I've been rebuilding my VMware lab and decided to do it all right this time by having a centralized database server, and I choose SQL Server 2008 R2. I have configured vCenter, VUM, and View Composer to all use SQL 2008 R2 with windows authentication, then it came time to get the View Events database up and running. Jason Langone has a great article on setting up the events DB using SQL Express, but there isn't a good walkthru for regular SQL server setup. So here we go.
Before we begin, make sure that SQL Server ports are allowed through the firewall. do some googleing and there are plenty of batch files out there that will open them up for you.
VMware View Events Database cannot use Windows Authentication for the SQL backend, so we have to use local authentication. Open up SQL Server Management Studio and go to the properties of the database server
We need to make sure that server is set to use "SQL Server and Windows Authentication Mode". By Default only Windows Authentication is used. This allows us to use local user accounts
Next we need to create a new login for a database we will create for the View Events. I chose to create a new user, if you want to use "sa", that's an option as well.
I created a new user called "vieweventsmgr". Next you must tick the "SQL Server Authentication" box as well as remove all password policies. Unticking "Enforce password policy" does the trick. Later on, you can change the database at the bottom to be the new database we are about to create, but it's not necessary. Click OK and you're done.
Now we need to setup our new database. Right click on databases and create New Database
I named my database "viewevents". We must also establish an owner of the database. Click the ... button and browse for a new owner by selecting the user we created in the previous step. This sets the user to db_owner.
head back on over to your VMware View administrator session and click on the events database and click on Edit. populate the fields.
- Database server = FQDN of your SQL Server
- Database type = Microsoft SQL Server
- Port = 1433 (auto-populates, but must be opened on the firewall)
- Database name is what we created in the previous step
- Database username and password is the local SQL authentication account we create
- Table Prefix = whatever you want it to be, i chose EVT_
Click on OK and you are now configured
