Virtual IP Office Server Edition
The 3 initial easy steps to deploy IPOSE with EXSi 6
By the end of this post, ‘Virtual IP Office Server Edition,’ you will be able to assess the hardware necessary to install an IPO as a virtual machine, as well as downloading, and understanding the Avaya IP Office software packages. And lastly, collect the existing virtual environment components with the benefit of understanding the customer’s network.
As installers, we face everyday challenges. A few years ago, I was dispatched to help a customer deploy a couple of Avaya VMs. This customer didn’t have experience with vmware or vSphere making the deployment more challenging.
The deployment of the servers were conducted by the Avaya Implementation team, which by the way was another monster on its own. At times it seemed as though they were conducting training among themselves, while deployment the new virtual solution. I have created these three steps to help you deploy the VMs, as well as configure them without the need of escalation or extra help.
- 1.- Understand the available resources
- 2.- Understand the File System and structure
- 3.- Initial system configuration
1.- Understand the available server resources
After you have learned the EXSi version and confirm that vSphere is connecting to the hypervisor, your next step is to understand the existing networks.
vSwitch – This virtual switch is part of the hypervisor and acts as a standard network switch reading the information from files, which then forwards them to its respective destined host without the need of broadcasting to the entire set of VMs. Disable STP, and LACP might be useful when using distributed switches and implementing load balancing.
Storage – vmware uses LUNs (Logical Unit Number) which in layman’s term is the HDD in SAN environment. You then select the default datastore to deploy the virtual IP Office.
Datastore – A datastore is nothing more than a disk partition, which you can format with VMFS.
2.- Understand the file system and structure
It is important for you to understand every single aspect of the virtual IP Office installation. The following explains the files necessary to deploy and install IP Office as a virtual server.
VMFS – It is the standard File System use with vmware.
Virtual Appliances – These are pre-configured virtual machines packaged into a compressed file called OVF.
Open Virtual-Machine Format (OVF) – Hyper-V does not support OVF files, but pretty much the rest do, from Virtual Box, Zen Server, and ESXi to mention a couple.
OVA (Open Virtualization Archive) – This is a compressed/zipped file that allows you to deploy a single VM. In most cases, you have to set the minimum requirements before deploying the OVA.
MAC Address – With vSphere 6 or EXSI 6 the entire MAC Address can be changed or updated to match the MAC Address assigned to the PLDS license file provided by Avaya.
Virtual IP Office Provisioning – There are three types of provisioning
Thin Provision – It saves disk space allocating the space used only by the VM. If is not written to the disk, the space is not allocated. It operates slower when writing data, but is is useful for read only.
Thin Provision Lazy Zeroed -It takes the available allocated disk space creating filling the existing blocks when it needs to write.
Thick Provision Lazy Zeroed – Same as Thin Provision Lazy Zeroed without the need of filling the blocks with zeros, improving the overall disk performance when using Virtual IP Office Servers.
3.- Initial system configuration
Using vSphere you can connect to the hypervisor (EXSi) and launch the ovf file that you already had downloaded from the Avaya support website. The OVF creates the Virtual IP Office server for you, without the need of any pre-configuration. Once the server is created, your next three immediate actions are=
Turn On – The server has to be turned on manually through the vSphere client.
Configure Interfaces – ETH0 and ETH1 represent LAN1(192.168.42.1) and LAN2 (192.168.43.1). Once the server is running, you can configure these interfaces through the vSphere console or the server ignition. Keep in mind that any IP Address configured needs to be able to route outside the vmware environment.
system-config-network – Run this tool from the IPOSE console-shell to configure the IP Address and DNS name. You can run the console from vSphere.
IP Office Server ignition – This feature lets you set up the server roll, name, set up interfaces, NTP, etc. To access the server ignition enter the existing virtual IP Office IP Address using secure http (https) and port 7071 e.g 192.168.42.1:7071.
IP Office Manager Application – Use this application to connect and configure to the IP Office. Once connected to the system, you can access other IP Office applications acting as a control panel.
Question
When creating a VM for Avaya virtual IP Office, which steps do you take?
Resources
Step by step IPOSE deployment with vSphere 6
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