Required network ports for Python ScaleIO install on Windows

I just posted about using the EMC-provided Python script to install and configure ScaleIO on Windows. Using this  script makes these steps much easier, especially in very large environments (you can find that post here). One of the next logical questions is concerning firewall requirements and this process. To achieve this automation, the script is going all over the place connecting to servers, copying files, starting services and issuing configuration commands. Therefore it is hitting a variety of network ports on the target hosts. So let’s talk about what exactly those ports are.

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Unattended/silent deployment of ScaleIO features on Windows Server

Two posts in two days. Phew! So much to talk about, but this is a quick one. In my previous post I wrote about installing ScaleIO on Windows hosts via a manual/user-controlled process using the CLI and running the MSI install file on each server. In larger environments this may not be practical where an automated deployment solution is required. Furthermore, it is invariably necessary to also deploy the software in a “silent” unattended mode so that end-users do not need to interact with the installer. Luckily this is a pretty simple process in Windows environments using the MSI ScaleIO installer.

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Scripting ESI PowerShell cmdlets and VMware

EMC offers a variety of tools to manage/enhance your virtual or physical environments–some free, some licensed. In most cases when you think of EMC tools for VMware one conjures up the free Virtual Storage Integrator which is more commonly referred to as VSI.

VSI is a great tool and continues to be improved through each version and allows you to provision storage, manage pathing, configure SRM etc. The one thing it does not have is a way to automate these tasks through an API or CLI. This is where another product comes in–one that many do not associate with VMware. The EMC Storage Integrator (ESI) is a lot of times seen as the Microsoft version of VSI–but that isn’t really true at all. While it might have started out that way and does indeed support Hyper-V and has a ton of Microsoft-specific features it is really the heterogeneous storage integrator. Importantly it  has a very handy and powerful feature–PowerShell cmdlets.

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