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Quick Tip - Configuring HTTP proxy for VAMI via CLI

04.20.2014 by William Lam // 4 Comments

An HTTP Proxy is commonly used by customers who do not have direct internet access from within their datacenter to either upload logs or download patches from a particular website. I recently had to configure this within our environment to ensure we could patch against the external repository as we also have the same restriction as majority of our customers. To configure a proxy server for a VMware Virtual Appliance, you can do so using the VAMI interface under the Network section as seen in the screenshot below.

I was looking to configure this from the command-line and through some quick test, here is how you do it. There is a command called /opt/vmware/share/vami/vami_set_proxy which accepts two parameters: proxy server and the proxy port.

Here is an example of how the command works:

/opt/vmware/share/vami/vami_set_proxy proxy.vghetto.com 3128

You can view the current proxy settings by running the following command:

/opt/vmware/share/vami/vami_proxy

There are two additional commands that show only the proxy server and proxy port respectively:

/opt/vmware/share/vami/vami_proxy_port
/opt/vmware/share/vami/vami_proxy_server

One thing you may have noticed is that these commands do not support configuring a proxy username or password as the VAMI UI does. After looking at the script does, I found that it is just writing it out into /etc/environment configuration file. If you require a proxy username and password, you could just directly edit the file and append the following as an example:

http_proxy=http://username:*protected email*:3128

How to create vCenter Alarm to alert on ESXi 5.5u1 NFS APD issue?

04.19.2014 by William Lam // 14 Comments

As some of you may have heard, there is currently a known issue with NFS based datastores (includes VSA NFS datastores) after upgrading to vSphere 5.5 Update 1. The issue causes NFS datastores to disconnect and go into an APD (All Paths Down) state. VMware is currently aware of the problem and you can follow KB 2076392 for the latest updates.

While going through my Twitter stream this morning, I noticed an interesting question from fellow Blogger and friend Jase McCarty who asked the following:

I was quite surprised to hear that there were no vCenter Alarms being triggered for this issue. I decided to take a look at the KB to better understand the symptoms and see if there was anything I could do to help. From what I can tell, the only way to identify this particular problem is by looking at the logs which the KB has an example of what you would see.

Once I took a look at the logs, I knew there was at least two methods in which one could get alerts. One option would be to leverage vCenter Log Insight and create a query based on the particular string but no every customer is using Log Insight and it does require a bit of setup. The second more obvious option for me would be to key off of the VMkernel VOBs that are being generated which I have written about in the past for detecting duplicate IP Addresses for ESXi and VSAN component threshold count.

Here are the steps to create vCenter Alarm:

Step 1 - Create a new vCenter Alarm and give it a name. Select "Hosts" for Monitor and "Specific event occurring ..." for Monitor for

Step 2 - For the Trigger, you will add the following VOB entries (just copy/paste them in)

esx.problem.storage.apd.start
esx.problem.vmfs.nfs.server.disconnect
esx.problem.storage.apd.timeout

Note: The alarm will activate if ANY of the VOBs are seen since it is an OR statement. It would have been nice to be able to group these together to generate the alarm

Once the alarm has been created, you will at least have a way to get notified if you are potentially affected by this problem. I would still highly recommend you subscribe to KB 2076392 for all the latest updates.

OVF template for creating Nested ESXi 3 or 32 node VSAN Cluster

04.15.2014 by William Lam // 14 Comments

Last week I had to build a couple of Nested VSAN environments for testing and of course I used my VSAN Nested ESXi OVF template to help expedite the deployment. After deploying the OVF for the third time to get my three Nested ESXi nodes, it hit me. Why am I doing this each time when I know I will need a minimum of three nodes for a proper VSAN environment? Not sure why I did not think of this earlier, but why not create a vApp that contains three Nested ESXi VM templates?

By leveraging the Dynamic Disk feature in OVF, I was able to create two tiny vApps (40KB & 410KB respectively) based off of my original Nested VSAN ESXi OVF template:

The only difference with these OVF templates is that you can now easily an quickly deploy a single OVF that will contain the minimal number of VSAN nodes up to the maximum supported which is 32.

Disclaimer: Nested Virtualization is not not officially supported by VMware, please use at your own risk

Prerequisite:

vSphere Web Client
- To deploy either the single VSAN Nested ESXi OVF template or these new ones, you need to make sure you deploy using the vSphere Web Client. The reason for this is that the lossless OVF import/export feature is only available when using the vSphere Web Client, else you the import will not capture all the settings the OVF template was configured with.
vSphere Cluster w/DRS enabled
- vApp creation is only possible when DRS is enabled

Step 1 - Deploy the OVF template using the vSphere Web Client and make sure you select "Accept extra configuration options" which contains extra parameters needed to run ESXi and VSAN in a nested environment.

Step 2 - Go through the OVF deployment wizard as you normally would. When you get to "Customize Template" you will notice each Nested ESXi VM is in its own Category as seen in the screenshot below. Here you can leave the defaults for a minimal VSAN deployment which contains 2GB disk for ESXi installation, 4GB disk for an "emulated" SSD and 8GB disk for MD or you can specify the size for each disk.

In just a couple of seconds, you will now have a vApp that contains either a 3-node Nested ESXi VM or you can go big and deploy a 32-node Nested ESXi environment.

Note: Please note there maybe other configurations changes such as this one and/or increase in VM resources to run larger VSAN Clusters.

I know these OVF templates will come in handy for myself when needing to quickly deploy a VSAN running in a Nested ESXi environment and hopefully it will also benefit others in the community as well!