Your company has just bought DataPower X2 appliances. The datacenter that they will be installed in is remote and you have been asked to put together a plan to remotely do their setup. This article will provide instructions and guidance on what is needed for a minimal setup to get the appliance on your network and accessible via the DataPower WebGUI.

DataCenter Prerequisites

  • DataPower appliance
    • Installed in a rack
    • Ethernet cables plugged in.
    • If your DataCenter has a Serial over LAN like Cyclades, the Cyclades cable is plugged in and the baud rate is set 115200. This is a change from XI52s, XG45s and XB62s.
  • Laptop
    • USB Serial cable that came with the appliances.
    • Program like PuTTY to initialize the appliance with the following values:
      • Baud rate: 115200
      • Data bits: 8
      • Stop bits: 1
      • Parity: None
      • Flow control: None
    • Refer to this technote for more information, https://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21663613

Required DataPower Appliance Setup Information

Information Requested Example Actual Value
Port that will configured. Values could be: mgt0, mgt1, eth10  
IP Address of one of the ports. It must be in CIDR format. 172.16.51.138/24  
Gateway IP address of the above IP address 172.16.51.2  
Admin password. Recommend initially something simple. admin123  

Initializing the Appliance

Notes:

  • The screen shots are from a virtual appliance. The prompts are the same except the interface name.
  • The settings are not saved except the admin password until the license is accepted.

Power up the appliance to the login prompt

  • With the following connections at a minimum:
    • One ethernet connection
    • Serial connection. Either through a Serial Console server or the USB Serial cable connected to a laptop.

Login into the appliance and go through the Startup Wizard

  • The userID for logging into the appliance is admin with the password as admin

  • Decide whether or not to Enable Secure Backup mode. Note: This can be enabled after initialization is complete.

  • Enable Secure Backup

  • Decide whether or not to Enable Common Criteria Compatibility mode. Note: Make this decision carefully as the only way to turn it off is to re-initialization the appliance back to the factory settings.

  • Set the initial password for the appliance.

  • Run the Install Wizard.

  • Configure the agreed upon network interface.
    • Unless the interface is being asked to configure, answer n. In the picture below, the Startup Wizard is asking for the eth0 interface.

  • Enter n for no to enable DHCP.
  • Input the IPv4 address for the interface in CIDR format.
  • Input the IPv4 address for default gateway.

  • Select n to the remaining interfaces.
  • Enter n for no until you get to the RAID drive step, Step 6.

  • Enter y for yes to configure the RAID array
  • Enter y for yes to continue
  • Enter the name for the file system. The default is ondisk.

  • Determine whether or not to enable B2B storage. If you are not installing the B2B Module, Enter n for no as the answer to this should be no. Otherwise, Enter y for yes.

  • Enter n for no to review the current configuration
  • Enter y for yes to save the configuration
  • Enter y for yes to overwrite the previously saved configuration

  • Enter co to enter the configuration mode.
  • Enter web-mgmt <<IP address>> 9090 to start the Web-GUI where IP address is the IP address of the interface configured earlier.
  • Enter ssh <<IP address>> to start SSH where IP address is the IP address of the interface configured earlier.
  • Enter write mem to save the configuration.
  • Enter y to overwrite the previously saved configuration.

  • Enter show web-mgmt to verify the Web GUI is up and running.

  • Enter exit to exit the configuration mode.
  • Enter show ssh to verify SSH is up and running.

  • Ping the gateway for the interface configured earlier.

  • Log into the Web GUI with the URL of https://<<IP address>>:9090 where IP Address is the interface configured earlier.

  • Accept the DataPower from the Web GUI by pressing I agree.

  • The appliance will reboot.

Congrats you have configured the DataPower appliance to allow the other teams to do more configuration and setup.