Install Cisco Catalyst 8000V in VMware ESXi Environment

VMware ESXi is a hypervisor that allows the basic creation and management of virtual machines, and is one of the hypervisors supported by Cisco Catalyst 8000V. This hypervisor runs on x86 hardware with virtualization extensions, and you can use it to run several VMs simultaneously.

This chapter provides information about how to deploy Cisco Catalyst 8000V in ESXi environments, the requirements for a successful deployment, and the deployment methods that are supported.

Before you proceed, familiarize yourself with VMware vSphere information by referring to the official VMWare product documentation.


Caution

Oversubscription of host resources can reduce performance, and your instance could become unstable. We recommend following the guidelines and best practices for your host hypervisor.

Supported features and operations

VMware supports various features and operations that allow you to manage your virtual applications and perform operations such as cloning, migration, shutdown and resume.

Some of these operations save the current runtime state of the VM. When you restart the VM, the system restores this state. If the runtime state includes traffic-related state, on resumption or replaying the runtime state, additional errors, statistics, or messages are displayed on the user console. If the saved state is only configuration driven, you can use these features and operations without any issues.

See the tables to view all the supported features and operations for Cisco Catalyst 8000V instances deployed in ESXi environments.

Table 1. Supported VMware features for vCenter Server

Supported entities

Description

Cloning

Enables cloning a virtual machine or template, or cloning a virtual machine to a template.

Migration

The entire state of the virtual machine as well as its configuration file, if necessary, is moved to the new host even while the data storage remains in the same location on shared storage.

vMotion

Enables moving the VM from one physical server to another while the VM remains active.

Template

Uses templates to create new virtual machines by cloning the template as a virtual machine.
Table 2. Supported VMware operations (for vCenter server and vSphere client)

Supported entities

Description

Power on

Powers on the virtual machine and boots the guest operating system if the guest operating system is installed.

Power off

Stops the virtual machine until it is powered back. The power off option performs a “hard” power off, which is analogous to pulling the power cable on a physical machine and always works.

Shutdown

Shut Down, or soft power off uses VMware Tools to perform a graceful shutdown of a guest operating system. In certain situations, such as when VMware Tools is not installed or the guest operating system is unresponsive, the shut down might not complete, and you must use the power off option instead

Suspend

Suspends the virtual machine.

Reset or restart

Stops the virtual machine and restarts it.

OVF creation

An OVF package consisting of several files in a directory captures the state of a virtual machine including disk files that are stored in a compressed format. You can export an OVF package to your local computer.

OVA creation

You can create a single OVA package file from the OVF package/template. The OVA can then be distributed more easily; for example, it may be downloaded from a website or moved via a USB key.

Table 3. Supported networking features

Supported entities

Description

Custom MAC address

You can set up the MAC address manually for a virtual network adapter from both vCenter Server and vSphere Client.

Distributed VSwitch

A vSphere distributed switch on a vCenter Server data center can manage networking traffic for all associated hosts on the data center. This feature is available only from vCenter Server.

Distributed resources scheduler

Provides automatic load balancing across hosts.

NIC load balancing

Load balancing and failover policies allow you to determine how network traffic is distributed between adapters and how to reroute traffic if an adapter fails.This feature is available in both vCenter Server and vSphere Client.

NIC teaming

This feature is available in both vCenter Server and vSphere Client and allows you to set up an environment where each virtual switch connects to two uplink adapters that form a NIC team. The NIC teams can then either share the load of traffic between physical and virtual networks among some or all of its members, or provide passive failover in the event of a hardware failure or a network outage.

Note

 
NIC Teaming can cause a large number of ARP packets to flood the Cisco Catalyst 8000V and overload the CPU. To avoid this situation, reduce the number of ARP packets and implement NIC Teaming as Active-Standby rather than Active-Active.

vSwitch

A vSwitch is a virtualized version of a Layer 2 physical switch. A vSwitch can route traffic internally between virtual machines and link to external networks. You can use vSwitches to combine the bandwidth of multiple network adapters and balance communications traffic among them. You can also configure a vSwitch to handle a physical NIC fail-over. This feature is available in both vCenter Server and vSphere Client.

Table 4. High availability features

Supported entities

Description

VM-level high availability

To monitor operating system failures, VM-Level High Availability monitors heartbeat information in the VMware High Availability cluster. Failures are detected when no heartbeat is received from a given virtual machine within a user-specified time interval. VM-Level High Availability is enabled by creating a resource pool of VMs using VMware vCenter Server.

Host-level high availability

To monitor physical servers, an agent on each server maintains a heartbeat with the other servers in the resource pool such that a loss of heartbeat automatically initiates the restart of all affected virtual machines on other servers in the resource pool. Host-Level High Availability is enabled by creating a resource pool of servers or hosts, and enabling high availability in vSphere.

Fault tolerance

Using high availability, fault tolerance is enabled on the ESXi host. When you enable fault tolerance on the VM running the Cisco Catalyst 8000V instance, a secondary VM on another host in the cluster is created. If the primary host goes down, then the VM on the secondary host will take over as the primary VM for the Cisco Catalyst 8000V.


Note
Cisco IOS-based High Availability is not supported by the Cisco Catalyst 8000V instance. High Availability is supported on the VM host only.
Table 5. Storage options (for vCenter Server and vSphere Web Client)

Supported entities

Description

Local storage

Local storage is in the internal hard disks located inside your ESXi host. Local storage devices do not support sharing across multiple hosts. A datastore on a local storage device can be accessed by only one host.

External storage target

You can deploy the Cisco Catalyst 8000V instance on external storage, such as a Storage Area Network (SAN).

Mount or pass through USB storage

You can connect USB sticks to the Cisco Catalyst 8000V instance and use them as storage devices. In ESXi, you need to add a USB controller and then assign the disk devices to the Cisco Catalyst 8000V instance.

Cisco Catalyst 8000V supports USB disk hot-plug. However, you can use only two USB disk hot-plug devices at a time.

USB hub is not supported.

Installation requirements

This section specifies the requirements for you to install Cisco Catalyst 8000V in ESXi environment. These requirements have been fully tested and meet the performance benchmarks.

ESXi hypervisor requirements

Cisco IOS XE release

vSphere Web Client

vCenter Server

Cisco IOS XE 17.18.x releases

Cisco IOS XE 17.16.x releases

Cisco IOS XE 17.15.x releases

Cisco IOS XE 17.14.x releases

Cisco IOS XE 17.13.x releases

Cisco IOS XE 17.12.x releases

VMware vSphere Web Client versions 8.0 and 7.0

VMware ESXi 8.0 and ESXi 7.0

Cisco IOS XE 17.11.x releases

Cisco IOS XE 17.10.x releases

Cisco IOS XE 17.9.x releases

Cisco IOS XE 17.8.x releases

Cisco IOS XE 17.7.x releases

Cisco IOS XE 17.6.x releases

VMware vSphere Web Client versions 7.0 and 6.7

VMware ESXi 7.0 and ESXi 6.7

Cisco IOS XE 17.5.x releases

VMware vSphere Web Client versions 6.7 and 6.5

VMware ESXi 6.7 and ESXi 6.5

Cisco IOS XE 17.4.x releases

VMware vSphere Web Client versions 6.7 and 6.5

VMware ESXi 6.7 and ESXi 6.5

Note

Do not use a standalone vSphere client to manage the ESXi server. Starting ESXi 6.0, it is no longer possible to directly deploy Cisco Catalyst 8000V in ESXi in the case of an ova deployment. You must have a vMware vCenter server and a vSphere client to deploy a .ova file.

vCPU requirements

These are the supported vCPU configurations for the installation.

  • 1 vCPU: requires a minimum of 4 GB RAM allocation

  • 2 vCPUs: requires a minimum of 4 GB RAM allocation

  • 4 vCPUs: requires a minimum of 4 GB RAM allocation

  • 8 vCPUs: requires a minimum of 4 GB RAM allocation

  • 16 vCPUS: requires a minimum of 8 GB RAM allocation (supported from Cisco IOS XE 17.11.1a)


Note
The required vCPU configuration depends on the throughput license and technology package installed. For more information, see the data sheet for your release.

vNIC requirements

The Virtual Network Interface Cards (VNICs) listed in this section are supported for the ESXi installation. A maximum of 8 vNICs is supported.

  • ConnectX-6 - Supported from Cisco IOS XE 17.18.1a

  • ixgbe - Supported from Cisco IOS XE 17.10.1

  • ConnectX-5VF - Supported from Cisco IOS XE 17.9.1

  • iavf - Supported from Cisco IOS XE 17.9.1

  • i40eVF - Supported from Cisco IOS XE 17.4.1 to Cisco IOS XE 17.8.x

  • VMXNET3 - Supported from Cisco IOS XE 17.4.1

  • iXGBeVF - Supported from Cisco IOS XE 17.4.1


Note

The supported version of the NIC driver and the firmware version are the default versions that are included with the hypervisor package.

Other requirements

  • VMware vCenter - installation tool

  • VMware vSwitch - standard or distributed vSwitches are supported

  • Hard Drive - only a single hard disk drive is supported. Multiple hard disk drives on a VM are not supported

  • Virtual Disk - both 16 GB and 8 GB virtual disks are supported

  • Virtual CPU core - one virtual CPU core is required. This needs a 64-bit processor with Virtualization Technology (VT) enabled in the BIOS setup of the host machine.

  • Virtual hard disk space - a minimum size of 8 GB is required

  • A default video controller, an SCSI controller set, and an installed virtual CD/DVD drive are also required for this installation.

What to do next

Familiarize yourself with the secure boot configuration before proceeding with the installation. For more information, see Enabling VNF Secure Boot.

Restrictions for deploying in ESXi environment

The VMware features and operations listed here are not supported in Cisco Catalyst 8000V. Using or performing these unsupported versions might result in dropped packets, dropped connections, and other error statistics.

  • Distributed Resource Scheduling (DRS)

  • Fault tolerance

  • Resume

  • Snapshot

  • Suspend

Deploying the OVA file using vSphere

The VMware vSphere Web Client is a web application that runs on x86 hardware with virtualization extensions and provides access to the VMware vCenter Server.

You can use the VMware vSphere Client or the vSphere Web Client to deploy the .ova installation file. First, download the .ova file from the Cisco Software Download page and then use this file for deployment.

Use the VMware vSphere Web Client software to:

  • Create, configure, and manage VMs on the vCenter Server.

  • Start or stop a Cisco Catalyst 8000V instance.

Guidelines when deploying the OVA file

These restrictions apply when you deploy the .ova file by using vSphere.

  • If you change the virtual CPU configuration, you must reboot the Cisco Catalyst 8000V instance. However, changing the RAM allocation does not require a reboot.

  • When you deploy the OVA, the VM requires two virtual CD/DVD drives, one for the OVF environment file and one for the .iso file.

  • You can use the OVA package to select the virtual CPU configuration.

Deploy the OVA to the VM

Perform these steps to deploy a .ova file to the VM.

Procedure

Step 1

Log in to the VMware vSphere client and choose File > Deploy OVF Template.

Step 2

In the OVA Wizard, point the source to the Cisco Catalyst 8000V OVA to be deployed and click Next .

Step 3

The system displays the OVF Template Details, which contain information about the OVA. Review this information, and click Next.

Step 4

In the Name and Inventory Location field, specify the name for the VM and click Next .

Step 5

From the Deployment Configuration drop-down list, choose the desired hardware configuration profile and click Next.

Step 6

In the Storage field, choose the Datastore to use for the VM and click Next.

Step 7

In the Disk Format field, choose one of these disk format options and click Next.

  • Thick Provision Lazy Zeroed
  • Thick Provision Eager Zeroed

Note

 
The Thin Provision option is not supported. The Thick Provision Eager Zeroed option takes longer to install but provides better performance.

Step 8

In the Network Mapping area, allocate one or more virtual network interface card (vNIC) on the destination network using the drop-down list.

Select the network mappings for the 3 default vNICs created during the OVA deployment. You can choose which vNIC will map to the router’s management interface when setting the bootstrap properties.

Step 9

Select the vNIC to connect at Power On and click Next.

When the Cisco Catalyst 8000V installation using the OVA is complete, two additional vNICS are allocated. Cisco Catalyst 8000V supports up to ten vNICs. You must manually create additional vNICs on the VM.

What to do next

Proceed to configure the bootstrap properties for the VM. After you change the bootstrap properties, the system treats the VM as new. When the VM restarts, it removes all pre-existing network configuration.

Configure the bootstrap properties

Before you begin

Perform the Deploy the OVA to the VM task.

Perform this task to configure the bootstrap properties for the OVA file deployment and to complete the deployment. The bootstrap properties are optional when you create the VM. You can set these properties to provision the VM before starting it.

Procedure

Step 1

In the VMWare vSphere client, navigate to the VM properties page.

Step 2

Configure these bootstrap properties for the VM.

Table 6. OVA Bootstrap Properties

Property

Description

Bootstrap Properties

Console

Configures the console mode. Possible values are virtual and serial.

Login Username

Sets the login username for the router.

Login Password

Sets the login password for the router.

Management Interface

Designates the management interface for the Cisco Catalyst 8000V instance. The format must be GigabitEthernetx or GigabitEthernetx.xxx.

Note

 
The GigabitEthernet0 interface is no longer supported.

Management vLAN

Configures the dot1Q VLAN interface. The management interface must be configured using the GigabitEthernetx.xxx format.

Management Interface IPv4 Address/Mask

Configures the IPv4 address and subnet mask for the management interface.

Management IPv4 Default Gateway

Configures the IPv4 management default gateway address. If using DHCP, enter “dhcp” in the field.

Management IPv4 Gateway

Configures the IPv4 management default gateway address. If using DHCP, enter “dhcp” in the field.

Management IPv4 Network

Configures the IPv4 network (such as “192.168.2.0/24” or “192.168.2.0 255.255.255.0”) that the management gateway should route to. If a default route (0.0.0.0/0) is desired, you can leave this field blank.

PNSC IPv4 Address

Configures the IP address of the Cisco Prime Network Services Controller.

This setting is used if you plan to remotely manage the Cisco Catalyst 8000V instance using the Cisco Prime Network Services Controller.

Router name

Configures the hostname of the router.

Resource Template

Configures the Resource Template.

Possible values: default, service_plane_medium, service_plane_heavy

Features

Enable SCP Server

Enables the IOS SCP feature.

Enable SSH Login and Disable Telnet Login

Enables remote login using SSH and disables remote login via Telnet. Requires that the login username and password are set.

Additional Configuration Properties

Enable Password

Configures the password for privileged (enable) access.

Domain Name

Configures the network domain name.

License Boot Level

Configures the license technology level that is available when the Cisco Catalyst 8000V instance boots. The available license levels are:

  • network-essentials

  • network-advantage

  • network-premier

Note

 
For details on Cisco DNA licenses, see Cisco DNA Software for SD-WAN and Routing.

Note

 

After you make any change to the bootstrap properties, the system assumes that you are starting with a fresh VM. So when the VM restarts, all pre-existing networking configuration is removed.

You can also configure advanced properties after the router boots.

Step 3

After you configure the router properties, click Next. The system displays the Ready to Complete page with the settings to be used when the OVA is deployed.

Step 4

Select Power On After Deployment to automatically power on the VM.

Step 5

Click Finish to deploy the OVA.

The OVA deploys the .iso file. If you select Power on After Deployment, the VM is automatically powered on. After the VM is powered on, the Cisco Catalyst 8000V instance begins the installation and boot process. If a bootstrap configuration file is included in the OVA, the router configuration is automatically enabled.

What to do next

To learn about the next steps, see Booting the Cisco Catalyst 8000V and Accessing the Console .

Deploy the VM using COT

To deploy the Cisco Catalyst 8000V VM, use the cotdeploy...esxi command. Note that the command description provided in this task offers a general guidance. The exact steps may vary depending on your VMware environment and setup.

Procedure

Run the cotdeploy...esxi command to deploy the Cisco Catalyst 8000V . The script options are described at: http://cot.readthedocs.io/en/latest/usage_deploy_esxi.html

Note

 

The default values may vary depending on the Cisco Catalyst 8000V version.

Edit the basic properties of the VM

Perform these steps to edit the basic properties of the Cisco Catalyst 8000V VM using COT.

Before you begin

Download and install the COT libraries and script. For instructions, refer to the GitHub site at http://cot.readthedocs.io/en/latest/installation.html.

Procedure

Step 1

To edit the basic properties of the OVA, use the cot edit-properties command.

Example:

cot edit-properties

-p key1 = value1 , --properties key1 = value1

This command sets properties using key value pairs. For Example, -p "login-username=cisco" sets the login username using a key value pair.

Here, -o output specifies the name or the path to a new OVA package if you are creating a new OVA instead of updating the existing OVA.

Step 2

Add additional arguments to the cot edit-properties command, if required.

This table specifies the cot edit-properties arguments that can be used to edit the basic properties of the VM.

Script step

Description

 

cot edit propertie
s c8000v-universalk9.ova

Edits the basic environment properties of the OVA file.

 

-p "login-username=cisco"

Sets the bootstrap login username.

 

-p "login-password=cisco"

Sets the bootstrap login password.

 

-o "c8000v-universalk9-customized.ova"

Saves a modified OVA that contains configuration commands from the text file.

For more information on the cot edit-properties command, see: http://cot.readthedocs.io/en/latest/usage_edit_properties.html. 


cot edit-properties c8000v-universalk9.ova
-p "login-username=cisco" 
  
-p "login-password=cisco" 
-o c8000v-universalk9-customized.ova 
\# save modifications to a new OVA
cot info c8000v-universalk9-customized.ova
  # verify the new values of properties in the OVA
(...)
Properties:
  <config-version>                                        "1.0"
  Router Name                                             ""
  Login Username                                          "cisco"
  Login Password                                          "cisco"
  Management Interface                                    "GigabitEthernet1"
  Management VLAN                                         ""
  Management Interface IPv4 Address/Mask                  ""

Edit the custom properties of the VM

You can add custom properties to your Cisco Catalyst 8000V instance based on the Cisco IOS XE CLI commands using the vSphere GUI. You can add these properties either before or after you boot the Cisco Catalyst 8000V instance. If you set these custom properties after you boot the Cisco Catalyst 8000V instance, you must reload the router or power-cycle the VM for the properties settings to take effect.

To edit the vApp options to add the custom Cisco Catalyst 8000V properties, perform these steps.

Procedure

Step 1

In the vSphere GUI, choose the Options tab.

Step 2

Choose vApp Options > Advanced.

Step 3

In the Advanced Property Configuration window, click Properties.

Step 4

Click New to add a property.

Step 5

In the Edit Property Settings window, enter the required information to create a new custom property based on the appropriate Cisco IOS XE CLI command.

Note

 
Before adding a custom property, make sure that the Cisco IOS XE command upon which it is based is supported for your Cisco Catalyst 8000V version.

  1. Enter the label. This is a descriptive string for the property.

  2. Enter the com.cisco.c8000v option in the Class ID field.

  3. Assign the property an ID of "ios-config-xxxx." Here, xxxx is a sequence number from 0001 to 9999 that determines the order in which the custom properties are applied.

  4. Enter a description for the property.

  5. Enter the property type as “string”. This is the only type supported.

  6. Enter the default value as the Cisco IOS XE CLI command the custom property is based on.

Step 6

Click OK.

Step 7

In the Advanced Property Configuration window, click OK.

Step 8

Reboot the Cisco Catalyst 8000V instance.

You must reboot the router for the new or edited properties to take effect.

Deploy the VM using COT

To deploy the Cisco Catalyst 8000V VM, use the cotdeploy...esxi command. Note that the command description provided in this task offers a general guidance. The exact steps may vary depending on your VMware environment and setup.

Procedure

Run the cotdeploy...esxi command to deploy the Cisco Catalyst 8000V . The script options are described at: http://cot.readthedocs.io/en/latest/usage_deploy_esxi.html

Note

 

The default values may vary depending on the Cisco Catalyst 8000V version.

Command references for deploying OVA using COT

This section describes the COT commands and scripts that are commonly used for deploying Cisco Catalyst 8000V using COT.

cot edit-properties

This command is part of COT and lets you configure or modify the properties within the OVA file. Use the cot edit-properties command to pre-apply a small number of configuration commands to the OVA.

cot edit-properties ova-filename

Here, -o output specifies the name or path to a new OVA package, if you are creating a new OVA instead of updating the existing OVA.

-c config-file specifies the name of a text file containing IOS XE commands to be added to the OVA.

In this example, a previously created text file, iosxe_config.txt, containing the appropriate IOS XE configuration commands, is added to the OVA deployment using the cot edit-properties command. 


$ cat iosxe_config.txt
  
interface GigabitEthernet1
no shutdown
ip address 192.168.100.10 255.255.255.0
!
ip route 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 GigabitEthernet1 192.168.100.1
$ cot edit-properties c8000v-universalk9.ova \
     -o c8000v-universalk9-customized.ova \
     -c iosxe_config.txt
$ cot info c8000v-universalk9-customized.ova

The cot info command is used to show the modified OVA. 


Properties:
  <config-version>              "1.0"
  Router Name                   ""

...


  Intercloud Tunnel Interface Gateway IPv4 Address   ""
  <ios-config-0001>             "interface GigabitEthernet1"
  <ios-config-0002>             "no shutdown"
  <ios-config-0003>             "ip address 192.168.100.10 255.255.255.0"
  <ios-config-0004>             "ip route 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 GigabitEthernet1 192.168.100.1"

This table specifies the command and arguments used in the example.

Script step

Description

 

cot edit properties c8000v-universalk9.ova

Edits the custom environment properties of the OVA file.

 

-o "c8000v-universalk9-customized.ova"

Creates a new OVA containing configuration commands from the text file.

 

-c iosxe_config.txt

The text file that contains IOS XE configuration commands. Each line of configuration in this file results in an entry such as com.cisco.productname.ios-config-xxxx in the XML of the OVA.

cot inject-config

The cot inject-config command is used in COT to embed one or more bootstrap configuration files into the OVA package.

Use the cot inject-config commandto pre-apply a large set of configuration commands to the OVA, for example, a complete running configuration. This method is efficient for file size and loading time, because it uses plain text for configuration commands rather than XML.

For more information about the cot inject-config command, see http://cot.readthedocs.io/en/latest/usage_inject_config.html

cot inject-config ova-filename

Here, -o output specifies the name or path to a new OVA package if you are creating a new OVA instead of updating the existing OVA.

-c config-file specifies the name of a text file, such as iosxe_config.txt to be embedded in the OVA.

In this example, the cot inject-config command adds Cisco IOS XE commands in text file iosxe_config.txt to the OVA. 


$ cat iosxe_config.txt  
interface GigabitEthernet1
no shutdown
ip address 192.168.100.10 255.255.255.0
!
ip route 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 GigabitEthernet1 192.168.100.1
$ cot inject-config c8000v-universalk9.ova \
     
 -o c8000v-universalk9-customized.ova \
      -c iosxe_config.txt
$ cot info c8000v-universalk9-customized.ova

<.. other output snipped for brevity ..>


Files and Disks:                       File Size  Capacity Device
                                       --------- --------- --------------------
  c8000v_harddisk.vmdk                71.50 kB   8.00 GB harddisk @ SCSI 0:0
  bdeo.sh                               52.42 kB           
  README-OVF.txt                         8.53 kB           
  README-BDEO.txt                        6.75 kB           
  cot.tgz                              116.78 kB           
  c8000v-universalk9.iso             484.80 MB           cdrom @ IDE 1:0
  config.iso                           350.00 kB           cdrom @ IDE 1:1

This table specifies the cot inject-config command and arguments used in the example.

Script step

Description

 

cot inject-config 
c8000v-universalk9.ova

Edits the custom environment properties of the OVA file.

 

-o "c8000v-universalk9-customized.ova"

Specifies the name of the new or modified OVA that contains the configuration commands from the text file.

 

-c iosxe_config.txt

The name of the text file that contains the IOS XE configuration commands.

Create the VM using the iso file

Perform this task to install the .iso file on the VMware ESXi host manually and create the VM using the vSphere GUI. This procedure provides general guidance for deploying Cisco Catalyst 8000V, but the steps may vary depending on your VMware environment and setup. The instructions in this procedure are based on VMware ESXi 5.0.

Procedure

Step 1

Download the iso file from the Cisco Catalyst 8000V software installation image package and copy it onto the VM Datastore.

Step 2

In the vSphere client, choose Create a New Virtual Machine.

Step 3

From Configuration, choose the option to create a custom configuration, and click Next.

Step 4

In the Name and Location field, specify the name for the VM and click Next.

Step 5

In the Storage field, choose the datastore to use for the VM and click Next .

Step 6

From the Virtual Machine Version drop-down field,choose Virtual Machine Version 15 or a higher version that is available and click Next.

Note

 
Cisco Catalyst 8000V is not compatible with ESXi Server versions prior to 6.5 Update 2.

Step 7

In Guest Operating System area, choose Linux and the Other 3.x Linux (64-bit)options and click Next.

Step 8

In the CPUs area, configure these settings and click Next:

  1. Number of virtual sockets (virtual CPUs)

  2. Number of cores per socket: The number of cores per socket should always be set to 1, regardless of the number of virtual sockets selected. For example, a Cisco Catalyst 8000V with a 4 vCPU configuration should be configured as 4 sockets and 1 core per socket.

Step 9

In the Memory field, configure the supported memory size for your Cisco Catalyst 8000V release and click Next.

Step 10

In the Network field, allocate at least three virtual network interface cards (vNICs).

  1. Select the number of vNICs that you want to connect from the drop-down menu.

    Note

     
    The VMware ESXi interface allows you to create 4 vNICs during the initial VM setup. You can add more vNICs after creating the VM and booting Cisco Catalyst 8000V for the first time.

  2. Add the vNICs.

    Select a different network for each vNIC.

    Select the adapter type from the drop-down menu. See the requirements sections in this guide for the supported adapter type in your release.

  3. Select all the vNICs to connect at power-on and click Next. You can add vNICs into the VM using vSphere while the Cisco Catalyst 8000V is running. For more information about adding vNICS to an existing VM, see the vSphere documentation.

Step 11

From the SCSI Controller drop-down field, choose VMware Paravirtual and click Next.

Step 12

From the Select a Disk drop-down field, choose Create a New Virtual Disk .

Step 13

In the Create a Disk area, configure these settings and click Next:

  1. Capacity: Disk Size: The virtual hard disk size required in your release. See the requirements section in this chapter for the supported disk size.

  2. Disk Provisioning: Select either Thick Provision Lazy Zeroed or Thick Provision Eager Zeroed.

    Note

     
    The Thin Provision option is not supported. Choosing Thick Provision Eager Zeroed takes longer to install, but it provides better performance.

  3. Location: Store with the Virtual Machine

Step 14

From the Advanced Options field, choose SCSI (0:0) for the virtual device node.

Step 15

On the Ready to Complete window, click the Edit the Virtual Machine settings before completion.

Step 16

Select the Continue checkbox.

Step 17

In the Hardware tab, click New CD/DVD Drive.

  1. Choose the Device Type that the VM will boot from:

    Choose the Datastore ISO file option to boot from the .iso file. Browse to the location of the .iso file on the datastore set in step 1.

  2. In the Device Status field, select the Connect at Power On checkbox.

  3. Select the Virtual Device Node CD/DVD drive on the host that the VM will boot from.

Step 18

In the Resources tab, under CPU, set the Resource Allocation setting to Unlimited and click OK.

Step 19

Click Finish.

The VM is now configured for the Cisco Catalyst 8000V and is ready to boot. The Cisco Catalyst 8000V is booted when the VM is powered on.

Note

 

To configure the Day 0 settings of a manually installed Cisco Catalyst 8000V, attach a second CD/DVD drive pointing to an ISO that contains the said bootstrap configuration. For further details on the supported bootstrap ISO contents, see Day 0 Configuration.

Note

 
To access and configure the Cisco Catalyst 8000V from the serial port on the ESXi host instead of the virtual VGA console, provision the VM to use this setting before powering on the VM and starting the router.

What to do next

For the next steps, see Booting the Cisco Catalyst 8000V VM and Accessing the Console sections.

Performance enhancements on ESXi configurations

Improve the performance of Cisco Catalyst 8000V running in an ESXi environment by adjusting these settings on the host and the virtual machine.

  • Enable the hypervisor performance settings on the hypervisor.

  • Limit the overhead of vSwitch by enabling SR-IOV for supported physical NICs.

  • "Ensure that the vCPUs of the VM run on the same NUMA node as the physical NICs.

  • Set the VM Latency Sensitivity setting to High.

Host configuration settings

To improve VMware ESXi performance, use the host configuration settings described here.

  • Choose High Performance from the Power Management field.

  • Disable Hyperthreading.

  • Enable SR-IOV for supported physical adapters.

Virtual machine configuration settings

To improve the performance of the VMware ESXi configuration, configure these settings on the host:

  • Ensure that the ESXi version is compatible with your Cisco Catalyst 8000V version.

  • Set the Virtual Hardware: CPU reservation setting to Maximum.

  • Reserve all the guest memory in Virtual Hardware: Memory.

  • Choose the VMware Paravirtual option from Virtual Hardware: SCSI Controller.

  • From the Virtual Hardware: Network Adapter: Adapter Type option, choose SR-IOV for supported NICs

  • Configure the General Guest OS Version > VM Options option to Other 3.x or later Linux (64-bit).

  • Configure the VM Options option under Advanced Latency Sensitivity to High.

  • In VM Options > Advanced Edit Configuration, add numa.nodeAffinity to the same NUMA node as the SRIOV NIC.