Deploying the Greenplum Virtual Appliance

The Greenplum Virtual Appliance is a pre-built OVA which can be deployed in VMware vSphere as a virtual machine. It contains all the tools and environment needed to perform configurations and auto-deployment of the Greenplum cluster. In this section, you will download the Greenplum Virtual Appliance OVA from VMware Marketplace, deploy the OVA in VMware vSphere, and use it to provision the Greenplum cluster virtual machines. You will need the Greenplum Virtual Operator CLI inside this virtual machine to perform deployment in the next sections.

Downloading the Greenplum Virtual Appliance

The Greenpum Virtual Appliance OVA is available on VMware Marketplace.

Log in and download the OVA. Make note of the directory where the file was saved.

Deploying the Greenplum Virtual Appliance OVA

1. Log in to vCenter and navigate to Hosts and Clusters.
2. Right click your cluster, then click Deploy OVF Template.
3. Choose Local file, select the Greenplum Virtual Appliance OVA file from your local machine, then click Next.
4. Set Virtual machine name as greenplum-virtual-appliance. Select the desired location for the virtual machine, then click Next.
5. Select the desired compute resource, then click Next. Wait while vCenter queries the OVA advanced configuration options.
6. Verify that the Review details section is correct, then click Next.
7. Select the desired storage, then click Next.
8. Select gp-virtual-external as the Destination Network, then click Next.
9. Configure the Customize Template section:
   1. If you have a DHCP server set up for gp-virtual-external Network and you want to use it to assign the IP address automatically, set External Network Type to DHCP. Then, skip Station IP configuration section and click Next.
   2. If you want to assign a static IP for the greenplum-virtual-appliance virtual machine, set External Network Type to Static. Then, finish the Static IP Configuration section as follows:
      • Set Static IPv4 Address to the desired IPv4 Address in format of #.#.#.#.
      • Set Static IPv4 Subnet Mask to the subnet mask as an integer.
      • Set Static IPv4 Network Gateway to the subnet gateway in the format of #.#.#.#.
      • Set DNS to the IP address of the DNS server.
      • Set NTP Server to the NTP server entry you want to use in /etc/ntp.conf inside the virtual machine.
10. Review the configuration, then click Finish.
11. Power on the gp-virtual-appliance virtual machine.

First Boot of gp-virtual-appliance Virtual Machine

Before continuing to the next sections, we need to do the first boot configuration:

1. Wait for the IP address of the newly created virtual machine to show up in the vSphere.
2. Once the IP is up, log in to the gp-virtual-appliance virtual machine using root with ssh. When you first login, it will ask you to change the root password. The default password is changeme.

Next Steps

The gp-virtual-appliance virtual machine is now ready for use. Continue to Choosing your Deployment Option to deploy a new Greenplum Database cluster using this virtual machine.