Deploying the Prime Optical Virtual Appliance
You can deploy a preconfigured Prime Optical virtual appliance. This consists in deploying a ready for use virtual machine, already installed and configured with RHEL, Oracle and Prime Optical. It is distributed/released as OVF/OVA file (Open Virtual Machine Format).
Before You Begin
- Make sure you have the Prime Optical installation USB drive—Linux.
- Make sure that the VMware setup is available and accessible via vSphere client (Consult your system administrator on the VMware configuration).
- Make sure that VMwAre setup can support the virtual machine to be deployed as a virtual appliance. Check the VM disk, memory, and CPU description (Consult your system administrator on the VMware configuration).
- Note the name for the VM, inventory location, host/cluster name, and disk format and location to store the VM virtual disks (Consult your system administrator on the VMware configuration).
Note
See “About Virtual Disk Provisioning Policies” in VMware vSphere documentation for disk format details.
To deploy the Cisco Prime Optical virtual appliance:
Note
Make sure to identify the network information of the VM to deploy such as the hostname, domain name, IP address, netmask/prefix, default gateway, and DNS.
Step 1
Insert the Cisco Prime Optical Server installation USB drive—Linux in your workstation.
Wait for the automatic discovery of the device.
You can find the OVF file at the following location:
/media/<USB-mount-point>/PrimeOptical_10_5_0/PrimeOptical10.5.ovf file
Step 2
Start the VMware vSphere Client and enter the IP address or name of the host that needs to be directly managed.
Step 3
Enter the username and password of the VMware server.
Step 4
Click Login.
Step 5
Choose File > Deploy OVF Template.
Step 6
Navigate to the OVF template file (va.ovf), then click Next.
Step 7
Verify OVF details, and then click Next.
Step 8
Specify the virtual appliance name and location for the template that you are deploying, then click Next.
Step 9
Select the VM host or cluster on which you want to run the OVF template, then click Next.
Step 10
Navigate to and select the resource pool (if required) where you want to run the OVF template (check with the VMware setup administrator), and then click Next.
Step 11
Select a datastore to store the deployed OVF template, and then click Next.
On this page, the datastore is a logical repository that has already been configured on the destination cluster or host. Select a datastore that has enough space to store the VM and all its virtual disks.
Step 12
Select a disk format to store the virtual disks, and then click Next. See “ About Virtual Disk Provisioning Policies ” in VMware vSphere documentation for disk format details.
Step 13
Verify the details of the OVF file, the name of the virtual appliance, size, host, and storage details, then click Finish to start the deployment. Consult your system administrator for more information on the VMware setup.
This may take a while to complete. Check the progress bar in the Deploying Virtual Application window to monitor the task status.
After the deployment task has successfully completed, a confirmation window appears.
Step 14
Click Close.
The virtual appliance that you deployed is listed under the host, in the left pane of the vSphere client.
Step 15
Enter the following commands to unmount the image file and free the device:
Booting and Configuring the Prime Optical Virtual Appliance
To boot and then configure the Prime Optical virtual appliance:
Step 1
After deploying the virtual appliance, select the virtual machine name in vSphere, right-click it and choose Open Console.
Step 2
Choose Power > Power On, and then click in the window.
During initial boot of the newly deployed machine, you will be prompted to enter root (system) credentials (password is cisco!).
The VM is reachable only through the console till the network configuration is done.
Step 3
Edit the /cisco/PrimeOpticalServer/cfg/va.cfg configuration file. The file content is reported below:
The configuration file must be modified to set the target networking parameters of the VM.
Step 4
Edit and enter the hostname, IP address, gateway, prefix, DNS, and domain information in the /cisco/PrimeOpticalServer/cfg/va.cfg configuration file. Consult your system administrator on the VMware configuration for appropriate values.
Note
Hostname must be unqualified hostname (va) and not fully qualified hostname (va.cisco.com). The hostname must be registered in DNS.
Step 5
Save and exit the file when you are done editing.
Step 6
Run the /opt/CiscoTransportManagerServer/bin/va_config.sh script and enter yes to apply the configuration.
Step 7
When you are prompted, reboot the VM.
Step 8
After reboot, the VM is reachable using SSH and Prime Optical will start to boot. It may take some time.
Step 9
For troubleshooting or configuration problems, view the /temp_CTM/va_cfg.log file.