A physical or virtual station that hosts NSP software requires a specific disk partitioning scheme. You can create the required disk partitions on the station:

• during the deployment of an NSP RHEL OS disk image, as described in NSP disk-image deployment

• after a manual RHEL OS installation, as described in Disk partitioning, with the NSP Platform Sizing Request response for the deployment

Note: The disk capacity required for the /opt/nsp/nfmp/nebackup partition depends on the number and types of devices in your managed network; see Sizing the NFM-P NE backup partition for information.

Additional disk configuration

Regardless of the disk deployment method, each partition created after the OS installation requires the additional configuration described in To configure and mount an NSP disk partition.

NSP OEM disk images for deploying an NSP RHEL OS instance on the deployer host and NSP cluster nodes are available in the following formats:

• NSP_K8S_PLATFORM_RHEL9_yy_mm.qcow2

• NSP_K8S_PLATFORM_RHEL9_yy_mm.ova

The following images are available in each format:

• NSP deployer host / NSP cluster VM image

• image for components deployed outside NSP cluster

Note: NSP RHEL image deployment is authorized only for NSP or Centralized License Manager software installation, and not for the installation of any other Nokia or third-party product.

An NSP RHEL disk image:

• contains only the RHEL OS

• has all required and optional OS packages to support NSP software deployment

• does not include any product-specific packages or application files

• has SELinux enabled in permissive mode

To deploy an NSP cluster, perform To install an NSP cluster.

NSP qcow2 image deployment

For NSP qcow2 image deployment, see To deploy an NSP RHEL qcow2 disk image.

NSP OVA image deployment

Deploying the NSP on VMWare has the following requirements.

• You must ensure that each non-LVM partition is mounted using the partition UUID, rather than the block device name; see To configure disk partitions using device UUIDs for information.

• If you use cloud-init to set the IP address of an NSP VM on VMWare, you must perform To apply the VMware cloud-init workaround before you attempt to install any NSP software on the VM.

For general NSP OVA image deployment information, see the documentation for your virtualization environment.

Note: For an NSP deployer host or NSP cluster VM deployed using the OVA image, it is strongly recommended that you mount the /opt directory on a separate hard disk that has sufficient capacity to allow for future expansion.

Each NFM-P main server stores NE configuration backups on the local file system in the following partition:

/opt/nsp/nfmp/nebackup

The partition size is specific to an NFM-P system, and is based on the following:

• number of managed NEs

• average configuration backup size

• number of backups retained per NE

Note: Uninstalling a main server does not delete or otherwise affect the saved NE configuration backup files.

The partition size is the amount of space required for the backup files of all managed NE types. You must calculate the space required for each NE type using the following formula, and then use the sum of the NE space requirements as the partition size:

data capacity = backup size × number of NEs × backups per NE × 2.5

Table 2-1, Configuration backup file sizes by NE type lists the backup size values.

Note: The formula is a guideline for planning purposes only; the actual size may require adjustment. It is recommended that you use the size of the largest backup per NE type in your network as the backup size, and multiply the result by 2.5, as shown in the formula. This calculation accounts for network and NE backup growth, and accommodates the storage of compressed archive files.

Table 2-1: Configuration backup file sizes by NE type

Partitioning requirements for the NSP deployer host, cluster VMs, additional NSP components, and NFM-P components are specified in the NSP Platform Sizing Request recommendation generated for each deployment. Partitioning for the NFM-P single-use client and client delegate on RHEL are in Table 2-2, Partitioning scheme, single-user client or client delegate server.

The NSP cluster can use local or shared storage where all other components must use local storage only except for the /opt/nsp/nfmp/auxdb/backup partition of the NSP auxiliary database, which can be locally mounted or use a remote mount point. If using a remote mount point, it is strongly recommended to use a minimum 10 GByte/s link.

Each partition in the provided layouts must be a mounted partition and not a symbolic link. The use of symbolic links to represent an NSP partition is not supported and should not be used under any circumstances.

Table 2-2: Partitioning scheme, single-user client or client delegate server