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We have two ESXi hosts that are connected to varies networks for varies purposes: management, NFS, iSCSI, a best practice.
The only physical thing in this lab is my laptop. Everything else is virtual! Im running this lab on Windows8 and VMware workstation 9. To create this lab, we will go through these steps: Installing and setting up VMware Workstation Installing the ESXi host as a virtual machine Installing a vSphere Client Installing a vCenter Server Configuring networking for NFS and vMotion Try this all out
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vMotion and FT. Although some of these features (perhaps all?) could use single adapter, this is not considered
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Installing and setting up VMware Workstation After downloading this product from VMwares site, we start the installation. This is an easy, several steps process. Lets begin
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Right now we dont want to participate in VMwares improvement program. So we deselect Help improve
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We click Continue.
Now its time to start the Workstation and go to the Virtual Network Editor. We select Edit->Virtual Network Editor. The defaults should look like this:
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This is not what we want, so we will first delete all networks by selecting each of them and clicking Remove for our management network and click OK. Then we make sure that the Host-only (connect VMs internally in a private network) option is selected, the Use local DHCP service to distribute IP address to VMs deselected, the Subnet IP is 1.1.1.0 and the Subnet mask is 255.255.255.0. When we click Apply our
We repeat the process for all other networks. When we are done, within a network connections we should see all our networks:
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Network. Then we will add our networks to match our diagram. We click Add Network, then select VMnet1
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We will rename all connections, so it is clearer to us which network is for which purpose. Right click a network, selecting Rename, repeated for each connection will eventually yield to this situation:
Now we make sure that each connection has proper IP settings. For example the Management network:
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We should have in mind that these settings will break communications to real IP addresses used here. For should use 192.168.0.0/24 or similar networks, but this will do for the lab.
From the Workstation we select File->New Virtual Machine and start the wizard. We select Custom
On the Choose the Virtual Machine Hardware Compatibility screen we click Next:
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(advanced):
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example we wont be able to reach anything that belong to the 1.1.1.0/24 segment from our laptop. Perhaps we
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Now we browse for an ESXi 5.1 ISO image and Workstation will detect what OS is in the ISO:
On the Processor Configuration screen, we select one for Number of processors and two for Number of cores per processor. These are minimums for ESXi 5.1. We could go higher here, depending on our laptops hardware:
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For memory size, again the minimum is 2GB, but we could go above:
select now:
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On the Network Type we can select any option, because we will have to change it later, no matter what we
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Customize Hardware:
In the Hardware dialog, we only need to change the network adapter to match our requirements. For the management network we will select VMnet1, for FT network VMnet5 and so on:
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Finally, on the Ready to Create Virtual Machine we deselect Power on this machine after creation and click
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Our summary portion of the Workstation windows should now look like this:
following pictures:
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Now we are ready to power the machine on, and begin installation of the ESXi. This is illustrated in the
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Now we must specify and verify the root password and carry on:
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After the VM is rebooted, we are presented with the ESXi console screen:
From the menu presented to us, we go under Configure Management Network. Under the IP Configuration we specify the IP address of 1.1.1.2 and subnet mask of 255.255.255.0. Remember, this has to be in the same segment as the IP address we specified under the VMnet1 adapters configuration. The default gateway has no meaning to us in our lab, but we must specify something, so we pick 1.1.1.1:
Under the DNS Configuration we need to specify a primary DNS server and a hostname. Here we can make choices. If our laptop is running Windows7/8, we would need another VM inside Workstation to act as a DNS server, or we could install a VM inside the ESXi host that we installed inside the Workstation. Funny, isnt it If our laptop is running Windows server OS or Linux, we could install a DNS directly in the OS that laptop is running. Im running Windows8, so for now I will choose 1.1.1.1 for DNS server and change it later when we install a DNS server as one of available options:
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There are several more steps that need to be completed. We start completing them by pressing the F2 key.
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Now we have our first ESXi host installed and set up:
Installing a second ESXi host is almost identical. After we are done we have this screen:
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Now when we have two virtual ESXi hosts, we need a tool to manage them. This tools is called vSphere Client. client. Similar to a DNS server installation. We could run it from a host OS, which is Windows8 in our case, we can run it from a VM inside the VMware workstation, or we could run it from a VM installed within a ESXi host that is running as a VM inside the Workstation. Fun stuff again Lets run it from a Windows8 host OS
We have a VMware vSphere ISO image downloaded and unpacked. Then we start the installation:
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We can download this tool from VMware site. We have several choices here about where we would install this
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Now we start vSphere client, and connect to one of our ESXi hosts:
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First time we will be presented with this certificate warning, which we will acknowledge. We will also acknowledge the evaluation dialog box warning:
And now we have our ESXi hosts managed with vSphere client, and we are ready to install our first virtual machine, which will be a vCenter Server.
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We give it a name:
For now, we only have a local datastore. So we rajaram.deal@gmail.com will create this VM on that store, and later we+91-9944535244 will migrate it on [Rajaram]
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From vSphere client, we select File->New->Virtual Machine, and complete a wizard. First we select Custom
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Windows 2003 (64-bit) as well, but we have to have in mind that vSenter 5.1 can only be installed on 64-bit
Depending on several choices, the amount of RAM required can vary. For lab environment I would suggest at least 2GB. More is better, but we are limited by the max amount of physical RAM on our laptop. For CPU, we can go with the defaults in our environment:
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version of Windows:
For guest OS version we select Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 (64-bit). We could say here Microsoft
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Although we created several networks, only one, VMnet1 or Management network is available to us at this
Next several steps, we will go with the defaults, except for disk size. We cannot accept default of 40GB, because
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we created our ESXi host with 40GB, but ESXi itself took some space:
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After reviewing our settings, we need to mount an ISO image containing the installation of Microsoft
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BIOS Setup. This is to ensure that when we power on the VM for the first time, it will go in the BIOS, so we
these steps.
installation files, and run the setup. Previously, we used the same installer to install the client and now we will use it to install the server. So we select VMware vCenter Simple Install. We could install all of components separately, such as database, Single Sign On and so on, but for the sake of simplicity, we will use the option of simple install. This option will install all needed components for us: the database, Single Sign On, Inventory Service and vSphere Server itself.
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Now we power on the VM and install Windows server. I guess we all know how to do that, so I will not show
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Now from within the VM we mount an ISO image that contains a vSphere Server
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Before we power on the VM, we should edit settings, go under Options, Boot Options, and we select Force
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After clicking Install, a simple wizard is run. First, the SSO install will begin. We can safely disregard this warning:
After several nexts, we need to provide the administrators password for the SSO service. Any other service that needs to connect to SSO service will need this password:
For the database, we will use the defaults, because this is a lab installation:
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Next, we can use the IP address or FQDN. It is recommended to use FQDNs, but we so far dont have a DNS and the IP address will do for the lab:
We could change the port number, but for most installation, the default will do:
Now we wait for the SSO installation to complete. Time for coffee After the SSO and its database is installed, the wizard will install the database for the vCenter server:
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Its best to leave ports to defaults. Because we have small numbers of VMs, we dont need additional random ports:
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After another coffee, the vCenter database is installed, as well as the Inventory Service and the vCenter itself.
We connect to vCenter server using the same interface as before, but now we use the IP address of Windows server and credentials of local administrator:
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server can take some time. So we need to be patient and wait for a services to start:
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Before we connect to vCenter server, one thing we should keep in mind: in the lab like this, starting of vCenter
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Because now we dont talk to the ESXi server, but to the vCenter server, we again have the certificate warning. We can safely ignore it. Now we create a virtual datacenter:
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Now we select the datacenter. We only have one. Finally, we review the summary and click Finish. The agent will be installed on ESXi host that will be used by the vCenter server to centrally manage this host:
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This process of adding the ESXi host should be repeated for the another ESXi host. Then we will have this situation:
set up:
Now we should add two additional network adapters to our ESXi hosts. One will be VMnet2 and will be used for the NFS and one will be VMnet4 for VMotion. First we power off ESXi hosts and add two adapters in each
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Remember our diagram and network settings in host OS? At this time we only have our management network
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thing is creating a shared storage and try one of advanced features, such as vMotion.
We have now two ESXi hosts managed by a single virtual vCenter server running on one of ESXi hosts. Next
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hosts. Within the Workstation, we select Edit virtual machine settings, then click Add, select Network Adapter and click Next:
For the Network Adapter Type we select Custom and then VMnet2 for NFS and VMnet4 for vMotion:
Now we power ESXi hosts back on and go under the network configuration. We should setup our newly added network adapters. First we add a NFS adapter. We click Add Networking, select VMkernel type and click Next. We can see our two adapters with proper network addresses listed along each adapter:
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We select vmnic1 and click Next. We give this network a name, check Use this port group for management hence this option:
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traffic and click Next. The NFS communication is handled through the management enabled interface, and
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Then we repeat these steps for vMotion network. The differences are in IP settings and the option Use this port group for vMotion:
Behind the scenes I have installed another VM, a SLES Linux which will be used as a NFS shared storage. I wont be showing here how to install this Linux and set up a NFS share, but I will show how the NFS setup screen should look like:
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that the wildcard list is 2.2.2.*, which means that only hosts form only NFS network can actually access the
Now we give the IP address of our Linux NFS VM, folder that we share from that server and a datastore name:
Please note that the NFS share should have these options enabled: rw, no_root_squash and appropriate host access wildcard (in our case 2.2.2.*). If everything goes well, we should see our shared storage:
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To use this NFS storage, under Configuration->Storage we click Add Storage. Then we select Network File
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Here we can see that we publish the /NFS folder, which must be created on the file system. Also we can see
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Try this all out After we set up the other ESXi host the same way, we can first migrate our vCenter Server to the shared storage and vMotion it from one host to another. First, lets move vCenter Server from ESXi-1 to ESXi-2. We select Virtual Center VM, right click and click Migrate. Then we select Change datastore and select NFS datastore. This could take a while, so its time for coffee.
Migrate, select Change host, select the 1.1.1.3 and complete the wizard. After a while we can see that the
In a similar fashion we can play with a cluster and other features. One final thing I would like to pint out. I created this lab on a HP ProBook 4740s with 8GB of RAM and here is its health with only one VM powered
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Lets now vMotion this VM to another host, without interrupting the service. Right click the VM, select
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Ok, finally! Now we have our vCenter Server on the shared storage and is powered on on the host 1.1.1.2:
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on:
consumed by ESXi hosts, but disk here is a big issue. So I would recommend a 16GB of RAM and SSD disk.
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Of course, powering a few more VMs wont affect the memory usage, because they will use the memory already
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