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

1. Deploy OVA to your vSphere environment as described at Deploy an OVF or OVA Template.
2. 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
3. Power on VM and complete Boot Wizard.

Deploying on Hyper-V Virtual Machine

Hyper-V image has been created using Hyper-V Configuration Version 8.0. Before deploying, please check if your Hyper-V server supports it.Virtual Machine version on Windows or Windows Server

1. Download ipfabric-*-hyperv.zip from official source.
2. Extract previously downloaded archive ipfabric-*-hyperv.zip.
3. Import HyperV image to your hypervisor server. Export and Import virtual machines (Microsoft docs)

4. During Choose Import Type part, check option Copy the virtual machine(create a new unique ID):

   

5. Wait until import process ends.

6. Edit VM hardware settings and adjust according to the network environment size (check requirements in operational requirements section). Right click on VM -- choose Settings:

   

   1. Change CPU count

      

   2. Change memory size

      

   3. Extend system disk if necessary

      

   4. Add a new empty virtual disk if necessary.

   5. Close VM Settings window

7. Start VM.

Deploying to Nutanix Virtual Machine

Note

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 deploytment section.

1. Download ipfabric-*-.OVA file from official source.

2. Extract previously downloaded OVA file using 7-zip or any similar software, structure of extracted files should look like below

   

3. Import .vmdk files to Nutanix hypervisor, following Nutanix official documentation -- Nutanix import OVA and Quick tip how to deploy a VM from OVF to AHV.

4. 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 system disk if necessary
   4. Add a new empty virtual disk if necessary.

5. Start VM and check if system starts without any interrupts.

Deploying on KVM Virtual Machine

1. Download qcow2 system disk to your KVM hypervisor.

2. Create a second qcow2 disk for data with size that corresponds to your network needs) with the following command:

   qemu-img create -f qcow2 ipfabric-data.qcow2 10G # (up to 920G for 20 000 devices)
   

3. Deploy VM to your hypervisor through virt-install utility by issuing the following command (chose CPU and RAM size according to size of your network):

   virt-install --name=IP_Fabric --disk path=<path to the first, larger disk with OS>.qcow2 --disk path=<path to the second disk for data>.qcow2 --graphics spice --vcpu=4 --ram=16384 --network bridge=virbr0 --import
   

4. This command deploys a new virtual machine with IP_Fabric name, two qcow2 disks, 4 CPU cores, 16GB of RAM and will connect VM to the internet through 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 --network parameter).

5. This command also starts up just created VM.

6. Additionally, you can create and add a new empty virtual disk if needed.

Deploying to Amazon AWS EC2 instance

Pre-requisites

Before you begin the deployment, please note the following:

1. IP Fabric uses SSH, telnet and REST API over http/https in order to access network devices and controllers and carry out its discovery. Please ensure that the VPC subnet chosen for the deployment has the appropriate level of access and routing in order to complete the discovery.

2. The IP Fabric AMI uses SSH for CLI console access, and HTTPS on ports 443 and 8443 for Web UI and system console access respectively. Security groups will need the appropriate configuration to allow inbound access to the AMI.

Deployment Steps

1. Login to the AWS console for the account provided to the IP Fabric support team.

2. Select the region for the VPC where you want to deploy IP Fabric:

   

3. From the Services menu at the top left, select EC2.

4. Then choose Instances in the left hand menu, and hit the Launch Instances button on the right:

   

5. Select My AMIs, then under Ownership, select Shared with me. The IP Fabric AMI should show up here. Select it.

   

6. Choose the most appropriate instance type:

   Devices	CPU	RAM	HDD	Example EC2 Instance Type
   500	4	16 GB	90 GB	c5.2xlarge
   1 000	4	32 GB	100 GB	c5.4xlarge
   2 000	8	32 GB	200 GB	c5.4xlarge
   5 000	12	64 GB	300 GB	c5.9xlarge
   10 000	16	128 GB	550 GB	c5.18xlarge
   20 000	18	256 GB	1000 GB	d3.8xlarge

   Selecting an appropriate instance type is necessary to achieve a stable and reliable system! Please double-check if your Instance settings are proper for your environment size.

7. Select Configure Instance Details, then ensure the correct VPC and subnet are selected for the IP Fabric instance. (Create a new VPC and subnet if required):

   

8. Then select Add Storage, add 80G to the additional amount from the table above for the root volume. For example, the instance c5.4xlarge should have 200G in total.

   

9. Select Edit Security Groups to make sure that IP Fabric will have the connectivity it requires to function:

   

10. Confirm the details with the IP Fabric Connectivity Requirements. The security group rules should look something like:

    

    Note

    Note that you can only select incoming rules at this point! By default the security group allows access to everything over any protocol and port: you will need to revisit once the instance has launched if you need to restrict access at source.

11. Click Review and Launch.

12. At this point, if you never used Debian in AWS before, subscription alert can appear. If requires, please follow instruction and open hyperlink in Error message: In order to user this AWS Marketplace product….

    

13. On new page, please click Continue to Subscribe

    

14. When done, please click Launch button once again.

15. Please confirm Key pair information and click Launch Instance.

    

16. Your Instance appears in the instances list, and it is started automatically by AWS:

    

17. You can now access the Web UI, install the license file and login to the instance to run the Configuration Wizard.

18. There is a bug in the latest version and you will need to setup traceroute in the IP Fabric in order to run Discovery. traceroute must be setup to -- 127.0.0.1/32. This is going to be fixed in the future.

    

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Complete (first-time) Boot Wizard

The First Boot Wizard starts when IP Fabric is run for the first time and configures system options. The wizard can also be re-run later from the service interface to modify basic system parameters.

1. Assign hostname.
2. Assign domain name.
3. Choose IP address acquisition method.
4. If a static method is used, configure IP address, netmask, default GW, and DNS servers.
5. Configure NTP servers or just click OK to continue if not using NTP.
6. Select time zone.
7. Configure Internet Proxy if used.
8. Set shell user password of osadmin user. The password is used to access the IP Fabric administrative interface and system shell (not for the GUI access, the GUI is accessible with the admin username by default, for more information, please, read: Access User Interface and Install License and also for encrypting system backups.
9. Optionally define organization parameters for the local SSL certificate.
10. After rebooting, the console login screen will display the assigned IP address of the system and provide a link to access the user interface.

Warning

Remember password from step 8! IP Fabric support engineers are able to reset osadmin user passwords but encrypted backups will be lost!

Info

A trusted certificate can replace a self-signed SSL certificate using IP Fabric web UI.