MSE Delivery Modes

The Cisco MSE comes preinstalled on a physical appliance with various performance characters. The MSE is delivered in two modes, the physical appliance and the virtual appliance.

Physical Appliance

When the MSE is located on the physical appliance, you can use the standard license center UI to add new licenses. When the MSE is located on the physical appliance, the license installation process is based on Cisco Unique Device Identifier (UDI). Choose Administration > License Center on the Cisco Prime Infrastructure UI to add the license.


Note

Virtual appliance licenses are not allowed on physical appliances.

Virtual Appliance

The MSE is also offered as a virtual appliance, to support lower-level, high, and very high deployments. When the MSE is located on the virtual appliance, the license is validated against Virtual Unique Device Identifier (VUDI) instead of UDI.


Note

MSE is available as a virtual appliance for Release 7.2 and later. The virtual appliance must be activated first before installing any other service licenses.

The MSE virtual appliance software is distributed as an Open Virtualization Archive (OVA) file. You can install the MSE virtual appliance using any of the methods for deploying an OVF supported by the VMware environment. Before starting, make sure that the MSE virtual appliance distribution archive is in a location that is accessible to the computer on which you are running vSphere Client.

For a virtual appliance, you must have an activation license. Without an activation license, the MSE starts in evaluation mode. Even if service licenses are present on the host, it rejects them if the activation license is not installed.


Note

See the VMware vSphere 4.0 documentation for more information about setting up your VMware environment.

You can add and delete a virtual appliance license either using the Services > Mobility Services Engine > Add Mobility Services Engine page when you are installing MSE for the first time, or you can use the Administration > License Center page to add or delete a license.

See the Adding and Deleting Mobility Services Engines and Licenses and the Deleting an MSE License File for more information on adding a license and deleting a license using the mobility services engine wizard.

For more details on deploying MSE virtual appliance, see the Cisco MSE Virtual Appliance Configuration Guide.

Operating Systems Requirements

The following operating systems are supported:

  • Red Hat Linux Enterprise server 5.4 64-bit operating system installations are supported.

  • Red Hat Linux version support on VMware ESX/ESXi Version 4.1 and later with either local storage or SAN over fiber channel.


Note

We recommend UCA and ESX/ESXi deployments for a virtual appliance.

Client Requirements

The MSE user interface requires Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0 or later with the Google Chrome plugin or Mozilla Firefox 3.6 or later releases.


Note

We strongly advise that you do not enable third-party browser extensions. In Internet Explorer, you can disable third-party browser extensions by choosing Tools > Internet Options and unselecting the Enable third-party browser extensions check box on the Advanced tab.

The client running the browser must have a minimum of 1 GB of RAM and a 2-GHz processor. The client device should not be running any CPU or memory-intensive applications.

Virtual Appliance Sizing

The following table lists the information on virtual appliance sizing.

Table 1 Virtual Appliance Sizing

Primary MSE

Resources

Supported License (Individually)

Virtual Appliance Level

Total Memory

Virtual CPUs

Base License (APs)

CMX License (APs)

wIPS License

Low End

6G

2

200

Not Supported

2000

Standard

16G

8

2500

2500

6000

High End

24G

16

5000

5000

10000

3355

16G

8

2500

2500

6000

Reinstalling MSE on a Physical Appliance

You must have root privileges to install the MSE on a physical appliance. To reinstall the MSE on a physical appliance, follow these steps:

    Step 1   Insert the provided MSE software image DVD. The system boots up and a console appears.
    Step 2   Select option 1 to reinstall the MSE software image. The system reboots and the configure appliance screen appears.
    Step 3   Enter the initial setup parameters and the system reboots again. Remove the DVD and follow the provided steps to start the MSE server.

    Deploying the MSE Virtual Appliance

    This section describes how to deploy the MSE virtual appliance on an ESXi host using the vSphere Client using the Deploy OVF wizard or from the command line.

    Deploying the MSE Virtual Appliance from the VMware vSphere Client

    The MSE virtual appliance is distributed as an OVA file that can be deployed on an ESXi using the vSphere Client. An OVA is a collection of items in a single archive. In the vSphere Client, you can deploy the OVA wizard to create a virtual machine running the MSE virtual appliance application as described in this section.


    Note

    While the following procedure provides general guidelines to deploy the MSE virtual appliance, the exact steps that you must perform may vary depending on the characteristics of your VMware environment and setup.


    Note

    Deploying virtual appliance takes at least 500 GB of available disk space on the ESXi host database. We recommend that the datastore on the host have a block size of at least 4 MB or more for ESXi 4.1 or earlier, else the deployment may fail. No such restriction is placed on the datastores on ESXi 5.0 and later.

    To deploy the MSE virtual appliance, follow these steps:

      Step 1   From the VMware vSphere Client main menu, choose File > Deploy OVF Template. The Deploy OVF Template window appears.
      Figure 1. Deploy OVF Template Window

      Step 2   Select the Deploy From File radio button and choose the OVA file that contains the MSE virtual appliance distribution from the drop-down list.
      Step 3   Click Next. The OVF Template Details window appears. VMware ESX/ESXi reads the OVA attributes. The details include the product you are installing, the size of the OVA file (download size), and the amount of disk space that must be available for the virtual machine.
      Step 4   Verify the OVF Template details, and click Next. The Name and Location window appear.
      Figure 2. Name and Location Window

      Step 5   Either keep the default name for the VM to be deployed in the Name text box or provide a new one, and click Next. This name value is used to identify the new virtual machine in the VMware infrastructure, you should use any name that distinguishes this particular VM in your environment. The Host or Cluster window appears.
      Figure 3. Host/Cluster Window

      Step 6   Choose the destination host or HA cluster on which you want to deploy the MSE VM, and click Next. The Resource Pool window appears.
      Step 7   If you have more than one resource pool in your target host environment, choose the resource pool to use for the deployment, and click Next. The Ready to Complete window appears.
      Step 8   Review the settings shown for your deployment and, if required, click Back to modify any of the settings shown.
      Step 9   Click Finish to complete the deployment. A message notifies you when the installation completes and you can see the MSE virtual appliance in your inventory.
      Step 10   Click Close to close the Deployment Completed Successfully dialog box.

      Configuring the Basic Settings to Start the MSE Virtual Appliance VM

      You have completed deploying (installing) the MSE virtual appliance on a new virtual machine. A node for the virtual machine now appears in the resource tree in the VMware vSphere Client window. Deploying the OVF template creates a new virtual machine in vCenter with the MSE virtual appliance application and related resources already installed on it. After deployment, you need to configure basic settings for the MSE virtual appliance.

      To start the MSE setup, follow these steps:

        Step 1   In the vSphere Client, click the MSE virtual appliance node in the resource tree. The virtual machine node should appear in the Hosts and Clusters tree below the host, cluster, or resource pool to which you deployed the MSE virtual appliance.
        Step 2   On the Getting Started tab, click the Power on the virtual machine link in Basic Tasks. The Recent Tasks window at the bottom of the vSphere Client pane indicates the status of the task associated with powering on the virtual machine. After the virtual machine successfully starts, the status column for the task shows Completed.
        Step 3   Click the Console tab, within the console pane to make the console prompt active for keyboard input.
        Step 4   Use the MSE setup wizard to complete the setup.

        Deploying the MSE Virtual Appliance Using the Command-Line Client

        This section describes how to deploy the MSE virtual appliance from the command line. As an alternative to using the vSphere Client to deploy the MSE OVA distribution, you can use the VMware OVF tool, which is a command-line client.

        To deploy an OVA with the VMware OVF tool, use the ovftool command, which uses the name of the OVA file to be deployed and the target location as arguments, as in the following example: 

        
ovftool MSE-VA-X.X.X-large.ova vi://my.vmware-host.example.com

        In this case, the OVA file to be deployed is MSE-VA-X.X.X-large.ova and the target ESX host is my.vmware-host.example.com. For complete documentation on the VMware OVF Tool, see the VMware vSphere 4.0 documentation.

        Adding Virtual Appliance License to the Prime Infrastructure

        You can add virtual appliance license to the Prime Infrastructure using the following two options:

        Adding a License File to the MSE Using the License Center

        To add a license, follow these steps:

          Step 1   Install the MSE virtual appliance.
          Step 2   Add the MSE to the Prime Infrastructure.
          Step 3   Choose Administration > License Center in the Prime Infrastructure UI to access the License Center page.
          Step 4   Choose Files > MSE Files from the left sidebar menu.
          Step 5   Click Add to add a license.

          The Add A License File menu appears.

          Step 6   Select the MSE and browse to the activation license file.
          Step 7   Click Submit.

          Once you submit, the license is activated and license information appears in the License Center page.

          Viewing the MSE License Information Using the License Center

          The license center allows you to manage the Prime Infrastructure, Cisco WLCs, and MSE licenses. To view the license information, follow these steps:

            Step 1   Choose Administration > License Center to access the License Center page.
            Step 2   Choose Summary > MSE from the left sidebar menu, to view the MSE summary page.

            The following table lists the MSE Summary page fields.

            Table 2 MSE Summary Page

            Field

            Description

            MSE Name

            Provides a link to the MSE license file list page.

            Service

            The service type can be CAS, wIPS, Mobile Concierge service, Location Analytics service, Billboard service, and Proxy service.

            Platform Limit

            Platform limit.

            Type

            Specifies the type of MSE.

            Installed Limit

            Shows the total number of client access points licensed across MSEs.

            License Type

            The three different types of licenses: permanent, evaluation, and extension.

            Count

            The number of CAS or wIPS elements currently licensed across MSEs.

            Removing a License File Using the License Center

            To remove a license, follow these steps:

              Step 1   Install the MSE virtual appliance.
              Step 2   Add the MSE to Prime Infrastructure using the wizard.
              Step 3   Choose Administration > License Center to access the License Center page.
              Step 4   Choose Files > MSE Files from the left sidebar menu.
              Step 5   Choose an MSE license file that you want to remove by selecting the MSE License File radio button, and click Remove.
              Step 6   Click OK to confirm the deletion.