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samuk
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Installing Vsphere 5 Standard

Hi All,

First time installing ESX 5, had afew questions.

We have purchased a Vsphere 5 standard licence, with a single processor. A second host will be purchased at a ter date for redundancy.

The host and VM's are to be placed in the DMz- The server will be a BL460c G7 blade server with a SAS storage blade.

Questions:

  • Am i ok to accept all the defaults for the installtion? I recall in the previous versions custom Partition sizes were recommended)
  • Is it the ESXi i need to install? the installation will be running of the local BL460 mirrored disks.
  • Should i VLAN the managment nic from the DMZ nic? or will it not make a difference?
  • How many VM's are recommended to be hosted on a single ESX host with a single processor and 32GB of memory? which works best or is memory \ cpu my limatation?

If there is anything else you feel i need to know before i do the installtion on Wednesday, please feel free to comment.

Thanks in advance.

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PduPreez
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Yes the Key's will still work

It is recommended to install the Important and critical patches

Normally this is all handled by VUM (VMware Update Manager),

If you do have vCenter just install VUM and do it through there Smiley Wink

This looks like a single host deployment with no vCenter so you can manually download the patches here .

Just search ESXi 5 All Cat and Important.

You can install the patches esxcli using vmroyale's guide. Click Guide

Please award points for helpful/correct answers :smileycool:

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PduPreez
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Hi

Just to make sure, your BL460 only have 1 physical CPU installed?

Questions:

  • Am i ok to accept all the defaults for the installtion? I recall in the previous versions custom Partition sizes were recommended)
  • Is it the ESXi i need to install? the installation will be running of the local BL460 mirrored disks.
  • Should i VLAN the managment nic from the DMZ nic? or will it not make a difference?
  • How many VM's are recommended to be hosted on a single ESX host with a single processor and 32GB of memory? which works best or is memory \ cpu my limatation?


- You can only select where you want to install to - so nothing else to change for installation. Use the HP ESXi build ISO

- You could install to local drive, but you could also install to internal USB/SD card. These Blades got both slots, you just need to install the flash disk

This way you don't need local storage and for the 2nd host you do not need to order HDD.

- For security reasons you should do this yes. I assume you have more than 2 physical NIC, or using Flex 10 witch gives 4 virtual per physical.

There some considerations around DMZ, Click here

- It depends on the number of cores and vCPUs. Best practice/guideline is not to use more than 4 vCPUs per core. So if this is a quad core CPU, you could run 16 VMs with 1 vCPU, 8 with 2 vCPUs, or mixed. Depending on the workload obviously. But normally Memory tends to be the limitation

Please don't forget to award points for correct/helpful responses Smiley Wink

samuk
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Hi,

Thanks for the info.

We have purchased VMWare from disti, and its not HP branded. can i still download the HP ISO? is there a cost involved?

Can i still install to a USB \ SD Card - any specific type?

Sam

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PduPreez
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Yes you can, and it is a free download from here

You just need to register though

The other option is to use the default build you guys received, and just download the "patches/drivers" (bundles) for these blades from here

Essentially the HP Install is the default build with these bundles already installed, and repackaged into a ISO.

Please award points for correct/helpful answers :smileycool:

samuk
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thanks for the info, i will downlaod the HP build and i assume the VMware install keys will work.

Are there any recommended VMware patches that i should be applying to the ESX host?

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PduPreez
VMware Employee
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Yes the Key's will still work

It is recommended to install the Important and critical patches

Normally this is all handled by VUM (VMware Update Manager),

If you do have vCenter just install VUM and do it through there Smiley Wink

This looks like a single host deployment with no vCenter so you can manually download the patches here .

Just search ESXi 5 All Cat and Important.

You can install the patches esxcli using vmroyale's guide. Click Guide

Please award points for helpful/correct answers :smileycool:

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samuk
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Hi,

Quick question, i have used putty to get into the server.

The guide says to run this command:

esxcli --server=192.168.100.185 --username=root software sources vib get -d /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/ESXi500-201109001.zip | grep "Maintenance Mode Required: True"

Do i need to change the --server for server name or does this get removed?

The command run as above retuns error:

no such option: --server

This command however seemed to worked, but the server was not in maintenance mode..?

esxcli software vib install -d /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/ESXi500-201109001.zip

Thanks

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