Inconsistent behaviour during OVF deployment

[yonatan]

I've been testing the appliance for a while and noticed that it behaves differently when deployed via vCenter as opposed to directly connected to an ESXi host with the vSphere Client.

vSphere Client to ESXi host:

The different options outlined in the Setup Guide are not present. Quoting from the guide none of these are shown:

"6. Select the deployment configuration for the appliance.
• Trial. Select Trial setup if Zimbra Appliance is being deployed in a non- production lab environment.
• Midsize. Select Midsize setup if Zimbra Appliance is being deployed in an environment with less than 500 users.
• Large. Select Large setup if Zimbra Appliance is being deployed in an enviornment with up to 1000 users.
Click Next.
8. Select the IP address allocation scheme appropriate to your network configuration. For most Zimbra Appliance environments select Fixed. The IP addresses are manually configured on the Properties page that follows. No automatic allocation is performed.
Note: To automatically configure the appliance trial server’s network configuration, select a destination network with DHCP services configured and running.
9. With the properties page open, configure the following details for Zimbra Appliance.
3
• Configuration Password. Enter the password for the Virtual Appliance Management Infrastructure (VAMI). When you log into the Zimbra Appliance console, you enter this password.
• Server Name. Enter the Zimbra Appliance hostname. This is the server name. For example, mail.company.com.
• Administrative Account. Enter the name of the administrator’s account This account is automatically created on Zimbra Appliance during the install.
• Admin Password. This is the password to log on to the Zimbra administration console and to log on to the administrator’s mailbox. The password must be at least 6 characters.
• If you selected Fixed as the IP allocation policy, enter the network IP address
Click Next."

vSphere Client to vCenter:

The OVF deployment wizard asks for the configuration information above.

Also, the appliance seems to discard the fixed ip configuration during deployment and always reverts to DHCP.

I'm hoping that the next version of the appliance 7.0 is more robust because there are quite a few quirks/bugs with the current one.

[phoenix]

Originally Posted by yonatan

I'm hoping that the next version of the appliance 7.0 is more robust because there are quite a few quirks/bugs with the current one.

Thanks for posting that information. You should really file a bug report with that information, please make sure you file it under 'Appliance' in the Component section.

[yonatan]

I want to add a couple of more things that I have discovered after deploying the appliance ~10 times.

- Not only is the fixed IP setting discarded in the OVF deployment, but also the complete password. For example, I set a password such as yonatan12 and I can logon to both the web interface and appliance (via console) using either yonatan, yonatan12 or say yonatan1.

- Some of the OVF deployment settings need to be clarified for the user. Specifically there is a field for hostname and admin email address. I take hostname to mean ZCA or mail. HOWEVER, this creates an appliance that won't send or receive email. What the field is asking for is the FQDN such as ZCA.mydomain.com or mail.mydomain.com. Also, for the admin email address I first used my personal one outside the actual domain say xxx@hotmail.com and this creates a domain hotmail.com for Zimbra. In other words the admin address must be admin@mydomain.com. These options definitely need to be more clear!

Also, the appliance creates a hosts file (/etc/hosts) that looks like this:
192.168.1.x zca.mydomain.com
127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost

I know from all the discussions here about split-dns etc that the hosts file should look like this:
192.168.1.x zca.mydomain.com zca
127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost

But the appliance works anyway, so I guess Zimbra is doing some trickery. Just thought I'd point it out.

That's it for now. Maybe Zimbra wants to hire me for QA testing

[patry]

I am just wondering if the inconsistent behaviour described by yonatan has been resolved in a newer version of the Zimbra Virtual Appliance ?

Thanks
/jy