HP StoreOnce VSA Deduplication Appliance Install Guide: Initial Install


Storage Virtual Machine appliances are not Software-Defined Storage in the strictest sense of the word as they do not separate control plane from data plane  I like to think of these appliances as Software-Virtualized Storage.  Recently, a customer asked to try out the HP StoreOnce VSA appliance for a few reasons:
  1. The appliance can be deployed faster than a physical loaner HP StoreOnce device
  2. The VSA can be a great option for ROBO
A few of my team members wanted to perform the customer PoC, so I put these instructions together.  I hope you find them useful.

Find the software and documentation

Google was nice enough to find the 60-day evaluation page here as the first search result.  Sign in with your free HP Passport account and you can download these two files:

  1. HP StoreOnce VSA 10TB v1.3.0 (TC458-10507.zip)
  2. HP StoreOnce Enterprise Manager v1.1 (TC458-10502.zip) (Not used in these instructions)

The Get Documentation tab is empty as the ZIP file includes the documentation.    The VSA ZIP file has three documentation PDFs enclosed:
  1. HP StoreOnce VSA Backup System User Guide
  2. HP StoreOnce VSA Deployment and Configuration Guide (same as the guide above)
  3. Release notes
I also have a quick start flowchart that my friends at HP were nice enough to share.  Click the above hyperlink for your own copy.

Install the StoreOnce VSA OVF through the vSphere Client

Since the VIClient has been deprecated by VMware, I will attempt to use the vSphere web client.

  • Fire up your vSphere Web Client at https://vcenter_server_name:9443 
  • Login
  • Choose vCenter then VMs and Templates













  • Right-click your Datacenter and choose Deploy OVF Template...
















  • Choose the OVF that you extracted from the ZIP file



  • Review the OVF details and click Next





















  • Select the Datacenter location and click Next

















  • Choose the host and click Next


  • Choose the storage format for the VM.  Choose Thin Provision.



  • Confirm your choices and click Finish


Create data disk(s) before powering on the VSA

From the install guide "After deployment you must use vSphere client to create the 1 TB virtual disk(s) for storage. If you do this before you power on the StoreOnce VSA, the total storage will be made available to the StoreOnce VSA automatically after power on. If you power on before creating the virtual disk, you must add 1 TB virtual disk(s) from vSphere client, use StoreOnce CLI commands to make the storage available to the StoreOnce VSA and then reboot the VSA for automatic addition of the Instant-On license."
  • Choose your new StoreOnceVSA VM in Virtual Center and Edit Settings



























  • Add a new hard disk


  

  • Create 1-10 1 TB hard disks.  Make the new 1 TB hard disk(s) Thick Provision Lazy Zeroed (My lab is a little shy of free space as you see. BTW 1 TB thin data disk takes about 41 GB of disk space on initialization).

  • Your VSA will now look like this:




















  • Power on your VSA and open the console
  • Two reboots will take place over about a ten minute timespan and eventually you will reach a login









  • Find out the IP address of your VSA in the vSphere Client Summary tab



















  • Point your web browser to that address and login as Admin/admin


  • Congratulations, you have your very own StoreOnce VSA!



  • Next post: Configuring your HP StoreOnce VSA for backup including Catalyst "pre-dup"


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