Minimum System Requirements
The virtual Flexbox appliance will require at least the following:
4 GB RAM
6 vCPUs
At least 2.2 GHz base clock frequency
At least AVX extensions
20 GB storage
LsiLogic SCSI storage controller
Network:
VmxNet3 Network adapter
Needs to receive at around 100Mbps (NDI).
Send at around 20Mbps (to our media server)
Requires DHCP for network configuration
Hypervisor
At least ESXi version 5.5
Note that high levels of CPU contention will cause a degradation of video encode performance and can result in stuttery video playback in ClearView Flex. We recommend that host CPU consumption should not exceed 80%.
Provisioning your Flexbox in VMWare
Download the Virtual Image
On the Virtual Licenses tab on the Flexboxes page, begin by clicking the VMWare - Virtual Image button. This will allow you to download the OVA image for the Virtual Flexbox.
The screenshot above is just an example. Please proceed to the ClearView Flex admin portal to download the OVA image assigned to your project.
Once you have downloaded the image, you can then import it into your VMWare hypervisor. Please refer to the system requirements above for the resources required for a Flexbox on VMWare.
Importing on VMWare
The following should be carried out by someone in your team who is familiar with VMWare.
To import a virtual flexbox appliance via the ESXi host client, click on "Create/Register VM":
Select the option from the left hand menu to deploy from an OVF or OVA file:
Enter a name for the virtual machine and select/drag&drop the provided OVA file. We recommend matching this to the Flexbox name you used to activate your virtual license.
Select the datastore to use:
Select the network for the VM to use and choose between thin or thick disk provisioning:
Finally, click "Finish" to start importing the VM:
Once the virtual machine has been successfully imported and booted up, launch the VM console view in the ESXi host client:
You should now have successfully provisioned your Flexbox in VMWare
Activating your Flexbox in VMWare using your activation key
Once you have successfully provisioned your Flexbox in VMWare, launch your Flexbox and login with the credentials obtained in CVF Admin. See Activating your Virtual license above. If you did not manage to copy your user credentials and activation key when activating your license you will need to Remove the Flexbox and reactivate the license to produce new credentials.
Run the registration command, providing the activation key:
This command will register the appliance with the ClearView Flex platform and complete the process of setting up the virtual machine:
Once this process is completed, you can exit from the virtual machine console:
You can now add your virtual Flexbox to a group (see Managing Flexboxes in a Group) and configure your default NDI settings (see Flexbox Network Settings). Once you've done this, it will be ready to use.
Removing a Flexbox from a Virtual license
If you want to free up a license for use with another virtual machine, you will need to remove the Flexbox from the license. To do so, find the desired license in your Virtual license list on the Virtual licenses tab of the Flexbox page of the ClearView Flex Admin panel.
Select the ‘X” button in the table. You’ll be asked to confirm that you wish to remove the Flexbox from the license. This will prevent any existing virtual machine activated using this license from functioning.