How To Install EMC ProSphere

<Update May 21st ProSphere was updated to 2.0, the install is still the same)

<Updated Jan 14th to include links to setting up VMware with ProSphere, and Cisco Switches – links at the bottom>

In December, the Storage Resource Management Suite was updated and with that came ProSphere 1.7.  If you are not familiar with ProSphere, it’s the “Storage Admin’s view” into their world and is pretty powerful. I know a lot of people are going to want to kick the tires on this so, I figured I might as well toss an install guide together.  Mostly because I’d never installed it and wanted to document it for my own use!

By the way, check out my blog post on Storage Resource Management Suite if you are not familiar with this new offering.

Also, I’d like to point out that EMC is offering a killer “EMC ProSphere: Play-Learn-Try”.  You can check out more information on it here: https://community.emc.com/docs/DOC-15851  Special thanks to Simon Seagrave (@Kiwi_Si) for pulling all that information together !

Now, lets move on to the install guide.

First things first, you will need to setup Solutions Enabler with SMI-S somewhere in your environment.  If you are not sure how to do this, or just want a general overview of that install process, check out the following blog post I put together:

How to setup Solutions Enabler with SMI-S for Windows

Once you have that all squared away, we can proceed to getting ProSphere setup and collecting information from your EMC array.  In this case, I’m going to set it up to collect info from an EMC VNX 5500 we have in our lab.

First things first, we need to go to support.emc.com and download the ProSphere 1.7 bits.  This is an .OVA file that will deploy into your VMware environment.  If you are not a VMware shop, you can download the free VMware HyperVisor as well as a 90 day eval of vCenter to get this deployed. 

Next, let’s get a mental picture of some of the info you need to have handy before we get into this installation.  Here is a quick checklist of things you need to have prepared:

• This vAPP is going to deploy 3(ea) Virtual Machines.
  • ProSphere VM
  • Discovery Engine VM
  • Historical Database VM
• You will need 3(ea) Static IP addresses for these VM’s
• You will also need to determine what you are going to name these VM’s – try not to get to cute
• You will need to make sure you’ve setup DNS for these VM’s and associated IP’s.
• When we get to the VNX part, you will need the following information:
  • The IP, as well as username/password for your Solutions Enabler with SMI-S provider.

Let’s get on with it.

1. Download the vAPP from Support.EMC.Com

2. Open up your vSphere Client to vCenter.

3. Go to File/Deploy OVF Template and go to the folder you downloaded ProSphere into.  Once you see the below screen, just click next.

4.Agree to the licensing agreement and click next.

5. Create a name and pick the inventory location you want.

6.  Choose the Host/Cluster you want to assign it to.

7. Select the Resource pool you want to use.

8. Now pick the datastore.

9. Pick the Disk Format

10. Pick the network mapping.

11. Here is all of the fun stuff.  First make sure you fill out each section. The first part asks you for IP address of the ProSphere Application VM.  That’s going to be the primary VM you surf into to monitor/manage and use ProSphere.  Also, make sure you put in the DNS Server info.  If you don’t, it won’t work !  Trust me

12. You then fill out the same information for the Discovery Engine – again, make sure you put DNS info.

13.Last but not least, you need to enter the information for the Historical Database and then click next.

14. Verify that all the info is correct and then click Finish.

15. And away it goes.

 

At this point, you should now see your vAPP deployed in vCenter

16. Right click on your vAPP and click Power On

17. In the Recent Task area you will see the VM’s powering on.

18. And now you can see them all powered on, and ready to go.

19. – Open up a Browser.

20. Surf over to FQDN of your ProSphere 1.7 install and click on Continue to the Website.

21.You should get prompted for a username and password for ProSphere – the default username is appadmin and the default password = Changeme1!

22. I’m sure I don’t have to explain this one to you

23. If you installed everything correctly, this should be your view.  Now let’s start collecting some information !  Click on Discovery.

24. We are going to add a VNX.  First thing we need to do is create access credentials.

25. Chose the SMI-S dropdown, name the access credentials,  then enter in the admin credentials for your Solutions Enabler SMI-S instance.  If you didn’t change the defaults – the username should be admin and the password would be #1Password – if you are not sure about this – go check out the following “How to Setup Solutions Enabler with SMI-S” blog post. – now click OK.

26. Now we need to create a job – across the top of the window you will see “Discovery Jobs” – click on that and let’s create a new Job.  Let’s name the job, in this case I’m just calling this the VNX Discovery Job

27. Just select Arrays and then put in the IP address of the Solutions Enabler – SMI-S Provider.

28. Next, simply select the Access Credentials we created at step #24/25 – click ADD to move it from left to right and then click Finish.

29. This will take you back to the main screen, notice that it says the job has never run, so lets select this job and click RUN.  Fingers Crossed we did everything right!

30. You can see that it’s now running.

31.If everything worked correctly, you should see it change from running, to success.

32. Now click on Dashboard at the top left hand side of the screen and lets see what it shows us.  Don’t panic if it still shows the original scree, with no info.  Simply hit the refresh button and it should update it.

33. BOOM – now look at those pretty graphs !!

 

There you have it, easy peasy on how to install and setup ProSphere 1.7 to collect information from our VNX.  The next couple of blog posts covers the following:

How to collect VMware info in ProSphere

Setting Up ProSphere to discovery Cisco Switches

 

If you run into any problems, feel free to leave a comment below, or better yet, open up a support ticket!

 

Thanks,

@vTexan