vSphere 6.0 – Page 38

Are Affinity/Anti-Affinity rules preserved during Cross vCenter vMotion (xVC-vMotion)?

04.02.2015 by William Lam // Leave a Comment

Among other things, vSphere Affinity/Anti-Affinity rules are indeed preserved with a Virtual Machine during a Cross vCenter vMotion (xVC-vMotion) which is a new vMotion capability in vSphere 6.0. If you wish to learn more about this awesome new feature be sure to read about it here and here.

There were a couple of people asking about the details on how this actually worked so I figured I would set this up in my lab and provide some additional information. In my environment I have two vCenter Server 6.0 joined to a single Platform Services Controller (same SSO Domain) which provides me with the Enhanced Linked Mode capability which is one of the requirements for a regular xVC-vMotion as it needs to be visible in the vSphere Web Client. You can also do an ExVC-vMotion, which does not require the vCenter Servers to be part of the same SSO Domain, you can find more details in this blog post here.

I initially had 3 Virtual Machines called: Web1, Web2 and Web3 which ran in my "PA-VSAN-Cluster" which is located in my first vCenter Server. I then create an Anti-Affinity rule called "Web-Rule" that ensures all three VMs are running on separate ESXi hosts. I then manually perform xVC-vMotion (remember automated DRS migration is on a vSphere Cluster boundry and will not vMotion outside of a vSphere Cluster or vCenter Server) each VM to my secondary vCenter Server to my "SB-VSAN-Cluster"

Once the VM has successfully relocated to the destination site, the Affinity/Anti-Affinity rules are then migrated over. You might be wondering why the Affinity/Anti-Affinity rule could not be created in advance and the reason is because it needs the actual VM object to be available to associate the the rules to. Once all three VMs have been migrated over, you will see that the old Affinity/Anti-Affinity rule no longer exists in the source vCenter Server and now lives in destination vCenter Server as seen in the screenshot below. Simple and elegant!

Quick Tip - vCenter Server advanced settings for vSphere 5.5 & 6.0

04.01.2015 by William Lam // 2 Comments

This was a question that was recently asked in an internal thread regarding the list of available advanced settings in vCenter Server. You can find these settings under the "Advanced Settings" section of all places 😉 and this is available both in the vSphere Web/C# Client.

I wrote a script awhile back that allows you to modify these advanced settings and with a slight modification to the existing script, I was able to produce the complete list of available settings (available via the vSphere API) that are user configurable, as not all settings are configurable. Below, is a table of all vCenter Server 5.5 advanced settings and I also have a table for newly added advanced settings for vCenter Server 6.0.

Disclaimer: Most of these settings should be left at their default and if you do need to make a change, make it is through a recommendation by either VMware's documentation or from GSS Support as modifying some of these changes can negatively impact your environment.

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How to deploy VCSA 6.0 using the HTML UI Installer on Mac OS X?

03.31.2015 by William Lam // 6 Comments

I know some of you were disappointed like I was that the new VCSA 6.0 HTML UI Installer is only currently supported on Windows and does not work on Mac OS X. I have been told by Product Management that this is temporary and that Mac OS X support will be coming in a future update. In the meantime, if you do not wish to spin up a Windows VM just to deploy the new VCSA from the HTML UI Installer, you can check out this tiny hack that allows you to deploy the new VCSA 6.0

Note: This trick will only allow you to deploy either an Embedded VCSA or Platform Service Controller. It does not work when trying to deploy an vCenter Server Management Node which is why I suspect Mac OS X support was not in this initial release of vSphere 6.0.

Disclaimer: This is not officially supported by VMware, please use at your own risk.

Step 1 - You will need to download and install the vSphere Client Integration Package (CIP) 6.0 package for Mac OS X by visiting the following URL: http://vsphereclient.vmware.com/vsphereclient/VMware-ClientIntegrationPlugin-6.0.0.mac64.dmg

Step 2 - You will need to extract the VCSA ISO to your local filesystem

Step 3 - Open up a terminal and change into the root directory of the extract VCSA ISO and we will need to modify the vcsa-setup.html file.

Step 4 - Run the following sed command which will replace the check for the OS platform from Windows to Mac OS X:

sed -i .bak 's/Win32/MacIntel/g' vcsa-setup.html

Note: You might also be able to use this trick for Linux desktop by properly replacing the navigator.platform property with the correct OS type.

Step 5 - Open the vcsa-setup.html using either Firefox or Chrome and give it a few seconds for the CIP to be loaded and you should be able to launch the VCSA HTML UI Installer as seen in the screenshot below

I have found sometimes the HTML UI is stuck at the "Starting VMware vSphere Web Client" screen but when you look at the VM Console of the deployed VCSA, it is completely done. I recommend that if the VM Console looks done, you can just close this screen and just open a browser connecting to the hostname/IP Address of your new VCSA and everything should be working as expected.

If you prefer to deploy the VCSA 6.0 on Mac OS X through an officially supported method, there is also a new VCSA CLI Installer that is supported on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux which you can find more details in this whitepaper here. In addition to this trick, you can also deploy the new VCSA 6.0 directly to vCenter Server or onto VMware Workstation/Fusion, for those alternative approaches be sure to check out my Ultimate automation guide to deploying the VCSA 6.0.