In this section:


Related articles: 


The following procedures are provided to launch the SBC virtual machine (VM) on the VMware vCenter using the OVA package and Guest OS customization.  The Customization Specification and the Day-0 config drive ISO are used to customize the SBC VM.

Prerequisites

  • Download the SBC OVA software bundle. 
  • Download the createConfigDrive-1.0.0.tar.gz tool.

Workflow

Step

Action

System

1

Create the Customization Specification

vSphere Client
2Create the SBC VM TemplatevSphere Client
3Create the SBC VM from the TemplatevSphere Client
4Create the SBC Config Drive ISOSBC VM
5Apply the VM Specific Config to the SBC VMSBC VM

Create the Customization Specification

This procedure is based on VMware documentation. For more details, see VMware Docs.

Start

  1. In the vSphere Client, select the Policies and Profiles option from the drop-down Menu.
  2. Select New to create a new customization specification.


  3. Create a name for the customization specification and select Linux as the Target guest OS. Click Next.


  4. Select the option Use the virtual machine name in the Computer Name Window and provide the domain name. Click Next.
  5. Select the appropriate time zone. Click Next.
  6. In the Network window, select the Manually select custom settings option, add four NICs for the SBC, and edit the settings. Click Next.


    For the first NIC, select the Prompt the user for an IPv4 address when the specification is used option.


  7. Provide the DNS settings if applicable.
  8. Click Finish in the Ready to Complete window  to create the customization specification.

Create the SBC VM Template

Create a virtual template from the OVA package. 

Start

  1. Select the Deploy OVF Template option in vCenter.


  2. Select the SBC OVA package via the URL or Local File as downloaded in Step 1.


  3. Enter the virtual machine template name, host information, other details, and then click Finish.
  4. When the Deploy OVF template task (virtual machine creation) is complete, right-click on the virtual machine, select Edit Settings to edit the guest OS version, and select Ubuntu Linux (64-bit) in the VM Options tab.


  5. Click the Power On icon to power on the virtual machine.


  6. Log in to the SBC VM and run the/opt/sonus/sbx/scripts/configureSystemForCustomSpec.shscript to configure the SBC system to apply customization specifications as shown below:


    Note

    This step is needed with the VMware vSphere 6.7 version as the Customization Script option is only available in the VMware vSphere 7.0 version.

  7. Power off the virtual machine by clicking the Shut Down Guest OS icon.


  8. When the virtual machine shuts down, right-click on the the virtual machine and select Template > Convert to Template.

Create the SBC VM from the Template

After creating the template, follow the steps below to create the SBC virtual machine.

Start

  1. Create a new virtual machine from the template. Right-click on the template name and select New VM from this Template.


  2. Follow the steps in the template to create a virtual machine.
    1. Specify the Virtual Machine Name. Click Next.


    2. Select the host and datastore as applicable. Click Next.
    3. For Select clone options, click Customize the operating system > Next.


    4. For the Customize guest OS section, select SBCSpec .
    5. For User Settings, select Network Adaptor 1 and provide the IP address/netmask/gateway for the management interface of the SBC as shown below:


    6. Click Finish to create the SBC virtual machine.
  3. When the virtual machine is created, right-click on the virtual machine name and select Edit Settings to add an additional disk for the virtual machine.
  4. In the Edit Settings window, select Add New Device > Hard Disk at the top right part of the window.


  5. Edit the New Hard Disk size to change it to 40 GB and click OK to close the window.

    Note

    40 GB is the minimum accepted disk size. Larger disk sizes can be selected based on client storage requirements for logs, CDRs etc.

  6. Power on the virtual machine by clicking the Power On icon.


  7. Check Events under the Monitor tab to apply customization specifications correctly.


  8. When the virtual machine boots up, log in using the linuxadmin user or try to SSH into the VM using the linuxadmin user and management IP address on port 2024.  After logging in, change to the root user with the sudo su- command.


Create the SBC Config Drive ISO

Start

  1. Create the config drive ISO for the SBC VM using the tool: createConfigDrive-1.0.0.tar.gz.  Refer to the README.md file inside the tarball for packages required to run the tool. The ISO file will be created inside the output directory as config_drive_<lower_case_ce_name>.iso (For example: output/config_drive_sbcvmwithcustomspec.iso). 
  2. The tool can be run in two modes: --cli and --file mode. 
    • The --cli option provides screen prompts to enter the configuration data for the deployment.
    • The --file option requires you to provide a file, sbx.json, to the script.  The file must contain all the necessary configuration data in JSON format.  A sample input file for reference is available in the tarball input/sbx.json.    

Apply the VM Specific Config to the SBC VM

Start

  1. When the ISO file is created in the output directory, copy the ISO file (.iso) to the VM and save the file to this path inside the VM: /mnt/sbxConfigDrive.iso.
  2. Reboot the VM, and the SBC application will automatically configure with the configuration provided in the ISO file.