Posted by I’m installing vCloud Automation Center (vCAC) in a lab and needed to set up a Postgres database on a server external to the vCAC core appliance. I have zero experience with Postgres so it took the normal Googling around to find a solution. For the Postgres database I used Postgres 9.3 on CentOS release 6.5. The vCAC documentation says, “PostgreSQL or vPostgres version 9.2.4 or later is required to deploy a database on a separate server.”
Installing Postgres 9.3
https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/YUM_Installation has the instructions for installing Postgres via YUM. I’ll reproduce some of them here.
First we need to exclude Postgres from the base CentOS repos.
Edit /etc/yum.repos.d/CentOS-Base.repo, in [base] and [updates] sections add
exclude=postgresql*
Now we can install the packages. The postgressql-contrib package allows you to create extensions as required for vCAC.
yum -y localinstall http://yum.postgresql.org/9.3/redhat/rhel-6-x86_64/pgdg-centos93-9.3-1.noarch.rpm
yum -y install postgresql93-server postgresql-contrib
The default data directory for Postgres is /var/lib/pgsql/9.3/data
Configuring Postgres
Several changes needs to be made in order for the vCAC core appliance can connect to Postgres. We need to make sure Postgres is not listening only on the loopback address and we need to allow the vCAC user to connect.
Edit /var/lib/pgsql/9.3/data/postgresql.conf and change
listen_addresses = ‘localhost’
to
listen_addresses = ‘*’
Edit /var/lib/pgsql/9.3/data/pg_hba.conf and change
# TYPE DATABASE USER ADDRESS METHOD
# IPv4 local connections:
#host all all 127.0.0.1/32 ident
to
host all all all md5
Instead of using ‘all’, you can specify the vCAC user and address, but I kept it simple for this lab.
Creating the vCAC database
Initialize Postgres
service postgresql-9.3 initdb
Configure Postgres to start on boot and start the service
chkconfig postgresql-9.3 on
service postgresql-9.3 start
Connect to Postgres
sudo -u postgres psql
Connect to the template1 database
\c template1
Create the vCAC user and vCAC database
CREATE USER vcac WITH NOCREATEDB NOCREATEROLE NOCREATEUSER INHERIT LOGIN ENCRYPTED password ‘vmware123’;
CREATE DATABASE vcac6a WITH OWNER vcac;
Connect to the vCAC database
\c vcac6a
Create extensions
CREATE EXTENSION “hstore”;
CREATE EXTENSION “uuid-ossp”;
Cleanup
Since we are now using an external database, we no longer need the embedded vPostgres service running on the vCAC core appliance so we can stop the service and configure it to not start on boot.
service vpostgres stop
chkconfig vpostgres off
If you’re using an external database for the vCAC core appliance, you can’t use the embedded vCO instance so we can stop the service and configure it to not start on boot.
service vco-server stop
chkconfig vco-server off
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