How to Create an ODBC Database Connection in VCenter Server

The database is required to store the vCenter server. There are two ways you can create a database on the VCenter server. The first is Express SQL 2008 and the other is to use a dedicated database server. In this article, we will see how to create an ODBC database connection with a special SQL server Server 2012 on vCenter Server.

Process of Creating ODBC Database Connection in VCenter Server

Now, as we have installed in SQL Server 2012, Server 2012 R2, let’s create a database and ODBC connection here. But before that, I will create a user account in the active directory that will be used to manage the vCenter server.

The user we created has created a user account called vCenUser that has administrative authority in vCenter. We will use this user account to log in to the vCenter server and manage the vSphere infrastructure.

We are now creating a database on the SQL server. To create a database on the SQL server, log in to the database server, then open Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio. Expand the server in the left pane. Right-click Databases and click New Database.

Our database will open as below. In the General tab, we will write the name of the database we want to create. We created its name as vCenDB. We press OK.

There are two methods to associate user accounts in this database.
The first one is to create a local user account on the SQL server, the second method is that we can use the same user account that you created in Active Directory. We will link the same AD user account for this database. To do this, open the Security segment. Right-click the Entries folder and click New Entry.

We write the user account here. Type the user account as is, mustbegeekvCenUser. Under the default database, we select the value of vCenDB from the incoming list.

Select Server Roles on the right. Check general and sysadmin server roles.

Now select User Mapping from the right pane. We control vCenDB under Users mapped to this login option. Similarly, for database role membership for the vCenDB option, we check db_owner and public. Then we click OK.

Now login to the vCenter server to create an ODBC connection to the newly created database. Open the ODBC Data Source Manager application. Select the System DSN tab and click Add.

The Create a New Data Source dialog box will open. Select SQL Server Native Client 11.0 and click Finish.

Now the Create New Data Source To SQL Server dialog box will open. Here we write the name, description of the ODBC connection, and the server IP address we made as shown below. Then we click next.

Here, we choose the Integrated Windows authentication. The SQL server will verify the authenticity of the login ID using Active Directory, so we click Next.

Here, change the default database to vCenDB and click Next.

Finally, we check the settings and click on the finish.

We can now test the data source. If we encounter any problems, we will go back and repeat the initial steps.

We create the ODBC connection as mentioned above. In the next step, we can now start installing the vCenter server.

I hope it was a useful article.