Nest ASDK on a VM ( Azure Stack Development Kit )

 

Nesting Azure Stack Development Kit on a VM (ASDK)

This is the post on my new blog started 2020, I wasn't sure what to blog about, so I referred to my most recent project which was testing Azure Stack Development Kit. I don’t have the hardware in a lab to run it, so I was forced to nest ASDK on a VM. I searched & reference a lot of websites/blogs & had to alter more than what was suggested. Some of these references got me 50%-60% of way but I had to scrub logs and resolve issues one at a time and then rerun the installer.

So, I’m consolidating that all into this one post hopefully making this a much simpler process, with new versions of ASDK installer files being uploaded & different hypervisors being used this could work 100% or get you most of the way.

What i will show is how to check the installer log which will reference the errors on script that you can either # out or edit to satisfy prerequisites. 



So, first thing first Prerequisites:

Can be found here on Microsoft's Page 

Here are the Hardware requirements that we obviously can’t meet hence the requirement to Nest this setup. We will edit the Prerequisite check script fool the installer to accept virtual Hardware assigned to the VM.

Hardware

Component	Minimum	Recommended
Disk drives: Operating System	1 operating system disk with minimum of 200 GB available for system partition (SSD or HDD).	1 OS disk with minimum of 200 GB available for system partition (SSD or HDD).
Disk drives: General development kit data*	4 disks. Each disk provides a minimum of 240 GB of capacity (SSD or HDD). All available disks are used.	4 disks. Each disk provides a minimum of 400 GB of capacity (SSD or HDD). All available disks are used.
Compute: CPU	Dual-Socket: 16 Physical Cores (total).	Dual-Socket: 20 Physical Cores (total).
Compute: Memory	192-GB RAM.	256-GB RAM.
Compute: BIOS	Hyper-V Enabled (with SLAT support).	Hyper-V Enabled (with SLAT support).
Network: NIC	Windows Server 2012 R2 Certification. No specialized features required.	Windows Server 2012 R2 Certification. No specialized features required.
HW logo certification	Certified for Windows Server 2012 R2.	Certified for Windows Server 2016.

To save you some struggle if you allocate to little compute memory (I started at 32GB, then 64GB, then 80GB with a Large page file in win Os to bring this up to 96GB Ram)

This is still better than 192GB.

The installer can run initially with minimal RAM but later in the installation the when it creates and powers on the 13 infrastructure VMs it needs ( List of the VMs Here ), your installation will stall as the VMs wont boot with Hyper V Error:

“Not Enough Memory in system to start Virtual Machine”

So, use your Initiative here, Try and allocate as much as possible that you can grab your hands on for your VM, your installation will be faster and GUI on ASDK portal experience will be better.

Cheat: you can change each Infrastructure VM to Dynamic RAM after Script has created and validated the VM during the installation, this will allow you to reclaim some resources back

Second let’s Prepare the VM (ASDK Host Preparation):

Create the VM on your choice of Hypervisor, address the compute requirements as discussed above (I used Vmware ESX)

• Create 4/5 Virtual disks " Make sure emulate SATA Hardware ( recommended )"
  See Link for supported Media types Here

• OS Disk(200GB) “Installer will extract a VHD file onto this volume”

• 3 or 4 Disks “for storage spaces direct (SD2) (Minimum of 80GB)

• Download AzureStackDevelopmentKit.exe self-extractor approximately 10GB
  Here. 
  

• Download ASDK Installer PS1 script here from Github repo
  Here.

• Run AzureStackDevelopmentKit.exe self-extractor this will extract CloudBuilder.vhdx file approximately 28GB.

• Move CloudBuilder.vhdx to root of C: volume

Next before we can run the installer PS1 Script we need to edit some of the prerequisite checks it will do on our ASDK Host VM.

Use either Notepad++ found Here Or PowerShell ISE install as follows:

Open Powershell (elevated as admin)

Import-Module ServerManager Add-WindowsFeature PowerShell-ISE

Edit ASDK-Installer.PS1

On Line 1917 remove 'Not Virtual Disk' replace with 'Not Disk'.

Here is a Link to the edited asdk-installer.PS1 on Github

At this point we need to edit a few files in the Cloudbuilder.vhdx file so when the ASDK host VM reboots into cloudbuilder.vhdx file the installion will continue without failure.

Find the Cloudbuilder.vhdx file on the root of the C: drive , Right Click and Mount.

Browse your new volume to file X:/CloudDeployment/NuGetStore/Microsoft.AzureStack.Solution.Deploy.CloudDeployment.1.0.598.8.nupkg

Copy this file and Rename original to .OLD

Rename the copied file extension from .NUPKG to .ZIP

Browse this file after renaming it to .ZIP & Alter 2 more files   

• X:/content/Roles/PhysicalMachines/Tests/BareMetal.Tests.ps1 

• ​X:/content/Configuration/Roles/Infrastructure/BareMetal/OneNodeRole.xml

BareMetal.Test.PS1 will validate if the ASDK host is Physical or Virtual again.

Edit in Notepad++ , use Find Next to find "if (-not ​$isVirtualizedDeployment)"

Change all traces to "if ($isVirtualizedDeployment)"

Here is a Link to the edited BareMetal.Tests.ps1 on Github

Next we need to Change OneNodeRole.xml Validation requirements

Change CPU , Memory & Disk Size Minimums: below example of my edit.

Here is a Link to the edited OneNodeRole.xml for Infrastructure on Github
 

I ran into a seperate issue and neede to edit out some Null refrences on OneNodeRole.Xml in the Fabric directory , I have shared below encase you had similar issue

X:/content/Configuration/Roles/Fabric/BareMetal/OneNodeRole.xml

Here is a Link to the edited OneNodeRole.xml for Fabric on Github

Once that is complete Or if you copied my Edited files into the zip..   
Microsoft.AzureStack.Solution.Deploy.CloudDeployment.1.0.598.8.zip

Rename this file back to :

Microsoft.AzureStack.Solution.Deploy.CloudDeployment.1.0.598.8.nupkg

• Copy the file back to X:/CloudDeployment/NuGetStore
• Unmount The Cloudbuilder.vhdx file
• Open Powershell & Run the asdk-installer.ps1 
• <drive letter>\AzureStack_Installer\asdk-installer.ps1 

Which will then bring you to this GUI

 

Continue with the MS wizard which will ask you a series of values & parameters needed to do the installation.

The deployment will take a few hours & will automatically reboot into the CloudBuilder.Vhdx OS.

Login with azurestack\AzureStackAdmin same OS password.

The deployment will automatically open up powershell and resume the deployment this will run for several hours.

If it doesn't run automatically run the following Powershell command elevated.

If your install fails at any point Use the -rerun parameter.

This helped alot , If you run into any issues the best way to troubleshoot is to review the logs , C:\CloudDeployment\Logs Deployement-xxx-x-x will show overall progress with the deployement , during the deployement more test will be run & these logs can be found C:\CloudDeployment\Logs\tests. If there is an error it will highlight in the XML file which Line of which Powershell script had an error.

Through this i was able to edit Scripts after error and then rerun , trial and error until it succeeded with a 6 hour installation.

The above example error was due to a service not starting automatically after a automated reboot during deployment setup. Starting the service and then using the -Rerun deployment resumed. 

With the edited files ive shared via links to Github you should be able to achieve complete installation without error.

Here again with the links:
 

edited asdk-installer.PS1

edited BareMetal.Tests.ps1

edited OneNodeRole.xml for Infrastructure

edited OneNodeRole.xml for Fabric

Once you completed you should see a Ouptut similar to this : 

At this point you need to then register your ASDK deployment

Follow the steps here provided by Microsoft very straight forward.

Sign into you Azure portal by typing the following address into the Browser on the ASDK Host VM

https://adminportal.local.azurestack.external

 

If you struggling to open the portal you can Validate your Azure stack system state by running a tool through Privileged end point (PEP)

Learn how to access PEP here 

Then running  Test-AzureStack

Lastly i setup VPN to my AZURE stack VM so that i can access my admin portal in my LAB VM off my laptop rather than using RDP or a Console client.

Before setting up a VPN connection to the ASDK, ensure you've met the following prerequisites: 

Install Azure Stack-compatible Azure PowerShell on your local computer.

Download the tools required to work with Azure Stack.

Then in powershell run the following: (Change value $Host IP )

You should then have a VPN connection on completion under your network connections that will allow once connected to use your local browser to access ASDK portal .

I hope this Post is of some help , please leave me a comment if you find error or if post requires update.

Thanks for Reading....