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Sponsorship slots available for the Top vBlog 2015

03.31.2015 by William Lam // 2 Comments

The results for the Top vBlog of 2015 was just announced today and you can find the complete details on Eric's blog post here. First off, I would like to thank Eric for all of his hard work and dedication that he has put into the annual voting and tallying Top vBlogger results. I know how much work he puts into it and I just wanted to say thank you and thanks for all the awesome content you aggregate for the Virtualization community over on vsphere-land. That is a must have resource for every one!

Secondly, I would like to thank all of my readers and supporters for voting for virtuallyGhetto. I am very honored to have retained my #2 spot on the Top vBlogger in 2015 (2nd year in row) and as well as the #1 scripting blog (3rd year in row). This was a pleasant surprise on my first day returning from paternity leave. I think I speak for all my fellow bloggers, it is really the passion that we all have in sharing our knowledge and experiences with the community that keeps us all going, so thank you for your continued engagement and I look forward to sharing more awesome content on virtuallyGhetto!

Lastly, I know there are many vendors like Veeam who have been very supportive of the Virtualization Community and Bloggers and provide ad sponsorships via BuySellAds which is a self-service Advertise/Publisher platform. I figure that I would put together a list of the Top 25 vBloggers of 2015 and their respective BSA Links for any advertisers looking large reach of audience. I know if I was looking to advertise, this is the list I would start with 🙂

Rank Blogger BSA Link
1
Duncan Epping  https://buysellads.com/buy/detail/160490/zone/1280563?src=bundle
2
William Lam  https://buysellads.com/buy/detail/167534/zone/1282588?src=bundle
3
Cormac Hogan  https://buysellads.com/buy/detail/261356/zone/1301445?src=bundle
4
Frank Denneman  https://buysellads.com/buy/detail/162705/zone/1281230?src=bundle
5
Scott Lowe N/A
6
Chris Wahl  https://buysellads.com/buy/detail/165747/zone/1281834?src=bundle
7
Derek Seaman  https://buysellads.com/buy/detail/212634/zone/1290804?src=bundle
8
Chad Sakac N/A
9
Eric Sloof  https://buysellads.com/buy/detail/164648/zone/1281545?src=bundle
10
Alan Renouf  https://buysellads.com/buy/detail/170962/zone/1283525?src=bundle
11
Michael Webster  https://buysellads.com/buy/detail/164639/zone/1281731?src=bundle
12
Eric Siebert  https://buysellads.com/buy/detail/260991/zone/1301252?src=bundle
13
Vladan Seget  https://buysellads.com/buy/detail/34813/zone/1299934?src=bundle
14
Andrew Leibovici N/A
15
Josh Odgers  https://buysellads.com/buy/detail/171583/zone/1290267?src=bundle
16
Mike Laverick https://buysellads.com/buy/detail/225654
17
Magnus Andersson https://buysellads.com/buy/detail/260380
18
Rawlinson Rivera N/A
19
Vaughn Stewart N/A
20
Justin IT Blog N/A
21
Andrew Mauro  https://buysellads.com/buy/detail/171249/zone/1283806?src=bundle
22
Nick Howell https://buysellads.com/buy/detail/167285
23
Luc Dekens https://buysellads.com/buy/detail/232807
24
Tommy Trogden N/A
25
VMGuru  https://buysellads.com/buy/detail/259273/zone/1300457?src=bundle

BSA also has a Virtualization Bundle which includes many other fellow bloggers which you can view here for more details.

Categories // Uncategorized

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.

deploy_vcsa6_ussing_html_installer_on_mac_osx_2
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

deploy_vcsa6_ussing_html_installer_on_mac_osx_1
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.

deploy_vcsa6_ussing_html_installer_on_mac_osx_3
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.

Categories // vSphere 6.0 Tags // osx, ovftool, vSphere 6.0

A preview of native syslog support in VCSA 6.0

03.30.2015 by William Lam // 29 Comments

Proper logging of VMware hosts, services and application logs are becoming more and more critical these days and their usage goes beyond just troubleshooting. In many of our customer environments, extended log retention is often mandatory to satisfy auditing and compliance requirements. Support for remote syslog has been around in ESXi for quite some time and has included several enhancements over the years, however logging for vCenter Server itself has not changed much over the years. Historically, vCenter Server started out as a Windows application and outside of standard filesystem logging there is also Microsoft Event Logs which was not really all that useful. With the release of the vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA), syslog support became more attainable, at least without additional 3rd party tools.

I can even remember when I was an administrator, I had to get creative on how to forward vCenter Server logs to a remote syslog server which I had blogged about back in 2012. Though the solution works, it was not ideal especially when you are running several dozen to several hundred vCenter Server instances like many of our customers do today. When I had discovered that there was a Common Logging initiative within VMware for vSphere 6.0, I was pretty excited and I can only guess that this also put a big smile on many of our GSS folks faces 😉

As you can imagine this was no small undertaking, especially with the organic growth of services and applications within vCenter Server. The goal was not only to support native remote syslog but to also standardize on the location, rotation, retention of all the logs and most importantly providing a consistent time stamp of events so that an administrator or 3rd party tool can easily correlate operations across multiple VMware log files. Though complete native syslog support in vCenter Server is not 100% ready just yet, much of the plumbing and foundation has already been finished and in fact you can see some of this in the latest release VCSA 6.0.

With VCSA 6.0, there is partial support for native remote syslog which is configurable through the VMware Syslog Service under the new vCenter Server System Configuration found within the vSphere Web Client.

vcenter_server_6_syslog_1
There are four settings that you will need to configure:

  • Common Log Level - * (everything), info, notice, warn, error, crit, alert & emerg
  • Host - Hostname/IP Address of a *single* remote syslog server
  • Port - Port of the remote syslog server (514 for UDP & 1514 for TCP is already opened on the VCSA firewall)
  • Protocol - Supports tcp, udp & tls

A restart is not required when configuring the syslog service and logs will automatically be forwarded to the remote syslog server which is quite nice. You can also view the health status of the syslog service and its connectivity to the remote syslog server by clicking onto the "Summary" view as seen in the screenshot below. For more information about the new syslog service, check out the official documentation here.

vcenter_server_6_syslog_2
So what exactly does partial syslog support really mean? What logs are being forwarded to a syslog server when the syslog service is enabled?

There are currently two major sets of logs that are forwarded to a remote syslog server when the new syslog service is configured:

  1. All logs from ESXi hosts that are connected to the vCenter Server will be forwarded
  2. A partial set of vCenter Server services (details in table below) will be forwarded
Service Name Service Description Service Log Location
applmgmt-audit Appliance Management /var/log/vmware/applmgmt/applmgmt-audit/applmgmt-audit-syslog.log
audispd Audit Event Dispatcher /var/log/audit/audispd/audispd-syslog.log
auditd Audit System /var/log/audit/auditd/auditd-syslog.log
rbd Auto Deploy /var/log/vmware/rbd/rbd-syslog.log
vmafdd VMware Authentication Framework /var/log/vmware/vmafdd/vmafdd-syslog.log
vmcad VMware Certificate Service /var/log/vmware/vmcad/vmcad-syslog.log
vmdird VMware Directory Service /var/log/vmware/vmdird/vmdird-syslog.log
watchdog-rhttpproxy Watchdog for Reverse HTTP Proxy service /var/log/vmware/rhttpproxy/watchdog-rhttpproxy/watchdog-rhttpproxy-syslog.log
watchdog-syslog Watchdog for Syslog service /var/log/vmware/syslog/watchdog-syslog/watchdog-syslog-syslog.log
watchdog-vmware-vpostgres Watchdog for vPostgres DB service /var/log/vmware/vpostgres/watchdog-vmware-vpostgres/watchdog-vmware-vpostgres-syslog.log
watchdog-vpxd Watchdog for vCenter Server service /var/log/vmware/vpxd/watchdog-vpxd/watchdog-vpxd-syslog.log
watchdog-vws Watchdog for vCenter Web Services service /var/log/vmware/vws/watchdog-vws/watchdog-vws-syslog.log

Note: The information above was extracted from /etc/vmware-syslog/custom-file-location.conf

Here is a screenshot of my vRealize Log Insight instance ingesting the logs that have been forwarded over from my VCSA 6.0:

vcenter_server_6_syslog_7
Although not all the vCenter Server services have been integrated into this new native syslog mechanism, you can see where things headed and hopefully in the not too distant future we will have full native syslog support for all application and system logs found withint vCenter Server. One thing that I really do like is that I can go to one single location to configure my remote syslog server and automatically receive all logs from the ESXi hosts being managed by that vCenter Server and forwarded to the configured syslog server. This definitely makes it operationally friendly so that you have one less thing to configure when provisioning new ESXi hosts.

One limitation that I found when configuring your remove syslog server is that there is no way to reset the values to NULL and the UI also limits the number of remote syslog server to just one, even though you can specify multiple targets. One way to get around this UI limitation is by editing the underlying configuration file which is located in /etc/vmware-syslog/syslog.conf

Here is an example of what the syslog.conf looks like for the above configuration:

*.info @log.primp-industries.com:514;RSYSLOG_SyslogProtocol23Format

If you wish to add a second or even third syslog server, you simply just need to duplicate the existing line and update the hostname or IP Address of your syslog server.

*.info @log.primp-industries.com:514;RSYSLOG_SyslogProtocol23Format
*.info @log2.primp-industries.com:514;RSYSLOG_SyslogProtocol23Format

If you are manually editing the syslog.conf, you will need to restart the syslog service by running the following command for the changes to take effect:

/etc/init.d/vmware-syslog restart

Some of you might say this is great and all, but one of the most important log files which is the vCenter Server log (vpxd.log) is not being being forwarded. How useful is this really to me? I know I definitely asked that question 🙂 Though not ideal, there is a small configuration change you can apply to easily get vpxd.log to also forward to a remote syslog server using the new syslog service.

You will need to change the vCenter Server advanced setting "config.log.outputToSyslog" property (can also be done using vSphere API) from false to true as seen in the screenshot below.

vcenter_server_6_syslog_3
The above assumes you have already configured the syslog service and for this change to go into effect, you will need to restart the vCenter Server service. This can be done using the System Configuration and under the vCenter Server Service, by just right clicking and selecting "Restart".

vcenter_server_6_syslog_4
If we now look at our vRealize Log Insight instance or whatever syslog server you are using, you should now see entries from the vpx.log being forwarded:

vcenter_server_6_syslog_6
You can also perform this change from the command-line by editing the vCenter Server configuration file at /etc/vmware-vpx/vpxd.cfg and modifying <outputToSyslog>true</outputToSyslog>

vcenter_server_6_syslog_5
Once you have saved the changes, you will need to restart the vCenter Server by running the following command:

/etc/init.d/vmware-vpxd restart

For those of you who are considering vSphere 6.0 and using the VCSA, this is something I definitely recommend checking out to help simplify the management of both your logs for vCenter Server and your ESXi hosts. I know the VMware Engineering team is working hard on making native syslog support even easier in the future and I look forward to the complete solution hopefully in the near future.

Categories // ESXi, vSphere 6.0 Tags // ESXi 6.0, syslog, vCenter Log Insight, vCenter Server, vcenter server appliance, VCSA, vcva, vmsyslog, vpx.cfg, vpxd.log, vSphere 6.0

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William is Distinguished Platform Engineering Architect in the VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) Division at Broadcom. His primary focus is helping customers and partners build, run and operate a modern Private Cloud using the VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) platform.

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