Getting Rockstor to work in a VM for vSphere/ESXi Deployment

•    Rockstor will not always work with vSphere/ESXi in a VM format. You will have to edit one file after you deploy/install your Rockstor VM.
•    The first step is to navigate to the data store on your ESXi data store. You need to open the VMs folder directory.
•    Within the VM folder directory of your Rockstor VM, click on the .vmx file and download this (this is just the .vmx file which is for VM customization).
•    Once the file is downloaded, open the file in Notepad++ or another notepad type file, and add the following line in the .vmx file Do not use the enclosing quotes, only use the quotes around the TRUE statement:
    o    “disk.EnableUUID=”TRUE””
•    Once this has been changed, save the file.
•    Navigate back to your VM data store and VM folder directory.
•    Click on the Upload link in the top right of the folder directory.
•    Select the new .vmx customized file and upload it.
•    You might also have to do these steps in vSphere to finish the TRUE statement if it does not take:
    o    Right click on the VM.
    o    Click on the VM Options tab.
    o    Click on the Advanced section.
    o    Click Edit Configuration tab.
    o    In the disk.EnableUUID, change from FALSE to TRUE.
•    Now, Rockstor is ready to be used as a VM in your environment.

 

Adding Rockstor NFS datastore to the vSphere

•  First log into Rockstor (log on through the web browser either through IP or FQDN) and click on Storage (top center Tabs), then click on NFS under File sharing.
•  From here, you need to create a new host string. This allows your file share to talk to vSphere/be added to hosts. You can either do an IP address range with wildcard (*) where needed, or you can specify FQDN and other options.
•  For our specific demonstration, we will click “Add NFS Export”
• From here we will click on the shares to export (which file share we wish to share).
•  And then put in the NFS clients by either IP address, domain names etc (example would be IP: x.x.x.x).
• Access type, you designate Writable if you want them to control items in the share, or read-only if you only want them to see it.
• Response type, I may be wrong on this, and I am not a data storage expert, but I have read the async option allows simultaneous read/write processes to happen while sync will wait for processes to be done.
•  Once this has been completed, you are ready to mount the datastore in vSphere by using the example shown in Rockstor: /export/<share_name> <mount_pt>
•  In vSphere you will navigate to the Storage menu however you please, either clicking on Storage from Home, or Storage from the Navigator menu.
•  Once you are here, you click on the data center which you would like to add storage to.
•  Click on the New Datastore icon in the top left of the datastore listings.
•  On location either select the datastore you want, or click next.
•  Click NFS
•  Choose either 3.0 or 4.1 NFS (3.0 is basic, 4.1 NFS allows Active Directory and other features)
•  Now you have to input the following in the “Name and configuration” screen:
• Datastore name: what name you want this datastore to show up as in vSphere.
• Folder: this depends, but for Rockstor, it will be /export/test/test (just make sure you have the export in front of your share. The whole purpose of this is to have vCenter/vSphere map the exact share you wish to map).
•  Servers: this is the IP, domain name of the server, etc.
•  Finally, you will either have a “servers to be added” section, or not. This depends if it was NFS 3.0 or 4.1. Just select the server you want to pull the share from.
•  Section 5 is configuring Kerberos authentication. Put in your Kerberos details in if you are authenticating/adding with that option.
• Host accessibility tab just allows you to designate a host to assign the datastore to. Could be esxi-1-test, or IP, x.x.x.x
• Finally, you can review your settings under the Ready to complete section.