The first step is to download the Simulator from NetApp site , you need to have an account to log in and download the simulator. (If you have a NetApp device or if you are NetApp partner, you can create a new account and use it to download the simulator and other tools)

First go to this link and click on "Log in" :

http://support.netapp.com/

Insert your username and password to log in or if you want to create a new account click on "Sign up now" :


Go to this section :

Downloads => Software

On the left pane, click on "Data ONTAP Simulator" :


Download the right version :




You can download simulator for "7-mode" or Clustered-ONTAP" (C-mode) , also download the license files for each version.
You can install the simulator to run it on VMWare Workstation or VMWare Player or Fusion , also you can download the one to run it on VMWare ESX :




I have downloaded the files for 7-Mode and C-Mode , also license files :



Let's extract the "vsim_esx-7m.tgz" file : (it will be another tar file ,almost 8GB , and need to unzip it again , I will unzip it twice to have 2 different copy and change the name of folders as well )


Here are the folders and files after extracting :



I have copied all the files and folders to my Datastore .

Browse the Datastore and add both of them to the inventory (If you want to have 2 of them and play with them):




When you try to start the VM , you will get an error message :




vmkload_mod multiextent


Now Power On the VM and open the console :


You can press "Enter" to boot immediately and when you see the message to press " Ctrl+C" please do it to go to the Configuration :


It will show you list of options, select option 4 "Clean configuration and initialize all disks" :



press y and enter to reset config and install a new file system :



It takes some time to complete the process , and the machine will be rebooted one time . Let it go to see this one ( have to wait few mins) :

Select a hostname and press enter to continue :


Enter the IP Address and subnet mask for all the available NICs :


Accept the defaults for other settings and just press enter  :


Press Enter and after that select a complex password and re-type it , then press enter.
It takes some time to extract all the files and finish the process , depends on your hardware and hard drive speed it may take 15-20 mins (or maybe longer)


On the client computer ( I am using a Windows 7 machine) Install the System Manager .

(Make sure you have already installed JAVA and Adobe Flash Player on your client computer)



Select the installation location :



You can select the port or leave the default to automatically select the port number :


When the installation process is completed  , press the finish button.




Double click the System Manager icon to open the application :


If you want you can click Download to go to the NetApp site and download the latest version of OnCommand System Manager and install it (sysmgr-setup-3-1RC1-win)




The System Manager is a web based application :



Click on "Discover" and insert the IP address of NetApp simulator we just installed and configured , then select one of the storage system NICs and add :




Storage System will be added and you can check the status,Model or System ID :



Double click on the Storage system name to connect to it , insert the username and password to be able to connect to storage :


This is the main window for the storage system :



Ok , the next step is to insert the licenses .
Go to " System Tools => Licenses " and click on "Add" to insert the licenses :



Insert all the licenses and click on "Add" :



And you will see the license status for each feature :



Let's go to NetApp console and check it.
You can connect to console by using "putty". Enter the username and password to log in first.

The first command we can use is " sysconfig " and it will show you the basic configuration of the system :



Now let's turn on the second VM as we named it DataONTAP2

When it prompts to pres Enter or any other key , just press any other key to go to the command prompt :


Run this command to change the serial number for this second NetApp server (else it will have exactly the same serial number as the first server and it will cause issues)

net SYS_SERIAL_NUM=777-777-777-777



Run this command after changing the serial number to boot and config the second NetApp server :

boot


You can now repeat the steps again and assign the IPs to the second NetApp server.


It takes some time to be completed (same as the other one) , time to go and grab a cup of coffee ;)


And after completing the discovery , it will be in System Manager :



And again the next step is inserting the licenses , but this time let me show you how you can add the licenses using the command line . First I will connect to NetApp server using Putty , and after log-in I use this command :

license add

And you can use this command to see the assigned licenses :

license show



Link to the other Parts :


NetApp 8.2 Simulation : Part 2 Create a new Aggregate and Volume
NetApp 8.2 Simulation : Part 3 Deploying a CIFS share ,set Share Security and Sessions
NetApp 8.2 Simulation : Part 5 Add an iSCSI LUN from NetApp to VMWare ESX host