• Contents
  • 1 About the chapters of this manual
  • 2 An introduction to Virtual Server Appliance
  • 3 Activate the VSA
  • 4 Configuration Assistant
  • 5 Install additional HELIOS products
  • 6 Linux Runtime
  • 7 Volume Management
  • A System and data disk migration
• <
• 3 Activate the VSA
  • 3.1 Virtualization platforms
  •  3.1.1 VMware ESX Server
  •  3.1.2 Microsoft Hyper-V
  •  3.1.3 Other virtualization solutions
  • 3.2 Log in for the first time
• >

 

3 Activate the VSA

The HELIOS Virtual Server Appliance has been designed as a ready-to-deploy VM (Virtual Machine) image. This means no installation process is required, the image file just needs to be imported into the hypervisor (virtualization solution). The Virtual Server Appliance is supported on ESX and Hyper-V hypervisors.

The following section describes how to import the appliance into the different hypervisors. By default, one system disk and one Ethernet network adapter are used. Customers can later add a second disk intended for the data volume group. As customers' needs may vary, the data disk image is not included.

Note:

Additional CPUs, memory, and network adapters can be added depending on the deployment requirements.

3.1 Virtualization platforms

The HELIOS Virtual Server Appliance is shipped in two distribution formats:

• Standard OVF (Open Virtualization Format)
  Exchange format which is compatible with several virtualization solutions. An OVF package consists of several files that contain configuration and disk image. HELIOS ships its Virtual Server Appliance software as an OVA file (Open Virtualization Archive = single-file format of the OVF package).

• VHD (Virtual Hard Disk)
  Virtual hard disk image that can be used to create the virtual machine under Microsoft Hyper-V.

3.1.1 VMware ESX Server

VMware ESX Server supports the OVF/​OVA standard.

Open the vSphere Client administration tool and select File > Deploy OVF Template… from the menu.

Choose the file “HELIOS VSA 2.0 for VMware.ova” and follow the import dialog instructions.

3.1.2 Microsoft Hyper-V

Microsoft Hyper-V does currently not support the OVF/​OVA format. Therefore a separate VHD disk image is provided which can be used to easily create a new virtual machine using Hyper-V.

Extract the file “HELIOS VSA 2.0 for Hyper-V.zip”.

Copy the extracted file “HELIOS VSA.vhd” to the Windows machine that is running Hyper-V.

A good location to copy the image to is the default path for virtual hard disks, which on most machines will be “C:\​Users\​Public\​Documents\​Hyper-V\​Virtual hard disks”.

Open the “Hyper-V Manager” program and start the “New Virtual Machine Wizard” (Action > New > Virtual Machine).

Choose e.g. “HELIOS VSA” as the name for the new virtual machine. In the next steps, assign virtual memory (a minimum of 1024 MB is recommended) and a network connection to your virtual machine.

Note:

If your server does not have a suitable virtual network yet, use the “Virtual Network Manager” to create one. See the Hyper-V documentation for details.

In the “Connect Virtual Hard Disk” step, choose Use an existing virtual hard disk and select the VHD image file prepared above. Then finish the wizard.

3.1.3 Other virtualization solutions

There are other virtualization solutions (VMware Workstation/​Fusion, Oracle VirtualBox, etc.) that support the distribution formats listed above. However, these are not supported for production but can be used for tryouts and testing.

3.2 Log in for the first time

After starting the Virtual Server Appliance you will be asked to enter your login name and password.

Enter “root” as login name and “helios” as password.

Important:

It is strongly advised to change the password as soon as possible using the Configuration Assistant!

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