Run the Witness in a VMware based Virtual Machine

If you would prefer not to configure and maintain a separate Linux server on which to install the Witness, as an alternative, you can elect to deploy a separate VM that has the Witness daemon running and is pre-configured with the Witness dependencies. You can deploy this VM from an OVF template, which you can download from HPE InfoSight.

IMPORTANT: HPE only supports this type of deployment via the vCenter GUI. Any other deployment method may fail.

To deploy a VM from an OVF template, complete the following steps:

Download the Witness OVA file from HPE InfoSight:
1. 1. Log into HPE InfoSight.
2. 2. Go to Resources → Software Downloads
3. Locate and download the Witness OVA file.
Login to the vSphere Client to access the vCenter where you want to deploy the OVA witness VM.
Right click on the compute resource (for example, an ESX host) that you want to deploy to, and select Deploy OVF Template
From the Deploy OVF Template Wizard, complete the following steps:
1. Page 1: Select local file, click choose files, and select the Witness OVA file.
2. Page 2: Change the virtual machine name to a name that is meaningful to you.
3. Pages 3, 4, 5, 6: Accept all default choices on each of these pages.
4. Page 7: Provide the following information:
  - Gateway: (mandatory)
  - IP 1: (mandatory)
  - Netmask: 1 (mandatory). (See Important note below)
  - IP 2 (optional)
  - Netmask 2 (optional)
  - IP 3 (optional)
  - Netmask 3 (optional)
  - DNS: (optional, list more than one as space separated string of IP addresses)
  IMPORTANT:
  When providing a Netmask, you must use a integer value format between 1-32 (such as /24 for example) for the Witness service to function. Specifying a value in a format such as 255.255.255.0 might deploy the OVA, but the Witness service will fail.
  
  If you inadvertently deploy the Witness using an incorrect format for the Netmask, you will need to redeploy the Witness VM again using the correct format.
5. Page 8: Accept all default choices on this page.
You should see the VM with the name you chose from step 4b above. When the deployment is complete, right click on the VM and power it on.

When performing the above steps, keep the following information in mind.

If the password for the root user is expired, you must change it when you first log on. The default witness OVA password is: 21brhGc+j6pIfApAHqEQ. After you have changed the password, create a new user with a new user name and password by using the following commands:
```
useradd <witness_user_name>
passwd <witness_password>
```
For more information about installing and configuring the Witness on a Linux server, see Install and Configure the Witness on a Linux server.
To ensure that the basic setup is correct, you can check the status of the ovf-set service and nimble-witnessd daemon after the VM has been started by running the following commands:
```
systemctl status nimble-witnessd
systemctl status ovf-set
```
If the services did not launch correctly, the errors for both services are reported in the /var/log/NimbleStorage/ directory.
If you need to change the network properties once the VM is deployed, you can perform the following steps:

Log in to the VM
Remove the following files:
- /opt/NimbleStorage/ovfset/state/state_set
- /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-*
- /tmp/ovf_env.xml
Shut down the VM
Change IP address, Netmask, DNS and Gateway values from the vCenter UI:
1. Click the VM
2. Go to the Configure tab
3. Select vApp Options
4. Select the properties you want to edit
5. Change the values by selecting Set Value
Power on the VM