Introduction to Cisco Prime Network Registrar IPAM Virtual Appliance 8.1.2

The Cisco Prime Network Registrar IPAM virtual appliance aims at eliminating the installation, configuration and maintenance costs associated with running Cisco Prime Network Registrar IPAM on a local system. It also guarantees portability and thus reduces the risk in moving Cisco Prime Network Registrar IPAM from one machine to another.

You must get a license of Cisco Prime Network Registrar IPAM virtual appliance, and download the virtual appliance from Cisco.com. Upon initializing the virtual appliance, and after running the configurenetwork and configureipam scripts, you have to add the license file. Cisco Prime Network Registrar IPAM will then be up and running, available to be configured.

This is different from just downloading a copy of Cisco Prime Network Registrar IPAM and installing it on a server or virtual machine provided by the customer, in that the operating system on which Cisco Prime Network Registrar IPAM runs is also provided in the virtual appliance.

The Cisco Prime Network Registrar IPAM virtual appliance supports VMware ESXi 5.0 or later platforms.

How the Cisco Prime Network Registrar IPAM 8.1.2 Virtual Appliance Works

The virtual appliance consists of a virtual machine in the OVA format, which contains a runnable guest OS (CentOS 6.5) and Cisco Prime Network Registrar IPAM 8.1.2 installed on that OS. When the virtual appliance is deployed, Cisco Prime Network Registrar IPAM 8.1.2 is already pre-installed and is configured by running the configureipam script, after the network configuration is complete by running the configurenetwork script. .

How to Download the Cisco Prime Network Registrar IPAM 8.1.2 Virtual Appliance

Do the following to download the Cisco Prime Network Registrar IPAM virtual appliance:

    Step 1   Download the IPAM OVA file from www.cisco.com and place it in a location which is accessible from the VMWare vSphere client.
    Step 2   Connect to the VMWare Server where you want to deploy the OVA and highlight the server name.
    Step 3   Click File -> Deploy OVF Template and click browse button to the location of the OVA.
    Step 4   Click Next through the dialogues and make changes as appropriate.
    Step 5   Once the Deploy process completes, start the virtual machine and right click to choose Open Console.
    Step 6   Set a root password for the virtual appliance when you are prompted to. There is no default password.

    Monitoring Disk Space Availability

    To view the disk space availability, do the following: :

    1. In the vSphere Client window, select the host/server on which the virtual Cisco Prime Network Registrar IPAM 8.1.2 appliance resides.
    2. Click Summary. The Resources area of the Summary tab, displays the capacity of the disk and the CPU and memory used.
    3. Select the virtual machine and click the Summary tab.

      The Resources area of the Summary tab displays the disk space details for the machine.

    To monitor the disk space availability using the console, do the following:

      Step 1   Select the virtual machine in the vSphere Client window and either click the Console tab on the right pane or right-click the virtual machine name and choose Open Console.
      Step 2   Log in as root and type df -k. The disk space details are displayed.

      If the disk space on the disk mounted on /data is not enough, then you should increase the size of the disk (see the Increasing the Size of Disk).

      Increasing the Size of Disk

      The growfilesystem script causes the data partition, /dev/sdb1 to grow to be the size of the entire data disk. It is trivial to expand the size of the data disk that the operating system sees, using VMware. To ensure that the operating system recognizes the bigger disk, you have to restart the VM and run the growfilesystem after increasing the size of the disk.


      Note
      Before running the growfilesystem script, ensure that you backup the entire /data/incontrol directory and that it is not stored anywhere in the file system under /data. Running the growfilesystem script after restarting the VM ensures that the filesystem uses all the space in the partition.

      If you need a bigger disk, do the following:

        Step 1   Stop the VM.
        Step 2   Increase the size of the disk by changing the size in the Virtual Machine Properties window. To open the Virtual Machine Properties window, you have to select the host name, right-click, and choose Edit Settings.
        Step 3   Restart the VM. This ensures that the partition for the Cisco Prime Network Registrar IPAM data covers the entire disk.
        Step 4   After the VM is up and running, log in as the root user and run the growfilesystem script:

        Example: 
        /usr/local/etc/growfilesystem

        This script will:

        • Unmount the data partition

        • Increase the size of the partition to be the size of the disk

        • Turn the ext3 filesystem into an ext2 filesystem

        • Expand the filesystem to be the size of the partition (which is now the size of the disk)

        • Turn the ext2 filesystem back into an ext3 filesystem

        • Remount the disk

        Note   

        Make sure Cisco Prime Network Registrar IPAM services are stopped before you run growfilesystem script.

        Troubleshooting

        If you experience any issues while working with the Cisco Prime Network Registrar IPAM 8.1.2 virtual appliance, we recommend you to do the following:

        Examine the log files in /opt/incontrol/log. Look particularly for errors in the log files as these signal exceptional conditions. If you are unable to resolve the problem and you have purchased Cisco support, then submit a case to Cisco Technical Assistance Center (TAC) regarding the problem.