NetScaler VPX

Apply NetScaler VPX configurations at the first boot of the NetScaler appliance on the KVM hypervisor

You can apply the NetScaler VPX configurations on the KVM hypervisor during the first boot of the NetScaler appliance. Therefore, a customer setup on a VPX instance can be configured in much lesser time.

For more information about Preboot user data and its format, see Apply NetScaler VPX configurations at the first boot of the NetScaler appliance in cloud.

Note:

To bootstrap using preboot user data in KVM hypervisor, the default gateway configuration must be passed in <NS-CONFIG> section. For more information on the content of the <NS-CONFIG> tag, see the following Sample <NS-CONFIG> section.

Sample <NS-CONFIG> section:

<NS-PRE-BOOT-CONFIG>

    <NS-CONFIG>
        add route 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0  10.102.38.1
    </NS-CONFIG>

    <NS-BOOTSTRAP>
            <SKIP-DEFAULT-BOOTSTRAP>YES</SKIP-DEFAULT-BOOTSTRAP>
            <NEW-BOOTSTRAP-SEQUENCE>YES</NEW-BOOTSTRAP-SEQUENCE>

        <MGMT-INTERFACE-CONFIG>
                <INTERFACE-NUM> eth0 </INTERFACE-NUM>
                <IP> 10.102.38.216 </IP>
                <SUBNET-MASK> 255.255.255.0 </SUBNET-MASK>
        </MGMT-INTERFACE-CONFIG>
    </NS-BOOTSTRAP>

</NS-PRE-BOOT-CONFIG>
<!--NeedCopy-->

How to provide preboot user data on KVM hypervisor

You can provide preboot user data on KVM hypervisor through an ISO file, which is attached using a CDROM device.

Provide user data using CDROM ISO file

You can use Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) to inject user data into the Virtual Machine (VM) as an ISO image using the CDROM device. KVM supports CD-ROMs in VM Guest either by directly accessing a physical drive on the VM host server or by accessing ISO images.

The following steps enable you to provide user data using the CDROM ISO file:

  1. Create a file with file name userdata that contains the preboot user data content.

    Note:

    File name must be strictly used as userdata.

  2. Store the userdata file in a folder, and build an ISO image using the folder.

    You can build an ISO image with userdata file by the following two methods:

    • Using any image processing tool such as PowerISO.
    • Using mkisofs command in Linux.

    The following sample configuration shows how to generate an ISO image using the mkisofs command in Linux.

    root@ubuntu:~/sai/19oct# ls -lh
    total 4.0K
    -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1.1K Oct 19 16:25 userdata
    root@ubuntu:~/sai/19oct#
    root@ubuntu:~/sai/19oct# mkisofs -o kvm-userdata.iso userdata
    I: -input-charset not specified, using utf-8 (detected in locale settings)
    Total translation table size: 0
    Total rockridge attributes bytes: 0
    Total directory bytes: 0
    Path table size(bytes): 10
    Max brk space used 0
    175 extents written (0 MB)
    root@ubuntu:~/sai/19oct#
    root@ubuntu:~/sai/19oct# ls -lh
    total 356K
    -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 350K Oct 19 16:25 kvm-userdata.iso
    -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1.1K Oct 19 16:25 userdata
    <!--NeedCopy-->
    
  3. Provision the NetScaler VPX instance using the standard deployment process to create the VM. But do not power on the VM automatically.

  4. Add a CD-ROM device with Virtual Machine Manager using the following steps:

    1. Double-click a VM Guest entry in the Virtual Machine Manager to open its console, and switch to the Details view with View > Details.
    2. Click Add Hardware > Storage > Device type > CDROM device.
    3. Click Manage and select the correct ISO file, and click Finish. A new CDROM under Resources on your NetScaler VPX instance is created.
  5. Power on the VM.

Apply NetScaler VPX configurations at the first boot of the NetScaler appliance on the KVM hypervisor