Installing Nexenta’s vSphere Web Client plug-in

Looking at the documentation for this plug-in it appears that you can do most anything in the plug-in that you can in the Fusion UI.  That is pretty cool.  I have heard good things about this plug-in so that is what we are going to get working today.  While there is both Windows, and VCSA support (Linux) we are going to stick with the VCSA.

Pre-Req’s

• You should be able to get the bits where you got the other Nexenta bits.  The filename is nsvp-installer-5.0.0.2498.tar.
• The doc is called NexentaStor 5.1 vCenter QuickStart.
• You should be able to ping from your Nexenta array.  If you cannot, that is easy to fix and the command is: net create host IP_address name . More info is on page 4 of the QuickStart guide.
• SSH needs to be enabled on the vCSA and you need the root credentials.
• You array should be configured and working.  This is not necessarily true, but for me it is better this way.  I plan mostly on monitoring from the plug-in and not doing much config type stuff.
• You will need your SSO administrator account and password.

I am using vSphere 6.5 Update 1 with the updates of 11/18/17.  I am using 5.1 of the Nexenta array software and 1.1 in Fusion.

Install Steps

• Log into the VCSA.
• In the root folder create a new folder called nsvp.

cd /

mkdir nsvp

cd nsvp

• Now you need to copy the bits to this folder.  I use SecureCRT and SecureFX for my SSH stuff but you can use whatever works for you.
• Now we extract from the archive.

tar -xvf nsvp-installer-5.0.0.2498.tar

• You can check using the following command.

./install.sh -help

• We can install the plug-in now using the following command.

./install.sh -action install -vcuser [email protected]

Of course, replace [email protected] with your own admin SSO account, and you will be prompted for the password.

We are done.  You should log out of the vSphere Web Client, and log back in.

Config Time

We log into the vSphere Web Client, and on the Home page we should see something new.

So we need to configure the plug-in to talk to our Nexenta array. So click on the Nexenta icon as seen above.

Select the Nexenta Storage Systems as seen with the arrow point at it above.

We use the Register button to start a wizard to connect us with the array.

We fill in the screen appropriately.  The username must have superuser rights. If you have a cluster you need to enable that and if you are using VASA you enable that. I have neither a cluster nor am I using VASA so neither are selected.

When I select Register we see something new. It only takes a few minutes, and we can see it happen in the Recent Tasks area.

So we are registered successfully and we can see some basic info of the array.  Things are going well!

Test Time

So we log into the vSphere Web client, select the Nextenta icon from the home screen, and make sure we are looking at Dashboard and the Summary tab.

So we see a few things here, like the name of our array, and that it is healthy, and how much storage is in use. So things are working.  There doesn’t seem to be any other locations where Nexenta shows up.  For example I looked on the Datatsore that is backed by Nexenta and there was no additional Nextenta info there. You can also see the following info when you select your array in the Nexenta Storage Systems view.

I do see more useful info for me in the Fusion UI.  I am using NFS and that may be what is limited what is seen above.  You can see additional info on the other tabs once you select Monitor. You will see Service Health, Hardware info, and Performance information.

Errata

Uninstall

If you need to uninstall this plug-in, you can use the following command, executed on the VCSA.

./install.sh -action uninstall -vcuser [email protected]

Make sure to use your own SSO admin account and password.

Updates

• 11/19/17 - Generally available of the article on this date.

Hope that this helps, and let me know if you have questions or comments.

Michael

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