HP StoreVirtual Storage VSA Installtion & Configuration – PART 1

Posted By Rajesh Radhakrishnan February 04 2018

Installing the CMC

Install the CMC on the computer or virtual machine that you use to administer the HP StoreVirtual Storage. You administer the entire network of StoreVirtual VSAs from this CMC.
To obtain the CMC, download the CMC installer from the following website

The CMC installation requires 63 MB disk space and 64 MB RAM during runtime. Installing the CMC in Microsoft Windows
1. Start the CMC installer.
2. Follow the steps in the installation wizard.
3. When the installation completes, HP is added as a separate Program Group and a shortcut icon is added to the  microsoft Windows desktop.
To start the CMC:
• Double-click the icon on your desktop, or
• From the Start menu, select
All Programs→HP →HP StoreVirtual→HP StoreVirtual Centralized Management Console

 

Installing the HP StoreVirtual VSA for vSphere

The HP StoreVirtual VSA for vSphere is pre-formatted for use with VMware vSphere. We have to install VSA on all the ESXi hosts.

Download the StoreVirtual OS 12.5 from below link .And follow steps mentioned below to install and Configure VSA on vSphere Host.

Required version of VMware

  • VMware vSphere 6.0 for LeftHand OS 12.5

Configuration requirements for the StoreVirtual VSA for vSphere

  • Virtual disk(s) with up to 64 TB (for vSphere 6.0) of space per disk located on internal disk storage, or any block storage that is on the VMware HCL: internal, external and shared. (Note that the LeftHand OS software consumes a small amount of the available space.)
  • StoreVirtual VSA for vSphere virtual disks must be configured as independent and persistent to prevent VM snapshots from affecting them.
  • The VMFS datastores for the StoreVirtual VSA must not be shared with any other VMs.
  • Microsoft NET 3.5 on the installer client.
  • vCenter servers properly licensed before connecting to them using the HP StoreVirtual VSA for vSphere installer.
  • When installing StoreVirtual VSAs that use more than 8 TB of datastores, increase the VMFS heap size. According to VMware, the VMFS heap size must be increased to access more than 8 TB of VMDKs in a VM. This means that a StoreVirtual VSA that uses more than 8 TB of datastores should have the heap size increased. See the following article for more information:

Reference KB

Best practices for StoreVirtual VSA for vSphere

  • Configure the StoreVirtual VSA for vSphere to start automatically and first, and before any other virtual machines, when the vSphere Server on which it resides is started. This ensures that the StoreVirtual VSA for vSphere is brought back online as soon as possible to automatically re-join its cluster.
  • Locate the StoreVirtual VSA for vSphere on the same virtual switch as the VMkernel network used for iSCSI traffic. This allows for a portion of iSCSI I/O to be served directly from the StoreVirtual VSA for vSphere to the iSCSI initiator without using a physical network.
  • Locate the StoreVirtual VSA for vSphere on a virtual switch that is separate from the VMkernel network used for VMotion. This prevents VMotion traffic and StoreVirtual VSA for vSphere I/O traffic from interfering with each other and affecting performance.
  • HP recommends installing vSphere Server on top of a redundant RAID configuration with a RAID controller that has battery-backed cache enabled. Do not use RAID 0.

Unsupported configurations for StoreVirtual VSA for Hyper-V

  • Use of Microsoft Live Migration, Quick Migration, or snapshots on the StoreVirtual VSA itself.
  • Use of any Hyper-V Server configuration that Microsoft does not support.
  • Extending the data virtual disk(s), the first SCSI Controller in Hyper-V, of the StoreVirtual VSA while in a cluster. Create additional disks and hot-add them instead.
  • Co-location of a StoreVirtual VSA and other virtual machines on the same NTFS partition.
  • Running StoreVirtual VSA for Hyper-Vs on top of existing HP StoreVirtual Storage is not recommended.

Deploying HP StoreVirtual

As mentioned above once you have completed the download from the webpage you may found downloaded File will be named like below

HPE_StoreVirtual_VSA_2014_and_StoreVirtual_FOM_Installer_for_VMware_vSphere_TA688-10544.exe

  • Ran this file as Administrator, it is a self-extracting one. After the extraction a CMD will comes up asking, if you want to use the GUI or CLI interface.
  • Chose the GUI wizard.
  • On the welcome page simply click “Next”.
  • Accept the License Agreement and Click Next

 

Continue  PART 2 

See – Part 1  , PART 3  ,  PART 4