Take a snapshot before you first power on ProSphere

A common source of questions during a fresh deployment of ProSphere is how to make a change if you made a mistake when entering the ip address, hostname, dns server or search domains during the initial setup.

While powering off the vApp, and changing the settings in vSphere sometimes works.  It is not recommended.  The settings that are entered get written to various places throughout the system.  For example, if you power off and simply change the case of a hostname, when you power it back on a new host entry gets written to the Bigdata journal file, which will lead to confusion during the next ProSphere update.

When you first deploy ProSphere, I recommend you do the following.

1. Deploy the ProSphere vApp, but ensure the check mark to automatically start the vApp after deployment is NOT selected.  This is the default.
2. Before powering on, take a snapshot of each of the ProSphere virtual machines
3. Now, power on the vApp, and continue with the deployment
4. Once you are comfortable that the system is working as expected, delete the snapshot

If during the initial setup you start to notice problems and realize there is a configuration setting that is wrong, you will be able to revert to the snapshot taken above, make the change to the virtual machine setting using the vSphere client, then Power On the vApp again.   Because you reverted to the snapshot that was created before the initial power on, the changes that ProSphere initially made to the system never happened, so you are essentially starting fresh.