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Guidelines for Configuring Virtual CTPView Servers on WMWare ESX Servers

 

One of the salient and significant advantages of configuring a CTPView server on a virtual machine is to enable configuration of multiple CTPView server instances for quick access to a variety of server configurations. Also, you can run different OS versions and software releases on the virtualized CTPView server instances. TACACS+ servers, syslog servers, and RADIUS servers, besides serving as a platform for other applications, can be configured on the virtualized CTPView servers. We recommend that you use the VMWare help documentation for assistance in using the vSphere Client software.

Keep the following guidelines in mind when you configure a CTPView server on a VMWare ESX Server:

  • Sizing the CTPView drive

    • When building a server, several options are presented to you from the Installation Utility. These choices depend on the version of software you are installing. The procedure illustrated in the section to create a VM instance of CTPView describes the options for CTPView 4.2R1 on CentOS. You can determine what other versions and OS you need by inspecting the code/gui/cdrom/isolinux.cfg file appropriate for the system in question. It also contains some hidden options not shown on the GUI screen.

    • Your most common selection is mostly “ctpview-vmdemo”. The advantage of using this choice is the small storage capacity it requires, with a minimum size is 4 GB. This behavior is achieved, which is also a disadvantage in some test cases, is using a single partition for the OS , data and applications. The only time you might not want to build a CTPView server in such a manner is when you are conducting a test or a trial, which is dependant on having the same drive partitions as a production server.

    • The choices of “ctpview-install” and ctpview-vmware” are identical. The reason for the distinction on the GUI screen is to alert the user that a minimum drive size of 60 GB is required. This classification is because some of the CTPView partitions in a network environment are fixed in size.

  • A directory has been created on the ESXi host for storing ISO files that you may upload at /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/ISO_FILES/.

  • When using a graphical application, such as WinSCP, to upload ISO files to the datastore remember to specify “scp” as the transport protocol. Also, you must disable the “Lookup user groups” option on the scp application to avoid a warning message.

  • You need to manage a maximum number of virtual machines that are running at a point in time in such a way that it does not adversely affect total performance. The vSphere client has a variety of tools available to help you monitor the system performance.