Nexus 1000V installation issues

[APrassas7]

Greetings

I'm a masters student and i'm working on my dissertation regarding network performance on a virtualised environment. I decided to use VMware vSphere evaluation version for 60 days and it is required of me to use NetFlow in order to extract some data about the network's performance.

My supervisor also suggested that I use the Nexus 1000V switch but I've run into some problems regarding the installation. I downloaded the latest version v.4.2.1.SV1.5.1a, I deployed the ova template to my vCenter server environment, I powered on the virtual machine and I accessed the web interface from my browser but there is no option to launch the installer application.

I read (http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/switches/datacenter/nexus1000/sw/4_2_1_s_v_1_4_a/install/software/guide/n1000v_install_software.pdf)

that the ESXi hosts are required to have the VMware Enterprise plus license installed but I use the evaluation version of vSphere. Could this be the problem?

I'm also wondering if the problem is caused by my network settings. In page 3 of the PDF doc link above there is an example of the Nexus 1000V network deployment but I can't quite get it. Do i need to have a switch capable of making VLANs or can I configure these VLANs from the ESXi host's networking settings?

Some help would be greatly appreciated, thank you in advance!

[mwronkow · Accepted solution]

Hello Andreas,

1. The Installer App was moved to the \Nexus1000v.4.2.1.SV1.5.1a\VSM\Installer_App directory of the installation tarball.  I will update the documentation.

2. VMware vCenter allows use of Enterprise Plus features for 60 days.

3. The switch upstream from ESX hosts should be capable of trunking vlans.  Then in the N1k VSM you will configured port-profile with trunks.  Please take a look at the videos as the bottom of the Installation Guide page.  They will guide you through both the Install App & manual installation processes.

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps9902/prod_installation_guides_list.html

Matthew

[Jeremy Waldrop]

vSphere 5 vNetwork Distributed Switches have the option to send NetFlow data to an exporter. This would be a less complex method for testing.

http://blogs.vmware.com/networking/2011/08/vsphere-5-new-networking-features-netflow.html

[kwinieck]

Hello Andreas,

For your requirment, the best thing to do is what Jeremy recommended above, using the built-in VMware vDS, there is literally a checkbox to mark to enable Netflow.

To answer your original question... to get the Java Installer, go to the VSM Install folder, make 2 shortcuts of the jar file to your deskop. Edit properties of the shortcut and add to the end of the Target “ VSM” with a space first (No quotes), and “ VEM” with a space before VEM so the java file will launch the VSM installer and thwe VEM installer.

Best of luck.