error 2' before quitting, sometimes it just quits.
I *know* that the 'right' way is to have DNS & NTP functional. But there has to be a way to install it in a new environment that has no network services at all, so you can spin up said network services.
I've verified that /etc/hosts has the IP pointing to photon-machine ie default hostname if no FQDN is installed.
I vaguely remember reading about a timeout setting for the installer, and setting it longer, but cannot find that information (if it was more than just a fever dream).
Any and all suggestions welcome.