Now that there is an increasing awareness towards reducing operational costs in a data center, businesses wish to try new avenues to keep up the efficiency factor intact. Public cloud is getting quite popular among small businesses and cloud service providers are ensuring that the security features are enhanced so that all types of businesses could rely on public cloud. However, there are businesses who are skeptical about moving their data to cloud and have their data in their own datacenter. With the increase in data load, there is a huge challenge in hosting both the production and testing environments.
Ravello has come up with an interesting concept where the entire infrastructure can be run in a public cloud but would expose as if it is running internally i.e computing, storage services, network etc. In other words, if one is using ESXi for their virtualization environment, the entire infrastructure of ESXi can be run in a public cloud thereby eliminating the need of maintaining multiple servers for such setup. This would ideally help businesses who wish to scale up and also to those who are willing to test public cloud for their testing environments.
Here’s how one can do it:
1. Sign Up for a free trial
https://www.ravellosystems.com/ravello-free-signup
2. Download ESXi ISO from VMware
Download the ESXi version 5.5 or 6.0. You will be required to login/register as a VMware user. The ISO file is ~300 MB and may take a few minutes to download.
3. Upload ESXi ISO to Ravello
3.1 Login to the Ravello cloud console – Click here, with the signup credential which you got from your email
3.2 Select library page from the left pane and choose disk image to upload your ESXi ISO which is downloaded from step 2
3.3 If this is your first time, you will be prompted to download VM Import Utility
3.4 Choose either GUI or CLI utility to download, for demo purpose I am choosing – GUI based util
3.5 Install the downloaded util
3.6 Once after the successful installation of the VM Import Utility, it’s time to upload your ESXi ISO to your Ravello account, to do so – go to Library tab and choose “Disk Images tab”
3.7 On the disk image tab -> Choose Import Disk Image button
3.8 It will take you to a separate console – “VM Import Tool”, Choose “Upload” button
3.9 On Upload Your VMs or Disks page, choose “Upload a disk image (ISO, VMDK, QCOW)” and select “Start” to proceed further
3.10 On “SELECT A DISK IMAGE” browse to your local repository where the downloaded ESXi is available
3.11 Select the ISO file and click “Upload” button
3.12 After the successful completion of your upload process, you will see the ESXi ISO available in the ready to launch status in Library->Disk Image tab
4. Install ESXi on Ravello
4.1 Create an application and give a friendly name for easy identification
4.2 Leave bucket name and From Blueprint untouched
4.3 In the application work area, choose “Empty ESXi” from the VM Library, drag and drop it to the work area
4.4 Choose disk settings and configure ESXi ISO to the CD rom, by selecting “Browse” button it will get the list of ISO available in the disk image tab, choose ESXi ISO over there
4.5 Publish the application and wait till it get published ~ 5 to 10 min
4.6 On successful publishing of the application, you can see a green colour play icon to the ESXi available at the application work area
4.7 Click on console to get the console access to the ESXi host
4.8 Click “Next/Enter/Accept/Continue” to install ESXi. You will be prompted to set password for root
4.9 Once installation completes, eject the ISO, save & update the ESXi application
Note: It is very important to eject the ISO before the reboot.
5. Configure ESXi to run on Ravello
5.1 Enable SSH – from the direct console access, type F2 to access “System Customized Menu”
5.2 Select Troubleshooting Option and press enter
5.3 Choose – Enable SSH and press enter to continue
5.4 After enabling SSH access, go to Ravello UI and create elastic ip, to do so – choose “Library” and select “Elastic IP Address”
5.5 Now assign “Elastic IP” to the network interface, check “Even without external services”, and create SSH service on Ravello (screenshots below). Now click on ‘Update’ on the Ravello UI to update the application
5.6 SSH to your ESXi server using the Elastic IP and invoke below command’s
5.7 To Enable nested on all ESX guests
Open conf file in any text editor: “/etc/vmware/config” and add the following to the file ‘vmx.allowNested = “TRUE”’ and save
5.8 To ensure changes are saved, run “/sbin/auto-backup.sh”
5.9 After all configuration changes, disable SSH access to restrict outside access
5.10 Make sure you have enabled the required port to get your ESXi connected through VSphere client
5.11 Now connect your ESXi from VSphere portal and get started
Conclusion:
It is very easy to deploy and maintain through Ravello and very cost effective when compared to having physical servers.
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