Installing BrickStor SP on Microsoft Hyper-V Virtual Machines About The following guide describes the process of installing the BrickStor SP on a Microsoft Hyper-V Virtual Machine. Required Items Virtual Machine (VM) configured as described in System Requirements VM console access BrickStor SP installation media A MyRackTop customer portal login BrickStor SP license entitlement serial number System Requirements To install BrickStor SP on Hyper-V the target virtual machine must be configured accordingly to meet specific software and hardware requirements outlined below. Software Requirements The BrickStor SP appliance can be deployed on any supported version of Windows. Minimum Virtual Hardware Requirements Resource Specification vCPU 4 OS (Operating System) Disk 200 GB Data Disk * GB vMemory 64 GB CD/DVD drive SATA CD/DVD drive VM Generation Generation 1 Data Disk is a separate virtual disk for creating SMB/NFS shares. Allocate sufficient amount of capacity based on the application. Capacity is modifiable after install. It is strongly advised to allocate beyond the minimum recommended virtual memory. BrickStor SP uses memory for data caching, it will drastically improve sequential IO and overall performance. Supported Hyper-V Operations The below section provides guidance for best practices for operating a BrickStor SP virtual appliance on Hyper-V. BrickStor SP comes bundled with Hyper-V Tools that will start automatically. Hyper-V Function Supported Notes Connect Yes Settings Yes Start Yes Checkpoint Yes Revert Yes Turn Off Not Recommended Graceful Shut Down is recommended by using Shut Down Shutdown Yes Save Yes Pause Yes Reset Not Recommended Use only in emergency situations when the VM is non-responsive. This is a hard reset. Move Not Recommended Requires Full Control permission for admin account on the share and Hyper-V host. Export Yes Rename Yes Enable Replication No Host Servers and Clustering In order to ensure the highest levels of availability for BrickStor SP services when running as a virtual appliance, it is expected that the BrickStor SP virtual machine is deployed on a Hyper-V Failover Cluster with two or more Hyper-V servers, and Hyper-V Failover Cluster enabled to restart virtual machines in the event of a host failure. Installer System Prerequisites Installer system refers to the client machine performing the installation. The installer system requires internet access during the installation in order to activate the product. Supported Browser Versions Google Chrome 109 or newer Mozilla Firefox 114 or newer Microsoft Edge 114 or newer Apple Safari 16.2 or newer The BrickStor SP installer uses DHCP to establish a network connection. To configure a static IP address see the Installer System Configuration section. Once a network connection is established, the BrickStor SP installer web UI can be accessed from the network client machine (Windows, macOS, Linux) using a modern-internet-browser. Installation Download and mount the BrickStor SP Installer. Power on the VM. Install BrickStor SP. Using a client machine, open a modern internet browser and enter https://<BrickStor IP address or hostname>/ into the browser’s address bar. Press Enter. A screen will prompt for input of an Access Code. The Access Code is displayed on the VM Console screen. Once the Access Code has been entered, click the Login button. The installer Home page will show. Begin installation by clicking the Install button. On successful completion of each stage a green checkmark will be shown next to the step in the list. Next, read and accept the End User License Agreement. The Activate screen will show. Click the Activate Now button. This will redirect to the MyRackTop customer portal. Log in. Next, a prompt will appear for selecting the order entitlement to activate this installation. Click the Activate button. A prompt will show successful activation. Click the Continue Installation button to be redirected back to the installer. The installer wizard will show a green check mark and a message confirming successful activation. Next, Select a boot device. Select the Primary boot device from the provided device options. If a new device is introduced after booting into the installer, click the Refresh Devices button to refresh selection. For Virtual Machine installations only Primary boot device is sufficient. When a secondary disk is selected, a drive mirror (RAID-1) will be created for redundancy. Secondary drives must be of the same type and capacity. SAS, SATA and NVMe device types are supported, but cannot be mixed. Once the correct boot device(s) has been selected, click the Next button to continue. Next, set default admin user password. The default admin username is bsradmin and cannot be changed. Enter a strong password using the Password field. Password must be at least 8 characters long. Re-enter the password in the Confirm field. Click the Next button to continue. Upon successful completion of all steps the Install screen will show. Click the Install button to begin the installation. A progress bar and description of the installation process will be displayed. Closing or refreshing the page will not interrupt the installation. Once the installation is completed a prompt will ask to reboot the system. Click Reboot. Remove the installation media from the VM.