The vDRA vSphere installer launches vDRA VMs as specified in the User Input structure. Once the VMs are launched, all VMs must be registered with the master as displayed using the command show running-config docker | tab. Also, the system percent-complete must reach 100% as displayed using the command show system status.

Once the VMs are registered, the installer is done and you can proceed with configuring the vDRA system.

VMware ESXi 6.5 must be installed on all the blades that are used to host the vDRA system. For more details, see http://www.vmware.com/products/esxi-and-esx/overview.html.

Installing vDRA on vSphere includes the following:

• Create a vDRA installer VM in vSphere using the latest vDRA Deployer Host VMDK.

• Create the artifacts that describe the VM roles, CPS ISO (dra-vnf or binding-vnf), IP addresses, hostnames, target ESXi servers, and so on.

• Run the cps install <vnf directory> command.

Note	The ESXi servers must be configured to use the Network Time Protocol (NTP) to synchronize their clocks.

The following network diagram, configuration and VM layout are for illustration purposes only. Contact Cisco Account representative for your specific vDRA requirements.

The following installation order should be used:

1. Binding VNF

2. DRA VNF

Note	VMs per VNF must be installed in parallel. There are no VM ordering requirements while installing a vDRA VNF.

You can specify the test bed configuration settings for global, role, and VM in increasing precedence using a directory structure and files containing key-value environment variables.

The Jinja2 templates are used to create user_data files for cloud-init, ovftool options, and VMware Virtual Machine VMX configuration files. The environment variables are applied to the various Jinja2 template files using envtpl.

The installer loops over the directory structure sourcing global environment, role environment, and finally VM environment settings. Once at the VM level, the installer applies the environment variables to the Jinja2 templates to create the cloud-init configuration drive files (meta_data.json, user_data, and interfaces file (content/0000)), the VMX files for creating OVAs, and ovftool command line options. The VM artifacts are stored in data/vmware/<vm name>.