Creating IP Pool for Virtual Appliances with vami.netmask0 error

Keiran Shelden 2014-07-09 2 min read

I rebuilt my lab today from scratch after having used AutoLAB for a little while and as much as I love AutoLAB and highly recommend it, I needed to go back to basics so I can lab up AutoDeploy and a few other things that are automated using AutoLAB.

I finished setting up my domain with a DC, vCenter/Starwind iSCSI, and 2 hosts. I had gone through and added my licenses and set up my networking – or at least I thought I had! I was finally up to a point where I thought I would start placing some VMs onto the hosts and thought I would start by just deploying a couple of Virtual Appliances so that I could make sure my iSCSI was running and I could get network access correctly.

I started by deploying vMA Virtual Appliance, easy – Accept the license agreement > set static IP > Done. (Plus a couple of other tick and flick options). Awesome ready to start it up… wrong! I receive an error. vami.netmask0

The error states: “Network ‘VM Network’ has no associated network protocol profile.” The amount of vSphere environments I have built, I have never come across this error. I have to admit it did take me a little while to think of what might be causing this.

The answer: When deploying a Virtual Appliance such as vMA or vCOPS, the Datacenter in which you are deploying the VA under requires you to create an IP Pool/Network Profile and assign it to the Virtual Machine Port you will be connecting the VA’s vNIC to – in this case, VM Network

1. Select your Data Center under your vCenter server in the Inventory list.

2. Select the IP Pools tab associated with the Data Center and click “Add”

3. Select IPv4 and input the information corresponding with your network’s required subnet and gateway. If you are wanting to let the Virtual Appliance select an IP from the Pool, you can set the range for it to choose from.