With proper planning and setup of the prerequisites (see Part 2), the actual deployment of the IsilonSD Edge cluster is fairly straight-forward. If you experience issues during this section (see Part 1) it’s very likely because you don’t have the proper configuration, so revisit the previous steps. That said, let’s dive in and make a cluster.

This post is part of a series covering the EMC Free and Frictionless software products.
Go to the first post for a table of contents.

High Level, you’re going to do a few things:

  1. Deploy the IsilonSD Edge Management Server
  2. Setup IsilonSD Edge Management Server Password
  3. Complete IsilonSD Edge Management Server Boot-up
  4. Configure  Management Server vSphere Link & Upload Isilon Node Template
  5. Open the IsilonSD Edge vSphere Web Client Plug-in
  6. Deploy the IsilonSD Edge Cluster

Here’s the detail.

Deploy the IsilonSD Edge Management Server

*Note there is no sound, this is to follow along the steps.
 This is your standard OVA deployment, as long as  you’re using the “EMC_IsilonSD_Edge_MS_x.x.x.ova” file from the download and providing an IP address accessible to vCenter, you can deploy this just about anywhere.

Follow along in the video on the left if you’re not familiar with the OVA process.

Once the OVA deployment launches, ensure you find the deployment task in the vSphere Task Pane and keep an eye on the progress.

Setup IsilonSD Edge Management Server password

IsilonSD_ManagementBootPasswordChangeOnce the OVA is complete and the virtual machine is booting up, you’ll need to open the console and watch the initialization process. Generally I recommend this with any OVA deployment, as you’ll see if there are any errors as the first boot configuration occurs. For the IsilonSD Edge Management Appliance, it’s required to set the administrator password.

Complete IsilonSD Edge Management Server Boot-up

IsilonSD_ManagementConsoleBlueScreenAfter entering your password, the server will continue it’s first boot process and configuration. When you reach this screen (what I call the blue screen of start) you’re ready to proceed. Open a browser and navigate to the URL provided in the blue screen next to IsilonSD Management Server.

 

Configure Management Server vSphere Link & Upload Isilon Node Template

When you navigate to the URL provided by the blue screen, after accepting the unauthorized certificate, you’ll be promoted for logon credentials. This is NOT the password you provided during the boot up. I failed to read the documentation and assumed this, resulting in much frustration.

Logon using:
username: admin
password: sunshine

After successful logon, and accepting the EULA, you have just a couple steps, which you can follow along in the video on the right:

  1. Adjust the admin password
  2. Register your vCenter
  3. Upload the Isilon Virtual Node template
    1. This is “EMC_IsilonSD_Edge_x.x.x.ova in your download

*Note there is no sound, this is to follow along the steps.

 

Open the IsilonSD Edge vSphere Web Client Plug-in

Wait for the OVA template to upload, this may take up to ten minutes depending on your environment. Once complete, you’ll be ready to move on to actually creating the IsilonSD cluster through the vSphere Web Client plug-in that was installed by the Management Server when you registered vCenter. Ensure you close out all the browser windows and open a new session to your vSphere Web Client.

IsilonSD_vCenterDatacenterSelect the datacenter where you deployed the management server (not the cluster, again where I lost some time).

 

IsilonSD_ManageTab In the right-hand pane of vSphere, under the Manage tab, you should now see two new sub-tabs, Create IsilonSD Cluster and Manage IsilonSD Cluster. IsilonSD_vCenterIsilonTabs

 

Deploy the IsilonSD Edge Cluster

*Note there is no sound, this is to follow along the steps.

Follow along in the video above:

  1. Check the box next to your license
  2. Adjust your node resources
    1. For my deployment, I started with 3 nodes; adjusting the Cluster Capacity from the default 2 TB  to the minimum 1152 GB (64GB & 7 Drives * 3 Nodes)
  3. Clicking Next on the Requirements tab will search the virtual datacenter in your vCenter for ESX hosts that can satisfy the requirements you provided, including having those independent drives that meet the capacity requirement
    1. Should the process fail to find the necessary hosts, you’ll see a message like this. Don’t get discouraged, look over the requirements again to ensure everything is in order, try restarting the Inventory Service too.
    2. IsilonSD_NoQualifiedHosts
  4. When the search for hosts is successful, you’ll see a list of hosts available to select, such as
    1. IsilonSD_HostSelection
  5. Next, select all the hosts you wish to add to the cluster (if you prepared more than 3, consider selecting 3 now, as the next post we’ll walk through adding an additional node).
  6. For each host, you’ll need to select the disks and their associated role (Data Disk, Journal, Boot Disk or Journal & Boot Disk).
    1. Remember, you need at LEAST 6 data disks, you won’t get this far if you don’t but you won’t get farther if you don’t select them.
    2. In our scenario, we selects 6x 68GB data disks, and a final 28GB disk for Journal & Boot Disk
    3. You’ll also need to select the External Network Port Group and Internal Network Port Group
    4. IsilonSD_HostDriveSelection
  7. After setting up all hosts, with the exact configuration, you’ll move into the Cluster Identity
    1. IsilonSD_ClusterIdentity
    2. Cluster Name (this is used in the management interface to name the cluster)
    3. Root Password
    4. Admin Password
    5. Encoding (I’d leave this alone)
    6. Timezone
    7. ESRS Information (only populate this if you have a production license)
  8. Next will be your network settings.
    1. IsilonSD_ClusterNetworking
    2. External Network
    3. Internal Network
    4. SmartConnect
  9. You have a final screen to verify all your settings, look them over, the full deployment will take awhile and click Next.

At this point, patience is key, do not interrupt it. An OVA will be deployed for every node, then all of those unformatted disks will be turned into data stores, then VMDK files put on each datastore; finally all the nodes will boot and configure themselves. If everything goes as planned, your reward will look like this:

IsilonSD_ClusterCreationSuccess

To verify everything, point your browser to your smart connect IP address, in our case https://Isilon01.lab.vernex.io:8080 if you get a OneFS Logon Prompt, you should be in business!

IsilonSD_OneFSLogonPrompt

 

You should also be able to navigate in windows to your SmartConnect address; recall ours is \\Isilon01.lab.vernex.io\ and see the IFS share. This is the initial administrator share that in a production environment you’d disable. Likewise in *nix you can NFS attach to //Isilon01.lab.vernex.io:/IFS