Setup Nested SvHCI in VMware – StorMagic

This article is intended for administrators wishing to install StorMagic Hyperconverged Infrastructure, or SvHCI in nested into a VMware environment for testing.

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Resolution/Information

Scenario

The below is an example setup used internally by StorMagic for lab testing.

Create a new VM:

Provide the VM a name:

You'll typically create 2x VMs to create a 2-node cluster and a separate witness VM, to emulate a potentially centralized, shared witness.

Select your host

and storage

Select VMware compatibility version:

Define the VM as RHEL 8

And disable secure boot

Running very slim in the below example give the VM some CPU, more if you want to run VMs, and set reserved (advised):

Running very slim in the below example give the VM some memory, more if you want to run VMs, and set reserved (advised):

Provide a small boot/OS disk. We're using 2x ~32GB here thin provisioned, to demonstrate the software RAID functionality within SvHCI.

Add a pool disk

Per the below this is emulating systems similar to the below:

However as reference SvHCI can consume HBA managed disks and software RAID0, 1 or 10 or hardware RAID

https://support.stormagic.com/hc/en-gb/articles/17597617525917-SvSAN-and-Software-RAID

https://support.stormagic.com/hc/en-gb/articles/5665208916381-SvSAN-Leveraging-Split-Virtual-Disks-Logical-Volumes-with-HPE-Servers

Add NICs to the VM as required and attached the ISO

https://support.stormagic.com/hc/en-gb/articles/6907213449117-Networking-examples-for-use-with-SvSAN-and-VMware

Set the disks to be seen as SCSI disks with the below Advanced Setting:

disk.EnableUUID = TRUE

This can then be cloned:

Deploy a Witness Appliance:

This can then be installed:

https://support.stormagic.com/hc/en-gb/articles/18858860181917-SvHCI-Installation

Licensed:

https://support.stormagic.com/hc/en-gb/articles/18860442155549-SvHCI-First-Boot-Wizard

Networking configured:

https://support.stormagic.com/hc/en-gb/articles/18860678011293-SvHCI-Configure-networking

Clustered:

https://support.stormagic.com/hc/en-gb/articles/18860768070557-SvHCI-Cluster-Creation

Note: The appliance will be in a Warning status due to not having VMware credentials configured. Add host or vCenter credentials to the nodes to go back to a Normal status

And VMs provisioned:

https://support.stormagic.com/hc/en-gb/articles/18860994242077-SvHCI-Windows-VM-Creation

And failover tests performed:

https://support.stormagic.com/hc/en-gb/articles/18990899134237-StorMagic-SvHCI-Evaluators-Guide