31
2012
Open-E DSS V7 as a virtual machine on VMware
An article by 
Most of us use Virtual Environments for production, testing, training or just for a demo. This is why we would like to be sure you know how to install our Open-E DSS V7 as a Virtual Machine.
In this post we will do it with VMware.
First, you need to download the Open-E DSS V7 TRIAL version from our website.
http://www.open-e.com/download/open-e-data-storage-software-v7/
Please download the ISO file. Next, in the VMware GUI upload the ISO into any existing data store.
Now you can add the new VM. Please select the “custom” setup option in order to set more details. Please use default settings, except for the following:
- Guest Operating system: Other 2.6.x Linux (64bit)
- Memory Configuration : at least 1GB
- Network adapter: VMXNET 3
- SCSI Controller: VMware Paravirtual
- Capacity of disk: 2GB (this disk will be used as a boot media for the Open-E DSS V7)
If you are not familiar with VMware you may watch the step-by-step video:
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About the Author: Janusz Bak
Janusz has over 20 years of software engineering experience, and is a recognized expert on storage technologies. Before Open-E Janusz headed up German support operations at Aztech Systems, a publicly listed East Asian manufacturer of multimedia PC components. Prior to Aztech, Janusz developed the service and support function of Mega, a Polish IT systems house. Janusz Bak is an engineer by training, and received his Master of Engineering from the University of Science and Technology in Krakow.
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Perhaps I’m missing something here, but if you’re virtualizing DSS, what is used to present the storage to the VM? ie. – wouldn’t DSS need to be installed as the storage server’s OS to present targets to systems like VMWare? And if DSS is installed on the storage server, what is the purpose of using it as a VM? Thanks!
Thank you for your question.
There are so called VSA (Virtual Storage Appliance) solutions which can provide High Available iSCSI or NFS storage to Vmware hosts. In such case, you need at least 2 Vmware ESX hosts and on two hosts you can install virtual DSS. Next, you can configure iSCSI Failover or NAS(NFS) Failover and mount such exported volumes in ESX hosts.
We have shown such a setup with the latest Active-Active iSCSI Failover on our webinar: http://www.open-e.com/service-and-support/library/webcasts-and-videos/
Next to such practical use, you can find DSS as VM very useful for demo, training and testing.
How about vmware tools?
This is a great question Oleg. Currently, Open-E DSS V7 offers support for only the most important parts of VMware tools. The software incorporates support for VMware Paravirtual SCSI (PVSCSI) adapters and Paravirtualized NIC (VMXNET3) adapters. These drivers increase the speed of your network and make storage access work faster because of lower CPU utilization.
Hi, how to do this on a Citrix Xenserver v5.6
Thank you
Oleg’s question is very relevant! What about vmtools? … It’s work, but it’s like a sailboat without sails …
Regards