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Search Results for: vsphere events

Google Chat space notification for failed vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) backups using VEBA

01.22.2024 by William Lam // Leave a Comment

It is always good idea to verify that your vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) backups are occurring and if there are any failures, you are notified about them immediately!

As alluded to at the end of that blog post, you can easily build event-driven automation using the popular VMware Event Broker Appliance (VEBA) solution, triggering notifications based on several types of VCSA backup events:

  • com.vmware.applmgmt.backup.job.failed.event
  • com.vmware.applmgmt.backup.job.finished.event
  • com.vmware.applmgmt.backup.job.start.event

I recently built a PowerShell function that would send a notification to a Google Chat space by enabling their incoming webhook integration as you can seen from the screenshot below:


While the message customization is not as extensive as using Slack (e.g. supporting advanced layouts and emoji), it does get the job done and you will know immediately when a backup has failed or when it has started or has completed.

Note: For existing VEBA users (pre-v0.8 release), the function.yaml needs to be updated to trigger off of the subject keyword rather than the type, which is due to replacing the event router with Tanzu Sources for vSphere. You also need to ensure the prefix of "com.vmware.vsphere" is removed along with trailing "v0" as this is the next syntax for vCenter Events once VEBA v0.8 is released.

spec:
  broker: default
  filter:
    attributes:
      subject: com.vmware.applmgmt.backup.job.failed.event

Categories // Uncategorized Tags // vami, VCSA

Heads Up - ESXi 8.0 Update 2 requires XSAVE CPU instruction even with allowLegacyCPU=true

10.05.2023 by William Lam // 25 Comments

As shared back in 2022 in my Homelab Considerations for vSphere 8.x blog post, if you attempt to install ESXi on system where the CPU is no longer being supported by the OEM vendor, who then informs VMware on what to publish on the VMware Hardware Compatibility Guide (VCG), you will see the following error message preventing you from proceeding.


Also mentioned in that article, you can override this default behavior with the following ESXi boot option: allowLegacyCPU=true which would convert this from an error to warning message but allowing you to proceed in an installation or upgrade.

Obviously, this is not officially supported by VMware and its behavior was never guarantee but it certainly was a nice gesture, in my humble opinion from Engineering, as they could have easily not allowed any override based on on our official VCG. For homelab use cases, it might be okay to use a CPU that is 5 to 6 years old, knowing that it should be replaced hopefully in the near future.

I just had a couple of users report issues while upgrading to the latest ESXi 8.0 Update 2 release when using the allowLegacyCPU boot option and saw the following error message

VMB: 716: Unsupported CPU


The ESXi installer immediately halts and prevents the upgrade from proceeding ...

[Read more...]

Categories // ESXi, Home Lab Tags // ESXi 8.0 Update 2, XSAVE

Synology DS723+ in Homelab

09.12.2023 by William Lam // 15 Comments

While I am a huge fan and a happy user of vSAN in my homelab environment, it can sometimes be challenging when you only have a single node (yes, this is not a best practice nor recommended). For example, I have not been able to upgrade to the latest vSAN Disk Group version because my vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) is also running on top of vSAN which prevents the upgrade operation from completing as changes to the vSAN Disk Group is required.


I honestly have been putting this maintenance off for quite some time but right before VMware Explore, I got an opportunity from Synology to check out one of their storage offerings, the DS723+. While I have never worked with a Synology product before, I know many in the VMware Community use their DiskStation NAS for a number of use cases from VM/Application backup, file sharing, and certainly external storage for ESXi. I also found it interesting that you can also run certain types of applications directly on the NAS, which certainly pique my interest 🙂

With VMware Explore US now behind us, I finally got a chance to play with the DS723+ which has the following configuration:

  • DS723+
  • HAT3300-4T - 2 x 4TB SATA Disks
  • SNV3410-400G - 2 x 400GB M.2 SSD Disks
  • D4ES02-4G - 6GB DDR4 ECC memory (1 x 4GB DDR4 module + included 2GB DDR4 module)
  • E10G22-T1-Mini - 10GbE network module

Note: For those interested, there is also DS723+ bundle (includes 2 x 4TB SATA disk) on Amazon

[Read more...]

Categories // ESXi, Home Lab Tags // Synology

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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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