Deploying Lighthouse VM on VMware Workstation

Lighthouse 4 has reached End of Life. This information is for archival purposes only.

Note: These instructions are adapted from the Lighthouse deployment guide.

Opengear's Lighthouse VM virtual central management appliance  can be run on a VMware Server or as a guest on a VMware ESX/ESXi Server or under a Linux Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM).

This FAQ examines deploying Lighthouse VM (and the earlier VCMS virtual central management appliance product) on VMware Workstation: 

1. Launch VMware Workstation:

2. You will need to have downloaded the Lighthouse VM image vcms-x.y.z-vmware.tar.gz from http://www.opengear.com/firmware/. This image can be uncompressed using gunzip, Winzip or similar before deployment (however note that PowerArchiver 2001 does not successfully extract all files)

3. Click the Launch Existing VM or Team icon in the right-hand side of the window. Browse to the CMS61xx-vcms-vmware.vmx file and click Open. This will display the Opengear VCMS tab.

4. Click the Power on this virtual machine link located in the Commands box. This will open the console and display a login to Lighthouse VM. The Network Adaptor is bridged by default

Note  With Lighthouse VM deployments (and with VCMS V3.6 and later) on initial deployments you will be prompted to enter and confirm a new root password before the device (UI and ssh) can be accessed. 

Basically, you get a notification via the device console that to complete the initial set up you need to enter a new root password. Press enter to continue and enter the root password. After this the device will continue booting and the UI and ssh will become available.

5. Identify the Lighthouse VM IP address and browse to the GUI

6. To toggle between the VMware Workstation Summary View and Console View, click the  icons directly above the Opengear VCMS tab

7. To edit settings, select the Summary View icon and click Edit virtual machine settings located in the Commands box, the appropriate amount of allocated resources depends on the number of Opengear devices to be managed – for installations supporting 100 or more Opengear devices the recommended resource is 4 to 8 x 2 GHz CPU cores, 16GB RAM