When Building Virtual lab for vSphere, Hyper-V, or any clustering solution the shared storage has always been an interesting part of the solution. Left Hand virtual storage appliance has always been a good easy to use option. After HP taking over lefthand, they have changed the product name to HP Storage P4000 Virtual Storage Appliance. Here I will show how to download & install the HP Storage P4000 Virtual Storage Appliance on ESXi host.
Before getting you to watch the video of how to install the HP Storage P4000 Virtual Storage Appliance on vSphere 5 and then connect it to the vSphere servers to build a vSphere cluster, its important to note that HP Storage P4000 Virtual Storage Appliance is not only suitable for lab environment but for small productions environment. Actually using such appliance in a small production environment can save a lot of money that would have been spend on physical storage that would have been required other wise. For larger environments, I would still highly recommend to get a physical storage box. Though if you like the simplicity of the HP Storage P4000 Virtual Storage Appliance, then you are in luck as you can buy a physical HP Storage Appliance that run the same code of the HP Storage P4000 Virtual Storage Appliance. Nonetheless all the pluses mentioned above, the only minus for me in the HP Storage P4000 Virtual Storage Appliance is that it still use a legacy client to manage it rather than a web interface.
OK, below is the highlight of the installation process of the HP Storage P4000 Virtual Storage Appliance. Please refer to the video below for a more details on the process.
1- Download the HP Storage P4000 Virtual Storage Appliance from the following link: Download HP Storage P4000 Virtual Storage Appliance (You will require an HP account, but you can register for free). Download the HP Storage Appliance for vSphere
2- Unzip the HP_P4000_VSA_ESX_OVF_TA688_10501
3- Deploy the HP Storage P4000 Virtual Appliance using the vSphere Client: File=>Deploy OVF Template
4- Complete the questions of the Deploy OVF Template wizard to start deploying the HP Storage Virtual Appliance.
5- Add Virtual Disks to the HP storage appliance as required. (The boot disk will be 0:0, but the rest of the disks should be 1:0, 1:1, 1:2 & so on else they will not be detected)
6- Optional for lab environment: If you are planning to use the appliance for production then deploy a second HP Storage P4000 Virtual Storage Appliance on a second ESXi server.
7- Power on the HP Storage P4000 virtual storage Appliances
8- Configure the network settings on the HP Storage P4000 Virtual Storage Appliances
9- Download & Install the HP Storage P4000 Windows CMC Installer for SAN/IQ. You can download the HP Storage P4000 WIndows CMC installer for SAN/IQ from
https://h20392.www2.hp.com/portal/swdepot/displayProductInfo.do?productNumber=P4000SW <== After getting to the link Choose HP P4000 Windows CMC Installer for SAN/IQ
10- Use the HP Storage P4000 Windows CMC Installer for SAN/IQ to configure LUNs and Access on the HP Storage P4000 to allow ESXi hosts connectivity. If you are using for production then you can cluster the two HP Storage P4000 Virtual Storage appliances created earlier to provide high availability.
11- Add the configured storage on the HP Storage P4000 to the ESXi hosts and create VMFS Datastore on them.
12- Now you have completed the setup.
Please for a step by step procedure watch the below video:
I hope this was enjoyable, Please leave your comments below & I will be reviewing and providing the installation for different Virtual Storage Appliances in the near future. If you have one in mind & want me to document on my blog please leave me a comment below or drop me an e-mail.