Deployment Guide

vNIOS deployment on VMware

vSphere
October 2019
Table of Contents
Introduction 3
About Infoblox NIOS Virtual Appliance for VMware 3
Deployment 3
Downloading vNIOS .ova file 3
Deploying Grid Master 4
Deploying a Grid Member 11
Pre-provisioning a member in the Grid-Master 11
Pre-provisioning and generating a token for the offline member 14
Getting the Grid-Master certificate 15
Deploying a Member and adding it to the Grid 15
Deploying vNIOS through Vmware ovftool 18
Downloading Vmware ovftool 18
Using ovftool to deploy vNIOS appliance on VMware vSphere 18
Resizing vNIOS vmdk disk 20
Some useful information 24
Introduction
About Infoblox NIOS Virtual Appliance for VMware
The Infoblox NIOS virtual appliance on VMware software can run on ESX or ESXi servers that have DAS
(Direct Attached Storage), or iSCSI (Internet Small Computer System Interface) or FC (Fibre Channel) SAN
(Storage Area Network) attached. You can install the NIOS virtual software package on a host with VMware
ESX or ESXi 6.x.x and 5.5.x installed, and then configure it as a virtual appliance.

Infoblox NIOS provides core network services and a framework for integrating all the components of the
modular Infoblox solution. It provides integrated, secure, and easy-to-manage DNS (Domain Name System),
DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) and IPAM (IP address management) services. In addition to this,
the NIOS software also provides TFTP, HTTP, NTP, and FTP file transfer services.

NIOS virtual appliances support the following features:

• Configuration as a HA pair, a Grid master, Reporting server, or a Grid master candidate

• Anycast addressing
• OSPF
• BGP
• Static routes
• IPv6
vSphere vMotion is also supported. You can migrate NIOS virtual appliances from one ESX or ESXi server to
another without any service outages. The migration preserves the hardware IDs and licenses of the NIOS
virtual appliances. VMware Tools is automatically installed for each NIOS virtual appliance. Infoblox supports
the control functions in VMware Tools. For example, through the vSphere client, you can shut down the virtual
appliance. You can configure most NIOS virtual appliances as independent or HA (high availability) Grid
Masters, Grid Master candidates, and Grid members.

This deployment guide covers deployment of vNIOS on Vmware vSphere 6.5 onwards using Vmware vCenter
server.

Deployment
Downloading vNIOS .ova file
1. Login to the https://support.infoblox.com portal.
2. Navigate to Downloads.
3. In the Infoblox Software drop-down menu select NIOS/vNIOS.
4. Under Select release type select the first option.
 5. In the Select version drop box select the latest NIOS release.

6. Scroll down and expand vNIOS for VMware section.

7. Click on Download Image section to download the .OVA file for Grid Master or Member.

Deploying Grid Master

1. Login to your vCenter server with enough permissions to deploy an OVF template.
2. Once you are logged in to the vCenter server, right click on cluster/esxi/resource pool/vapp and select
Deploy OVF Template.

3. In the following wizard you can either give a URL by selecting URL option to download the OVA file or
you can browse the locally downloaded OVA file by selecting Local file option.

Note: This deployment guide covers deploying vNIOS though locally downloaded OVA file.
4. In the Select name and location wizard, enter a name for the vNIOS and select a datacenter or folder
where vNIOS will be deployed. Click on Next.

5. Review wizard displays the product details and description. After reviewing the details click on Next.
6. Accept the End User License Agreement (EULA) and click on Next.

7. In the Select configuration wizard, select the vNIOS model, by clicking the dropdown menu.
RAM and CPU utilization of each vNIOS differs and is displayed against Description. Click on Next.
 8. Select the datastore where vNIOS files will be stored from the Select Storage wizard.
Note: Infoblox recommends using thick provisioning for enhanced performance.

9. Select the network for the vNIOS appliance from the Select networks wizard.

10. Customize template wizard, lets you to assign LAN-1 networking details for the Grid-Master and licensing
details.
a. Expand the Uncategorized option and enter license strings→ nios IB-V815 enterprise for activating
vNIOS 815 and grid license. License strings are separated by space only. Refer Some Useful
Information section to get the list of license strings.

Expand Networking option to enter LAN-1 networking details. Click on Next.

11. You will be presented with the summary of your vNIOS deployment details. Review it and click on
Finish to commence the deployment.

12. Deployment will take some time. In the meantime, you can monitor the console of the vNIOS to find
out what is happening.
13. After initial deployment cloud-init kicks in and assigns the networking and licenses which triggers
multiple reboots.

14. Once vNIOS successfully boots up, login to it using admin/infoblox as user id and password
 15. To validate IP address and license assignment, run the following commands respectively.
show network
show license

Deploying a Grid Member

Pre-provisioning a member in the Grid-Master
1. Login to the Grid UI using the IP address which was specified in the Customize template option.
2. Once logged in, navigate to the Grid→ Grid-Manager → Members → Click on + option.
3. Select Member type as Virtual NIOS. Specify a FQDN for this member in the Host Name option and
click on Next.

4. For Type of Member option select Standalone Member. Specify the IP address, subnet mask and
default gateway which you would like to assign to this member and click on Next.
5. Click on Save and Close to add this member.

6. Once the member is added successfully it will show as offline in the GUI.
Pre-provisioning and generating a token for the offline member
1. Select the newly added offline member and click on edit option.
2. Navigate to the Pre-Provisioning option.
3. From the Hardware Model drop down option select the desired vNIOS model type. Click on Save and
Close

4. Click on the icon of the newly added member and select Generate Token.

5. You will be presented with a token like the one mentioned below. Make a note of this token.
Getting the Grid-Master certificate
1. Execute the following command from a Linux machine with openssl utility installed.
# openssl s_client -connect grid_master_ip:443 -showcerts

2. You will be presented the with the certificate details of the Grid-Master. Make a note of the PEM
certificate section of the Grid Master.
PEM certificate chain looks like.
-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----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-----END CERTIFICATE-----

Deploying a Member and adding it to the Grid

1. To deploy a vNIOS member follow same set of instructions as mentioned under Deploying Grid-Master
section (till step 9)
Note: Please give a different name while deploying the member vNIOS.
2. Once you arrive at Customize Template wizard,
a. Expand Uncategorized option and specify Temp license strings → nios IB-815 enterprise to
active vNIOS and grid license.
 b. Expand the Gridmaster section and enter the Certificate and Token which we obtained
previously.

3. Scroll down and expand the Networking section, enter the IPv4 address, IPv4 netmask and IPv4
default gateway details. This should match with the details specified during pre-provisioning of the
member.
4. Click on Next and you will be presented with the summary of all the deployment details.
5. Review and click on Finish to commence the deployment.

7. Deployment will take some time. In the meantime, you can monitor the console of the vNIOS member
to find out what is happening.
8. After initial deployment cloud-init kicks in and assigns the networking and licenses which triggers
multiple reboots.
9. Post this cloud-init also adds the newly deployed vNIOS member to the Grid.
 10. Login to the grid and verify that member is showing up as green and in online state.

Deploying vNIOS through Vmware ovftool

The VMware OVF Tool is a command-line utility that allows administrators to import and export Open
Virtualization Format (OVF) packages to and from VMware products. VMware OVF tool comes handy when a
scripted deployment of OVA is desired.

Downloading Vmware ovftool

Ovftool can be downloaded from https://code.vmware.com/web/tool/4.3.0/ovf. This site also provides the
documentation on the installation procedure on ovftool on Linux. More information on installation of ovftool on a
linux machine can be obtained from https://www.virtual-odyssey.com/2017/11/26/install-vmware-ovftool-ubuntu/

Using ovftool to deploy vNIOS appliance on VMware vSphere

1. Login to the ubuntu machine where ovftool is installed as a root user.
2. Create a directory ovftool by executing following command
3. Copy the vNIOS OVA file to ovftool directory.

4. Use the following command to commence the deployment of Grid-Master using ovftool.
ovftool --noSSLVerify --name=name_of_the_vm --acceptAllEulas --
datastore=name_of_the_datastore -dm="disk_provisioning" --
network=name_of_the_portgroup --powerOn --prop:remote_console_enabled=True
--prop:temp_license="license_string" --prop:lan1-v4_addr=lan1_ip_address --
prop:lan1-v4_netmask=lan1_netmask --prop:lan1-v4_gw=lan1_gateway
absolute_path_of_the_ova_file
'vi://vcenter_user_id:password@vcenter_fqdn/datacenter_name/vm/name_of_vapp
_already_created_in_vcenter'

5. Sample command and its output

6. ovftool will take some time to deploy the OVA. Once deployed you should be able to access Grid GUI
using the LAN-1 IP address.
7. Once Grid GUI shows up, please follow the same set of instructions as mentioned under Pre-
provisioning and generating a token for the offline member section.
8. To get the Grid-Master certificate details follow the instructions mentioned under Getting the Grid-
Master certificate section.
9. After generating member token and getting certificate details use the following command to deploy a
vNIOS member and add it to the grid.
ovftool --noSSLVerify --name=name_of_the_vm --acceptAllEulas --
datastore=name_of_the_datastore -dm="disk_provisioning" --
network=name_of_the_portgroup --powerOn --prop:remote_console_enabled=True
--prop:temp_license="license_string" --prop:lan1-v4_addr=lan1_ip_address --
prop:lan1-v4_netmask=lan1_netmask --prop:lan1-v4_gw=lan1_gateway --
prop:gridmaster-ip_addr=gridmaster_ip_address --prop:gridmaster-
token=member_token --prop:gridmaster-certificate=gridmaster_certificate_pem
absolute_path_of_the_ova_file
'vi://vcenter_user_id:password@vcenter_fqdn/datacenter_name/vm/name_of_vapp
_already_created_in_vcenter'
 10. Sample command and its output.

Resizing vNIOS vmdk disk

Starting from NIOS 8.5 onwards, customers can resize vNIOS virtual hard disk. Once vNIOS is deployed
from the resizable OVA file, its virtual hard disk can be resized based on your requirement and future
expansion. By default, 60 GB hard disk gets provisioned post deployment. Once the virtual hard disk usage
reaches 80%, Infoblox GUI flashes a disk usage warning. Infoblox recommends increasing the virtual hard
disk size immediately after disk usage warning appearance. Resize option can only be performed before
powering on vNIOS for the first time.

1. Follow the steps mentioned under download vNIOS OVA file section to download resizable vNIOS
OVA file.
2. After OVA file is downloaded, follow the instructions mentioned under Deploying Grid-Master.
3. Post-deployment, right click on the vNIOS and click on Edit Settings option.
4. Expand the Hard disk 1 option to view and change hard disk related options.
5. To increase the vNIOS virtual hard disk size, enter virtual hard size against Hard disk 1 option and
click on OK.
Some useful information
• NIOS virtual appliance for VMware supports most of the features of the Infoblox NIOS appliances, with
the following limitations:
o When you configure an HA pair, both nodes in the HA pair must be NIOS virtual instances.
You cannot configure a physical NIOS appliance and a NIOS virtual instance in an HA pair.
o NIOS virtual appliances run on virtual hardware. They do not have sensors to monitor the
physical CPU temperature, fan speed, and system temperature.
o Changing the NIOS virtual appliance settings through the VMware vSphere or vCenter
console may violate the terms of the NIOS virtual licensing and support models. The NIOS
virtual appliance may not join the Grid or function properly.
• Following are the temp license strings which activates the corresponding licensed features using
cloud-init.

• After increasing the vNIOS virtual hard disk size it cannot be decreased.
• vNIOS virtual hard disk can be increased up to 2.5 TB.
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