Getting Started, Converting the OVF for Nutanix AHV

NOTE: The below procedure has been tested with Nutanix AHV Community Edition which has Prism Element included. Prism Central allows native OVA import and deployment, documentation can be found here.

Extracting the VMDK files from the FirstWave NMIS Suite OVA

As Prism Element does not allow native OVA import and deployment, you will need to extract the files from the OVA first. The Unarchiver should do the trick on macOS and equivalent applications to do similar on Windows.

To extract VMDK files from an OVA file on a Linux system, you can use the tar command. As an OVA file is essentially a tar archive.

tar -xvf FirstWave_VM.ova

This will extract all the contents of the OVA file in the current working directory. You should see the VMDK files along with any other files contained within the OVA.

Uploading the VMDK files to Prism Element

Once you have extracted the VMDK files from the OVA, they need to be uploaded to Prism Element. To do this:

Click on the Settings cog in the top right corner.

On the left hand panel, under General click on Image Configuration. Then click on Upload Image.

In the Create Image Window you will need to create TWO seperate images, as our OVA has two disks attached. It is important to map them correctly as it will be important in later steps of this guide. 

As an example:

omk-vm9-debian11-disk001.vmdk should be named equivalent to something along the lines of "FirstWave-NMIS-OVA-Disk1"

omk-vm9-debian11-disk002.vmdk should be named equivalent to something along the lines of "FirstWave-NMIS-OVA-Disk2"

On the Image Type dropdown, click on DISK.

For Storage Container, keep "default-container-UUID" selected.

For Image Source, select the "Upload a file" radio button and choose the disk equivalent to the image name you have chosen. The end result should look like the below.

Click Save. The creation process will then start. At this point it is important that you do not click away from this screen while it is uploading, as if you do it will cancel the operation and you will need to restart the process.

Deploying the Virtual Machine

Once both images have been uploaded to Prism Element we can then begin with deploying the virtual machine.

To do this navigate to the VM page in Prism Element (click on the drop down to the right of your Nutanix cluster name in the top navigation bar), then click on Create VM on the right hand side.

In the Create VM window, first provide a name for the virtual machine. For Compute Details we recommend you configure the same as what the OVA is shipped with, that is 4 vCPU and 8GB RAM. Leave the boot configuration set to "Legacy BIOS".

For Disks you will need to configure as below:

Click Add New Disk and you will be taken to a Add Disk window. You then need to complete as below:

Type: DISK

Operation: Clone from Image Service

Bus Type: SCSI

Image: FirstWave-NMIS-OVA-Disk1 (or what you named it earlier) needs to be selected FIRST.

Index: Next Available

Once the first disk has been added, repeat for the second disk. The end result will look like the below in the Create VM screen (as the CD-ROM is not needed, it has been removed):

The last step is to add a Network Adapter. Once added, click Save. The create VM process will then commence.

Launch the Virtual Machine

Once the VM creation process has completed, click on Table and you will see your virtual machine present.

Either right click on the virtual machine and then click "Power on" or you can click on the virtual machine in the table and then the "Power on" button below it.

Once powered on, use our provided credentials to login. You can find this in the Install instructions on our website.

Tip: Once authenticated, our appliance ships with a Message of the Day (MOTD) which will provide you with the virtual machine's IP address, used to access the NMIS Suite Graphical User Interface (GUI). You can also find this by typing "ip a" into the console of the virtual machine.