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

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

  • ESXi 7.0

 What you need

  • VMware vSphere (version 7.0+ installation guide)
  • Camio Flex for VMware ESXi. either Thickly or Thinly [[COMING SOON]] Pre provisioned. 
  • A computer that can run VMware ESXi 7.0+ 

Hardware Specs 

Two Camio Flex images have been provided, a “thick” and a “thin” image. The “thick” pre provisioned image supports more streams but requires more resources. The recommended hardware specs for the images are as follows:

    • For the "thickly" pre provisioned image:
      • 512 GB for the main drive
      • 2 TB or more for the storage drive 
      • 16 CPU cores
      • 32 GB memory
    • For the "thinly" pre provisioned images:
      • 256GB for the main drive 
      • 512GB for the storage drive
      • 4 CPU cores
      • 8 GB memory


General guides to follow: 

  • It is recommended to add approximately 128GB to the storage drive for each 1080p 2Mbps stream
  • 4 CPU cores + 1 CPU core for each 1080p 2Mbps stream is the recommended for the Virtual Machine.
    • If operating at the minimums, performance may be negatively affected depending on the hardware speed and generation.
    • 2 GB of Memory per CPU core is recommended
  • Example: 12 x 1080 2Mbps streams:
    • 16 CPU cores
    • 32 GB memory
    • 256 GB main drive
    • 2 TB storage drive
  • More information on sizing your Flex VM can be found here: How do I tune my Camio Flex VM to match the number of connected video streams?

To start, you'll have 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 Flex VM Image

  1. Download the camio-flex-esxi-v1.5.0-thick.tar.gz file.
  2. Untar the downloaded file to extract the files:
    1. camio-flex-esxi-v1.5.0-thick-disk1vmdk
    2. camio-flex-esxi-v1.5.0-thick.mf 
    3. camio-flex-esxi-v1.5.0-thick.ovf 

3. Get a MAC address for your Virtual Camio Flex 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 Flex 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-flex-esxi-v1.5.0-thick.ovf  , camio-flex-esxi-v1.5.0-thick-disk1.vmdk, and camio-flex-esxi-v1.5.0-thick.mf files that were extracted earlier. You do not need to upload the .mf file.
  6. Select the underlying datastore that you wish to install the VM onto (at least 96GB 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 similar to this one below

5. Set the MAC address and Networking for your VM and add a Storage drive 

  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
  5. select Add,  and select new HDD, and add a new storage disk, based on your pre provisioned size and sizing guidelines. 

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.

On the current version of the Camio-Flex, custom network settings need to be configured manually. Please contact Camio for assistance if your VM is having issues connecting to your network.



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.
  3. You may need to reboot the VM multiple times through the process, giving it approximately 10 minutes between reboots to allow the Flex box time to attempt to register and connect to Camio.

interface_name

The primary NIC interface_name is:

ens160

The secondary NIC interface_name is:

ens192

If you have any further network issues, it may be related to the netplan configuration on the VM. If so, please contact Camio for assistance with netplan configuration.

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