NexentaStor QuickStart

NexentaStor
Quick Start Guide

Version 2.2
Copyright © 2010 Nexenta Systems, Inc.
Nexenta Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. 1

Table of Contents
1. Introduction............................................................................................................................................3
Login.....................................................................................................................................................4
System Requirements – VMware based Virtual Appliance...................................................................4
System Requirements – Xen based Virtual Appliance..........................................................................4
System Requirements – Unified Appliance...........................................................................................5
Document Conventions.........................................................................................................................5
Terminology..........................................................................................................................................5
2. Hardware Installation.............................................................................................................................7
3. VMware: Getting Started with Virtual Appliance...............................................................................13
Unpacking Virtual Appliance..............................................................................................................15
ESX.................................................................................................................................................15
Workstation.....................................................................................................................................15
Booting virtual appliance in VMware Workstation.............................................................................16
Booting virtual appliance in VMware ESX.........................................................................................17
4. Xen: Running Appliance in Citrix XenServer....................................................................................20
5. Three Easy Operations........................................................................................................................23
A. Registering: steps 1 and 2...............................................................................................................23
B. Configuring primary network interface and choosing transport protocol for NexentaStor Web
GUI......................................................................................................................................................27
C. Initial Configuration.......................................................................................................................30
6. Upgrading the license – Re-registering...............................................................................................37
7. Documentation and Technical Support...............................................................................................40
8. Unpacking Virtual Appliance..............................................................................................................41
9. References...........................................................................................................................................42

1. Introduction
Nexenta Storage Appliance (NexentaStor) is a software based network attached storage (NAS)
appliance that meets the current feature sets of the best of breed NAS, including unlimited
snapshots, snapshot mirroring (replication), NFS v3/v4, CIFS, and easy management of extremely
large storage pools. NexentaStor delivers richly featured software in the form of a software
appliance that is trivial to install and easy to manage.
The product is designed and built to operate as 2nd tier storage alongside pre-existing commercial
storage, providing online continuation of data for months and years, with tapes relegated to
archival purposes only. The appliance is targeted for 2nd-tier NAS and iSCSI applications requiring
extremely low cost storage as well as dramatically simplified provisioning, expansion, backup,
replication and archiving. NexentaStor can also be used as a primary NAS in businesses that wish
to expand at closer to commodity pricing.
NexentaStor product is available in two packages:
• NexentaStor Virtual Appliance – pre-installed VMware or Xen1 image that will run
unmodified on the corresponding hosted products listed below.
• NexentaStor Unified Appliance – CD image that can be installed on a “bare-metal”

x86/64 hardware2. Note that the hardware compatibility lists for Solaris 10 and for
OpenSolaris should be considered inclusive for what is supported. The NexentaStor
installer will also verify hardware compatibility before installation commences.
For more information on the hardware compatibility, please visit NexentaStor F.A.Q.
For free downloads and the latest available updates, please visit NexentaStor Products page. For
the most recent information on available products and prices, please visit our store, or contact
sales@nexenta.com.
For ordering information and pricing, please visit our F.A.Q. pages:
(1) How do you calculate storage space?
(2) Please explain your pricing
(3) How do I order NexentaStor?
It is recommended to deploy appliance on a single dedicated x86/64 based platform, with at least
512MB of RAM. Quick summary of requirements for the Virtual and Unified Appliance products
follows below.
NexentaStor installation demo is available on the website. This pre-recorded movie

demonstrates the installation process and provides commentary.
1. VMware® is a registered trademark of VMware, Inc. Xen® and Citrix® are registered trademark of Citrix Systems,
Inc. All other trademarks and names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective companies.
2. For product availability and pricing, please refer to NexentaStor Products page.

Login
NexentaStor is pre-configured with administrative user accounts: root and admin. After
registering the appliance (Section “Three Easy Operations”), you will receive the default password
in auto-generated email, along with the product Registration Key. Don't forget to change the
default password. For more information, please see the following F.A.Q.:
• Documentation mentions two built-in user accounts: root and admin. What is the
difference?
System Requirements – VMware based Virtual Appliance

• Supported VMware products:
✔ VMware Player 2.5.x
✔ Workstation 6.5 or later
✔ VMware Server 1.0.4 or later
✔ VMware ESX 3.5 Update 2 or later
✔ VMware ESXi 3.5 Update 2 or later
✔ VMware ESX 4.0
• x86/64 platform with 1GB of memory (512MB minimum)3
• Virtualized network interface
• At least two physical4 and/or virtual disks, with at least 4GB of total free disk space for the
latter. Note that NexentaStor uses one of the hard drives for a system disk – the disk that
holds system folder and all subsequent system upgrades.
System Requirements – Xen based Virtual Appliance

• Citrix XenServer 5.0.0 or later
• At least 1 GB of RAM
• Virtualized network interface
• At least two physical and/or virtual disks, with at least 4GB of total free disk space for the
latter. Note that NexentaStor uses one of the hard drives for a system disk – the disk that
holds system folder and all subsequent system upgrades.
3. NexentaStor Virtual Appliance contains configuration file that specifies 64bit architecture. The Virtual Appliance,
however, will run on a 32bit hardware architectures (and within 32bit VM) since the OS kernel has the capability to
automatically determine the architecture and load the corresponding (32bit or 64 bit) libraries.
4. Note that your VMware product may support direct access to local hard disks

System Requirements – Unified Appliance
As far as “bare-metal” installation5, following is the list of recommendations and important notes:
• 64 bit processor (32 bit not recommended for production)
• 768MB RAM minimum for evaluation, 2GB okay, 4GB ideal
• 2 identical relatively small disks for high-availability system folder (for operating system
and the rest appliance's software) and additional drives/storage for data volumes.
For more information on hardware compatibility, please visit NexentaStor F.A.Q., and in particular
the following two F.A.Q. entry:
• Will NexentaStor run on my hardware platform?
Document Conventions
Command line example
Cross-reference
A notice, warning, conclusion, important remark.
Terminology
The following lists just a few terms used throughout this document. For the complete list of terms,
please see [1].
Term Comment
NexentaStor Nexenta Storage Appliance.
SA-API Storage Appliance API. NMS (next) is a sole provider of SA-API.
NMS Nexenta Management Server. There is only one server instance per
appliance. The server provides public and documented Storage
Appliance API (SA-API) available to all appliance management and
monitoring clients, remote and local, including (but not limited to)
NMC.
5. You can certainly also install Unified Appliance CD yourself into an “empty” VMware or Xen Virtual Machine.

Term Comment
NMC Nexenta Management Console. NMC can be used universally to view

and configure every single aspect of the appliance: volumes and
folders, storage and network services, fault triggers and statistic
collectors. NMC communicates with the local NMS (see previous) and
remote management consoles and management servers to execute
user requests. Multiple NMC instances can be running on a given
appliance. NMC is a single-login management client with a capability
to manage multiple appliances and groups of appliances.
NMV Nexenta Management View. Web client uses the same SA-API (above)
to communicate with the NMS. NMV shows status of all appliances on
the network, displays graphical statistics collected by "statistic
collectors" (see below), and more.

2. Hardware Installation
The Virtual Appliance product does not require installation – the appliance is already pre-
installed.
NexentaStor Virtual Appliance users – please continue to the Section

“Getting Started with Virtual Appliance”.
NexentaStor Unified Appliance ISO image is available in two editions: Developer Edition and Free
Trial Edition. The Products page on the website summarizes the differences between NexentaStor
editions, in terms of functionality, available support, available extensions, and upgrade options:

To download Developer Edition ISO image, please visit our Community pages, at
http://www.nexenta.com/community. The Free Trial Edition is linked off of the Products page.
Prior to installation, you may also want to visit NexentaStor FAQ page,
and in particular, the following frequently asked questions:
• Will NexentaStor run on my hardware platform?
• What hardware do you recommend for NexentaStor?
X4500 (Thumper) users: please follow the guidelines documented in the

“NexentaStor User Guide”, Section "Configuring Thumper" (see [1]), or
see the following F.A.Q.:
• I've installed from CD onto a Sun X4500...
Finally, do not forget to check the hardware requirements – Section “System Requirements –
Unified Appliance”.
NexentaStor installation demo is available on the website. This pre-recorded movie

demonstrates the installation process and provides commentary.
To install, insert the CD and boot from it, following the on screen instructions. With the very first
screen, the boot manager invites you to start the hardware installation6:
6. Note that some of the screenshots throughout this document may differ in your version of NexentaStor.

Installer's Boot Menu
The appliance can be installed via serial port COM1. The latter option is available if
your system BIOS supports keyboard/monitor to serial port redirection. Please pay
attention to the very first menu – the boot manager menu, an example of which is
shown on the picture above. This shows that by default the boot manager will try to
use serial port, that is, unless you hit a Down arrow and ask it to boot using directly
attached keyboard/monitor.
NexentaStor can be installed via directly attached keyboard/monitor, as well as via serial port
COM1.
To install via serial port, please configure the BIOS to use serial port
input. The serial port parameters are the most common 9600 8,N,1
After configuring the BIOS to use serial port and inserting Installation CD,
you should see Nexenta Installer's welcome message on the remotely
connected terminal window. Please make sure that the remote terminal
client supports ANSI or VT100 emulation and is also configured for 9600
8,N,1.
You can postpone the installation, and optionally run a thorough memory check – notice the 2nd
entry in the menu above. Choosing to do so brings the following screen, with a multitude of
available memory-checking options and algorithms. Use instruction at the bottom of the screen to
control the execution:
The next screen covers the product license7, which must be accepted to proceed further.
7. Evaluation license, in this particular example. Note that some of the screenshots throughout this document may be
outdated – captured from older versions of NexentaStor. This may be reflected in minor differences with the actual
appliance screens that you observe.

Once the license is accepted, we proceed to install the software. The most important detail is
selecting your disk drive(s) for use as a system volume. NexentaStor Operating System will be
installed onto the system volume, and all existing data on the corresponding selected disk(s) will
be lost during the installation process.
The corresponding drives are sometimes also called “root drives” or “boot drives”. At least one
drive is necessary to install the system. However, if you have two or three equal size disks with
sizes less than 100GB, it would be recommended to setup a mirror set for the system volume8:
Use Up and Down arrows and SPACEBAR to make the selection.
8. Note that N-way mirror can sustain simultaneous failure of (N-1) drives.

Upon selecting your drive(s), a confirmation dialog is presented informing you that the entire
selected disk(s) will be re-formatted and reused for the appliance system software. Answer yes to
proceed with installation:
The system volume is then formatted and the appliance software is installed. Please note that the
installer may pause for some period around 3% or 4% completion, as the packages are being
examined.
The progress bar may stay at 3% for some time, sometimes a few minutes.
Note that the installation continues in the background. Please wait.
Footnote at the bottom of the screen (see screenshot above) explains how to switch from Installer
to Shell (F2), to Log (F3), and back to the main screen (F1).

While the software installs, you can review the detailed progress by simply pressing F3 key:
Observe running processes by pressing F2:
To return back to the main Installer's screen, press F1.
After all operations complete, you are asked to reboot the appliance. Please do so, and proceed to
Section “Three Easy Operations”.

3. VMware: Getting Started with Virtual Appliance
NexentaStor Unified Appliance users – please continue to the Section

“Three Easy Operations”.
NexentaStor Virtual Appliance users – please see the following F.A.Q.

article for information on (VMware) related options:
• Can I deploy NexentaStor as VMware Guest?
The Virtual Appliance is provisioned with 2 virtual disks (one system disk 9 and one data disks) and
1GB of memory. Prior to powering on your new VM, take a moment to consider these settings.
You may want to add data disks. Note that you can change the Nexenta-supplied defaults at any
time, at the very first powering-on of the NexentaStor VM or later.
In general, there is a wealth of information on the Web and in print, related to deploying and
managing Virtual Machines. If you would like to research it, learn more about multiple available
VM deployment options, a good place to start would be VMware Documentation. This (research)
however, is optional – for product evaluation purposes 10 you could start by using the default
settings and the documentation provided with the appliance (see Section “References” below).
Getting started with NexentaStor Virtual Appliance is easy – essentially it boils down to extracting
the files from .zip or .tar.gz archive and booting the appliance in your preferred VMware
environment. This section provides instruction on running the appliance in both the VMware
Workstation (hosted) environment and the Hypervisor (ESX server) environment. But first:
Step 1. Check the requirements (Section “System Requirements – Virtual Appliance”), and
download Virtual Appliance:
9. Or, more exactly, one disk that is used for system volume and one disk that is not allocated.
10. and beyond..

Step 2. The downloaded Virtual Appliance is a compressed and archived .zip 11 or .tar.gz
image. For detailed instruction on how to extract the Virtual Appliance files from tar.gz
archive, please see Section “Unpacking Virtual Appliance” below. The extracted archive will
contain the following files:
• NexentaStor.vmx - configuration
• NexentaStor-flat.vmdk - system disk (4GB, installed with NexentaStor)
• NexentaStor_1-flat.vmdk - data disk (2GB)
• NexentaStor.vmdk - disk descriptor for the system disk
• NexentaStor_1.vmdk - disk descriptor for the data disk
Most importantly, one of the files above is the pre-installed Virtual Machine (VM) – the
.vmx image.
From here on, the next steps depend on your VMware environment.
11. For ZIP file format introduction and history, see for instance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZIP_(file_format)

Unpacking Virtual Appliance
ESX
As far as ESX is concerned, there are two basic ways to extract Virtual Appliance from the
downloaded compressed archive:
1) extract the archive on a Windows platform, and then copy the extracted files onto ESX
2) extract the archive directly on ESX
For the first way (extracting on Windows and copying), the detailed steps are: use any compliant
PKZIP utilities for .zip extension, or any archiver that supports .tar.gz – for .tar.gz extension,
respectively. The resulting folder is then uploaded onto ESX using VMware Infrastructure Client or
VMware vSphere Client, as illustrated in the next section.
You may also choose to copy the archive directly onto ESX server. The procedure outlined in this
document requires SSH root access, as per Knowledge Base article:
http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?
language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=8375637
Once SSH root access is acquired, you can then SCP the archived Virtual Appliance using any
compliant SCP implementation (for instance, WinSCP for Windows). Next, SSH into ESX and
unpack the appliance. For the .tar.gz extension, the corresponding command would look like:
# tar xzvf name_of_the_archive.tar.gz

Next, proceed to booting the appliance (Section “Booting virtual appliance in VMware ESX”).
Workstation
Use the tools available on the platform to unpack the archive. For instance, on Linux you'd use tar
to run:
# tar xzvf name_of_the_archive.tar.gz

assuming the archive extension is .tar.gz
Then, proceed to the next section (below).

Booting virtual appliance in VMware Workstation
Step 3. The next picture shows opening NexentaStor.vmx in the VMware Workstation:
... and the NexentaStor.vmx VM being opened:
At this point you can simply boot it by pressing on a little green icon on the toolbar, or by
clicking “Power On” of the top level VM menu. You can also change configuration via Edit
virtual machine settings link (see picture above): add more virtual disks, memory, etc.

Booting virtual appliance in VMware ESX
Step 3. First, make sure that the .zip or .tar.gz archive is extracted into your ESX Datastore
accessible by your ESX server. Please see Section “Unpacking Virtual Appliance” for
detailed instruction. In the example below, we will be using a Datastore named [testbox].
Rest of this section illustrates in detail the steps of:
Step 4. Using VMware vSphere Client12 to browse Datastore [testbox]:
Step 5. Uploading pre-installed NexentaStor Virtual Appliance into ESX server. Or, in
VMware terms, adding the corresponding .vmx file (NexentaStor.vmx) to ESX Inventory:
12. Note that VMware vSphere(tm) is used here solely for illustration purposes.

Step 6. Entering a name of the virtual machine, with default being the name of the .vmx
file:
Step 7. Finishing registration of the NexentaStor Virtual Appliance with ESX:
Step 8. And finally, booting. You can power on NexentaStor VM by clicking a little green
triangle on the toolbar, or via the Inventory => Virtual Machine => Power menu.

You can also change configuration via Edit virtual machine settings link (see picture
above): add more virtual disks, memory, change networking configuration, etc.

4. Xen: Running Appliance in Citrix XenServer
NexentaStor Unified Appliance users – please continue to the Section

“Three Easy Operations”.
The Virtual Appliance is provisioned with 1 virtual disks with pre-installed NexentaStor Appliance
and 1GB of memory. Prior to powering on your new VM, take a moment to consider these
settings. You may want to add data disks. Note that you can change the Nexenta-supplied
defaults at any time, at the very first powering-on of the NexentaStor VM or later.
Getting started with NexentaStor Virtual Appliance is easy – essentially it boils down to unzipping
the downloaded image and running it in your preferred Citrix environment. This section provides
detailed instructions:
Step 1. Check the requirements (Section “System Requirements – Virtual Appliance”), and
download Virtual Appliance.
Step 2. Unzip the downloaded ZIP13 archive into a new directory. The extracted archive will
contain the following files:
• NexentaStor-COM-x.x.x.xva - Template for XenServer
Step 3. To boot pre-installed image in Citrix XenServer, start your XenCenter. Select
“Import…” in the “VM” menu:
13. For ZIP file format introduction and history, see for instance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZIP_(file_format)

Step 4. Next, we will be importing the image. Select “Import type”: Exported Template.
Click button “Browse…” and then select NexentaStor-COM-x.x.x.xva:
Click “Next”
Step 5. Page “Home Server”

Select your Citrix XenServer and click button “Next”
Step 6. Page “Storage”
Select storage for virtual disk and click button “Import”
Step 7. Page “Network”
Network configuration leave blank and click button “Next”
Step 8. Page “Finish”
Your template is done for importing. Click button “Finish” and wait importing process.
Step 9. Importing process is finished. Next step: create VM from template.

Step 10. Select “New VM...” in menu “VM”, select NexentaStor-COM-x.x.x template in
Templates list and click “Next”
Step 11. Page “Name”
Enter the name of your VM, fill in description and click “Next”
Step 12. Page “Location”
This window leave as is and click “Next”
Step 13. Page “CPU & Memory”
Select number of CPU and RAM for your VM (for fast work select not less than 768 MB of
RAM) and click “Next”
Step 14. Page “Virtual Disks”
NexentaStor Citrix XenServer Template has one 4GB virtual disk with pre-installed
Operating System. If necessary, add more virtual disks and click “Next”.
Step 15. Page “Virtual Interfaces”
NexentaStor Citrix XenServer Template hasn't network interfaces. Add network interfaces
to your VM (one or more) and click “Next”.
Step 16. Page “Finish”
Select check box “Start VM Automatically” and click “Finish”

5. Three Easy Operations
The rest of this document applies to both the Virtual and “bare-metal” Unified Appliance products,
based on both Evaluation and Commercial licenses.
In all cases – virtual and “bare-metal”, evaluation and commercial – it takes 3 easy operations to
deploy the appliance:
(A) register the appliance
(B) configure primary network interface, and
(C) perform a few essential Wizard-guided configuration steps.
The following is a step-by-step detailed instruction on how to deploy NexentaStor Appliance

products.
A. Registering: steps 1 and 2

Step 1. Boot NexentaStor appliance. After the appliance boots up, review and accept
NexentaStor software license agreement14
Step 2. Follow instructions on the appliance's console15 to register the appliance software:
14. Some of the screenshots throughout this document may be outdated – captured from older NexentaStor versions.
15. Nexenta Management Console a. k. a. NMC

Note the Machine Signature (DC56AFAD in the example above) on the appliance's console.
This value identifies the machine, and is needed to produce unique registration. Product
registration forms are available on the website.
To register NexentaStor Developer Edition, please click on the evaluation registration link
on the Community page, as shown below:
The evaluation registration form will look as follows:

To register NexentaStor Trial Edition, please click on the Free Trial Registration link on the
Products page, as shown below:

You may be required to login using your Free Trial account.
To register commercial version of the product, please follow instructions emailed to you
after you have purchased the license directly from Nexenta Systems, Inc at
http://www.nexenta.com/store, or via a certified third party vendor. The commercial
registration form will look as follows:
Notice the field “Machine Signature” on all product registration forms shown above.
In all cases, evaluation and commercial, pre-installed VM image and

bare-metal installation, use the exact Machine Signature to register
the software.
You will need to enter the exact value as displayed on your appliance's console. In the example
Error: Reference source not found (see Step 2 on page #Error: Reference source not found) the
Machine Signature would be: DC56AFAD.
Fill out the rest of the corresponding registration form and click 'Submit Request'. An
automatically generated unique license key will be emailed to you, and you will be able to activate
the appliance.
See also the following related F.A.Q.:
• When I enter license key, I get an error message saying the key is invalid...
• What happens if license expires or some license-imposed limit is exceeded?

B. Configuring primary network interface and choosing
transport protocol for NexentaStor Web GUI
Step 3. Please make sure to enter the product registration key exactly as it appears in
your email sent to you as a result of registration (previous step).
Key is case sensitive. Make sure to enter the key exactly as specified in the auto-
generated email. The '-' separating groups of key characters need to be entered as well.
Once the Registration Key is entered, (“TRIA-...” in the example above), proceed to
configure primary network interface. You can connect to the system as is via the stated
address if you configure a client on the same network with a 192.168.1.X type address.
To facilitate initial configuration, the appliance is pre-configured with a static IP

address 192.168.1.111
When going through the very first post-installation steps, please make sure that
192.168.1.111 is NOT in use. The chance that specifically this address is already in
use is pretty low; however the chance exists, and if this happens the well known
“duplicate IP address” scenario may arise on the network to which appliance is
currently connected. The corresponding troubleshooting is described elsewhere in
great detail.
Next, you will want to reconfigure the primary network interface. Choose DHCP if your
environment supports that, or elect to set up the interface statically (you will need to
specify the device’s IP address, subnet mask, default gateway, and DNS server addresses
to do so).

.
In most cases you will want to configure appliance's primary IP

interface statically. General network administration guidelines do apply.
Step 4. After choosing your primary IP settings, you need to elect not to reconfigure:
The example above shows primary networking interface and its

(configured) settings. At this point you should be able to ping the
appliance from an external host.

Step 5. Finally, choose transport protocol for NexentaStor Web GUI (NMV). You can select
either HTTP – fast and (plain text) unsecured, or HTTPS – secured but less responsive:
At this point the appliance is installed and READY TO BE INITIALLY CONFIGURED via
appliance's web GUI.
Notice a brief instruction displayed on the console above the login prompt (highlighted). It
is essential to follow this instruction and use Internet Browser to perform a few most
basic configuration steps.

C. Initial Configuration
Step 6. The appliance is now almost ready for usage! As per instruction on the screen
above, use the displayed URL (in this case that would be http://192.168.102.182:2000) to
connect your browser to the NexentaStor GUI-based Initial Configuration Wizard. The
Wizard will then guide you through the most essential appliance's setup – for more
information refer to a separate “NexentaStor User Guide” document ([1]).
If your Internet Browser does not connect to the appliance, it is most probably
because the primary networking interface (Steps 4 and 5 above) is mis-
configured. You can always fix the configuration by logging in the console and
running:
nmc:/$ setup appliance init
Advanced users only:
Note that already at this point you could log into the appliance via Nexenta
Management Console (NMC) from either use the directly connected monitor or
by ssh-ing to the appliance's primary IP address. In both cases login as root, and
use the password that is sent to you in registration email (see Step 4 above).
If you elect to do so, you will be greeted by the following SYSTEM NOTICE:
This is a simple reminder that it is recommended to complete the appliance's

configuration via Initial Configuration Wizard.
For information on the NexentaStor Management Console (including navigation

guidelines, command reference, user guide, and tutorials) please see [1].
Step 7. Your next step is to continue appliance's configuration. The appliance has a web
interface that will also initialize the system if the network (see Step 6 above) is available.
Use the URL printed above. Security certificate is displayed since you are connecting via
secure connection:

Please accept it.
Step 8. NexentaStor Initial Configuration Wizard is subdivided into two guided stages:
• Stage I - Basic Configuration (the first screenshot below)
• Stage II - Configuring Network and Storage
It is important to perform all Wizard-guided steps of the Basic Configuration.
Wizard demonstration is available on the website. The demo shows the most
essential steps (of setting up the installed appliance), and provides
commentary.
Notice the URL in the browser's address location window (below). This is the appliance's
web GUI URI, the same one that was displayed at the end of Section “B. Configuring
primary network interface and NMV transport” (above).
For more information on the Wizard and Wizard-guided steps of configuring the appliance,
see “NexentaStor User Guide” [1], Section “Initial Configuration Wizard”, and Initial
Configuration Wizard tutorial on the website (see [3]).

Next, please assign root and admin passwords:

NexentaStor is pre-configured with administrative user accounts: root and admin. After
registering the appliance (as desctribed in the "Quick Start Guide" document), you will
receive the default password in auto-generated email, along with the product Registration
Key. Don't forget to change the default password. For more information, please see the
following F.A.Q.:
• Documentation mentions two built-in user accounts: root and admin. What is the
difference?
It is important to setup at least a mail server and mailing address to system notifications,
reports, and faults to be reported. Configure as necessary for your site.
Setting up e-mail notification is important, as indicated on the side panel. Part of

the appliance's Fault Management and Reporting is realized via notifications. It
is recommended to configure either appliance's mailer or enable appliances
inbox (User Guide, section “Inbox”).
If the mailer is not configured and Inbox is disabled, the appliance will fail to
notify of important events, and the notifications will silently end up in the
appliance's log.
You can always review the changes, and either apply them (Save Configuration), or go
back and make more changes (Previous Step):

The Stage-I Basic Configuration Wizard is run only once, after the appliance is
freshly installed.
The Stage-II Configuring Network and Storage Wizard can be run multiple times.
Stage-II Wizard can be run multiple times. Even though Nexenta Management View
provides a superset of functionality, you may find it convenient to re-run the Wizard, by
pointing your Internet Browser to the /wizard2 URL. In the example (below) that URL is:
http://192.168.1.108:2000/wizard2
The following shows some of the Stage-II Wizard screens, to configure Networking and
Storage. Start from configuring appliance's primary interface:
Stage-II Wizard contains a number of optional steps, to setup network and storage, data
volumes, folders and zvols.
At the end of this sequence you will be asked to create a system checkpoint. For the
freshly installed appliance, it is recommended to create system checkpoint upon initial
configuration.
The appliance supports all 3 types of iSCSI discovery. Here you can connect to iSCSI

targets and discover remote LUNs. The following screen shows existing directly attached
disks, and allows to attach more, via iSCSI:
Next, the Wizard will help you create data volumes:

While walking Wizard-guided steps, pay attention to system notices. When creating a
volume, please keep in mind that redundant configurations typically improve performance
and reliability but reduce effective storage capacity.
Please see the system notice on screen and NexentaStor F.A.Q. for more information.
Finally, with its last screen the Wizard invites to review and save all changes:
The Wizard will also recommend to create system checkpoint (see above) – “a snapshot of
the freshly installed and initially configured appliance”. Please see [2] for introduction and
[1] for detailed information on appliance's upgrade/checkpoint functionality.
The Stage-II Installation Wizard can be run multiple times. Even though NMV provides
a superset of functionality, you may still find it convenient to re-run the Wizard. To do
this, point your Internet browser to a the following URL:
https://<appliance's IP address:2000>/wizard2
or:
https://<appliance's hostname:2000>/wizard2
or:
http://<appliance's hostname:2000>/wizard2
Make sure to use the 2000 port and the right (http or https) prefix.

6. Upgrading the license – Re-registering
You can start using NexentaStor Free Trial Edition, and after a trial period decide to purchase a
commercial version. If at this point you already deployed the Trial Edition, there will be no need to
reinstall. As part of the product purchasing process, a new license key will be generated and sent
to you. There will be no downtime.
If you already started using NexentaStor Developer Edition in production environment, and then
decided to convert it into a commercial version with better support options, extra features, ability
to run commercial plugins, and fewer (or none) usage restrictions – please contact technical
support. The preferred and recommended option though is to start using NexentaStor Free Trial
Edition which does not require any conversion whatsover.
For a summary and details on available product editions, please refer to NexentaStor
Editions Table on the website, or Section "2. Hardware Installation" in this document.
To display appliance's license information, simply click on the About menu of the Nexenta
Management View top level toolbar, for example:

Alternatively, use NMC command:
nmc:/$ show appliance license
If you changed your licensing terms (e. g., added more capacity) and received a new license key
for the appliance that is already in use, re-register the appliance using the following NMC
command:
nmc:/$ setup appliance register
For information on registering (and re-registering) appliance, see the corresponding manual page:
nmc:/$ setup appliance register -h
Or, you can re-register using the appliance' web GUI interface:
In addition, starting with version 2.1, there is a convenient way to request additional storage
capacity. You can simply specify the number of additional terabytes you'd need to deploy with a
given NexentaStor appliance, and a new license key will be automatically generated and sent to
you to replace the old license.
For more information on “licensed storage capacity”, please see the following F.A.Q. entry:
➢ How do you calculate storage space?
The next screenshot illustrates Request for Additional Capacity:

For more information, please see the following F.A.Q. entries on the website16:
• What is a NexentaStor plugin?
• When I enter license key, I get an error message saying the key is invalid...
• How can I evaluate NexentaStor commercial extension (plugin)?
• What happens if license expires or some license-imposed limit is exceeded?
• How do you calculate storage space?
16. Also accessible via http://www.nexenta.com/nexentastor-faq

7. Documentation and Technical Support
Complete product documentation is available online – from the Nexenta Management View (NMV)
Help menu simply click on the “NexentaStor User Guide” link:
Use the Technical Support form (below) to report any technical problems and/or request new
features. From this page a simple email can be sent to support technicians.
The equivalent NMC command is called 'support':

nmc:/$ support
Here as well you will be prompted to enter your contact email, describe the problem - and the
message will go out to the Technical Support team, with all the required system information
automatically collected and attached.

8. Unpacking Virtual Appliance

9. References
[1] NexentaStor User Guide: available in PDF and HTML at http://www.nexenta.com/docs
You can download the document (PDF) or view it on-line.
[2] NexentaStor: Introduction and Executive Summary (white paper):
http://www.nexenta.com/docs
[3] Tutorials on the web: http://www.nexenta.com/tutorials
[4] Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ): http://www.nexenta.com/nexentastor-faq
Make sure to review our constantly updated F.A.Q. pages.
[5] Downloads: http://www.nexenta.com/products

[6] Release notes: http://www.nexenta.com/nexentastor-relnotes
Other useful quick links include:
• Tutorials & Demos
• Documentation
• Knowledge Base
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Release Notes
• NexentaStor Plugins
• NexentaStor API & SDKs
For comments, recommendations or information contact support@nexenta.com

NexentaStor QuickStart

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Quick Start Guide

Copyright © 2010 Nexenta Systems, Inc.

Nexenta Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. 1

Nexenta Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. 2

• NexentaStor Unified Appliance – CD image that can be installed on a “bare-metal”

NexentaStor installation demo is available on the website. This pre-recorded movie

Nexenta Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. 3

System Requirements – VMware based Virtual Appliance

✔ VMware Player 2.5.x

✔ Workstation 6.5 or later

✔ VMware Server 1.0.4 or later

✔ VMware ESX 3.5 Update 2 or later

✔ VMware ESXi 3.5 Update 2 or later

✔ VMware ESX 4.0

• x86/64 platform with 1GB of memory (512MB minimum)3

• Virtualized network interface

System Requirements – Xen based Virtual Appliance

• Virtualized network interface

Nexenta Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. 4

• 64 bit processor (32 bit not recommended for production)

• 768MB RAM minimum for evaluation, 2GB okay, 4GB ideal

• Will NexentaStor run on my hardware platform?

Command line example

A notice, warning, conclusion, important remark.

NexentaStor Nexenta Storage Appliance.

SA-API Storage Appliance API. NMS (next) is a sole provider of SA-API.

Nexenta Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. 5

NMC Nexenta Management Console. NMC can be used universally to view

Nexenta Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. 6

NexentaStor Virtual Appliance users – please continue to the Section

Nexenta Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. 7

• Will NexentaStor run on my hardware platform?

• What hardware do you recommend for NexentaStor?

X4500 (Thumper) users: please follow the guidelines documented in the

• I've installed from CD onto a Sun X4500...

NexentaStor installation demo is available on the website. This pre-recorded movie

Nexenta Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. 8

Nexenta Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. 9

Use Up and Down arrows and SPACEBAR to make the selection.

Nexenta Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. 10

Nexenta Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. 11

Observe running processes by pressing F2:

To return back to the main Installer's screen, press F1.

Nexenta Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. 12

NexentaStor Unified Appliance users – please continue to the Section

NexentaStor Virtual Appliance users – please see the following F.A.Q.

• Can I deploy NexentaStor as VMware Guest?

Nexenta Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. 13

• NexentaStor-flat.vmdk - system disk (4GB, installed with NexentaStor)

• NexentaStor_1-flat.vmdk - data disk (2GB)

• NexentaStor.vmdk - disk descriptor for the system disk

• NexentaStor_1.vmdk - disk descriptor for the data disk

Nexenta Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. 14

2) extract the archive directly on ESX

# tar xzvf name_of_the_archive.tar.gz

# tar xzvf name_of_the_archive.tar.gz

Then, proceed to the next section (below).

Nexenta Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. 15

... and the NexentaStor.vmx VM being opened:

Nexenta Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. 16

Rest of this section illustrates in detail the steps of: