Skip to main content
ONTAP tools for VMware vSphere 10
A newer release of this product is available.

Quick start for ONTAP tools for VMware vSphere

Contributors netapp-jani
PDFs

Getting started with ONTAP tools for VMware vSphere includes a few steps. This quick start takes you through the initial setup of ONTAP tools for VMware vSphere.

Initially, you’ll deploy ONTAP tools for VMware vSphere as a small-sized single node configuration that provides core services to support NFS and VMFS datastores. If you need to expand your configuration to use vVols datastore and high availability (HA), you’ll do so after you finish this workflow. For more information, refer to the HA deployment workflow.

One Plan your deployment

Verify that your vSphere, ONTAP, and ESXi host versions are compatible with the ONTAP tools version. Allocate sufficient CPU, memory, and disk space. Depending on your security policies, you may need to configure firewalls or other security appliances to allow network traffic.

Ensure the vCenter Server is installed and accessible.

Two Deploy ONTAP tools for VMware vSphere

Initially, you'll deploy ONTAP tools for VMware vSphere as a small-sized single node configuration that provides core services to support NFS and VMFS datastores. If you plan to expand your configuration to use vVols datastores and high availability (HA), you’ll do so after you finish this workflow. To successfully expand to an HA configuration, you must ensure that the CPU hot hot-add and memory hot-plug options are enabled.

Three Add vCenter Server instances

Add one or more vCenter Server instances to ONTAP tools for VMware vSphere to configure, manage, and protect your virtual datastores in your vCenter Server environment.

Four Configure ONTAP user roles and privileges

Configure new user roles and privileges for managing storage backends using the JSON file provided with ONTAP tools for VMware vSphere.

Five Configure the storage backends

Add a storage backend to an ONTAP cluster. For multitenancy setups where vCenter acts as the tenant with an associated SVM, use ONTAP tools Manager to add the cluster. Associate the storage backend with the vCenter Server to map it globally to the onboarded vCenter Server instance.

Add the local storage backends with cluster or SVM credentials using the ONTAP tools user interface. These storage backends are limited to a single vCenter. When using cluster credentials locally, the associated SVMs automatically map to the vCenter to manage vVols or VMFS. For VMFS management, including SRA, ONTAP tools supports SVM credentials without needing a global cluster.

Six Upgrade the certificates if you're working with multiple vCenter Server instances

When working with multiple vCenter Server instances, upgrade the self-signed certificate to a certificate authority (CA) signed certificate.

Seven (Optional) Enable SRA protection

Enable the SRA capability to configure disaster recovery and protect NFS or VMFS datastores.

eight (Optional) Enable SnapMirror active sync protection

Configure ONTAP tools for VMware vSphere to manage host cluster protection for SnapMirror active sync. Pair the source and destination clusters and SVM for SnapMirror active sync. This applies only to VMFS datastores.

Nine Set up backup and recovery for your ONTAP tools for VMware vSphere deployment

Schedule backups of your ONTAP tools for VMware vSphere setup that you can use to recover the setup in case of a failure.