How to install the Cisco vWLC on KVM using virt-install

vwlc-on-kvm.md

Installing the Cisco vWLC on KVM using virt-install

Cisco has a few different guides for installing their vWLC on KVM, but most of them focus on oVirt-style installations that are heavy on hand-crafted XML and [what appears to be] the use of OpenStack. If you're just using a plain single-host KVM setup and want to install the vWLC in a VM, this guide is for you.

Instructions

First, download the vWLC KVM installation image appropriate for your setup. I'm going to use version 8.5.171.0 (you'll have to create an account to download it), and then transfer it to your KVM server:

AndrewBobulskys-MacBook-Pro:~ andrewbobulsky$ scp ~/Downloads/MFG_CTVM_LARGE_8.5.171.0.iso 10.0.25.2:/tmp                   100%  367MB  40.7MB/s   00:09    
AndrewBobulskys-MacBook-Pro:~ andrewbobulsky$

Create a folder to store the vWLC hard disk image, and move the ISO file into your KVM image store:

mkdir -p /opt/vm/vWLC
mv /tmp/MFG_CTVM_LARGE_8.5.171.0.iso /opt/vm

Now invoke virt-install to kick off the installation process:

• The --network lines correspond to my networking setup on this server, where bridge0 is an OpenVSwitch bridge.

virt-install \
--name vWLC \
--vcpus 2 \
--memory 8192 \
--graphics none \
--disk /opt/vm/vWLC/disk0.qcow2,size=10,format=qcow2 \
--autostart \
--cdrom /opt/vm/MFG_CTVM_LARGE_8.5.171.0.iso \
--network bridge=bridge0,model=virtio,virtualport_type=openvswitch \
--network bridge=bridge0,model=virtio,virtualport_type=openvswitch \
--graphics none \
--console target_type=serial

Wait for the vWLC software to finish its automated install. It may power off (about 2-6 minutes), then you can restart it and connect to the serial console with virsh:

virsh start vWLC
virsh console vWLC

Then you can proceed to configure your vWLC.