vSphere – Page 91

How to generate specific support log bundles for vCenter & ESXi using vSphere API?

07.15.2014 by William Lam // 1 Comment

When an issue arises in your vSphere environment and you engage with VMware GSS, one of the first task you will mostly like be asked to perform is to generate a support log bundle and submit it. You can generate a support bundle using the vSphere Web/C# Client as seen in the screenshot below.

Last week I recieved a question from one of our development teams about generating support log bundles for both vCenter Server and ESXi hosts, but using the vSphere API instead of the UI. This functionality is available as part of the DiagnosticManager and the method you will want to call is GenerateLogBundles_Task() which allows you to specify which systems to collect support logs from. This by far is the easiest way if you just want to collect all logs and I will go into more detail in a bit on what I mean by this.

When invoking the GenerateLogBundles_Task(), support logs will be generated on each of the respective sub-systems which includes vCenter Server and the ESXi hosts. Once the log bundles have been created, the API will return a list of download URLs to the support log bundles. To demonstrate this functionality, I have created a sample vSphere SDK for Perl script called generateLogBundle.pl

The script assumes you want to collect ALL logs for both vCenter Server and ESXi hosts being managed by the given vCenter Server.

While working on the sample code, one thing I had noticed in the vSphere Web/C# Client is that you have the ability to select the specific logs to export.

I was looking through the vSphere API but I did not find a way to specify this level of granularity in the logs. I was of course curious and wondered if this was using some sort of private vSphere API (which I hoped was not the case). I decided to pull out one of my favorite tools when I get stuck with a question around the vSphere API which is Onyx. After manually generating the support log bundle and selecting a subset of the logs to export, I found out this process actually makes a call to a CGI script on the ESXi host called vm-support.cgi.

The list of available logs to export is generated by making a GET request to the following URL: https://[ESXI-HOSTNAME]/cgi-bin/vm-support.cgi?listmanifests=1

The output is an XML file that contains the manifest of the available logs to export in the log support bundle. To specify the specific logs to collect, you must provide the "id" property as seen in the screenshot above. In this example, I would like to collect the following: System:Base, VirtualMachines:GuestState, Storage:VSAN and VirtualMachines:diskinfo

To generate a support bundle from the ESXi host that contains the above, you will need to issue a GET request using the following URL: https://[ESXI-HOSTNAME]/cgi-bin/vm-support.cgi?manifests=System:Base VirtualMachines:GuestState Storage:VSAN VirtualMachines:diskinfo

This will instruct the ESXi host to generate the log bundle that contains the following manifest log files. To include others, you just need to append to the URL. You can easily test this out by pasting this URL into a web browser and providing your ESXi credentials and the logs will be available for download. Going back to my original observation, this is actually how vCenter Server provides the ability to export specific logs from each of the ESXi hosts when generating a support bundle.

If you would like to use the vSphere API to provide this same capability, you just need to leverage the AcquireGenericServiceTicket() API method which is available as part of the SessionManager and specify the URL for the support bundle. This will allow you to request a support log bundle from within vCenter Server without having to go directly to each of the ESXi hosts manually. You can see a very similar implementation of this API by taking a look at my How to efficiently transfer files to a datastore in vCenter using the vSphere API and specifically the efficent-upload-files-to-datastore.pl sample code.

Quick Tip - How to BSOD/Panic a Virtual Machine in ESXi?

07.14.2014 by William Lam // Leave a Comment

https://twitter.com/virtualdominic/status/488570929383890945

While catching up on my Twitter feed this morning, I saw an interesting question from Dominic Rivera. I remember a few years back I was troubleshooting an issue and required to panic a Virtual Machine, I did not recall the steps that GSS had walked me through but I figure if anyone would know, it would be my buddy Paudie who used to work in GSS. Sure enough, he had the answer which was using a nifty little tool on the ESXi Shell called vmdumper.

UPDATE: It turns out there is an even simpler thanks to Frank Buechsel who is also from GSS. Frank mentioned you can send an NMI request simply using either the vSphere Web/C# Client. In the vSphere Web Client, you just need to right click on the VM and go to All vCenter Actions->Export Systems Logs. To be able to perform this action, you will need the Global->Diagnostic privilege for the the given user.

Next, expand the menu and select Send_NMI_To_Guest option.

If you wish to perform this operation using the vSphere C# Client, you just need to select the VM and then at the top menu and click File->Export System Logs and you will have the option of sending the NMI request this way.

Using the vmdumper utility, you can create a BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) for a Windows or Kernel Panic for Linux Virtual Machines by sending an NMI (Non-Maskable Interrupt) request.

To send an NMI or any other request, you need to first identify the VM's World ID, this can be done using either ESXCLI or vmdumper utility itself.
Using ESXCLI:

esxcli vm process list | grep -A1 '^[VMNAME]'

Using vmdumper:

vmdumper -l | grep [VMNAME]

In the example above, I have a VM called vcenter55-2 running Windows 2008 R2 and the World ID is 23100118. To send the NMI request, you will now run the following command:

vmdumper [WORLD-ID] nmi

If we now take a look at the VM Console, we will see that it successfully BSOD the Windows VM:

Here is a screenshot for sending an NMI request to a Linux VM. It seems the Linux system handles the NMI in a much more graceful manner and the system was still responsive 🙂

After learning about the vmdumper utility, I also performed a quick search online and found VMware KB 2005715 that provides some additional information. It looks like the KB only references ESXCLI as a way to locate the World ID, I will see if we can get the KB updated to also include vmdumper method of identifying the VM's World ID.

VMware Fusion Tech Preview 2 can now connect to ESXi & vCenter Server!

07.04.2014 by William Lam // 4 Comments

There was a lot of buzz this week on the announcement of the first vSphere Beta that is available for anyone to sign up for (still a private Beta with NDA rules), however one announcement that was probably missed is that the folks over on the VMware Fusion team just released their second Tech Preview of VMware Fusion (Build 1943533). Why is this such a big deal? Well, it includes one very exciting new feature that I have been asking for a awhile now, which is the ability to connect to an ESXi host or vCenter Server using VMware Fusion! VMware Workstation has had this feature for awhile now and I have been hoping the Fusion team would eventually implement something similar and It looks like they have finally answered 🙂

You now can connect either a Workstation, ESXi host or vCenter Server using VMware Fusion! If you are like me who primary uses a Mac and you do not want to run a single Windows VM just to be able to use the vSphere C# Client, you can now use VMware Fusion to connect to a vSphere system and perform some basic VM operations, which includes managing Virtual Hardware 10 VMs. You can even use this latest version to connect to the beta version of ESXi host.

Under the File menu, there is now a new option called "Connect to Server" or you can use Command+K for keyboard shortcut.

Here is a screenshot of connecting to a Mac Mini running ESXi 5.5:

Here is screenshot of connecting to one of my remote vCenter Servers:

As you can see this is a super handy feature and you can also have multiple connections to various vCenter Servers, ESXi hosts including Free ESXi! This alone is worth grabbing the latest Tech Preview of VMware Fusion! I can not wait for this feature to be officially released with VMware Fusion, this is going to be a must have feature for any VMware/Apple user!

If you have any feedback on this particular feature or others, please leave a comment on the VMware Fusion Tech Preview community forums!