Installing HPE SimpliVity (with software v4.1)

Last time I unboxed my two #AMD based #HPE #SimpliVity 325 nodes. This time, I am going to do the installation including cabling and software deployment. I will also give you a few tips how to avoid some of the mistakes I made during the installation.
I got an early access to the freshly released and long anticipated SimpliVity software version 4.1 well before the release so, I'm going to deploy my SimpliVity cluster with this latest software version. Of course, I am also going to talk about the main features of the new software version 4.1.
My take in short: #hyperconvergence in general is a good fit for #edgecomputing environments but a 2-node HPE SimpliVity 325 cluster with one AMD #Epyc CPU is ideal for smaller #edge deployments for it's small physical size, simplicity, ease-of-use and lower cost point. SimpliVity #OmniStack software version 4.1 brings in much anticipated support for #cloud and remote StoreOnce #backups as well as #container and #VMware vSphere 7.0 support.
Tune in an join me with the HPE SimpliVity 325 installation!
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📜 Table of Contents
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0:00 - Intro
1:38 - Required components for HPE SimpliVity installation
2:20 - Network card for SimpliVity 325 Gen10
2:37 - Cabling: direct connect 2 SimpliVity nodes for storage traffic
3:19 - Cabling: iLO for hardware management
3:33 - Cabling: VMware management network
3:47 - Cabling: Power cables
4:06 - Booting up the SimpliVity nodes
4:16 - SimpliVity software installation overview
4:47 - Arbiter installation
5:22 - SimpliVity plug-in for vCenter installation
5:46 - SimpliVity Deployment Manager: Network settings
8:47 - SimpliVity Deployment Manager: Testing the settings
9:15 - Deploying the SimpliVity cluster
9:30 - Lessons learned
11:15 - What's new with SimpliVity software v4.1?
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🌐 Relevant resources
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HPE SimpliVity 325 Unboxing: • HPE SimpliVity 325 Unb...
HPE SimpliVity 380 Gen10 Hardware Tour: • HPE SimpliVity 380 Gen...
Hyperconvergence - Simple is Beautiful: • Hyperconvergence - Sim...
HPE SimpliVity official website: • Hyperconvergence - Sim...
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[@TechEnthusiastInc]

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[@rajinis1652]

You are an excellent communicator! amazing work 👏👏

[@TechEnthusiastInc]

Thank you, Rajini! And thanks for your incredible support. Couldn't have managed to recover from that corrupted file situation without you. Keep up the superb job! 👍🥳

[@rajinis1652]

@@TechEnthusiastInc you're most welcome & thank you :)

[@maha-madpedo-gayphukumber1533]

This is cooler then anything I've seen in movies. Fact is more cooler then fiction.

[@MrCoolwine]

Hello Markus, we are in the process of purchasing two nodes, as a replacement for our current HPE VSA + FOM Solution. So this video is very helpful to understand the installation Process THX

[@TechEnthusiastInc]

Awesome! Glad to hear the video helps. You'll be more than happy with your SimpliVity nodes. Let me know how the installation went and how you like them. 👍

[@aryehbarron4067]

Another excellent video 👌

[@TechEnthusiastInc]

Thanks, Aryeh! 👍

[@shivamgopal4988]

Fantastic!!!!!

[@TechEnthusiastInc]

Thank you, Shivam. 💪

[@yavuzkombe4568]

Great, that s clear👍🏻

[@TechEnthusiastInc]

Thank you, Yavuz! Glad to hear you liked it.

[@maurizioroggia9114]

standing ovation.

[@TechEnthusiastInc]

😂

[@TechEnthusiastIncSupport]

Thanks so much for that comment! Actually, we would love to use your comment as a testimonial on Tech Enthusiast’s web pages, especially since we are expanding the same style into online courses soon - so stay tuned! Please let us know how you would feel about it and if your KZbin user ID & profile picture can be displayed alongside the quote! 😊It would mean a lot 🙏

[@adityajain1989]

Your vedios are amazing big fan...

[@TechEnthusiastInc]

Thank you, Aditya! 👍

[@adityajain1989]

@@TechEnthusiastInc : Just 1 Request... If you can roll out such good content more and more... We need it...

[@TechEnthusiastInc]

@@adityajain1989 Haha! I hear you. Thanks for the request. I will definitely try to make more videos in the future. Stay tuned! 🕺

[@ricardoduarte9927]

How is the storage performance of a DL325 XS node? Is there any place to get some specs about IOPS and/or n# of VMs guidance?

[@sonicareful]

If you cannot deploy ESX 7 image: you have to update HP Simplivity Installer (> 10.162.1) on every 325 series host!

[@ricardoduarte9927]

Hi Makus. I wonder what happens if a Simplivity cluster is not shut down cleanly (ex.: power failure). Is my (existing and already on disk) data safe? Can I get into a situation where OVC do not start and all data is gone? Also, do you know if disk writes are only committed to the hypervisor when they are physically written to disk and the replica? Or does the OVC acknowledges the write when data is still on OVC RAM? Thanks.

[@etaitson]

Hi Ricardo, your data will be safe even if the cluster is not shut down cleanly. Writes are only committed after physically written and disk controllers ("Smart Arrays") are battery-backed to ensure all writes go through in case of power loss.

[@mohamedkerany2588]

Great video,please could you providena schema before cabling the nodes

[@TechEnthusiastInc]

Thanks, Mohamed! Good point. Unfortunately, I can't add the schema to the video anymore but take a look at SimpliVity network cabling guide (Direct-Connected network configuration): support.hpe.com/hpesc/public/docDisplay?docLocale=en_US&docId=emr_na-a00039816en_us Also, I highly recommend to check out Bart Heungens' blog post about SimpliVity networking: www.bitcon.be/hpe-simplivity-networking-explained/

[@dmu8102]

Hi Markus, so it's not enough to have two Simplivity nodes to run the environment? External vCenter server and arbiter are mandatory?

[@TechEnthusiastInc]

That's correct. With 2 nodes, there needs to be an arbiter. At the moment it is to be installed on a Windows machine but I've heard rumors that a cloud version might be coming too. At first vCenter server is also needed but you can move vCenter to run on SimpliVity afterwards. Not very recommended but possible.

[@dmu8102]

Well... in that case it is really desirable immediately creating at least two VMs- one as domain controller and probably arbiter (Windows Server; or split them apart by roles), while another - vCenter. After deployment both of them can be moved from external ESXi host to SimpliVity cluster. Looks queer, but for lab purposes should be OK :)

[@TechEnthusiastInc]

Technically, that should work. But DO NOT TRY THIS IN PROD, obviously. 😋

[@drugfree1337]

Where do you install VCSA before you deploy the Omnistack hosts? Can I deploy Omnistack for 2 hosts first with VCSA on the third? Then install it on the last host after?

[@TechEnthusiastInc]

Oh darn. My apologies, I missed this comment completely somehow. :( Maybe I stood too far back because you are a Pro. =D Anyway, that's a really good question! Honestly, I think this is one of the few caveats of Simplivity: you have to have VCSA running externally, at least at the deployment phase. According to HPE *best practices* you shouldn't install VCSA on the SVT cluster at all at any time but always use an external installation. And while deploying the first nodes in the cluster, you actually technically have to have VCSA on an external server. Once the cluster is up&running, you can move VCSA to the cluster and to my understanding that is also supported (but not a best practice). I don't think you should be using the 3rd node to temporarily run VCSA in the initial deployment phase. Even if you would be planning to install VCSA eventually in the deployed SVT cluster, I would still find a temporary external server for this and not meddle with installing VCSA on a Simplivity node since it does have OmniStack software installed on it. This was not an official HPE advice, though. ;)

[@idowujohn6006]

Hello Markus, I have a question and it's if I am a new customer who just purchased the HCI do I need a deployment server to proceed installation.

[@TechEnthusiastInc]

Yes, initially you need to have vCenter running on an external server. You can move it to run on the Simplivity after the installation but it’s not recommended.

[@Supri-adi]

just curious...is it true that now omnistack card is not available for simplivity ?? they change into omni software ??

[@TechEnthusiastInc]

Yep, that is the case. Most SimpliVity nodes come without a physical accelerator card these days. The only one that still uses an accelerator card is the "original" SimpliVity 380. I like the card so a bit sad to see them phasing it out but according to HPE it doesn't make a huge difference neither with regards to resource consumption nor performance. I do understand the decision to move to software acceleration especially with SimpliVity 325 which is 1U...there's just not enough space.

[@adityajain1989]

@@TechEnthusiastInc : True, that card FPGA {brain of card, small proc} is no match to current system board processor's so going along with would be expensive and bottle. You definitely would get better dedupe with software + proc

[@richardarcher5789]

Hi Markus, what is the limitation of running esxi on the simplivity nodes. I am looking for one complete solution and not having to add an external server.

[@TechEnthusiastInc]

Hi, Richard! Do you mean the VMware vCenter server? There're no technical limitations. It's just that according to HPE best practices you should be installing vCenter on an external computer for higher availability. But there's really nothing preventing you from installing vCenter on the Simplivity nodes too. When you have to call support, they might get grumpy about your setup but... ;)

[@richardarcher5789]

@@TechEnthusiastInc that’s interesting, you don’t have those recommendations from Nutanix. Thanks for the information.

[@jorgeespinozab2508]

Hi, Is supported Windows Server Failover Clustering (WSFC) on different ESXi hosts with shared disk VMDK?

[@TechEnthusiastInc]

Yep, it is supported. Please take a look at this technical white paper: www.hpe.com/psnow/doc/a50000833enw

[@jorgeespinozab2508]

@@TechEnthusiastInc Hi, but in the paper the Cluster node live in the same host. can live in separates host to?

[@sangaw.ismahelcoulibaly6708]

What's the main difference between nutanix and hpe nimble ?

[@TechEnthusiastInc]

Nutanix is a hyperconvergence (HCI) solution meaning it has compute and storage resources. Nimble Storage is only storage. However, there is another solution called Nimble Storage dHCI that has compute and storage resources. With dHCI storage is provided by Nimble Storage and compute by Proliant servers. So it's no an all-in-one appliance like Nutanix.

[@LouisReedijk]

I like the video a lot, but there is one thing I didn't like. never ever ever use IP networks that are not in the private range for deployment. Not in production, or in test / dev. since you are using 10.0.0.x you could have simply used 10.1.0.x & 10.2.0.x for the storage and other stuff. Using 20.x.x.x & 30.x.x.x is just really really bad practice in my opinion. but for the rest I liked the video a lot! thank you!

[@TechEnthusiastInc]

Hi Louis! You are most probably correct about this. What I have is a 100% demo environment with nothing else messing up with the IP ranges so I just decided to go for easy to remember, easy to type IP addresses with the demo...but maybe I cut the corners a tad too much. 😬 So, you are working in networking, I presume? 😉 And thanks for the compliments!

[@LouisReedijk]

@@TechEnthusiastInc yeah correct I am a system/network administrator myself :)

[@angelg3986]

I think there is one problem when you're using windows VM's over vmware - you loose the microsoft datacenter activation for virtual machines, so you could end up with very high licensing costs to license every Windows Server VM running.

[@TechEnthusiastInc]

You are right. Licensing is definitely tricky business with hypervisors. But since vast majority of apps are running on VMs or as containers these days, licensing models have evolved accordingly over the years. I’m not really updated on VMware nor MS latest licensing but data center licence might not even be your best choice anymore.

[@csebastian3]

It is NOT ok to use 20.0.0.* or 30.0.0.* -- those are public networks.

[@TechEnthusiastInc]

Hi Christopher! Yep, maybe I should have chosen some other networks for the demo. However, I'm in a private network without access to outside world so no damage done. But agreed, maybe not according to the best practices.