Deploying the IP Fabric Virtual Machine (VM)

All virtual appliance images are available at https://releases.ipfabric.io/ipfabric/#current. Access is restricted to registered customers only. Please contact our sales representative if you are interested in a trial of IP Fabric.

Important

Please bear in mind that IP Fabric uses CLI access (SSH or telnet) to connect to devices for data collection. It’s important to place the VM in the proper network segment to prevent high ACL or firewall configuration overhead.

Deploying on VMware OVA Virtual Machine

Deploy OVA to your vSphere environment as described at Deploy an OVF or OVA Template.
Edit VM settings and adjust according to your network size as described in the operational requirements section.
1. Change CPU count.
2. Change memory size.
3. Add a new empty virtual disk or resize the main system disk
Power on VM and complete Boot Wizard.

Invalid OVF checksum algorithm: SHA256

Importing OVA on older vSphere/ESXi hosts may error stating the OVF checksum is invalid. Please see this documentation on how to resolve this.

Deploying on Hyper-V Virtual Machine

The QCOW2 disk image file can be converted to different formats. Using this method we will create a VHDX usable on Microsoft Hyper-V and manually create a new VM.

Download ipfabric-*.qcow2 from the official source.
Convert QCOW2 image to VHDX (Be sure to change the filenames in the command examples below.)
- Windows instructions:
  1. Download QEMU disk image utility for Windows
  2. Unzip qemu-img-windows
  3. Run qemu-img.exe convert ipfabric-<*>.qcow2 -O vhdx -o subformat=dynamic ipfabric-<*>.vhdx
- Linux instructions:
  1. Install qemu-utils sudo apt install qemu-utils
  2. Convert file: qemu-img convert -f qcow2 -o subformat=dynamic -O vhdx ipfabric-<*>.qcow2 ipfabric-<*>.vhdx
Create New Hyper-V Virtual Machine and Specify Name and Location
Specify Generation as Generation 1
Assign Memory (check requirements in operational requirements section)
Configure Networking
Connect the Virtual Hard Disk
Verify the Summary and Finish
Wait for the VM to be created
Edit the VM CPU settings (check requirements in operational requirements section)
Optionally increase Hard Disk Size based on operational requirements section

1. Extend the system disk or add a new empty virtual disk if necessary.
Close the VM Settings window
Start the VM.

Deploying a Virtual Machine to Nutanix

Note

The Nutanix image is based on Virtual Disks of VMware vSphere OVA image. As Nutanix officially supports import of VMware VM’s, below instructions are based on the same image as used at VMware deployment section.

Download the ipfabric-*-.OVA file from official source.
Extract the previously downloaded OVA file using 7-zip or any similar software. The structure of extracted files should look like below
Import .vmdk files to Nutanix hypervisor and follow Nutanix’ official documentation – Nutanix import OVA and Quick tip how to deploy a VM from OVF to AHV.
Edit VM hardware settings and adjust according to the network environment size (check requirements in operational requirements section).
1. Change CPU count
2. Change memory size
3. Extend the system disk or add a new empty virtual disk if necessary.
Start the VM and check if the system starts without any interrupts.

Deploying a Virtual Machine on KVM

We have currently the limitation that drives need to be /dev/sdx. Usually Linux hypervisors are using the virtio-blk driver which is represented as /dev/vdx in the guest system. To overcome this limitation use the virtio-scsi as drive controller.

Download qcow2 system disk to your KVM hypervisor.
Resize the qcow2 data-disk that corresponds to your network needs if necessary. Use the following command:
```
qemu-img resize ipfabric-disk1.qcow2 100G # (up to 1000G for 20 000 devices)
```
Deploy the VM to your hypervisor with the virt-install utility by issuing the following command (chose CPU and RAM size according to the size of your network):
```
virt-install --name=IP_Fabric --disk path=<path to the disk>.qcow2 --graphics spice --vcpu=4 --ram=16384 --network bridge=virbr0 --import
```
This command deploys a new virtual machine with IP_Fabric name, system qcow2 disk, 4 CPU cores, 16GB of RAM and will connect VM to the internet through the virtbr0 interface (if your machine has a different bridge interface name or you want to connect it straight through the device network card to the internet you need to change the --network parameter).
This command also starts up the VM.
Additionally, you can create and add a new empty virtual disk if needed.

Deploying a Virtual Machine on VirtualBox

Warning

Deploying IP Fabric on VirtualBox is currently not officially supported – it is not tested and we cannot guarantee that it will work.

Download the OVA image.
Import the OVA image via File → Import Appliance…:
In the next step of the Import Virtual Appliance guide:

- set CPU and RAM as per the hardware requirements for your use-case - set the Network Adapter to Paravirtualized Network (virtio-net) - keep the Import hard drives as VDI option checked for importing the disk image in the default VirtualBox format, otherwise the disk image will be imported as VDMK (the default format of VMware)
Right-click the newly-created virtual machine and select its Settings…
In the System section, select ICH9 as the Chipset:
In the Display section, select VMSVGA as the Graphics Controller:

- or to what VirtualBox suggests when an invalid Graphics Controller is selected:

Warning

When an invalid Graphics Controller is selected, it can lead to issues in the virtual machine and even on the host machine.
In the Storage section, select virtio-scsi as the Controller Type:
In the Network section, select Bridged Adapter and re-check in Advanced that the Adapter Type is Paravirtualized Network (virtio-net):
Start the virtual machine.

Deploying a Virtual Machine on Microsoft Azure

Log in to the Microsoft Azure portal and create a resource group

In the Microsoft Azure documentation, a resource group is defined as:

… a container that holds related resources for an Azure solution. The resource group can include all the resources for the solution, or only those resources that you want to manage as a group. You decide how you want to allocate resources to resource groups based on what makes the most sense for your organization. Generally, add resources that share the same lifecycle to the same resource group so you can easily deploy, update, and delete them as a group.

Please follow the instructions at Create resource groups.
Create a storage account for IP Fabric

A storage account is an Azure Resource Manager resource. Resource Manager is the deployment and management service for Azure. For more information, see Azure Resource Manager overview and Creating Storage Account.
Create a Storage Blob container

Azure Blob Storage allows you to store large amounts of unstructured object data. You can use Blob Storage to gather or expose media, content, or application data to users. Because all blob data is stored within containers, you must create a storage container before you can begin to upload data. To learn more about Blob Storage, read the Introduction to Azure Blob storage.
Convert qcow2 image to VHD

IP Fabric provides the qcow2 image. For converting qcow2 to VHD, you may for instance use a utility from QEMU. The recommended way to convert the image is then:
```
qemu-img convert -f qcow2 -o subformat=fixed,force_size -O vpc ipfabric-6-3-1+1.qcow2 ipfabric-6-3-1+1.vhd
```
Important

Please use qemu-img version 2.6 or higher. According to the Azure documentation:

There is a known bug in qemu-img versions >=2.2.1 that results in an improperly formatted VHD. The issue has been fixed in QEMU 2.6. We recommend using either qemu-img 2.2.0 or lower, or 2.6 or higher.

You may check the qemu-img version that you are using with:
```
qemu-img --version
```
Upload VHD image to storage account

To upload the VHD image, one need to download and install the Azure Storage Explorer. The image needs to be uploaded to the previously created Blob container.

Important

For uploading the VHD image, please use the Azure Storage Explorer (a native Windows app) instead of the Azure web UI. If you upload the VHD image via the Azure web UI, you might encounter the following error:

The specified cookie value in VHD footer indicates that disk ‘ipfabric-6-3-1+1.vhd’ with blob https://…/vhd/ipfabric-6-3-1+1.vhd is not a supported VHD. Disk is expected to have cookie value ‘conectix’.
Create image from VHD

Creating a managed image in Azure is as simple as loading the necessary files. The Create a legacy managed image of a generalized VM in Azure documentation section contains all the needed clues.
Deploy VM from image

Ensure that you follow the resource requirements matrix when sizing the virtual machine on Azure.
Important

Please note that the Azure serial console might be not accessible for setting the osadmin password in the First Boot Wizard. In that case, please contact the IP Fabric Support team or your Solution Architect. We can connect to the appliance via SSH with the default/factory osadmin password (that is overwritten during the First Boot Wizard) and run the First Boot Wizard manually with:
```
sudo nimpee-net-config -a
```