WilliamLam.com

Handy VCSA (vCenter Server Appliance) Operational KB Resources

by // 1 Comment

I am a huge fan of the VCSA (vCenter Server Appliance) for anyone that knows me. From time to time, I see interesting VMware KB articles that contain what I think are valuable tidbits of "Operational" information that could come handy in the future. I normally would bookmark these in my browser since you never know when you might need it. I figured for customers who are currently using the VCSA, having some of these operational tidbits would definitely be helpful, especially during troubleshooting or helping them build out a list of resources they could reference when they need to update, increase capacity or change the configurations for the VCSA. Instead of just keeping this list for myself, I thought I can share what I have for the latest VCSA 5.5.x as well comb through our VMware KB site looking for other handy operational KB's to include.

I have categorized the VCSA KB's into four categories that I felt made the most sense, I am sure you could break it down further but I thought this would make it easier to process. In addition, I have also included articles from virtuallyGhetto (subset from this page) that may also apply to these areas which I have listed at the very bottom in case you were interested in those as well. Hopefully this will be helpful for anyone managing VCSA(s) and if there are any that I have missed or you would like to see get added, feel free to leave a comment.

Deployment:
Configurations:
Logging & Troubleshooting:
Backups & Recovery: 

virtuallyGhetto VCSA Operational Resources

Deployment:
Configurations:
Logging & Troubleshooting:
Backups & Recovery:
Tips/Tricks:

Quick Tip - Start & Stop order for vCenter Server Services

by // 9 Comments

A couple weeks back I had worked on something that required me to shutdown all the vCenter Server Services on a VCSA (vCenter Server Appliance). There is no high level service that can be stopped which would properly shutdown all the different services in the appropriate order. Luckily, one can easily derive the start and stop order by just taking a look at the runlevel scripts (S* for start and K* for Kill scripts). I have extracted the order in which the vCenter Server Services must be stopped and started which is shown below:

Stop Order:

  1. vmcad
  2. vmdird
  3. vmkdcd
  4. vmware-inventoryservice
  5. vmware-logbrowser
  6. vmware-netdumper
  7. vmware-vpxd
  8. vsphere-client
  9. vmware-stsd
  10. vmware-sts-idmd

Start Order:

  1. vmcad
  2. vmdird
  3. vmkdcd
  4. vmware-netdumper
  5. vmware-sts-idmd
  6. vmware-stsd
  7. vmware-inventoryservice
  8. vmware-logbrowser
  9. vmware-vpxd
  10. vsphere-client

Note: Although I mention the VCSA, the ordering also applies to a vCenter Server for Windows which has the exact same services.

Here is a simple shell script snippet that can be used to stop all vCenter Server Services in the appropriate order:

VMWARE_SERVICE_STOP=(
vmcad
vmdird
vmkdcd
vmware-inventoryservice
vmware-logbrowser
vmware-netdumper
vmware-vpxd
vsphere-client
vmware-stsd
vmware-sts-idmd
)

for i in ${VMWARE_SERVICE_STOP[@]};
do
  /etc/init.d/$i stop
done

}

Here is a simple shell script snippet that can be used to start all vCenter Server Services in the appropriate order:

VMWARE_SERVICE_START=(
vmcad
vmdird
vmkdcd
vmware-netdumper
vmware-sts-idmd
vmware-stsd
vmware-inventoryservice
vmware-logbrowser
vmware-vpxd
vsphere-client
)

for i in ${VMWARE_SERVICE_START[@]};
do
  /etc/init.d/$i start
done

How to quickly deploy new CoreOS Image w/VMware Tools on ESXi?

by // 14 Comments

deploy-coreos-with-vmware-tools-on-esxi Thanks to a conversation I had this morning with a Twitter user @BOK, I learned that CoreOS has just recently published a new CoreOS Alpha Image (v490.0.0) that now includes the Open VMware Tools package. In addition, the new image also now uses the optimized VMXNET3 network adapter. From our chat, it looks like this update is not available in the insecure or VMware Fusion image and I can only guess that these images may eventually get deprecated or removed completely in favor for the newer VMware image which can both run on ESXi as well as hosted products like VMware Fusion/Workstation.

@BOK also shared with me a modified version of my script that I initially created to automate the deployment of CoreOS onto ESXi. The original workflow had to be slightly modified as the new image is only available as bz2 (bunzip2) and ESXi does not contain the bunzip2 utility. This means there are now two steps: first is to extract the VMDK and upload to ESXi datastore which is going to be done manually and you can run the script which will automatically convert the VMDK to the proper format and register the VM in ESXi.

I was thinking about how I could simplify this process, even though it is just a couple of extra commands, I always like to see how I can make something easier to consume and reducing the complexity if possible. I of course decided to create a new script called deploy_coreos_on_esxi2.sh which now runs outside of the ESXi Shell. The script requires a UNIX/Linux system that has the bunzip2 utility and will automatically download both the VMX and VMDK file, perform the extraction and then upload it to ESXi host using an HTTP API provided through the vSphere Datastore. Lastly, it auto-generates the configuration shell script that will run over SSH to the ESXi host (SSH is still required) which will perform the same set of operations as my previous script did.

Note: You will be prompted to enter the ESXi root password when it tries to run the script remotely on the ESXi Shell, there is a timeout for 120seconds in case you step away from the console.

Prior to running the script, you will need to edit the following 7 variables:

  • ESXi_HOST
  • ESXI_USERNAME
  • ESXI_PASSWORD
  • ESXI_DATASTORE
  • VM_NETWORK
  • VM_NAME

Here is a screenshot of running the script from my Mac OS X desktop:

install-core-os-with-vmware-tools-on-esxi-0
Once the CoreOS VM has fully booted, we can take a look at our vSphere Client and we should see that VMware Tools is in fact running and we can see the IP Address automatically being displayed in the UI:

install-core-os-with-vmware-tools-on-esxi-1
The really nice thing about having VMware Tools running in the CoreOS image, is that you can use VMware's Guest Operations API to be able to perform operations within the guest which are proxied through VMware Tools and can be quite handy, especially if networking is not available or you want to go through a single management interface such as using the vSphere API.