topic Re: Anyone has success running netapp simulator on KVM? in Simulator Discussions

Anyone has success running netapp simulator on KVM?

JohnZhuang — Wed, 04 Jun 2025 10:08:01 GMT

I took the .ova files (9.7 & 9.8), and my peer convert to KVM images (due to our vmware env shrinking). The simulator vms come up, we can see the console, but cannot type. The console has no response to key strokes. At initial boot, it accepts enter, but then after it comes up, no keyboard input.

Re: Anyone has success running netapp simulator on KVM?

JohnChampion — Fri, 03 Dec 2021 20:33:33 GMT

I've never tried converting the Sim and no idea what your KVM environment is ... but if you're using "virt-install" try adding a "--nographics" switch to the end of the command and see if that helps.

Good Luck!

Re: Anyone has success running netapp simulator on KVM?

jcolonfzenpr — Sat, 04 Dec 2021 14:23:02 GMT

Hi,

Take a look at this link:

https://github.com/tcler/ontap-simulator-in-kvm

Hope this helps 🙏

Re: Anyone has success running netapp simulator on KVM?

JohnZhuang — Tue, 07 Dec 2021 23:02:39 GMT

I took a look at the github and passed to my peer. He used some of the options, and used below command for install:
virt-install --name nasim01a --memory 12288 --vcpus 2 --os-variant freebsd11.2 --disk=vsim-NetAppDOT-simulate-disk{1..4}.qcow2,bus=ide --autostart --network bridge=br0,model=e1000,mac=02:18:A6:97:B3:A0 --network bridge=br0,model=e1000,mac=02:d6:ca:b8:90:ce --network bridge=br0,model=e1000,mac=02:0a:1f:e3:5f:ef --network bridge=br0,model=e1000,mac=02:c0:80:ec:5b:93 --autostart --vnc --virt-type kvm --machine pc --boot hd,network,menu=on --noautoconsole

The significant change may be the os. Now the vm boots up to cluster setup (after 2nd reboot) and I was able to do set up.

However, I expected 2 nodes, but only get 1 node with 2 cores, 12G RAM, and 4 nic. I am wondering how to make it 2-nodes? Was it because I did not give enough nics?

thanks!

john

Re: Anyone has success running netapp simulator on KVM?

JohnChampion — Wed, 08 Dec 2021 09:04:23 GMT

You'd need to install a 2nd instance (nasim01b? - be sure to use different MACs, etc) and change the serial number on the 2nd node. The Simulator Install and Setup Guide (pdf) has the instructions on how to do this and the CMode_licenses.txt file has the serial number and license keys for the 2nd node.

... and if you do a search for "Sean Hatfield", he's made numerous posts on how to customize the simulator including adding disks, changing disk size, etc.

Re: Anyone has success running netapp simulator on KVM?

Jianhong — Thu, 11 Aug 2022 06:57:06 GMT

there are two scripts in https://github.com/tcler/ontap-simulator-in-kvm :

ontap-simulator-single-node.sh for single node,

and ontap-simulator-two-node.sh for two nodes.

Usage:

./ontap-simulator-two-node.sh --image /path/to/vsim-netapp-DOT9.9.1-cm_nodar.ova --license-file /path/to/CMode_licenses_9.9.1.txt

Re: Anyone has success running netapp simulator on KVM?

Jianhong-Yin — Sat, 18 Nov 2023 03:57:09 GMT

Update: now we provide an auto script:

https://github.com/tcler/kiss-vm-ns/blob/master/utils/make-ontap-simulator.sh

after install kiss-vm and download the ontap-simulator image and license file to ~/Downloads ; run

ONTAP_VER=9.13.1 make-ontap-simulator.sh #will auto create a two node ontap simulator.