WilliamLam.com

How to troubleshoot NSX-T API errors when using PowerCLI?

by // Leave a Comment

In the last few days, I have been ramping back up on NSX-T usage, especially as I take a closer look at VMware Pivotal Container Service (PKS) which hopefully I will be able to share more with an upcoming blog series (at least, thats the plan when I find some spare time). While working on some Automation using the NSX-T REST APIs and the new NSX-T PowerCLI cmdlets, I found it to be pretty challenging and frustrating to troubleshoot NSX-T error messages thrown from the  PowerCLI cmdlets.

For example, below is a PowerCLI snippet which I wrote to create a new T1 Logical Router in NSX-T.

$edgeClusterService = Get-NsxtService -Name "com.vmware.nsx.edge_clusters"
$edgeCluster = $edgeClusterService.list().results | where { $_.display_name -eq "Edge-Cluster-01" }
$logicalRouterService = Get-NsxtService -Name "com.vmware.nsx.logical_routers"
$lrSpec = $logicalRouterService.Help.create.logical_router.Create()
$lrSpec.display_name = "Foo"
$lrSpec.router_type = "TIER1"
$lrSpec.high_availability_mode = "ACTIVE_STANDBY"
$lrSpec.failover_mode = "FAILOVER_MODE_PREEMPTIVE"
$lrSpec.edge_cluster_id = "ea655f88-e184-47fe-9352-8ab9d8c955a7"
$lrAdd = $logicalRouterService.create($lrSpec)

However, when I ran the code, PowerCLI threw back a pretty generic and useless error which I am sure some of you have probably seen before "A server error occurred: 'com.vmware.vapi.std.errors.invalid.frequest': . Check $Error[0].Exception.ServerError". Even checking the error variable as stated in the error message did not yield any further details or specific to the issue I was running into.

[Read more...]

Thunderbolt to 10GbE Network Adapters for ESXi

by // 5 Comments

I was recently made aware of this article in which the author, Karim Elatov, had successfully demonstrated the use of a Sonnett Thunderbolt 2 to 10 Gigabit Ethernet Adapter with ESXi running on an Apple Mac Mini. As far as I am aware of, this may be the first public confirmation that such a device would work with ESXi, not to mention having it functional on the Mac Mini. I know in past years, there have been unconfirmed reports on various forums mentioning a Thunderbolt to 10GbE solution that works with ESXi but it was unclear on whether custom drivers were needed or if it would even work with newer versions of ESXi.


This topic has been popular amongst our customers who virtualize Apple MacOS on vSphere. In fact, several years back I had written an article on Thunderbolt Storage for ESXi, which includes a number of solutions that our customers have implemented to provide remote storage for their vSphere infrastructure running on either an Apple XServe, Mac Pro or Mac Mini. Questions around a functional Thunderbolt to 10GbE has definitely been asked about, but I had never heard from any customer who have had a successful story to share, at least until now.

From Karim's post, it looks like he was able to get this working using ESXi 6.0 but it was unclear if there was anything he needed to do to get the device recognized. I reached out to Karim and he was able to confirm that the Thunderbolt device was recognized by ESXi without any additional driver installation. In fact, if you look at this console output on his blog, you will see that it simply uses the inbox Intel ixgbe driver. I had also asked if Karim tried this with the latest version of ESXi, which is currently at 6.5 Update 1. Karim was kind enough to perform one additional test for me which was to confirm the device would still work with the latest ESXi release, which you can see for yourself in the screenshot below.

UPDATE (02/04/19) - Chad Moon recently shared his experiences on getting 10GbE support with an Intel NUC using the OWC Mercury Helios 3, Thunderbolt3 to PCIe expansion enclosure

[Read more...]

How to check when the VSAN Hardware Compatibility List (HCL) is updated?

by // 2 Comments

While catching up on emails from being out on paternity leave, I came across a VSAN HCL feature request that I had filed in early December of last year. I was pleasantly surprise to see that it had been marked resolved. The VSAN Hardware Compatibility List is continuously being updated to include new hardware platforms and components that have been certified by our hardware vendors.

This of course is great news for our customers, but one challenge that I have heard on several occasion is how to keep up with the changes, especially the addition of new components? The VSAN HCL allows you to subscribe and get notification on individual components which is useful to get the latest recommendation. However, in the case of new components being add or even removed, there is no easy solution and most folks resort to manually checking the VSAN HCL by hand.

VSAN itself does include an HCL healthcheck, which you can have it directly pull the latest VSAN HCL JSON from VMware's website, although this may not always be possible for customers without direct or proxy access to the internet. This means for customers who may have dark sites, they must periodically download the latest VSAN HCL JSON and distribute that throughout their vCenter Server, where as a more ideal solution is to only push the update when a new JSON has been provided by VMware.

My feature request was quite simple, it asks for a method in which customers can easily subscribe and get notified of when the VSAN HCL database has been updated. This has been delivered as a tiny RSS feed service.

[Read more...]