VirtualRealization: EMC UnityVSA installation and configuration

I am currently testing SRM and installed Nimble as my virtual storage array with Nimble SRA 3.0 but having to many problems with getting the array pairs working correct so decided to setup UnityVSA community addition which is available for free with up to 4TB of data. At the bottom of the page I provided some useful links:

Installation:
first off lets review requirements:

vCenter 5.5 update and later.
ESXi 5.x and later
12GB Memory
2 vCPU

Deploy the OVA downloaded "UnityVSA-4.0.0.7329527.ova".

I am not going to provide the steps to deploy and OVA since this is pretty straight forward and nothing really to configure except for management and data ports and management IP address.

After deployment is completed and VM powered on, open a browser and point to IP address specified during OVF deployment.

You will be presented with a login screen.

Type admin / Password123#

Wizard will appear for initial configuration.

Specify password to replace the default.

You need to request the license file by providing the System UUID to the following website:

https://www.emc.com/auth/elmeval.htm

Download the license file and install it.

Enter DNS information

Enter NTP information

Pools can be configured here but you do you require a manually created VM disk. If you have not added the new disk within vCenter for the VM then I would recommend just skipping this step for now.

Enter SMTP information

Create iSCSI network interface.

This can also be performed later but I created this on the data network ports i specified during the OVF deployment.

Creating NAS server but this can be done at later time.

Initial setup is now completed, yay!

Setup Pool:

Next step is to setup your storage to used by the UnityVSA.

This is very easily accomplished through vCenter server.

Edit settings on the UnityVSA VM

Select new device "New Hard disk" and click Add

Create hard disk with following recommended settings:

SCSI controller 0 which is VMware Paravirtual
Thick provision eager zero
Max size of 4TB
Min size of 10GB
Connect up to maximum of 12 disks for user data

Wait 60 seconds for UnityVSA to recognize the new storage.

Now we can setup our Pool

Select Storage -> Pools

Select + to create new pool

Select the newly create disk, and make sure to select the storage tier. After select the Storage tier, press either enter or anywhere else on screen to make the Next button available.

check box for storage tier

Select virtual disks

Create Capability profile. This is a set of storage capabilities for VVol datastore. The capabilities are derived from the underlying pools so best practices is to configure it during pool creation. Capabilities needs to be created before you can create a VVol datastore.

Specify Tag. Usage tags can be applied to capability profiles to designate them and their associated VVol datastores for a particular use

Setup initiators:

Select Access -> VMware

You have some options here to either directly connect and configure the ESXi hosts or connect directly to vCenter server and select which ever ESXi hosts within the environment you want to setup initiator access for. I selected the latter since easier to connect to vCenter.

Enter vCenter information

Select the ESXi hosts.

Click Finish

To verify the added ESXi hosts you can select Access -> Initiators. Here you can review your which will import both FC and iSCSI protocols if configured on hosts.