In previous versions of vSphere ESXi, it was relatively straight forward to create a bootable USB key which already contained the ESXi hypervizor.  This was done by extracting the files from the ISO and then using ‘dd’ to image the directory structure to the USB stick.  With vSphere ESXi 5 however, this technique is no longer possible.  There is a workaround however.  ESXi is installed and configured in two steps, the installation is done to a disk with a vanilla installation of ESXi without configuration.  The server is then rebooted and the configuration of ESXi continues with the creation of the management network vmk0 or vmk1 (depending on your setup), hostname, DNS etc.

For this to work, we do not perform the second part, which is the configuration, but take an image of the USB key directly after the installation of the vanilla installation of ESXi without configuration.  This enables us to image this vanilla installation onto as many USB sticks, i.e., servers as we like without clashes in virtual MAC addresses and the like.

What you will need: VMware Workstation, 1 USB stick, the ESXi Installable ISO file VMware-VMvisor-Installer-5.0.0-469512.x86_64.iso, WinImage.

Quick steps

1. Create a new ESX virtual machine in VMware Workstation with CD-ROM drive, USB adapter, 2Gb RAM and 2vCPUs.
2. Mount the ESXi Installable ISO file to the CD Drive.
3. Insert the USB stick to your workstation (the same one that runs VMware Workstation).
4. Boot the VM and connect the USB stick to the VM.
5. Install ESXi as normal, making sure that you install onto the USB stick, when installation is complete, disconnect the USB stick from the VM and do not reboot the VM, just turn it off.  You no longer need this VM.
6. With the USB stick still connected to your workstation, open up Winimage.
7. Go to Disk | Creating Virtual Hard Disk image from physical drive and select the USB stick that you installed ESXi on.
8. Select a location where to save your image and change the file type to Image file (*.ima).
9. WinImage will now make a backup on your newly installed USB stick.

Creating vSphere 5 ESXi embedded bootable USB sticks

1. Now that you have an ESXi image, you can use this to build lots of USB sticks which are ready for ESXi deployment.
2. Insert a new USB stick into a spare USB port.
3. Launch WinImage and navigate to Disk | Restore Virtual Hard Disk image on physical drive.
4. Select the USB stick and click on OK.
5. Navigate to the image file that you created previously.  WinImage will now restore the backed up image to your new USB stick.
6. Repeat as necessary.

Configure ESXi

Once the stick is ready, just insert into a spare USB port on your server and ESXi will boot into the configuration screen ready for you to configure management network details.

You may need to log onto the local console once ESXi has finished booting and launch the ‘Restore Network Settings’.  This will reset the vmk0 or vmk1 (depending on your setup) interface.

The vCSA supports all vCenter features – DRS, SDRS, HA, Host Profiles, dvSwitches, etc.

Secondary architecture features like supported DB, View Composer are not yet at feature parity with the Windows vCenter Server.

Not supported yet:

• Microsoft SQL as the database for vCenter – requires stable ODBC driver for Linux that can scale.
• vCenter Server Linked Mode – requires ADAM.
• vCenter Server Heartbeat – requires Windows.
• IPv6.
• Single sign-on using Windows session credentials.
• VMware View Composer (Linked Clones) – installed on Windows vCenter Server only.
• vSphere Storage Appliance – VSA Manager & VSA Cluster Server installed on Windows vCenter Server.
• VIX Plugin for vCenter Orchestrator – VMware Tools API only works with Windows vCenter Server.

Other VMware products that work with the vCSA:

• vCenter Operations.
• vCenter Orchestrator.
• vCenter CapacityIQ.
• SRM5.
• VMware View 5 (no Linked Clones).
• Auto Deploy.
• vCenter Update Manager.
• vMA.
• vSphere Client.
• vSphere Web Client.
• VMware vCloud Director.
• PowerCLI.
• vSphere Client for iPad & vCMA.

If I find anything else, I’ll update the article.

It provides exactly the same functionality as the traditional Windows vCenter Server but packaged in a Linux distribution. I know that some of my pure UNIX and LINUX customers have been asking for this for a while.

It’s been available as a technology preview since 2009 as “vCenter 2.5 on Linux” but has finally arrived with vSphere 5 to give customers’ an alternative to the Windows vCenter Server. Expect to see it available for download when vSphere 5 goes GA.

*UPDATE* vSphere5 is now GA, and the vCSA is available to download here.

I’ve been using it for a while now in the lab and have found it very easy to deploy and use. vCenter services start a lot quicker and the user experience with the VMware vSphere Client is exactly the same.

vCenter Server Virtual Appliance features and benefits

• Installed on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 x64.
• OVF when deployed is configured with 2vCPUs and 8Gb memory, LSI Logic Parallel, VMXNET 3, 15Gb and 60Gb VMDKs and VMware Tools.
• Includes embedded DB2 database that is suitable for evaluation or for environments with less than 5 ESXi hosts or 50 virtual machines (equivalent to Windows vCenter Server + MSSQL Express).
• Supports external Oracle database for large environments.
• Includes Active Directory (AD) and Network Information Services (NIS) authentication.
• vSphere Web Client support is built into the vCenter Server Virtual Appliance. vSphere Web Client is OS agnostic and the interface is highly customisable.
• Windows vSphere Client is still supported.
• Includes a pre-configured Auto Deploy server therefore reducing operational costs with the installation of Auto Deploy.
• Can use NFS mounts to store vCenter Server Virtual Appliance core and log files.
• vCSA can act as a syslog server for ESXi system logs.
• Can be used as a network collector for ESXi kernel core dumps.
• Simplified and rapid deployment, approximately 15 minutes deployment time.
• Lower TCO by eliminating Windows OS dependency and licenses.
• Reduces operational costs – vCSA is easier to upgrade – just deploy a new appliance and connect to the external Oracle database or
• Import configuration data from previous installation.
• Patches can be installed using the vCSA web interface.

Not yet feature parity with Windows vCenter Server

vCenter Server Virtual Appliance provides all features as the Windows vCenter Server but does not support the following features:

• Microsoft SQL as the database for vCenter.
• vCenter Server Linked Mode.
• vCenter Server Heartbeat.
• IPv6.

For details on what products are supported with the vCSA please see this post.

I’ve provided a quick start guide including a 10-minute how-to video demonstrating the deployment and administration in this post.

This article provides a step-by-step guide on how to deploy the vCSA, configure networking, authentication, database and vCenter services.  For further information regarding the vCSA please refer to this post and this post.

Note: This article was written using the release candidate version of the software so your experience with the GA version may differ slightly.

The following table lists the required files that you will need, gather these files before proceeding.

Watch the 10-minute video (Optimised for iPad)

Deploy the vCenter Server Linux Virtual Appliance

1. Launch your vSphere Client and navigate to File | Deploy OVF Template.
2. Browse to the location of the vCenter Appliance .ovf file, then click on Open.
3. On the following screen click on Next.
4. Then click on Next again on the OVF Template Details page.
5. Under Name and Location, give your vCenter Appliance a name then click Next.
6. Choose a datastore then click Next.
7. Select a disk format on the next page then click on Next to continue.
8. Click on Finish to start deploying.

Configuring the vCenter Server Linux Virtual Appliance

1. Boot the appliance.
2. Open a vSphere Client console session to the virtual appliance and configure the network and timezone.
3. Now open up a browser and type https://<ip_of_appliance>:5480 to continue the configuration.
4. Accept the certificate error to continue.
5. Login as root, the default password is vmware.

1. Now read through every single word of the EULA and click on Accept EULA to continue. Please be patient whilst the vCenter is configured. If you look at the appliance remote console you’ll see the services being configured and started.

1. You can start using the web interface again once the console screen returns to default.

1. Next click on Status, and view the current status of the vCenter Server. The service should be on a Stopped state and the Database Type should show not configured.
2. Click on the tab, you will notice that there are no DNS Servers configured and the appliance’s hostname is the standard localhost.localdom, lets change this.
3. Click on and change to your relevant values and click on to complete the network configuration.
4. Now setup authentication by clicking on and then on either NIS or Active Directory. My lab environment uses AD.
5. Click on the tick box and then fill in your domain details and then click on Save Settings. You should receive an Operation is successful message to confirm that the authentication settings has worked.
6. We now need to configure a database for vCenter to use, for this article, let’s use the embedded DB2 database. Click on to continue.
7. When using the embedded database, there is no need to enter any details, just click on . This will take a while to complete, once done click on . After some time the database will complete configuration.
8. Now reboot the virtual appliance one last time. To reboot click on and then click on . Click Reboot again to confirm.
9. This time the vCenter Appliance will successfully start the vpxd daemon and initialize the database, eventually vCenter 5.0 will be ready for you to use.

Connecting to vCenter 5.0 for the first time

With all VMware vSphere Clients, when you start the vSphere Client and connect to either a vCenter Server or an ESX/ESXi host, it will check whether the vSphere Client is compatible. This is still the case with vSphere 5.0 and you will need to update your vSphere Client if you haven’t already done so. You can update by connecting to vCenter Server or ESX/ESXi or you can download the vSphere Client executable from the VMware Downloads website.

1. Launch the vSphere Client and connect to your newly configured vCenter Server.
2. You must use root | vmware to login, domain credentials will not work until the permissions are added to vCenter.

1. Update the vSphere Client as necessary.
2. Add an AD group into vCenter permissions and set the role as Administrator. [See video].
3. Now you will be able to log in with domain credentials.
4. You will need to enter your username in DOMAIN\Username or username@DOMAIN format.

It is also possible to just use the vSphere Web Client by opening up a browser session to https://<ip_of_vCSA>:9443/vsphere-client/

Following on from the PSO NEMEA twitter list, I decided to go further and produce this list of VMware employees that are on Twitter, sorted alphabetically by Twitter ID as of 29/06/2011.

Let me know if I have missed you out or you follow someone that works for VMware.

A list of VMware PSO consultants covering NEMEA that are on Twitter, sorted alphabetically by Twitter ID.

Follow us for tweets from the real world.

Map created using templates from http://www.presentationmagazine.com.

I have since tried to update the installation by running conary updateall at the CLI. Unfortunately, this installs an updated kernel (2.6.29.6-0.24.smp.gcc3.4.x86_64 (SMP)) and also a new ramdisk which makes all the hard work from the previous post defunct. This article shows you how to perform the update and then make a new initrd-usb-update.img to work with the new kernel.

So assuming you’ve made a successful USB key using the previous article, continue with the following to update your Openfiler installation and also make the updated Openfiler installation USB key bootable.

Update Openfiler

Let’s first update Openfiler.

1. Log into the CLI as root
2. Run

   conary updateall

3. This will take a while as it downloads around 26 packages and installs them.
4. Once complete insert the Openfiler CD into your drive and restart your system, making sure that it boots from CD.

Creating a new ramdisk that works with the new kernel

This part is more or less very much similar to the steps in the previous post, there are some minor additions that we need to make, but for completeness I’ve included all the steps here.

1. Once Openfiler finishes booting from the CD type.

   linux rescue

2. Go through the menus and select your region and keyboard and skip the automatic mounting of your installed OS. We will do this manually.
3. When the prompt appears, create a directory to mount the USB key.

   mkdir /mnt/sysimage

4. Now mount the / of the USB key onto /mnt/sysimage.

   mount /dev/sda2 /mnt/sysimage

   Note: your / partition may be /dev/sda3 instead, depending on how you setup your partitioning during the installation of Openfiler.
   

5. Now mount the boot partition of the USB key onto /mnt/sysimage/boot.

   mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/sysimage

   Note: your / partition may be /dev/sda1 instead, depending on how you setup your partitioning during the installation of Openfiler.
   

6. Make the /mnt/sysimage your working environment by changing your root location so you are working on the file system on the usb key.

   chroot /mnt/sysimage

7. Copy the current initrd file to a temporary location where we can work on it.

   cp /boot/initrd-¹ /tmp/initrd.gz

   Note¹: now’s a good time to press TAB, there will now be two kernels, use 2.6.29.6-0.24.smp.gcc3.4.x86_64 as this is the updated kernel that was installed during the update.
   

8. Gunzip the initrd.gz file

   gunzip /tmp/initrd.gz

9. Make a temporary working directory

   mkdir /tmp/b

   We are using /tmp/b because /tmp/a already exists as the temporary working directory from the previous article.
   

10. Go into the new working directory

    cd /tmp/b

11. Extract the contents of the initrd file into /tmp/b.

    cpio –i < /tmp/initrd

12. Now we edit the init file to load the USB and SCSI drivers for the new initrd-usb-update.img ramdisk.

    nano init

13. Do a search for “mount –t proc /proc /proc” and add the following underneath this line. We want to load these USB and storage modules before any other modules that’s why these entries need to be at the top of the file. Note that there is a new module crc-t10dif.ko which is required by the new kernel to boot from USB and as such must be launch during init time.

    echo “Starting Openfiler on USB”

    echo “Loading scsi_mod.ko module”

    insmod /lib/scsi_mod.ko

    echo “Starting crc-t10dif.ko module”

    insmod /lib/crc-t10dif.ko

    echo “Loading sd_mod.ko module”

    insmod /lib/sd_mod.ko

    echo “Loading sr_mod.ko module”

    insmod /lib/sr_mod.ko

    echo “Loading ehci-hcd.ko module”

    insmod /lib/ehci-hcd.ko

    echo “Loading uhci-hcd.ko module”

    insmod /lib/uhci-hcd.ko

    echo “Loading ohci-hcd.ko module”

    insmod /lib/ohci-hcd.ko

    sleep 5

    echo “Loading usb-storage.ko module”

    insmod /lib/usb-storage.ko

    sleep 5

14. Do a search for insmod /lib/scsi_mod.ko, insmod /lib/sd_mod.ko, insmod /lib/ehci-hcd.ko, insmod /lib/uhci-hcd.ko and /lib/crc-t10dif.ko and remove these duplicate entries from the rest of the file. We do not want these loaded again.
15. Save the file and exit with CTRL X, then Y, or if you used vi then :wq!
16. Now we need to copy all of the modules in Step 13 into our working directory.
17. Go to the drivers directory

    cd /lib/modules/²/kernel/drivers

    Note²: just press tab to fill in this bit, there will now be two kernels, use 2.6.29.6-0.24.smp.gcc3.4.x86_64 as this is the updated kernel that was installed during the update.
    

18. Copy all of the modules in Step 13 to /tmp/b/lib.

    cp scsi/scsi_mod.ko /tmp/b/lib

    cp scsi/sr_mod.ko /tmp/b/lib

    cp scsi/sd_mod.ko /tmp/b/lib

    cp usb/host/ehci-hcd.ko /tmp/b/lib

    cp usb/host/uhci-hcd.ko /tmp/b/lib

    cp usb/host/ohci-hcd.ko /tmp/b/lib

    cp usb/storage/usb-storage.ko /tmp/b/lib

    cp /lib/modules/2.6.29.6-0.24.smp.gcc3.4.x86_64/kernel/lib/crc-t10dif.ko /tmp/b/lib

19. Now let’s package the contents of the working directory /tmp/b into our new initrd-usb-update.img.

    cd /tmp/b

    find . | cpio –c –o | gzip -9 > /boot/initrd-usb-update.img

20. Now all we need to do is edit the /boot/grub/menu.1st file to tell the kernel to use the new ramdisk that we just created. Remember that this new ramdisk is currently located in /boot/ (aka /dev/sda1) and is called initrd-usb-update.img.

    nano /boot/grub/menu.1st

21. Find the line starting with initrd /vmlinux-…………………… and replace with

    initrd /initrd-usb-update.img

22. Save the file and reboot the computer, remove the CD and allowing it to boot from the USB key. You now have your new updated Openfiler installation booting from the USB key directly.

Turn off flow control for SMB Clients

For better CIFS performance turn off your network adapter flow control. I can achieve a sustained 60 mb/s transfer between my Macbook and Openfiler once flow control is turned off. I was only achieving around 30 mb/s previously.

Turn off flow control for ESXi hosts using NFS/iSCSI to Openfiler

First understand what flow control is before performing the follow actions, the following articles provide good cases for either enabling or disabling flow control and auto-negotiation for flow control.

http://www.telecom.otago.ac.nz/tele301/student_html/ethernet-autonegotiation-flow-control.html – not to be confused with auto-negotiation of flow control.

http://virtualthreads.blogspot.com/2006/02/beware-ethernet-flow-control.html

Since this is my lab I’m going to disable flow control completely.

To do this on ESXi hosts follow these instructions or use VMware KB 1013413.

1. Enable Remote SSH for the ESXi host first.
2. Use your favourite SSH client and log in as root (assuming you can, disable lock-down mode etc).
3. Run the following command to list all your vmnic interfaces, make a note of the vmnic that is used to connect to the Openfiler Server.

   esxcfg-nics –l

4. In my case it’s just vmnic0 (I’m using a HP Microserver), type the following command to see the current flow control status of that adapter.

   ethtool –show-pause vmnic0

5. Run the following commands to set auto-negotiation or RX flow control or TX flow control, any combination is possible.
6. To disable flow control for sent and received traffic, use the command:

   ethtool –pause tx off rx off

7. To disable auto-negotiation of flow control, use the command:

   ethtool –pause autoneg off

1. Open the /etc/rc.local file using a text editor and append the same commands used in Step 6, placing each on its own line. Then save the file.
2. For an ESXi host, save the configuration change using the command:

   /sbin/auto-backup.sh

   The commands added to the /etc/rc.local file will be executed at startup, persisting the configuration changes across reboots. As they are executed in Step 6, no reboot is required for them to take effect.

The steps must be performed in this order, otherwise you’ll get a headache trying to work out why you cannot see any Groups listed.

Go to Services | Enable SMB/CIFS server.

Click on SMB/CIFS Setup.

1. Change the NetBIOS name to just the hostname of the server (do not include the domain).

Navigate to Accounts | Expert View. Configure for your environment, note the CAPITALIZATION of some of the fields.

Click on Use Kerberos 5 and enter your domain details, note the CAPITALIZATION of some of the fields.

Now click on Accounts | Group List and if done successfully, you should see your Domain groups.

1. Disconnect all hard disks from the server.
2. Boot from the Openfiler CD and install Openfiler by invoking the linux expert command and installing as normal onto your USB key, taking into account your partitioning to fit onto your USB key and also making a record of which partitions are your /boot and your / partitions.

Create a new ramdisk that includes the USB drivers.

1. When installation is complete, reboot the server with the Openfiler CD still in the drive and then type

   linux rescue

2. Go through the menus and select your region and keyboard and skip the automatic mounting of your installed OS. We will do this manually.
3. When the prompt appears, create a directory to mount the USB key.

   mkdir /mnt/sysimage

4. Now mount the / of the USB key onto /mnt/sysimage.

   mount /dev/sda2 /mnt/sysimage

   Note: your / partition may be /dev/sda3 instead, depending on how you setup your partitioning during the installation of Openfiler.
   

5. Now mount the boot partition of the USB key onto /mnt/sysimage/boot.

   mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/sysimage

   Note: your / partition may be /dev/sda1 instead, depending on how you setup your partitioning during the installation of Openfiler.
   

6. Make the /mnt/sysimage your working environment by changing your root location so you are working on the file system on the usb key.

   chroot /mnt/sysimage

7. Copy the current initrd file to a temporary location where we can work on it.

   cp /boot/initrd-¹ /tmp/initrd.gz

   Note¹: now’s a good time to press TAB
   

8. Gunzip the initrd.gz file

   gunzip /tmp/initrd.gz

9. Make a temporary working directory

   mkdir /tmp/a

10. Go into the new working directory

    cd /tmp/a

11. Extract the contents of the initrd file into /tmp/a.

    cpio –i < /tmp/initrd

12. Now we edit the init file to load the USB and SCSI drivers for the new initrd-usb.img ramdisk.

    nano init

13. Do a search for “mount –t proc /proc /proc” and add the following underneath this line. We want to load these USB and storage modules before any other modules that’s why these entries need to be at the top of the file.

    echo “Starting Openfiler on USB”

    echo “Loading scsi_mod.ko module”

    insmod /lib/scsi_mod.ko

    echo “Loading sr_mod.ko module”

    insmod /lib/sr_mod.ko

    echo “Loading sd_mod.ko module”

    insmod /lib/sd_mod.ko

    echo “Loading ehci-hcd.ko module”

    insmod /lib/ehci-hcd.ko

    echo “Loading uhci-hcd.ko module”

    insmod /lib/uhci-hcd.ko

    echo “Loading ohci-hcd.ko module”

    insmod /lib/ohci-hcd.ko

    sleep 5

    echo “Loading usb-storage.ko module”

    insmod /lib/usb-storage.ko

    sleep 5

14. Do a search for insmod /lib/scsi_mod.ko, insmod /lib/sd_mod.ko, insmod /lib/ehci-hcd.ko and insmod /lib/uhci-hcd.ko and remove these duplicate entries from the rest of the file. We do not want these loaded again.
15. Save the file and exit with CTRL X, then Y, or if you used vi then :wq!
16. Now we need to copy all of the modules in Step 13 into our working directory.
17. Go to the drivers directory

    cd /lib/modules/²/kernel/drivers

    Note²: just press tab to fill in this bit, you should only have one kernel.
    

18. Copy all of the modules in Step 13 to /tmp/a/lib.

    cp scsi/scsi_mod.ko /tmp/a/lib

    cp scsi/sr_mod.ko /tmp/a/lib

    cp scsi/sd_mod.ko /tmp/a/lib

    cp usb/host/ehci-hcd.ko /tmp/a/lib

    cp usb/host/uhci-hcd.ko /tmp/a/lib

    cp usb/host/ohci-hcd.ko /tmp/a/lib

    cp usb/storage/usb-storage.ko /tmp/a/lib

19. Now let’s package the contents of the working directory /tmp/a into our new initrd-usb.img.

    cd /tmp/a

    find . | cpio –c –o | gzip -9 > /boot/initrd-usb.img

20. Now all we need to do is edit the /boot/grub/menu.1st file to tell the kernel to use the new ramdisk that we just created. Remember that this new ramdisk is currently located in /boot/ (aka /dev/sda1) and is called initrd-usb.img.

    nano /boot/grub/menu.1st

21. Find the line starting with initrd /vmlinux-…………………… and replace with

    initrd /initrd-usb.img

22. Save the file and reboot the computer, remove the CD and allowing it to boot from the USB key. You now have your Openfiler installation booting from the USB key directly.

Hardware

The Total SATA 3 ports is 6, plus an additional 4 SATA 2 ports from the onboard adapter.

I have disabled all the SATA 2 ports from within the BIOS as I will only be using the SATA 3 ports from the three Add-in cards to support my 5 Seagate disks in a RAID-5 aggregate.

Overview of the Openfiler Setup

I have already setup my Openfiler Server by following the instructions from http://vmwire.com/2011/06/12/how-to-install-and-run-openfiler-on-a-usb-key/ to install Openfiler onto the Kingston DataTraveller+ 2Gb USB Key. Networking is setup and everything is working nicely ready for the configuration of the new RAID-5 Array.

Below is a screenshot of the Openfiler Hardware Information.

Setting up the Software RAID

I’m using software RAID due to the fact that SATA III RAID Controllers with 5 or more ports are currently still very expensive. The HighPoint RocketRaid 630 and the ASUS S6U3 Controllers are relatively cheap and can be picked up for less than £20 each.

1. You can view the list of block devices available to use on Openfiler by navigating to Volumes | Block Devices.

Openfiler has successfully picked up the 5 new disks and we can now manage them.

To set up the Software RAID we must first partition the disks as “RAID array member” partitions.

To do this you must click in each of the block devices and create a “RAID array member” partition. Remember to leave /dev/sda alone as this is the boot device.

1. Clicking on /dev/sdb brings up the partitioning page.
2. Select RAID array member from the Partition Type drop down menu and then just click on Create.

Continue creating the partitions on the remaining four disks by repeating Step 1.

Once complete the Block Device Management should look something like this.

Now we are ready to create the RAID Array. To do this we need to navigate to Volumes | Software RAID and create the array.

I’m going to create a RAID-5 (parity) array with a 64kB chunk size.

The Seagate disks only have about 1.82Tb usable capacity, so a RAID-5 array with 5 disks would give a total of 7.4Tb usable capacity.

Setting up the Volume Group

We can create the Volume Group by navigating to Volumes | Volume Groups.

I’ve decided to create a single volume group for all my services – CIFS, NFS, iSCSI and FC. We will then create Volumes from this single Volume Group to carve up the storage. The resulting Volume Group Management page will then look something like this.

That’s our Volume Group setup complete. You would never need to revisit the Volume Group Management page ever again, unless you either rebuild your disks or create new Volume Groups from new disks. For reference the path for this Volume Group is /dev/md0/volg_raid5/.

Setting up a new Volume

Now we can start carving up our 7.4Tb usable capacity by creating Volumes and then assigning these Volumes to specific services.

We can manage this by using the Add Volume page. I’m going to add a new 1Tb NFS volume for my VMware virtual machines.

To do this navigate to Volumes | Add Volume.

Upon creating this new Volume, the path for this Volume will then be /dev/md0/volg_raid5/nfs01/.

Setting up a new Sub-folder on a Volume

Now that we have created a Volume, we can now create a Sub-folder in which we can make a Share. I’m going with a 1:1 allocation of Volume to Sub-folder in my lab, so the naming conventions reflect this.

To do this, navigate to the Shares page. The screen should be similar to this.

We can create the new Share by clicking on the VMware Virtual Machines link.

Now we can create a new sub-folder, I’m going to call mine nfs01-vm01.

The Shares page will now display the following.

Setting up a new Share

To create the actual nfs01-vm01 NFS share that is mounted on our vSphere servers we need to make the share from the Sub-folder created in “Setting up a new Sub-folder from a Volume”.

1. Click on the nfs01-vm01 link and then click on the Make Share button.
2. Select the “Public guest access” radio button and click on Update.

1. Now scroll to the bottom of the page and click on the “RW” radio button underneath the NFS column, and then click on Update.

Note that you need to have setup network access configuration prior to doing any of these steps. This is not covered in this guide.

Again, for reference this nfs01-vm01 NFS share for use by VMware vSphere hosts has a path of /mnt/volg_raid5/nfs01/nfs01-vm01/.

Mounting the NFS share

The NFS volume is now ready to be mounted by VMware vSphere hosts. Just use /mnt/volg_raid5/nfs01/nfs01-vm01 as the “Folder” mount point.

Happy days!

[NEW]

Setting up a new Volume for CIFS

Now I can start carving up my remaining 6.4Tb usable capacity by creating Volumes and then assigning these Volumes to specific services. For this part I’m going to create a new Volume for CIFS.

We can manage this by using the Add Volume page. I’m going to add a new 3Tb CIFS volume for my Windows file storage.

To do this navigate to Volumes | Add Volume.

Upon creating this new Volume, the path for this Volume will then be /dev/md0/volg_raid5/cifs01/.

Setting up a new Sub-folder on a Volume for CIFS

Now that we have created a new Volume for CIFS, we can now create a Sub-folder in which we can make a Share. I’m going with a 1:1 allocation of Volume to Sub-folder in my lab, so the naming conventions reflect this.

To do this, navigate to the Shares page. The screen should be similar to this.

We can create the new Share by clicking on the Windows File Share.

Now we can create a new sub-folder, I’m going to call mine cifs01-smb01.

The Shares page will now display the following.

Setting up a new Share for CIFS

To create the actual cifs01-smb01 CIFS share that can be used for SMB file storage we need to make the share from the Sub-folder created in “Setting up a new Sub-folder on a Volume for CIFS”.

1. Click on the cifs01-smb01
   link and then click on the Make Share button.

1. Select the “Controlled access” radio button and click on Update.

1. Now scroll to the Group access configuration section in the middle and select the primary group for this CIFS share and also set Read or Read/Write Permissions for this share based on your Active Directory Groups. I’ve already created a Security Group called “openfiler cifs users” with which my AD account VIRTUAL\Hugo.Phan is a member of. Once done click Update.

    Note that to use Active Directory authentication, you must set up Authentication under the Accounts section. I’ve written a guide here http://vmwire.com/2011/06/13/how-to-setup-active-directory-authenticaton-on-openfiler/.

1. Now scroll all the way down to the bottom and configure the Host access configuration to the /mnt/volg_raid5/cifs01/cifs01-smb01/ Volume. Choose the options relevant to your environment, I’m making this share R/W accessible by all my devices in my network – 192.168.200.0/24. Then just click on Update to finish.

Note that you need to have setup network access configuration prior to doing any of these steps. This is not covered in this guide.

Again, for reference this cifs01-smb01 CIFS share for use as network file storage over the network has a path of /mnt/volg_raid5/cifs01/cifs01-smb01/.

Connecting to the SMB Share

The SMB share is now ready to be used by client computers. To connect just open a UNC path to it. of.virtual.local is the FQDN of my Openfiler Server.

Now enter your domain credentials.

Job done!