The following list contains the pre-requisites of Cisco Optical Network Controller 24.3.1 installation.

• Before installing Cisco Optical Network Controller 24.3.1, you must first login in to the VMware customer center and download VMware vCenter server version 7.0, as well as vSphere server and client with version 7.0. Cisco Optical Network Controller 24.3.1 is deployed on rack or blade servers within vSphere.

• Install ESXi host version of 7.0 or higher on the servers to support creating Virtual Machines.

• You must have a DNS server. The DNS server can be an internal DNS server if the Cisco Optical Network Controller instance is not exposed to the internet.

• You must have an NTP server or NTP Pool for time synchronization.

• Before the Cisco Optical Network Controller 24.3.1 installation, three networks must be created.

  • Control Plane Network:

    The control plane network helps in the internal communication between the deployed VMs within a cluster. If you are setting up a standalone system, this can refer to any private network.

  • VM Network or Northbound Network:

    The VM network is used for communication between the user and the cluster. It handles all the traffic to and from the VMs running on your ESXi hosts and this is your Public network through which the UI is hosted.

  • Eastbound Network:

    The Eastbound Network helps in the internal communication between the deployed VMs within a cluster. If you are setting up a standalone system, this can refer to any private network.

Note	For more details on VMware vSphere, see VMware vSphere.

The minimum requirement for Cisco Optical Network Controller 24.3.1 installation is given in the table below.

The requirements based on type of deployment are given in the table below.

To create the control plane and virtual management networks follow the steps listed below.

1. From the vSphere client, select the Datacenter where you want to add the ESXi host.

2. Right-click the server from the vCenter inventory and click Add Networking.

3. To create a private network for Control Plane and Eastbound Networks, follow the wizard for a Standard Switch addition for each network.

   1. In Select connection type, choose Virtual Machine Port Group for a Standard Switch and click Next.

   2. In Select target device , select New Standard Switch (MTU 1500) and click Next.

   3. In Create a Standard Switch, click Next, and confirm There are no active physical network adapters for the switch.

   4. In Connection settings choose a network label (Control Plane or Eastbound) and select VLAN ID as None(0) click Next.

   5. In Ready to complete, review your configuration and click Finish.

After adding the ESXi host, create the Control Plane, Northbound, and Eastbound Networks before deploying.

For accessing SSH, ed25519 key is required. The ed25519 key is different from the RSA key.

Use the CLI given below to generate the ed25519 key.

ssh-keygen -t ed25519
Generating public/private ed25519 key pair.
Enter file in which to save the key (/Users/xyz/.ssh/id_ed25519): ./<file-name-of-your-key>.pem
Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase):
Enter same passphrase again:
Your identification has been saved in ./<file-name-of-your-key>.pem
Your public key has been saved in ./<file-name-of-your-key>.pem.pub
The key fingerprint is:
SHA256:zGW6aGn8rxvEq82sA/97jOaHrl9rnoTaYi+TqU3MeRU xyz@abc
The key's randomart image is:
+--[ED25519 256]--+
|                 |
|                 |
|          E      |
|       + + .     |
|        S .      |
|    .+ = =       |
|     o@o*+o      |
|     =XX++=o     |
|    .o*#/X=      |
+----[SHA256]-----+

#Once created you can cat the file with .pub extension for the public key. ( ex: <file-name-of-your-key>.pem.pub )

cat <file-name-of-your-key>.pem.pub
#The above key has to be used in the deployment template ( SSH Public Key ) in the Deployment process