William Lam

Long awaited Fling, Windows vCenter Server to VCSA Converter Appliance is finally here!

03.02.2015 by William Lam //

Back in VMworld 2013, the Office of CTO held its annual Fling Contest where customers can submit their ideas for cool new Flings that they would like to see. If selected, not only would the individual get a free pass to VMworld but VMware Engineers would also build and release the Fling, how cool is that!? There were over 200+ submissions that year and I was very fortunate to have been on the panel to help select the winner. The winning Fling for that year was the Windows vCenter Server (VCS) to VCSA Converter Appliance by Stephen Athanas.

UPDATE 09/15/16 - The officially supported VCSA Migration Tool has has GA'ed with the release of vSphere 6.0 Update 2m. Please see this blog post here for more details.

The idea of a VCS to VCSA Converter really resonated with me as well as with many of our customers. In fact, everyone that I had spoken with who has used the VCSA just love the simplicity, ease of deployment and management it provides compared to its Windows counterpart. However, one of the biggest adoption barrier that I have seen from talking to customers is that is no simple way of migrating from a Windows based vCenter Server to the VCSA. You literally have to start fresh and this is pretty a show stopper for the majority of our customers and I do not disagree with them.

Customers want a migration path to be able to preserve all their vCenter Server configurations such as Folder structures, Permissions, Alarms, Tags, VM Storage Policies, etc. This is the idea behind the VCS to VCSA Converter Appliance which helps migrate a Windows vCenter Server running on an external Microsoft SQL Server Database to an embedded VCSA running a vPostgres Database. Today, I am very proud to announce the release of the VCS to VCSA Converter Appliance Fling.

The Converter Appliance migrates the vCenter database, Roles, Permissions, Privileges, Certificates, Alarms and Inventory Service which contains Tags and VM Storage Policies. At the end of the migration, you will end up with a fully functional VCSA with the original hostname/IP Address fully intact and ready to use. As you can imagine, this was no easy task and we had some of the smartest VMware Engineers working on this project. Todd Valentine from the OCTO managed the overall program with Ravi Soundararajan as the Chief Architect working closely with Mike Stunes, Jignesh Shah, Raju Angani. Being a huge advocate and supporter of the VCSA, I also had the unique opportunity to be involved in this project and working closely with some amazing engineers to help design, test and validate the migration appliance.

We hope you give the VCS to VCSA Converter Appliance a try in your lab (Please carefully read through the documentation along with the requirements and caveats before getting started). Let us know what you think by either leaving a comment here on my blog or on the Flings webpage. This is our first release and we already have some ideas of features and capabilities we would love to add to future releases but if there are things that you feel that are currently missing or enhancements you wold like to see, please let us know!

If you wish to provide private feedback about your environment or engage with us further, feel free to send an email to Todd Valentine at: tvalentine [at] vmware [dot] com

New VOBs for creating vCenter Server alarms in vSphere 6.0

03.02.2015 by William Lam // Leave a Comment

Here are some new VOBs in vSphere 6.0 that I recently came across which can be useful on getting notified on specific events such failed login attempts in ESXi or detecting a device has gone offline in VSAN as some examples. These VOBs can be used to create vCenter Server alarms to take various actions such as a simple UI notification in the vSphere Web/C# Client to sending an email or SNMP trap regarding the event. For more information on how create vCenter Server alarms using VOBs, please take a look at these two articles here and here which also includes a comprehensive list of past vSphere VOBs in vSphere 5.5 which are still applicable in vSphere 6.0.

General vSphere 6.0 VOBs

VOB ID	VOB Description
esx.audit.account.locked	Remote access for an ESXi local user account has been locked temporarilly due to multiple failed login attempts.
esx.audit.account.loginfailures	Multiple remote login failures detected for an ESXi local user account.
esx.audit.esxcli.host.restart	Rebooting host through esxcli
esx.audit.lockdownmode.exceptions.changed	List of lockdown exception users has been changed.
esx.problem.coredump.copyspace	The free space available in default coredump copy location is insufficient to copy new coredumps.
esx.problem.coredump.extraction.failed.nospace	The given partition has insufficient amount of free space to extract the coredump.
esx.problem.dhclient.lease.offered.error	No expiry time on offered DHCP lease.
esx.problem.pageretire.selectedbutnotretired.high	Number of host physical memory pages that have been selected for retirement but could not yet be retired is high.
esx.problem.swap.systemSwap.isPDL.cannot.remove	System swap at path {1} was affected by the PDL of its datastore and was removed. System swap has been reconfigured.
esx.problem.swap.systemSwap.isPDL.removed.reconfig.failure	System swap at path {1} was affected by the PDL of its datastore. It was removed but the subsequent reconfiguration failed.
esx.problem.vmfs.ats.incompatibility.detected	Multi-extent ATS-only VMFS Volume unable to use ATS
esx.problem.vmfs.lockmode.inconsistency.detected	Inconsistent VMFS lockmode detected.
esx.problem.vmfs.spanned.lockmode.inconsistency.detected	Inconsistent VMFS lockmode detected on spanned volume.
esx.problem.vmfs.spanstate.incompatibility.detected	Incompatible VMFS span state detected.
esx.vFlash.VFlashResourceCapacityExtendedEvent	vFlash resource capacity is extended
vprob.vmfs.heartbeat.corruptondisk	VMFS Heartbeat Corruption Detected

VSAN 6.0 VOBs

VOB ID	VOB Description
esx.audit.vsan.net.vnic.added	Virtual SAN virtual NIC has been added.
esx.audit.vsan.net.vnic.deleted	Virtual SAN network configuration has been removed.
esx.problem.vob.vsan.dom.lsefixed	Virtual SAN detected and fixed a medium error on disk.
esx.problem.vob.vsan.dom.nospaceduringresync	Resync encountered no space error
esx.problem.vob.vsan.lsom.disklimit2	Failed to add disk to disk group.
esx.problem.vsan.dom.init.failed.status	Virtual SAN Distributed Object Manager failed to initialize
vprob.vob.vsan.pdl.offline	Virtual SAN device has gone offline.

Easily manage ESXi & VCSA SSH login banner & MOTD in vSphere 6.0

02.27.2015 by William Lam // 3 Comments

For customers who have a requirement to configure an SSH login banner and/or message of the day (MOTD) for ESXi or vCenter Server, this usually meant manually editing the /etc/issues (login banner) and /etc/motd (MOTD) configuration files. In vSphere 6.0, this has now been simplified by providing vSphere APIs to allow administrators to easily view and configure SSH login banner and MOTD for both ESXi and VCSA (this does not apply to vCenter Server for Windows).

For ESXi, there are two new ESXi Advanced properties called Config.Etc.issue and Config.Etc.motd and this can also be viewed and edited using the vSphere Web/C# Client as seen in the screenshot below:

For vCenter Server, there are also two new Advanced Options called etc.issue and etc.motd which can also be viewed and edited using the vSphere Web/C# Client as seen in the screenshot below:

What's Displayed

The /etc/issues displays a banner during an SSH login session, this means that you will see the message during the login as highlighted in the screenshot below:

The /etc/motd displays a banner after a successful SSH login as highlighted in the screenshot below:

How to Automate

You can use both the vSphere API/CLI to modify the issues and motd configurations. In the examples below, I will be using PowerCLI to demonstrate retrieving and setting the two properties.

Retrieve /etc/issues for VCSA

Get-AdvancedSetting -Entity $vc -Name "etc.issue" | Format-List

Set /etc/issues for VCSA

$msg = "
beware
you
are
entering
the
house
of
Cormac
the
grey
"
Get-AdvancedSetting -Entity $vc -Name "etc.issue" | Set-AdvancedSetting -Value $msg

Retrieve /etc/motd for VCSA

Get-AdvancedSetting -Entity $vc -Name "etc.motd" | Format-List

Set /etc/motd for VCSA

Get-AdvancedSetting -Entity $vc -Name "etc.motd" | Set-AdvancedSetting -Value $msg

Retrieve /etc/issues for ESXi

Get-VmHostAdvancedConfiguration -Name "Config.Etc.issue"

Set /etc/issues for ESXi

$msg = "
beware
you
are
entering
the
house
of
Cormac
the
grey
"
Set-VMHostAdvancedConfiguration -Name "Config.Etc.issue" -Value $msg

Retrieve /etc/motd for ESXi

Get-VmHostAdvancedConfiguration -Name "Config.Etc.issue"

Set /etc/motd for ESXi

Set-VMHostAdvancedConfiguration -Name "Config.Etc.motd" -Value $msg