Franske ITC-2300 Assignment: Difference between revisions

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===Introduction to the Cloud===
===Introduction to the Cloud===
* [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/modules/create-an-azure-account/index Create an Azure Account]
* [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/modules/create-an-azure-account/index Create an Azure Account]
** NOTE: Do this through the [https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/free/students/ Azure for Students page] to get a $100 credit on your account.
* [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/modules/tour-azure-portal/4-exercise-work-with-blades Manage Services in the Azure Portal: Work with Blades]
* [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/modules/tour-azure-portal/4-exercise-work-with-blades Manage Services in the Azure Portal: Work with Blades]
* [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/modules/tour-azure-portal/5-exercise-navigate-the-portal Manage Services in the Azure Portal: Use the Azure Portal]
* [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/modules/tour-azure-portal/5-exercise-navigate-the-portal Manage Services in the Azure Portal: Use the Azure Portal]

Revision as of 23:10, 16 October 2019

Labs

You are responsible for completing ALL of these labs. You must submit a lab report (click for details about how to write these) for each topic. Each lab report is worth up to 20 points. This falls into the Labs/Homework category of your course grade.

Virtualization Labs

IP Addressing Information

Use the following information to correctly address your VMware systems:

Default Gateway: 172.17.144.1 Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0 DNS: 172.17.139.10

vmWare ESXi Installation Lab

  1. Open your network adapter properties on your host system and right click to "Disable" any VirtualBox network adapters such as the VirtualBox Host Only Adapter.
  2. Create a new VM in VMware Workstation with the following specifications. Be sure to save the VM to a location on the D drive outside of the CNT Files folder.
    • 24GB RAM
    • 350GB Hard Drive
    • 2 CPUs
  3. Locate the ESXi Install ISO file (VMvisor Installer) in the D:\CNT Files\ITC 2300 directory and use it to start the installation
  4. Set the networking to "Bridged" and make sure you are connected to the ITC network.
  5. Set the root password on your ESXi system during the installation, it needs to be at least 7 characters. Be sure to write it down!
  6. Create another new VM in VMware Workstation with the following specifications. Be sure to save the VM to a location on the D drive outside of the CNT Files folder.
    • 3GB RAM
    • 25GB Hard Drive
    • 2 CPUs
  7. Locate the Windows 7 Enterprise ISO file in the D:\CNT Files directory and use it to start the installation
  8. Set the networking to "Bridged" and make sure you are connected to the ITC network.
  9. Set the Administrative password on your Windows 7 Client system during the installation, be sure to write it down!
  10. Verify you have network connectivity between the Windows client system and all your ESXi systems.
  11. Shut down your Windows 7 Client, this will be used in a future lab.
  12. Browse to the ESXi system in a web browser on your host system.
  13. Login as the root user.
  14. Add a new account and give it administrative permissions to the ESXi system. Log out of the root account and in with the new user account.
  15. Create a new folder on the ESXi datastore for ISO files.
  16. Use a web browser on your host system to access the ESXi server's web interface.
  17. Log in to the "VMware Host Client" through the web interface using your new login credentials (not the root account)
  18. Upload the Linux Mint ISO file from the D:\CNT Files directory on your host system to the new ISO folder on the ESXi server datastore.
  19. Create a new VM on the ESXi system (not in VMware Workstation) where you can install the Linux Mint system.
  20. Complete the installation of Linux Mint as a VM on the ESXi host
  21. Safely shut down your ESXi server VM.
  22. Ensure all your network connections are back to normal and you are connected to the campus network.
  23. Remind your instructor to download a new VCSA image file to the CNT Files directory before next week, they expire every year!

vmWare vSphere vCenter Server Installation Lab

  1. Connect the PCs in your pod to the ITCnet network
  2. Open your network adapter properties on your host system and ensure any VirtualBox network adapters such as the VirtualBox Host Only Adapter are disabled.
  3. Boot your ESXi Server system
  4. Obtain static IP addressing information from the table above and change the IP address of each ESXi server in your pod to a unique static IP address.
  5. Boot your Windows 7 Client system
  6. Mount the vSphere vCenter Installer ISO (VCSA) found in the D:\CNT Files location on your Windows 7 Client system by attaching it to the Windows 7 VM virtual CD drive.
  7. Open the installer.exe file found in the vcsa-ui-installer\win32 directory of the CD image and click install to begin the installation process. If you're unfamiliar with the installation process you can refer back to your readings as well as a VMware walk-through.
  8. During the installation you will need to select one of your pod's ESXi servers to install the vCenter appliance onto. Only one VCSA installation per pod!
  9. Set a root password for your VCSA server during the installation process, be sure to write this down!
  10. When given the option you should install vCenter Server with an Embedded Platform Services Controller
  11. When asked about the appliance size choose a "Tiny" installation and "Default" storage size.
  12. Select the checkbox to enable "Thin-Disk Mode"
  13. Use the correct static IP address for the VCSA from the allocation you received for your pod and choose to synchronize time with the ESXi appliance host. The IP address should also be used as the system name.
  14. The first phase of the installation will take quite a while to complete. Once it is done you will be prompted to start stage 2
  15. Choose to synchronize time with the ESXi host and enable ssh access
  16. When creating a new SSO domain use "podX.local" (where X is replaced by your pod number) as your SSO Domain Name
  17. Set the site name to Pod-X (where X is replaced by your pod number)
  18. After the installation completes use your credentials (administrator@podX.local) to log in to the VCSA web client at the address provided.
    • Note: You do not need to access the web interface through the Windows 7 client system. Because it's just a web interface you can connect from the browser on your host system or any other PC on the network.
  19. Spend a few minutes exploring the VCSA web client interface
  20. Create a new Datacenter and give it a name
  21. Add the all the ESXi hosts in your pod to the datacenter
  22. Create a few more VMs through VCSA on various different ESXi hosts. Use the ISOs in the CNT Files folder to install another copy of Mint into one, Windows 7 into another, and Windows 10 into another.
    • NOTE: You will need to upload the ISOs to the datastore on the ESXi system which you are creating the VM on before you can install the systems.
  23. Safely shutdown all running VMs except VCSA
  24. Safely shutdown the VCSA appliance
  25. Safely shutdown all ESXi hosts
  26. Safely Shutdown Windows 7 Client System
  27. Ensure your system is reconnected to the campus network

vmWare vSphere Administration Lab

  1. Connect the PCs in your pod to the ITCnet network
  2. Open your network adapter properties on your host system and ensure any VirtualBox network adapters such as the VirtualBox Host Only Adapter are disabled.
  3. Boot all your ESXi Server systems
  4. Boot your VCSA VM Appliance using the ESXi web interface on the ESXi system hosting VCSA.
  5. Use the VCSA web interface to create a new VM which is running on an ESXi server OTHER than the one running VCSA (so more RAM is available) to install Windows Server 2016. You will need a VM with 2GB RAM and a 50GB hard drive.
  6. Complete the installation of Windows Server 2016 into the new VM. The ISO installation file for Windows Server can be found in "D:\CNT Files" Use "dc1" as the machine name.
    • NOTE: Click the link that you do not have a key and install the standard version of Server 2016, this will give you a trial license.
  7. Add the Active Directory Domain Services role to the server. Use "podX-ad.local" (where X is your pod number) as the root domain name and "podX-ad" as the NetBIOS domain name.
  8. While the Active Directory role is installed and the domain controller promotion script is running (these will take some time to complete) continue through this lab.
  9. It's sometimes the case that you may have a malfunctioning web interface and need to start some critical VMs such as VCSA and some Active Directory servers only through the host command line interface. We'll simulate this setup by checking the status and powering on one of our Windows 7 or Linux Mint VMs through this host console.
  10. Use the host command line console on your ESXi machines to get a list of the VMs registered at each host.
  11. Use the host command line console on your ESXi machines to check the power status of one of your Windows 7 or Mint VMs (they should be off)
  12. Verify the VMs are off in the vCenter Server web client
  13. Use the host command line console on your ESXi machines to power on one of your Windows 7 or Mint VMs.
  14. Verify the VM is powering on through both the Use the host command line console on your ESXi machine as well as through the vCenter web interface.
  15. Another useful virtual machine task is to set certain VMs to automatically power on when the ESXi server powers on. Read the VMware KB article on the topic.
  16. Set the VCSA VM to automatically power on with the ESXi host.
  17. One benefit of the vCenter Server system is that you can migrate VMs from one ESXi host to another. First let's try this with a powered off virtual machine.
  18. Choose one of the powered off VMs on one of your hosts in the VCSA Web Client. On the summary tab check to see which host the VM currently resides on.
  19. Right click on it and choose migrate to open the migration wizard. You want to move both the compute (CPU/RAM) and storage (disk images) to a new host so make that selection.
  20. Select a different ESXi server and a datastore attached to that server and begin the migration.
  21. Once the migration is complete check that the VM shows it is on a different host and verify that it still powers up and works.
  22. An even more powerful tool is to be able to migrate VMs while they are running, this feature is called vMotion. Take the same VM and try the migration process again (back to the original host) while the machine is powered on.
  23. This may take quite a bit longer to complete so let's go back to our Windows Server setup while the vMotion magic is happening.
  24. It would be nice to have a single sign on for VMware vCenter Server users which is backed by our Active Directory domain so let's see if we can get that running.
  25. Follow the VMware instructions for adding a vCenter Server Single Sign-On identity source. You may also need to read the Active Directory Identity Source Settings.
    • NOTE: You will need to know the Base DN for the users and groups in your Active Directory. A Base DN is a path to the location in Active Directory where something is stored (in this case user accounts and groups). You may need to do some research online and make some inferences to figure out what your Base DNs are.
  26. You are going to want to setup Active Directory as an LDAP server so that you don't need to join your VCSA system to your domain. Instructions for setting that up can be found here.
  27. Create a new user account in AD and try adding it as an administrator in vCenter Server.
  28. Try logging in with the new account in vCenter Server.
  29. Safely shutdown all running VMs except VCSA
  30. Safely shutdown the VCSA appliance
  31. Safely shutdown all ESXi hosts
  32. Ensure your system is reconnected to the campus network

Proxmox VE Installation Lab

  1. Open your network adapter properties on your host system and ensure any VirtualBox network adapters such as the VirtualBox Host Only Adapter are disabled.
  2. You will be installing a Proxmox VE server on each computer in your group (so do all these steps, unless otherwise indicated, on each computer). If you are unsure about how to do something try checking the Proxmox Wiki site first.
    • NOTE: Be sure to use a unique system name on each Proxmox server, otherwise you will have issues connecting them together in a future lab.
  3. Create a new VM in VMware Workstation with the following specifications. Be sure to save the VM to a location on the D drive outside of the CNT Files folder.
    • 24GB RAM
    • 175GB Hard Drive
    • 2 CPUs
    • Enable Intel VTi/VTx Virtualization for the processors in the VM
  4. Locate the Proxmox VE installer ISO file in the D:\CNT Files\ directory and use it to start the installation
    • NOTE: This lab has been tested with Proxmox VE 5.x but there is also a 6.x ISO file you can try if you would like. The 6.x version has many more features including the ability to live migrate machines using local storage from the GUI.
  5. Set the networking to "Bridged" and make sure you are connected to the ITC network.
  6. Start the Proxmox VE installation making note of these options
    • Use ext4 as the filesystem
    • Record the administrative password for future use
    • Set the IP address using the same table as VMware (above) ESXi addresses
    • Make sure the hostname is different on each Proxmox VE server
  7. Use a web browser on your host system to access the Proxmox VE server's web interface as the root user (username root) and password set during the installation
  8. Add a second user account to Proxmox VE and set it up with administrative access. Set the second account up as a Proxmox VE Authentication Server realm account meaning it will only be available in Proxmox and not on the underlying Linux system.
    • NOTE: You may want to read up about objects and paths for user accounts in Proxmox you will need to set a path for the account.
  9. Log out of the administrator account and in using the secondary account you just created
  10. Upload Windows 7 and Linux Mint ISO files from your host system to the Proxmox VE server using the web interface
  11. Try creating a Windows 7 and Linux Mint VM in Proxmox VE and complete the installation (use KVM as the VM type)
    • NOTE: At least some versions of Mint need special settings in Proxmox to install. When you create the VM for Mint set it up with an IDE hard drive instead of SCSI and set the network card emulation to Intel e1000 instead of VirtIO.
  12. Safely shut down your Windows and Linux guest systems
  13. Safely shutdown your Proxmox VE server
  14. Ensure all your network connections are back to normal and you are connected to the campus network.

Proxmox VE Containers and Cluster Lab

  1. Open your network adapter properties on your host system and ensure any VirtualBox network adapters such as the VirtualBox Host Only Adapter are disabled.
  2. Connect the PCs in your pod to the ITCnet network
  3. Boot all your Proxmox VE Server systems
  4. Check the available container templates on your PVE server and make sure you have downloaded the latest Debian and Ubuntu system templates. Also download at least one of the Turnkey Linux appliance templates such as the Wordpress template.
    • NOTE: If you have an incomplete list of container templates it's likely the case that your system was powered off when the auto-run script went to check the list of available templates. You can refresh this list manually from the PVE command line using information from the ProxMox Linux Containers page.
  5. After you have the containers downloaded go ahead and deploy a container based on the Ubuntu template, use DHCP addressing.
  6. Try using the Ubuntu container to see if it feels any different than a full Ubuntu VM.
  7. Create a Proxmox cluster for your pod. Do this on the proxmox node containing the most VMs (the ones you want to save) all other nodes will need to have their VMs wiped before joining the cluster.
  8. Add all of the PVE servers/nodes in your pod to your Proxmox cluster
    • NOTE: You will need to remove all of the VMs on the node before you add it to the cluster
  9. Deploy a Debian container to a node in your Proxmox cluster, verify it is working
  10. Deploy a Wordpress server container to a node in your Proxmox cluster, verify it is working
  11. Try migrating one of your VMs from the last lab which is not powered on from one node to another node in the cluster and then powering up and verifying the VM still works
  12. Try migrating one of your Linux containers from one node to another node in the cluster (you will have to power it down) and then powering up and verifying it still works
    • NOTE: We are unable to test online migration as Proxmox requires shared storage for online migration (this was also required by VMware until recent versions)
  13. Try modifying an existing container or VM by adding extra storage, in the form of an additional virtual disk, to the system
  14. Try cloning one of your VMs
  15. Safely shut down all your containers and VMs
  16. Safely shutdown your Proxmox VE server
  17. Ensure all your network connections are back to normal and you are connected to the campus network.

Cloud Labs

Introduction to the Cloud

Using Azure Virtual Machines

Scaling Azure Virtual Machines

Homework

Any homework assigned in the course will go here. This falls into the homework category of your course grade.

  • For each topic you need to write at least 5 high quality multiple choice questions and submit them in the correct format, with the correct answer and a citation (book name and page number, URL, or other resource). These questions will be worth up to 15 points for each topic based on grammar, quality, spread across the topic content (don't concentrate on just one part of the topic), etc. Be sure to read the Writing Moodle Questions tutorial for additional information.

Participation Activities

Any participation activities completed in the course will go here. This falls into the participation category of your course grade.

  • For each topic you need to meet with the instructor at least once to check on your status and understanding of the topic. Each meeting will be worth up to 10 points.
  • You will need to complete peer evaluations of all course projects, these evaluations will be worth 10 participation points total

Topic Assessments

You are responsible for completing an online assessment for each topic. These fall into the online assessments category of your course grade.

Other

You are also responsible for completing these things, see the course syllabus for category and weighting information.

  • Online Final Exam
  • Course Project

Course Project

The course project will take the place of the skills exam in this course and will allow you and your lab partner to continue to experiment with one of the topic areas covered in the course. You will need to present your project in a presentation/demonstration to the class which is expected to last 10-20 minutes.

The project should be related to one of the three topics covered in the course (VoIP, virtualization, and/or storage). You may either expand on one of the tools that we used in the course or explore a different tool in the same topic area. Your project plan should be approved by the instructor. Remember that the project is 15% of your final grade so it is expected to be a substantial amount of work.

Grading

Your project will be graded in three ways, an instructor project score, a peer project score, and a score for completing quality peer evaluations of each project.

The instructor score is comprised of:

  • Topic Content (30 Points)
    • Was the topic appropriate for the course project? Was the content presented accurate and did it provide a good overview of the topic and the work done? Was the amount of work done appropriate for a large course project?
  • Presentation Skills (30 Points)
    • How well did the group do explaining the content? Were they able to adequately answer appropriate questions from the class? Was the presentation professional and well prepared?
  • Engagement (20 Points)
    • How well did the group engage the class in their presentation? This could include getting or asking questions of the class, using appropriate visual aids, etc. How well did the group express excitement and interest in the topic of their presentation?
  • Overall Quality (20 Points)
    • Did you learn something or get something clarified in your mind? Did you feel listening to this presentation was worth your time? Was this a "good" presentation? Are you interested to learn more about this topic having heard this presentation? Do you have a good understanding of how you could use this to solve future problems you come across?

Peer evaluations will be based on the same areas as the instructor score but the instructor score will be worth 100 points and the peer score (the average of all scores from your peers) worth 10 points of your final grade in this area.

You must also complete a peer evaluation for all of the other groups. These are graded based on how well you justify (explain) the scores you give in each of the areas as well as if the information you write will be helpful in improving future projects. Also, do your scores match what you're saying? If you have complaints about the presentation and think there is anything they could have done better they should not be getting a perfect score. Think about how well you feel they met the criteria for each area of the project, assign points based on how they did or did not, and make sure you have ample constructive (helpful) comments to back it up.

Archived Labs

This section contains information about labs that have been used in this class in the past. You are NOT responsible for completing these labs.

VoIP Labs

  • CUCM Install & Chapter 8 Lab (One report for these)
  • Chapter 9 Labs (One report for these)
    • NOTE: You will not need to complete the Active Directory (LDAP) Integration lab
  • Chapter 10 Labs (One report for these)

VoIP Lab IP Addressing and Extensions

You need to be assigned a pod number by the instructor. In the information below you will replace the X with your pod number.

NTP Network (Simulated WAN) Information

  • You need to physically connect Fa0/1 on your router to the NTP switch. The NTP switch is shared by all students in the class and is also connected to the "Phone Company" router Fa0/1 interface. There is no special configuration on the NTP switch, just an empty configuration.
  • The Fa0/1 interface on your router should be assigned IP 10.0.0.x/24
  • The default route on your router should be 10.0.0.254 (and you should be able to ping that address).
  • NTP on your router should be set to get time from 10.0.0.254

LAN Information

You will have 3 VLANs on the LAN side (Fa0/0) of your router.

VLAN Name VLAN Number Router Subinterface Addressing
Management x1 10.x1.0.1/24
Data x0 10.x0.0.1/24
Voice x5 10.x5.0.1/24

So, for example IF YOU ARE POD 5 your data VLAN is number 50 and your IP address for the router subinterface on that VLAN is 10.50.0.1/24.

You will need to setup DHCP pools on the DATA and VOICE VLANs as well. These pools should provide IP addresses, the correct default-router for each VLAN and the DHCP Option 150 should be set to the address of your CUCM server (see below). You should exclude addresses .1-.10 from each VLANs DHCP pool.

On your switch you will need to create all three VLANs, set the port connecting to your router as an 802.1q trunk port, and set the remaining ports on your switch as access ports on the data VLAN with a secondary voice VLAN set (switchport voice vlan x5).

Your switch should have a management IP of 10.x1.0.2/24 on the management VLAN and a default gateway set to the IP of the router on the management VLAN.

CUCM Information

Your CUCM server should be assigned the IP address of 10.x0.0.5/24 (in other words host 5 on the Data VLAN). The default gateway for CUCM should be 10.x0.0.1 because that is the router interface on that VLAN. The NTP server for your CUCM server should also be the address of your router on the data VLAN (10.x0.0.1).

Note that NTP must be fully synchronized on your router before CUCM will allow you to complete the network addressing portion of the installation.

Phone Extension Information

Extension Range First DID Number CUC Pilot Number
2x00-2x99 5105552x00 2x90

So, for example if you are Pod 3 your extension numbers are 2300-2399, your first DID number is 5105552300 and your CUC Pilot number is 2390.

Phone Security Key Reset Procedure

The first time you try to register a used Cisco IP phone to a CUCM server it will likely fail. This is because when the phones register to a server they get a set of unique keys that will only allow them to register to that same server. These keys can be cleared out from the phone itself only (not from CUCM). The procedure is as follows:

  1. Press the "Settings" button on the phone
  2. Scroll down and select "Security Configuration"
  3. Scroll down and select "Trust List"
  4. Determine whether CTL and/or ITL files are installed on your phone (you will need to repeat this if both are set)
  5. Scroll down and select the installed CTL or ITL file you wish to remove
  6. Press "**#" on your phone to unlock the Trust List settings page
  7. Use the soft-key at the bottom of the screen to "Unlock" the CTL or ITL file
  8. Press the "more" soft key at the bottom of the screen
  9. Press the "Erase" soft key at the bottom of the screen
  10. Repeat if needed to clear the other (CTL or ITL) file from the Trust List settings page. Both should show "Not Installed" in order to register to a new CUCM server.

Storage Labs

FreeNAS Installation Lab

  1. Connect your PC to the ITC network
  2. Create a new VM for FreeNAS in VMware Workstation with the following specifications. Be sure to save the VM to a location on the D drive outside of the CNT Files folder.
    • 12 GB RAM
    • 32 GB Primary Hard Drive
    • Quantity 3 - 100 GB Data Hard Drives
  3. Complete the FreeNAS installation onto the 32GB hard drive making note of your root password and using the same static IP address as your third ESXi server above using the installation ISO from your D drive.
  4. Boot into your FreeNAS system
  5. Access the web interface from your host PC (or another PC on the ITC network) and complete the Initial Configuration Wizard.
    • Setup the data disks in a raidz1 pool
  6. See if you can get a Windows (SMB) share working and copy some files from your host PC D: drive onto the share. Refer to the FreeNAS documentation as necessary. Here are some hints:
    • You need to create a FreeNAS user account and activate the "Microsoft Account" option for the user
    • You need to create a location on your raidz storage pool for the 10 GB file share to exist on, you need to make sure that the user and group you want to have access to the files is the owner of this location (requires changing permissions)
    • You need to create the SMB file share and point it to the storage location
    • You can access a file share in Windows by opening a Run dialog box and entering \\ip.address.of.freenas\ opening your share, and giving the correct username and password when prompted
    • NOTE: Because of changes in Windows 10 you will need to add the user account you log in to Windows 10 with to FreeNAS before you will be able to access the share from a Windows 10 system
  7. Safely shut down your FreeNAS VM
  8. Ensure your computer is reconnected to the campus network and you have a working Internet connection

FreeNAS iSCSI Lab

  1. Connect your PC to the ITC network
  2. Power on your FreeNAS VM
  3. Use a web browser on your host machine to access the configuration web site of your FreeNAS server.
  4. Access the Sharing -> Block (iSCSI) settings page and review the target global configuration parameters for iSCSI.
    • Make a note of the Base Name, the other settings are not required
  5. Create a new iSCSI portal in FreeNAS to allow iSCSI connections on a certain IP address associated with your FreeNAS server.
    • Given that we are working on a private network in a non-production environment we will not be setting up authentication or security on our iSCSI system so the Discovery Auth Method and Group can remain set to "None".
    • Make a note of the portal Group ID
  6. Add an initiator to FreeNAS (really this is an access control list for initiators, the actual initiator is the system which will be accessing the iSCSI volume)
    • Even without authentication it's possible to restrict iSCSI access to certain systems (initiators) by IP address or network address but because we'll be working today with an initiator with a dynamic IP we need to set up initiator access for ALL hostnames from ALL networks.
    • Make a note of the Group ID number for this access control list
  7. Now create an iSCSI Target
    • You must pick a target name such as "win7-drive" which is similar to a DNS host name, it will have the global base name automatically added to it.
    • Set the portal group ID and initiator group ID to match the portal and initiators you just configured.
    • Given that we are working on a private network in a non-production environment we will not be setting up authentication or security on our iSCSI system so the Auth Method and Authentication Group number can remain set to "None".
  8. At this point you have done most of the iSCSI configuration but it's not yet connected to any particular storage volume/disk/virtual disk. iSCSI calls these storage devices "extents" so the next step is to create an extent. There are two types of extents which can be created, device extents and file extents. Device extents are used if you want to make all of a physical hard drive or ZFS volume available through the iSCSI target. They offer better performance as they are essentially a remote drive but they have less flexibility as you need to dedicate an entire drive or ZFS volume to each target. File extents are like virtual hard drives for VMs, each one exists inside of a file stored on a physical drive so multiple targets can share the same physical drive or ZFS volume offering much more flexibility. The downside is that performance can be worse. For our simple test setup file based extents will provide more flexibility so we'll stick with those.
  9. Create a file based extent
    • Set the path where you want the extent to be stored (remember this is a file based extent so we need to store the "virtual hard drive" file somewhere on one of the ZFS volumes on our server)
    • Set the extent size to 2500 MB (2.5 GB)
  10. Now we need to associate the iSCSI target (think of this as the share) we previously created with the extent (where the data will actually be stored). This mapping is done in the "Associated Targets" tab of the iSCSI configuration.
  11. Start the iSCSI service in Services -> Control Services
  12. Power on your Windows 7 VM in VMware Workstation (not in ESXi) which you used to install vCenter Server.
  13. Use the built in iSCSI Initiator (search in the start menu to find it) to connect to the iSCSI target you have created on FreeNAS
  14. Once you have successfully connected the system to the iSCSI target it should show up as a secondary hard drive in the system just like any other hard drive would. Check in the Windows Disk Management control panel to find it and format the new iSCSI drive with NTFS and try storing some files on it.
  15. Now we're going to try to increase the size of the iSCSI "drive". It's safest to do this when the system is disconnected from the iSCSI target so the first step will be to shut down the Windows 7 VM.
  16. Try following the instructions in the FreeNAS documentation to grow the size of the file based extent LUN (basically increase the size of the virtual drive) from 2.5 GB to 5 GB.
  17. After increasing the size of the extent you either need to stop and restart the iSCSI service on FreeNAS OR delete the target and then re-add a "new" target with the same name and extent location so that the new size is recognized by the iSCSI process on the storage server.
  18. Power back on your Windows 7 VM and ensure you are reconnected to the iSCSI target.
  19. Check the target (iSCSI "drive") size in Windows explorer. Has it increased to 5 GB?
  20. Try checking in the Windows "Disk Management" control panel now. What you should see is the drive size has grown to 5 GB but the NTFS partition is still only 2.5 GB because that's what it was formatted as.
  21. There are two solutions to fixing this problem. First, you could re-format the drive but in that case you would loose any data on the drive. A better option, because NTFS supports it, might be to try and grow the size of the NTFS partition from 2.5 GB to 5 GB. See if you can figure out how to use Windows tools such as DISKPART to grow the size of the NTFS partition on the drive.
  22. Check to see that you haven't lost any of the files you tried storing on the iSCSI drive during the grow process.
  23. Download the CrystalDiskMark drive benchmarking software and install it in your VM.
  24. Run the CrystalDiskMark software on both your C: drive and your iSCSI drive in Windows 7 and compare the results. Because we have several layers of virtualization occurring and are using software based targets and initiators for the iSCSI side speeds are likely to be poor on both drives but you should get some idea of how you can compare local drives with iSCSI drives. There are also many other tools which can be used for benchmarking specific types of storage loads such as database transactions, I/O per second (IOPS), etc.
  25. If time allows configure another iSCSI target & extent on your own and try to get it connected and mounted on a Debian Linux VM.
  26. Safely shut down your Windows 7, Debian, and finally FreeNAS VMs
  27. Ensure your computer is reconnected to the campus network and you have a working Internet connection

Storage for Virtualization Lab

The following are key goals of this lab, this time we'll leave the specific instructions up to you to figure out. A suggestion though is to tackle the iSCSI work for both VMware and Proxmox first and then do the NFS work (but that's up to you):

  1. Get VMware vCenter connected to your FreeNAS server (using the FreeNAS server as a datastore) using BOTH an iSCSI share and an NFS share.
    • HINT: Remember that FreeNAS is using the same IP as ESXi-3 so you should NOT boot ESXi-3 (or Proxmox-3) while working on this lab and also should not have VMware and Proxmox systems booted at the same time (because they also share IPs).
  2. Ensure you are able to create and migrate VMware VMs using the FreeNAS iSCSI and NFS storage
    • Note: this doesn't mean migrating between two types of storage, this means migrating a VM instance from one host to another
  3. Get your Proxmox cluster connected to your FreeNAS server using BOTH iSCSI and NFS (different shares than you used for VMware)
    • HINT: Shared iSCSI configuration in Proxmox can be a little tricky as it requires setting up an iSCSI connection and then LVM on top of that.
  4. Ensure that you are able to create and migrate Proxmox VMs and containers using the FreeNAS iSCSI and NFS storage.
    • NOTE: Specifically you should be able to live migrate in Proxmox now that you have shared storage in place.
    • Note: this doesn't mean migrating between two types of storage, this means migrating a VM instance from one host to another
  5. Ensure your computer is reconnected to the campus network and you have a working Internet connection before you leave.

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