You will need to initially download the OVF file from here – https://my.vmware.com/group/vmware/details?downloadGroup=VRLI-332&productId=568&rPId=11456 (You will need to be logged in). When you have download the OVF file, login to your vCenter and select File –> Deploy OVF Template. Select the correct OVF file as below –

You will be presented with information about the OVF file –

Select Next to continue.

Accept and select Next on the licensing agreement.

Type a suitable virtual machine name.

Select the size of your deployment, I have selected small as I will only be using this in a lab environment consisting of two hosts.

Select the cluster required for the virtual machine.

Select the storage required for the virtual machine.

Specify the correct network for your virtual machine. Usually this will be your management network.

Configure the appliance with the required IP address details.

You will now see a summary of the deployment, select Finish to continue.

When the deployment has finished you will see the below –

Proceed to the website as per the appliance setup above. In my case it was http://172.16.0.204 – You will be presented with the below

Select Start New Deployment, If you have an existing deployment you can configure the appliance for that scenario.

Specify the administrator credentials required.

Input your license key –

Select the e-mail you would like to use for notifications.

Configure your NTP Servers, these are the defaults provided –

Configure a SMTP server for your alerting e-mails. You can skip this if you prefer to not setup SMTP.

Select Finish to continue.

You can now proceed to add your first vCenter. Type your administrator credentials and select Test Connection, if this is successful, select Save.

You will see that VMware vRealize Log Insight will automatically configure your VMware ESXI Hosts Syslog server location to this server.

We now need to configure the VMware vRealize Log Insight Agent’s, this isn’t required if you are not going to be adding any Windows/Linux VM’s to the console. If you simply want to monitor vCenter (Without Windows vCenter Logs) you can finish here. If however you want to configure Windows/Linux logs you can install the required agents. You will need to navigate to the agents screen and select ‘Download Log Insight Agent’. This will allow you to download the package for Windows and for Linux.

Copy this on to your vCenter server and install the agent.

You’ll notice this is pre-configured with the VMware vRealize Log Insight IP address.

Select Install to continue the installation.

You will need to copy the .DEB package (For Ubuntu) to your required host, this can be achieved using WinSCP when completed you can run the following command to install the agent –

sudo dpkg -i VMware [Press Tab]

This file will have appended the IP address of your server to the end so you will need to press TAB for it to auto-complete the file name. You can see below it has now installed the agent.

You can install content packs that will be able to monitor services, alternatively you can create your own but they are pre-configured for applications such as Microsoft Exchange. Select the Content Packs selection as below –

When you have selected the one you want to install, select Install then navigate back to ‘Agents’

You can now copy one of these profiles and select the servers you need to add to the group.

For example Windows monitoring you can copy the group by selecting ‘Copy Template’

You can now specify the filter, in my case I have specified Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 Standard as the majority of my Windows servers are using this operating system.

You can now navigate back to Dashboards once you have gathered some data (I would leave this for a few hours) and you will be able to see the below information presented –

This completes the VMware vRealize Log Insight Installation!