How to set up a Camio Box VM in VMware ESXi/vSphere?

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Camio offers a version of Camio Box made to run inside of the ESXi/vSphere suite of VMware enterprise-grade products. The Camio Box VM image for VMware vSphere is compatible with these versions of VMware products:

  • ESXi 6.0
  • ESXi 6.5
  • ESXi 6.7
  • ESXi 6.7 U2
  • ESXi 6.7 U3

If you are attempting to set up a Camio Box VM in the consumer-grade VMware Workstation Pro suite we recommend you follow these instructions instead.

 What you need

  • VMware vSphere (version 6.0+ installation guide)
  • Camio Box VMware ESXi Appliance Image.
  • A computer that can run VMware ESXi 6.0+ with the following hardware specs
    • At least 64GB of disk space is required for the VM disk image.
    • 4GB of RAM is recommended for the Virtual Machine.

To start, you'll VMware vSphere installed as the hypervisor on a computer or server or yours. VMware vSphere is not free but it is possible to find a trial version of the product that allows you to evaluate the product for 30+ days.

1. Install VMware vSphere

    1. Go to this link: https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vSphere/7.0/com.vmware.esxi.install.doc/GUID-016E39C1-E8DB-486A-A235-55CAB242C351.html
    2. Download the version of vSphere that you wish to install as a hypervisor on your computer or server.
    3. Follow the steps listed on the downloads page to install VMware vSphere hypervisor onto your computer.

2. Download the Camio Box VMware Appliance

    1. Download the camio-box-os-vmware_esxi_6-2020-08-27.zip file.
    2. Unzip the downloaded file to extract the files:
      1. camio-box-os-vmware_esxi_6-2020-08-27.ovf
      2. camio-box-os-vmware_esxi_6-2020-08-27-0.vmdk
      3. camio-box-os-vmware_esxi_6-2020-08-27.mf
      4. camio-box-os-vmware_esxi_6-2020-08-27.nvram

3. Get a MAC address for your Virtual Camio Box

Copy the MAC address shown on this page:
https://camio.com/box/register/box_vm_mac
Note: If you're running multiple Virtual Machines, then you can get additional MAC addresses by appending a number at the end of the URL above (e.g. https://camio.com/box/register/box_vm_mac2).

4. Create the Camio Box Virtual Machine

These instructions show how to upload and configure your Camio Box VM through the vSphere web interface.

    1. Navigate to the web interface for your vSphere instance (this is generally just the IP-address or URL of your vSphere server).
    2. Click on the "Virtual Machines" section on the left then click on "Create/Register VM" on the top row.
      mceclip0.png
    3. Select "Deploy a virtual machine from an OVF or OVA file"
    4. Enter a name for the VM (we suggest something like camio-box-1)
    5. In the file-upload section, upload the camio-box-os-vmware_esxi_6-2020-08-27.ovf, camio-box-os-vmware_esxi_6-2020-08-27.nvram, and camio-box-os-vmware_esxi_6-2020-08-27-0.vmdk files that were extracted earlier. You do not need to upload the .mf file.
      mceclip1.png
    6. Select the underlying datastore that you wish to install the VM onto (at least 64GB of free space is required).
    7. Select your specific deployment requirements (virtual network, disk provisioning, etc).
    8. At the final step click "Finish". The page should look like this one below.
      mceclip2.png

5. Set the MAC address and Networking for your VM 

    1. Right-click on the Camio Box VM that you had just imported and select "Edit" to edit the settings of the VM
    2. Select the 'Network Adapter' option to expand the networking options.
    3. Enter your MAC address copied from the previous step in the 'MAC Address' field
      mceclip3.png
    4. Close the 'Advanced' dialog and save your changes

6. Start your Camio Box Virtual Machine

Click the Green-arrow at the top of the window to start your VM. Once the virtual machine is finished booting, it's ready to be registered to your Camio account.

Important: the login credentials for the VM are not public and are not needed. From this point on you will control your Camio Box VM through the Camio website (https://camio.com/boxes).

mceclip4.png

7. Register your Camio Box:

    1. Go to camio.com/box/register/box_vm_mac
    2. Enter a name for your Box.
    3. Click 'Register' and wait for confirmation of registration success to appear on that page. It should register within 30 seconds.

Congratulations! You have now registered your virtual Camio Box. Go to the camio.com/boxes page to connect cameras on your network to your Camio account.

8. (Recommended) Set Your VM to Use "Disk" Storage

It is recommended, in nearly all cases, that you configure your Camio Box VM to use "disk" storage instead of the default "volatile". Follow the simple steps in this help article to do that.

Advanced:

You can of course customize the amount of resources dedicated to your Camio Box virtual machine. For more information see this help article : How do I tune my Camio Box VM to match the number of connected video streams?. 

Why is My Machine Not Registering?

  1. Double check that you have set the MAC address for your VM correctly. You should have set the MAC address for your VM according to the steps covered in step #5 above and you will be registering the device with that same MAC address.
  2. Check and see if the VM can be found on your local network. To do this you can use any available network scanning tool like nmap or the Fing application. If the VM is powered on but you do not see it on the local network, you have likely misconfigured the networking for the device.

interface_name

The primary NIC interface_name is:

ens160

The secondary NIC interface_name is:

ens192
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