About the Installation Environment
  
About the Installation Environment
Installation environment components include:
• Appliance hardware—A standard server that meets Riverbed hardware requirements. The software is installed on this server and then shipped to the end user.
• Riverbed Edge Installation Server—A Linux-based virtual machine provided by Riverbed. This server has copies of the latest version of the software and executes the installation of ESXi and Edge on the appliance hardware. Minimum requirements for the Installation Server are as follows:
– The minimum disk space needed for the PXE server is 64 GB. PXE Boot must be visible in the boot options. If it isn’t, you must enable it in the BIOS.
– Do not set BIOS to PXE boot every time automatically. It is only required for the initial build from the boot menu. If it is set to boot automatically, it will loop the installation of ESXi.
– We recommend using MSATA for the ESXi boot drive. If MSATA is not an option, create the first RAID group for ESXi. For the installation to work correctly, you must perform these steps in the following sequence: Create the RAID group and then make it bootable. Next, create the SSD group. Finally, create the blockstore RAID group.
• Isolated Layer 2 installation network—An isolated Layer 2 network used for installation. The Edge Installation Server runs DHCP, PXE, tftpd server, NFS server, and a web server. If any of these are on the same network, it will disrupt other servers. You have to set up a separate independent Layer 2 network either by having a separate physical network using a simple Layer 2 switch or a separate VLAN. This network is referred to as the installation network in the rest of this guide.
• Management network—An existing network with internet connectivity that is used to connect other systems.
• VMware ESXi server with two network interface cards (NICs)—This server is used to deploy the Riverbed Edge Installation Server, which is distributed as an OVA and must be installed. One of the server NICs must be connected to the installation network so that the Riverbed Installation Server can have a virtual NIC in the installation network. The second NIC on the ESXi server must be on a network through which you can connect and manage the servers.