Control Center User Guide
- Installation and Configuration
- Introduction
- Topic Map
- Virtual Control Center Deployment
- Requirements
- Deployment
- Deployment Time
- Default Settings
- Edit Settings
- Power On
- Automatic Startup
- Adjusting Memory
- IP Configuration
- Virtual Machine Version
- Site Requirements
- Unpacking and Installation
- Provisioning
- Access and Security Setup
- Network Services
- Working with the Web Interface
- Managing the Control Center
- Managing the Deployment
- Managing Local Managers
- Accounts and Security
- Applet
- Auditing
- Maintenance and Troubleshooting
- Advanced Features
Virtual Control Center Deployment
This document contains instructions for using vSphere to deploy a virtual Uplogix Control Center (vUCC) to a VMware server. Note: newer versions of VMware ESXi (v6+) no longer support all features of vSphere, but they still work for deploying our image. You may use the newer HTML5 application to deploy the vUCC. Requirements and steps are almost identical.
Prepare to have available disk (see Requirements), two IP addresses on the same network with netmask and gateway, NTP server, and an optional DNS server. You will also need to have downloaded the vUCC OVA file from the Uplogix Support Site.
Requirements
- VMware host running ESX/ESXi version 4.1 or higher (Virtual Machine Version 7)
- Storage, memory, and CPUs appropriate for your deployment:
| Deployment Size | Storage | Memory | CPUs (2+ GHz) |
|---|---|---|---|
| >1000 Local Managers | 825 GB thick (SSD) | 8 GB | 8 cores |
| 250-999 Local Managers | ~650 GB thin (SAS/SSD) | 8 GB | 8 cores |
| 100-249 Local Managers | ~550 GB thin (SAS/SSD) | 4 GB* / 8 GB default | 4 cores |
| 1-99 Local Managers | ~450 GB thin (SAS/SSD) | 4 GB* / 8 GB default | 2 cores |
| Evaluation vUCC (<10 LMs) | ~65 GB thin (SATA) | 1 GB* / 8 GB default | 2 cores |
*Requires vUCC application RAM settings to be adjusted - see Adjusting Memory
- The OVA file is about 6GB that expands to 430GB when deployed with thin provisioning. The maximum total disk size is 825GB.
- The evaluation OVA file is about 3GB that expands to 50GB when deployed with thin provisioning. The maximum total disk size is 100GB.
Upgrades of the evaluation UCC are not supported.
- Thin provisioning may always be used, but when supporting a very large number of LMs, we recommend you use thick provisioning. The space savings for using thin are minimal and thick provisioning will guarantee you have allocated enough disk space and remove any possible performance degradation as the disk grows.
- SSDs are always recommended regardless of deployment size. The OVA will deploy quicker and the UCC will run with much lower latency.
- CPU cores may be adjusted without any changes to Uplogix configuration files. Recommendations are specified above, but you may increase or decrease the number of cores based on your performance desires. A restart of the VM is all that is needed after you change your VM properties.
- Memory may also be adjusted, but you must update an Uplogix configuration file - see Adjusting Memory.
ESXi Version 6.5 and 6.7 Browser Deployment
There is a known issue deploying and exporting “large” VMs with the ESXi web client in early versions of 6.5 and 6.7. If you try to deploy the Control Center VM using a browser and it fails about half way through, we recommend using the command line VMware OVF Tool. This tool is actively maintained and supports ESXi 6.5 and 6.7. You can download it from VMware (https://www.vmware.com/support/developer/ovf/). This deployment issue appears to be fixed in ESXi 6.7.0 Update 1. Please contact Uplogix Support if you have any question about using the OVF Tool.
Deployment
Connect to your VM host and select File > Deploy OVF Template.... Although this menu item says OVF, it will let you select OVA files as well. An OVA file is just a package of the OVF file and VMDK files in the TAR format.
Select OVA
Select the vUCC OVA file you previously downloaded.
Ignore Warning
Depending on the version of your VMware host, you may see a similar warning window below. This is normal and will not impact the deployment of the vUCC. Click Yes to proceed.
Select Datastore
Select a datastore with enough free space to handle your deployment (see Requirements).
Select Disk Format
Select Thin Provision or Thick Provision as appropriate to your deployment size for the disk format. If you have determined that you should use thick provisioning, you may choose lazy or eager zeroed based on your own preferences.
Map Network
Map the source network to the destination network according to your needs. The default is frequently acceptable.
Finish
Ensure Power on after deployment is not selected. Click Finish to begin the deployment of the vUCC.
Deployment Time
The progress bar is not very accurate with its time estimation. Since the vUCC has 6 VMDKs (disks) inside the OVA, you will frequently see an estimate like 5 minutes remaining, but then it will move on to the next disk and say the same estimate for remaining time. Typical deployment times vary from 25 minutes (SSD RAID 10) to 3 hours (SAS RAID 5). The deployment time is heavily dependent on the speed of the VMware host datastore and may increase when a datastore is heavily shared by other VMs. Network speed is also a factor and we recommend you use a gigabit link.
Once the deployment has completed successfully, click Close.
Default Settings
The following shows the default settings for the vUCC.
The following shows the default settings for the evaluation vUCC.
Edit Settings
If you need to edit any of the deployment settings, right-click on the VM's name. Select Edit Settings... to change the number of CPU cores, memory, or network settings.
Power On
Once the settings have been configured, power on the VM. You can do this by right-clicking the VM name again or using the green “play” icon.
Automatic Startup
We recommend that you configure the vUCC for automatic startup and shutdown. Version 5.4 of the vUCC contains open source vm tools which allow VMware to do a soft shutdown of the VM. While problems usually do not occur with a hard power off, we recommend that you avoid it when possible. Hard power off can occasionally cause file system corruption.
Adjusting Memory
If running the VM with anything other than 8 GB of RAM, the memory settings for the vUCC application will need to be changed:
- Enter vi /etc/sysconfig/embassy.overrides
- Move the cursor over the number 8 on the line which reads RAM=8
- Press r, then enter the number of gigs of RAM allocated to your VM
- Type :wq to save the file and exit from the editor
- Restart the vUCC application by entering the commands ucc stop and ucc start.
IP Configuration
After powering the VM on, click the Console tab. Once the vUCC has finished booting, log in as user emsadmin with password password. You may miss the login prompt as information about the database writes to the console. If you see Database “UPLOGIX” warm started, hit enter once and you will be presented with the login prompt.
To configure static IP addresses for the vUCC and to complete the provisioning process, please continue to Provisioning.
Virtual Machine Version
Uplogix configures the Control Center to use VM version 7 for backwards compatibility to ESXi version 4.1. You may optionally upgrade the VM version to match the version of ESXi in your environment. VMware recommends creating a snapshot or backup before upgrading in case there are issues post upgrade. In older versions of ESXi, you may need to use vCenter to convert the image to a newer version. In newer versions of ESXi, you can use the web client to upgrade the VM while it is powered down (Actions > Upgrade VM Compatibility). Uplogix has tested most of the versions including version 14 running on ESXi 6.7.
Updating the VM version will also enable you to update the Guest OS associated with the VM (Edit > VM Options > General Options > Guest OS Version). Any version of the Control Center after 5.4.0 uses CentOS 6 (64-bit).
Please contact Uplogix Support if you have any question about configuring the VM version or Guest OS.
