Installing the virtual appliance
You can install BMC Discovery by using a virtual appliance. This section provides information about how to perform the installation. For information about the supported virtualization platforms, see Appliance specification. After you install the virtual appliance, configure it to have sufficient resources for its intended use.
Because extending resources on the virtual appliance is challenging if it has been in use, we recommend that you configure your virtual appliance post-installation as a best practice. For more information, see Sizing guidelines for virtual appliances.
Warning
No OS customizations are supported on the appliance
The BMC Discovery software is delivered as an appliance model, virtual or physical, which includes the entire software stack from the OS and the BMC application software. The OS must not be treated for general purpose use, but rather as a tightly integrated part of the BMC Discovery solution. This includes changes to the locale, the appliance is only supported with the English language: LANG="en_GB.UTF-8"
We reserve the right to withdraw support, and make no guarantees that future upgrades will be compatible or maintain any of those customizations. We may ask for customizations to be removed for testing purposes. In practice, we will try and provide support for issues that are unrelated to the OS layer.
Warning
Third-party software
BMC Discovery is built as an appliance that is not intended to have any additional software installed on it. If you have an urgent business need to install additional software on the appliance, see the third party software support page.
At the end of your BMC Discovery installation, you should ensure that you have configured networking to suit your environment. For example, if your installation uses a static IP address, you must specify appropriate DNS settings. You can add DNS entries through the UI in the Administration page. See Configuring name resolution settings for more information.
Before you begin
Before you start the installation procedure, make sure that:
- You have identified a server onto which you will deploy your BMC Discovery virtual appliance
- The server has sufficient spare resources to support the intended configuration of the virtual appliance.
You have identified the VMware Administrator who will be installing the virtual appliance.
Note
The Demo VA is pre-populated with example data, and intended simply as a demonstration tool. It is not intended for production use and cannot be supported by BMC Customer Support.
Installing BMC Discovery on a VMware appliance
The following section describes the steps for installing BMC Discovery on various versions and flavors of VMware.
To install on VMware Virtual Infrastructure (ESX/ESXi)—5.5 and later
- Copy and extract the BMC Discovery virtual appliance zip file to the local file system.
It contains 3 files, OVF File, SHA256 File, and VMDK File. - In VMware Virtual Infrastructure, from the File menu, browse to the location where you extracted the zip file, select the 3 files together, and click Open.
The Local file is selected, and you see a message,3 files. - Click Next to proceed with the installation.
- In VMware Virtual Infrastructure, from the File menu, select Deploy OVF Template.
- Specify the file name of the BMC Discovery OVF file in the Filename dialog box, or click Browse... to locate the file.
- Click Next.
Review the details provided. - Click Next and provide a name for the virtual machine.
- Click Next and choose datastore location for the virtual machine.
- Click Next and choose thin or thick disk format.
The default is thick which pre-allocates all disk space. - Click Next and Review the configuration.
- Click Finish to proceed.
A progress bar is displayed while the virtual machine is deployed.
Optionally, you can now add additional disk storage which can be managed with the disk configuration utility. - Click the Hardware tab and click Add.
- Select Hard Disk, click Next and choose the disk capacity and other options.
For information about recommended capacity, see the Hardware requirements. - Click Next.
- Review the settings and click Finish.
- Click OK to save the changes.
You can now start the virtual machine.
To install on VMware Workstation 11.1.4 and later
- Copy and extract the BMC Discovery virtual appliance zip file to the local file system.
It contains 3 files, OVF File, SHA256 File, and VMDK File. - In VMware Virtual Infrastructure, from the File menu, browse to the location where you extracted the zip file, select the 3 files together, and click Open.
The Local file is selected, and you see a message,3 files. - Click Next to proceed with the installation.
- In VMware Workstation, from the File menu, select Open.
- Enter the file name of the BMC Discovery OVF file into Filename, or click select OVF as the file type and click Browse... to locate the file.
- Click Open.
- Enter a name for the virtual machine and click Import.
VMware Workstation imports the virtual machine and the virtual machine is displayed in the virtual machine library.
Where to go from here
Configuring after installing the virtual appliance
Comments
Some people have been confused about installation and the adding the new disks as desired for the datastore and other data.
I recommend adding some new steps to the bottom of the Post-Installation steps like this:
STEPS FOR NEW DISKS: . Add any new disks required to contain the datastore, backup, debug logs, datastore transaction logs, and/or record&pool data.
Most customers add a new disk to contain the datastore, at a minimum.
See the "sizing guidelines" to see the minimum size for the datastore disk.
For a cluster, each cluster member should have a datastore disk of at least the minimum size. Add a separate disk for each type of data that you want stored on a separate disk. For a cluster, add the new disks (of the same size) to each cluster member.
. Reboot the appliance or cluster
. If any new disks were added, use the Administration->Disk Configuration page in the UI to move the data location to the new disk ... one disk at a time, one cluster member at a time.
(This step may seem odd since you don't have any data yet, however, moving the location of the data is an important step). NOTE: Only one type of data can be moved to a new disk using the UI.
The new disk can not contain 2 types of data, with the exception of swap space.
A new disk can contain the datastore (for example), and also swap space ... but the swap must be added using the Administration->Disk Configuration page at the same time the data is moved to the new disk.
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