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Quick Tip - Useful ovftool debugging options

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This morning I needed perform several OVF uploads using ovftool and provide that information to engineering to investigate some performance issues. I tend to error on the side of providing more information than requested. The ovftool provides some really useful debugging options that are really handy in these situations but are un-documented. I can never seem to remember the exact syntax and hence I am documenting them here. I will also file a documentation bug to ensure these get added 🙂

UPDATE (08/19/13) - Thanks to one of the OVF engineers, it turns out you can see all the debug options and their definitions by running ovftool --help debug

The two options that I am referring to are:

--X:logFile=
--X:logLevel=

The first option allows you to log the entire ovftool session to a file which you can then send off to someone and the second option allows you to control the verbosity of the logs which I normally set to use verbose.

Here is an example of how you would use these ovftool options:

/Applications/VMware\ OVF\ Tool/ovftool --X:logFile=upload.log --X:logLevel=verbose -ds=mini-local-datastore-2 '--net:Network 1=VM Network' VMware-vCenter-Server-Appliance-5.1.0.10200-1235310_OVF10.ova vi://root@mini

Once the ovftool has completed its operation, you can take a look at the log and you will see quite a bit of information including some additional ovftool options that can be specified on the command-line which start with /X:

--> /X:httpTimeout = "0"
--> /X:imageReadSize = "262144"
--> /X:logFile = "upload.log"
--> /X:logLevel = "verbose"
--> /X:maxNumberOfTermSignals = "5"
--> /X:maxRedirects = "256"
--> /X:maximalDeltaConfSize = "8"
--> /X:maximalDeltaTreeSize = "6"
--> /X:progressSmoothing = "60"
--> /X:useMacNaming = "true"
--> /X:vCloudEnableGuestCustomization = "false"
--> /X:vCloudKeepTemplate = "true"
--> /X:vCloudTimeout = "3600"
--> /X:vimSessionTimeout = "600"

Note: I would not recommend tweaking the other options as the defaults should be sufficient, but logging to a file or upping the verbosity can be useful for troubleshooting

Quick Tip - Marking an HDD as SSD or SSD as HDD in ESXi

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This was a neat little trick that I picked up in one of our internal storage email distribution groups which I thought was quite interesting. Some of you may recall an article I wrote a few years back on how to trick ESXi 5 in seeing an SSD device which relied on adding an SATP rule for a particular storage device. The actual use case for this feature was that not all real SSD devices would automatically be detected by ESXi and this allowed a user to manually mark it as an SSD.

The other "non-official" use case for this feature allows a user to basically "simulate" an SSD by marking a regular HDD as an SSD and I this actually helped me test the new Host Cache (Swap-to-SSD) feature which was part of the vSphere 5 release. Recently there was a customer inquiry asking for the complete reverse, in which you could mark an SSD as an HDD. I am not sure what the use case was behind this request but I did learn it was actually possible using a similar method of adding a SATP rule to a device.

Note: If you are running Nested ESXi, a much simpler solution for simulating an SSD is to use the following trick noted here.

Before you begin, you will need to identify the storage device in which you wish to mark as an SSD or HDD. Use the following ESXCLI command to do so:

esxcli storage core device list

In the screenshot above, we can see for our device mpx.vmhba1.C0:T2:L0 shows "Is SSD" parameter as false. After running two commands below, we should then see that property change to true.

Marking HDD as SSD:

esxcli storage nmp satp rule add -s VMW_SATP_LOCAL -d mpx.vmhba1:C0:T2:L0 -o enable_ssd
esxcli storage core claiming reclaim -d mpx.vmhba1:C0:T2:L0

 

Marking SSD as HDD:

esxcli storage nmp satp rule add -s VMW_SATP_LOCAL -d mpx.vmhba1:C0:T1:L0 -o disable_ssd
esxcli storage core claiming reclaim -d mpx.vmhba1:C0:T1:L0

To perform the opposite, you simply just need to add the disable_ssd option. If you receive an error regarding a duplicate rule, you will need to first remove the SATP rule and then re-create with the appropriate option.

Another useful tidbit is that if you are running Nested Virtualization and the virtual disk of that VM is stored on an actual SSD, that virtual disk will automatically show up within the guestOS as an SSD so no additional changes are required.

Quick Tip - Automate the export of a vCenter Orchestrator workflow using the CLI

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Steve Jin recently wrote an article about vCenter Orchestrator REST APIs: Executing Workflow which reminded me of an interesting issue that I had faced several months back. I had just finished developing a custom workflow on a beta version of vCenter Orchestrator and of course one of the challenges with using early software is that it could be unstable. I was unable login to the vCO interface via vSphere Web Client or the vCO Client to export my workflow through the regular UI interface. I tried everything and I thought I might have lost my workflow!

I reached out to one of the vCO engineers and asked if there was an easy way to recover my workflow and it turns out there was a very simple method IF the vCO REST API endpoint is still accessible, which it was. To test this, you can either use cURL on the command-line or your favorite REST Client for your browser and perform a GET operation on the following URL (replace the URL with the URL of your vCO Server):

https://vco.primp-industries.com:8281/api/workflows

Note: The vCO REST API is only available starting with vSphere 5.1

If the command was successful, you should see a list of all the workflows in your vCO Server:

I am not aware of any filtering that can be done to narrow down the specific vCO Workflow, but if you are using a browser-based REST Client, you can just search for the name of your workflow. In the above example, I am interested in the "Change Guest OS Type" workflow and you can see its corresponding vCO Workflow ID which is highlighted.

To export and save the vCO Workflow to your local system, you just need to perform a GET operation on the vCO Workflow URL and specify "Accept:application/zip" for the request header which will allow you to save the vCO workflow.

Here is an example using cURL to export the  vCO Workflow and save to a file called ChangeGuestOS.workflow:

curl -i -k -u vcoadmin -H "Accept:application/zip" -X GET https://vco.primp-industries.com:8281/api/workflows/7D808080808080808080808080808080BC818080013141141566711a974a8fef8 -o ChangeGuestOS.workflow