Deploying EMC UnityVSA on VMware ESXi 6.7

I have been using virtual SAN appliance in my labs for a few years as it is the easiest way to configure shared storage for my LAB cluster and as I don’t have a NAS or another external storage device available.

EMC have a version based on there Unity array and this is the same version we us in production so I wanted to configure this as my virtual SAN.

In the next few posts we will go through configuring a UnityVSA and setting up so that it can present iSCSI LUN’s to VMware.

To download the OVA use the below link, the current version 5.0.3

Data Storage Management Software Downloads | Dell Technologies US

Create a new VM and select deploy using an ova

Select the required datastore

Select the appropriate network

Assign a static IP

Complete the VM deployment wizard.

The VM will now start to deploy.

Once the appliance was deployed there was no network connectivity and I had to run the intial configuration command.

To connect I used the VMware console. The default logon for the admin account is Password123# but this didn’t work for the console logon.

I had to use service for both the usersname and password.

To configure the IP run the below command.

svc_initial_config -4 “IPAddress Subnet defualtGateway”

I was then able to connect to the Unity Management console. To logon use the default admin/Password123#

Next follow the initial configuration wizard

set the DNS and NTP

Once at the licenses page, we will need the system UUID to be able to register from a trial licenses. The get license didnt work for me so i use

https://www.dellemc.com/en-us/auth/elmeval.htm

Next we configure the storage pools, I added some additional drivers to the VSA to be used as storage pools

Follow the wizard to create the storage pool

I wont be configure alerts or proxy servers so I leave them as default values.

Next we configure the iSCSI interfaces, these will be used to connect to the ESXi host later

I wont be configuring a NAS server either so will leave that as default also

Finish the configuration

The UnityVSA should now be configured and show simlar to the below.

In the next post we will go through configuring the LUN’s and connecting to vCenter.