vFMC on Windows 10 using VMware Workstation Player

[alsayegh]

Hello,

I will be setting up vFMC 7.0 for the first time to configure my ASA 5555-X reimaged with FTD 6.6.5.

I will eventually have a dedicated VPS for the FMC. However, at this stage I'm looking for a temporary setup that will allow me to get started on configuring my security appliance, so I decided to install it on Windows 10 using VMware Workstation Player 16.1.2. Before going any further with this, has anyone tried it before and can shed some light on it? How practical is it? What are its limitations compared with dedicated VMware VPS?

Thank  you.

-ammar

[Rob Ingram]

@alsayegh VMware player is not supported when installing FMCv, the following platforms are supported.

Supported Platforms

The Cisco Firepower Management Center Virtual can be deployed on the following platforms:

• VMware vSphere Hypervisor (ESXi)—You can deploy the Firepower Management Center Virtual as a guest virtual machine on VMware ESXi.

• Kernel Virtualization Module (KVM)—You can deploy the Firepower Management Center Virtual on a Linux server that is running the KVM hypervisor.

• Amazon Web Services (AWS)—You can deploy the Firepower Management Center Virtual on EC2 instances in the AWS Cloud.

• Microsoft Azure—You can deploy the Firepower Management Center Virtual in the Azure Cloud.

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/security/firepower/quick_start/fmcv/fpmc-virtual/fpmc-virtual-intro.html

Also check out the resources required (as per the link above), minimum 32B RAM, 4CPU, 250GB HDD - it's not something that can just be run on a local VM.

HTH

[alsayegh]

I converted FMCv 7.0.0 for Microsoft Azure into Hyper-V App. The conversion went fine, but the issue now is that the boot loader cannot find the OS. Any suggestion on how to overcome that?

[alsayegh]

I managed to get over the boot loader issue and FMCv started booting on Hyper-V, but hung on the line:

IPv6: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): lo: link is not ready

Can I disable IPv6 on FMCv altogether?

[alsayegh · Accepted solution]

The virtual appliance completed the boot successfully. I simply decided not to intervene when it hangs during boot even if I had to leave it stuck overnight. It eventually completed the boot sequence after an extended period of time.

The trick to get FMCv under Windows is to be patient, as the procedure might be obscured by long waits on steps without any feedback from the system until the steps are completed.

Summarizing the procedure to get FMCv to working under Microsoft Hyper-V as I found after few trials and errors:

1. Download latest FMCv for Microsoft Azure.

2. Unzip using 7z as it is the only tool that will show you progress of the decompression for bz2 files.

3. Migrate the vhd in Hype-V machine using proper conversion tool - I used StarWind V2V Converter.

4. Set the migration to Generation 1. Generation 2 will not work.

5. Set the virtual disk size to 250GB fixed.

6. Start the FMCv and be patient until it completes its boot sequence.

I'll take this as the solution for my original question.

Thanks to all who shared their thoughts!

[Marvin Rhoads]

Adding to what Rob said, installation will also hard fail on a VM that has less than the required RAM.

[alsayegh]

Hello Marvin,

I experimented with that on Hyper-V using i7-4790 CPU. OS = Windows 2019 Server DC.

Started with 4 CPU's + 32 GB RAM - Worked.

3 CPU's + 16 GB RAM - Worked.

2 CPU's + 8 GB RAM - Worked.

1 CPU + 4 GB RAM - Worked.

I will continue running it on 1 CPU + 4 GB RAM for now and until I encounter performance issues.

Regards.

-ammar