▶ BLOG

KB No. 2798: MANAGEMENT OF OLFEO VIRTUAL APPLIANCES

KB OLFEO On-Premise
June 5, 2023

Summary

 

SELECT THE APPROPRIATE VIRTUAL APPLIANCES

 

There are four virtual appliance profiles (three master profiles and one slave profile) available for VMware vSphere (v5.0 and above) and Microsoft Hyper-V (Windows Server 2008 and above). Virtual appliances can be downloaded from this page (customer account required): https://www.olfeo.com/fr/telechargements

The master machine is available with three hard drive sizes for storing browsing logs for 365 days, depending on the number of users to be secured:

Please refer to the article on sizing an Olfeo infrastructure for more information on this subject.

 

CONTENTS OF VIRTUAL APPLIANCES

 

Olfeo virtual appliances are equipped with a Debian 9 x64 Linux operating system and include the Olfeo environment in the form of a chroot accessible in the /opt/olfeo/chroot directory tree. 

To optimize the integration of Linux virtual machines in VMware and Microsoft hypervisors, the open-vm-tools packages (open-source implementation of VMware tools) and LIS (Linux Integration Service for MS Hyper-V) are pre-installed.

 

IMPORTING VIRTUAL APPLIANCES

 

Once the file has been downloaded from the customer area, unzip the ZIP archive and verify the integrity of the OVA or VHD file using the associated text file and an appropriate tool.

VMware vSphere

From the web console ( vSphere Client (HTML5) or vSphere Web Client (Flex)), access the context menu and select Deploy OVF Template...:

In the installation wizard, select the Local File option and specify the location of the OVA file:

Microsoft Hyper-V

Create a new virtual machine and adjust the sizing (vCPU and RAM) according to the role of the machine (master or slave). 

Select Generation 1 for this machine:

Attach the corresponding virtual disk using the recovered VHD file.

 

TROUBLESHOOTING IMPORT ISSUES

 

VMware vSphere

Olfeo virtual appliances are generated from VMware vSphere 6.5 using the SHA256 encryption algorithm.

Therefore, any attempt to deploy these appliances from the vSphere client will fail with the following error:

It is necessary to use the web console (vSphere Client (HTML5) or vSphere Web Client (Flex)) to import these virtual appliances due to compatibility with the SHA256 cryptographic hash algorithm. This issue also affects the PowerCLI tool.

However, if you want to import via vSphere Client, you will need to convert the OVA from the SHA256 cryptographic hash algorithm to SHA1: https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2151537

When using the vSphere 5/6 web console, the deployment wizard may display a message in a loop even though the Client Integration Plug-In program is correctly installed:

Version 6.0 of the client integration plug-in was not detected. Install version 6.0 of the client integration plug-in using the following link.

The Client Integration Plug-in must be installed to enable OVF functionality. Click the link below to download the installer. If installed, refresh the browser and allow access.

The issue occurs with all browsers and is related to SSL certificate requirements in recent browsers that are incompatible with the certificates used by the Client Integration Plug-In program. VMware provides workarounds described in these articles:

Microsoft Hyper-V

Olfeo virtual appliances are Generation 1. If you select Generation 2, you will get this type of error:

 

CONFIGURATION OF VIRTUAL APPLIANCES

 

Once you have imported the virtual appliance and verified the hardware configuration, you can proceed to configure the system.

The items to configure on a virtual appliance:

  • The hostname: /etc/hostname and /etc/hosts
  • Network configuration (IP address, mask, and gateway): /etc/network/interfaces
  • DNS servers: /etc/resolv.conf
  • Installing security updates: apt update then apt upgrade

 

Restart the system using the reboot command to finalize this system preparation. This restart is required to apply the machine name change and update the Linux kernel.

Once the host system has been configured, you can proceed with the initial configuration of Olfeo by logging into the web administration interface: https://IP_OLFEO:8443

Note: if an error occurs when activating the license, temporarily modify the DNS configuration file in the Olfeo environment /opt/olfeo/chroot/etc/resolv.conf, then restart the operation. The DNS configuration can then be carried out in the administration interface.