Deploy Skyline Health Diagnostics in Workstation or Fusion
I always get interesting questions, todays was ‘Can I Deploy Skyline Health Diagnostics in Workstation or Fusion?’
Looking through the documentation it is certainly not listed as a requirement to run on ESX or any other specified platform;
“Software Requirement
- Photon OS 3.0 Revision 2 ISO Distribution (Minimal Version)
Hardware Requirements
Recommended settings for vSphere virtual machine
- 4 vCPUs
- 16 GB RAM
- 150 GB space for the hard disk
- A port group with network connectivity for accessing this virtual machine from your workstation”
The requirement to run Photon OS 3.0 can be met either by Fusion or Workstation. Which leaves only the hardware requirements, some might struggle to provide 4 vCPUs and 16GB RAM, so does the installation work if we cut that down to say 2 vCPUs and 4 GB?
Only one way to find out! For more instructions on how to install the diagnostic tool, refer to the documentation or my own post here
After creating a VM and setting the CPU and RAM resources to 2 vCPUs and 4 GB, we move on to the installation of PhotonOS itself.
The installation of PhotonOS is simple, after agreeing to terms, auto partitioning and a DHCP network configuration, 60 seconds later it’s installed and asking for a first boot.
Mounting the SHD installation CDROM and executing the installation binaries was equally painless. After checking the DHCP address by running ‘ifconfig’ on the appliance, browsing there I get a logon prompt.
So far so good, but does it actually work with reduced resources?
running ‘top’ on the OS shows that at least whilst the SHD tool is processing logon and browsing, it’s working just fine.
So what about uploading bundles?
Consumption rises, but we don’t max out the two vCPUs nor the 4GB RAM.
And it is very much a similar story when looking at the analysis phase of the log bundle upload.
Most importantly it works and a report is generated from the provided log bundle.
Thanks!
Simon