This article is intended for administrators wishing to install StorMagic Hyperconverged Infrastructure (SvHCI) nested inside an existing StorMagic SvHCI environment for evaluation, testing, and lab purposes.
Deploying SvHCI Nested in SvHCI
This guide walks through creating the virtual machines required for a nested SvHCI environment before continuing with the standard SvHCI installation process.
Lab Scenario
The configuration below is an example environment used internally by StorMagic for testing and development.
Create the Virtual Machines
Begin by creating a new virtual machine in the bare-metal SvHCI.
The below example creates 2x small Protected and mirrored instances:
- 4vCPUs - 8vCPUS
- Ensuring to select the 'Hardware Virtualization' flag
- 16GB RAM
- 32GB Boot disk
- 100 VM/SAN disk
- 4x NICs - to simulate a physical box
- This example uses
- 2x NICs teamed as a 'front-end' management and VM network
- 2x NICs teamed as a 'back-end' storage sync and live migrate network
- This example uses
The example below uses a minimal CPU allocation. Increase the CPU allocation if you intend to run more guest virtual machines inside SvHCI and reserve the CPU resources where possible to reduce the risk of underlying resource contention.
The example configuration emulates systems similar to the following:
SvHCI can consume HBA-managed disks and supports software RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 10, or hardware RAID configurations.
For additional VMware networking guidance, refer to:
Deploy the StorMagic Witness
Deploy a separate StorMagic Witness (usable by SvSAN or SvHCI) for use by the nested SvHCI cluster. This may be:
- A StorMagic Witness Appliance either in VMware ( per the below), SvHCI or other hypervisor,
- as a Service running on Windows or Deb linux off the cluster, such as a backup box or a QNAP
- or on a Raspberry PI
- or Witness-as-a-service hosted behind network address translation (NAT) in the cloud
Install and Configure SvHCI
Install the SvHCI operating system using the standard installation process:
License the appliance using the first boot wizard:
Configure the SvHCI networking:
Create the SvHCI Cluster
After networking has been configured, create the SvHCI cluster by following the Cluster Creation guide.
Provision Virtual Machines and Perform Validation
Once the cluster has been created, provision virtual machines using the standard SvHCI workflow.
After provisioning virtual machines, perform failover testing to verify the cluster is operating correctly.
Continue the Installation
The nested SvHCI environment is now prepared. Continue the remaining installation and configuration tasks using the standard SvHCI Installation guide.
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