CCIE5851: vRNI 3.2 Installation

This week (12/8/16) VMware released vRealize Network Insight (vRNI) was released and added some really cool capabilities to the platform. Some highlights are below.

· XML Export of Firewall Rules

· Support of NSX Edge NAT

· Application Centric Micro-segmentaton

· Online upgrade

· NSX configuration, health and capacity checks

· Handful of other misc. features

I plan to blog about many of these features, but let’s start with the basics and see what we need to do and get the ball rolling. First, download the 2 files needed, the platform and proxy OVAs. Be warned, this is close to 14GB of files. If like me, you have slow(ish) Internet, patience is a virtue. You’ll want to make sure you have resources to meet the requirements.

Now that you have the files and meet the specs, let’s get started. I’ll be using the fat client because, well….I use it when I don’t have to use the web client. On a side note, I hear the 6.5 client is awesome but have not used it and NSX and vRNI don’t support it yet today. Anyways, find the data center you want to deploy the OVF to and start the process like below. You’ll start with the Platform as that’s the main engine for the product.

You’ll go through the usual process of showing the requirements, EULA, and location.

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The first real question you’ll need to address is the size of the configuration. Your choices are Medium or Large and depending on the size of your deployment and the volume of data you’ll collect. The easy decoder is the number of VMs you have to drive the sizing. If you have ~3,000 VMs, medium will work fine and if you have ~6,000 or more choose large. As always, these are “it depends” numbers and you can work with your account team to see the rest of the equation and make the best choice for you.

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Extra settings on the properties page

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Choose your resources like storage and network connectivity, fill in the blanks on the IP address detail you’ll use and let it rip.

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Depending on your config this could take quite a while or go quickly. Hopefully you selected the Power on after Deployment button because you’ll want it to come online before you deploy the proxy. While the platform is coming online and loading all of the processes, let’s be productive and start to deploy the proxy. This is important to note, but the platform must be online for the proxy to be deployed.

Once again we’ll go through the typical OVF process with requirements, EULA, location, configuration size, storage, and network mapping.

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What will be new is that when you get to the Properties page you’ll need to generate the Shared Secret. This is used to link the platform with the proxy. Hopefully you’ve powered on the platform and hit its IP/DNS name with Chrome. The first thing will be to apply your license, activate it and login (admin@local/admin is the default account). Now you can generate the shared secret and use the handy Copy button to paste it to the OVF window. Fill in the rest of the blanks and again, Power on after deployment.

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It’ll spin and take some time depending on your config. Remember, these are big OVAs and so go get some coffee or check your email. After the proxy comes up, it’ll be automatically detected by the platform and you’re done!