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Project USB to SDDC - Part 3

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OK, the wait is finally over! In this final article, we will now walk through the process of getting access to this project as well as how to get this deployed in your own environment. For those that just want to see the code, you can find it at the Github project below:

Github Project: https://github.com/lamw/usb-to-sddc

Below are the details outlining the environment and software requirements as well as the instructions to consume this in your own home lab environment. The content below is a subset of what is published on the Github project, but this should get you going. For more details, please refer to the Github project and if you have any issues/questions, feel free to file a Github issue.

Environment Requirements:

  • USB key that is at least 6GB in capacity
  • Access to either macOS or Linux system as the script that creates the USB key is only supported on these two platforms
  • No additional USB keys must be plugged into the hardware system other than the primary installer USB key
  • Hardware system must have at least 2 disk drives which can either be 1xHDD and 1xSSD for running Hybrid vSAN OR 2xSSD for running All-Flash vSAN
  • Both Intel NUC 6th Gen and Supermicro E200-8D and E300-8D have been tested with this solution. It should work with other hardware systems that meet the minimum requirements but YMMV

Software Requirements:

Note: Other ESXi / VCSA 6.5.x versions can also be substituted, this includes the latest ESXi 6.5d (vSAN 6.6) release which I have also verified myself.

UPDATE (04/17/18) - No changes are required to get vSphere 6.7 to work, the only minor thing to be aware of is that the vSphere Web Client customization has changed in 6.7 and so you need to set VCSA_WEBCLIENT_THEME_NAME="" as empty string or you will find that the UI will not load unless you delete the customization directory in the VCSA that was pulled down automatically.

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Project USB to SDDC - Part 1

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A couple of weeks back, Alan Renouf and I co-presented at the Sydney and Melbourne VMUG UserCon, here are some great write-ups about the events here and here. We were very honored to have been invited out and to also deliever the closing keynote. Having traveled halfway around the world, we thought it was only fitting to share something really special.

For the last couple of months, we had been working on a small pet project that I personally had been referring to as the "vGhetto SDDC". This was not something we had not shared with anyone before and thought the VMUG UserCon was the perfect venue to demo our new project. For the session, we decided to rename the project/session to USB to SDDC (better ring than the previous title) which might give you a hint on what the project might be about.

The inception for this project really stemmed from the work we did at last years VMworld Hackathon which was another idea that both Alan and I had came up and worked with the VMware Code team to deliver at both VMworld US and Europe. Like all great Automation stories, the motivation for this project was born out of pure laziness. With the huge success of the Hackathon at VMworld US, there was a huge demand for us to also deliver it again at VMworld Europe.

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Potential ESXi Host Preparation issues with NSX 6.3

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While working on updating my vGhetto Automated vSphere Lab Deployment script to add support for NSX 6.3 with vSphere 6.5, I ran into an issue with the Host Preparation step. Although the resolution turned out to be quite simple, it was very difficult to diagnose the problem. I suspect this scenario could easily be encountered by others, so I wanted to make folks aware of what I ran into. There is also another potential gotcha for host preparation that I did not encounter myself, but it was brought to my attention that I thought was also worth sharing as well.

Scenario 1 - Attempted Host Preparation and all "Install agent" tasks fails with "Cannot complete the operation. See the event log for details" and below is a screenshot of the error. There was nothing useful when looking at the event logs for either NSX or ESXi using the vSphere Web Client.


There was also nothing useful in the ESXi log /var/log/esxupdate.log that gave insights to why the NSX VIBs failed to install:

2017-02-16T12:38:53Z esxupdate: 73899: Transaction: DEBUG: Populating VIB list from all VIBs in metadata https://vcenter65-1.primp-industries.com:443/eam/vib?id=d4917629-51d1-4da9-82d6-8da54815447d; depots:
2017-02-16T12:38:54Z esxupdate: 73899: downloader: DEBUG: Downloading https://vcenter65-1.primp-industries.com:443/eam/vib?id=d4917629-51d1-4da9-82d6-8da54815447d to /tmp/tmpdfcbr23q...
2017-02-16T12:38:54Z esxupdate: 73899: Metadata.pyc: INFO: Unrecognized file vendor-index.xml in Metadata file
2017-02-16T12:38:54Z esxupdate: 73899: imageprofile: INFO: Adding VIB VMware_locker_tools-light_6.5.0-0.0.4564106 to ImageProfile (Updated) ESXi-6.5.0-4564106-standard
2017-02-16T12:38:54Z esxupdate: 73899: imageprofile: INFO: Adding VIB VMware_bootbank_esx-vsip_6.5.0-0.0.4987428 to ImageProfile (Updated) ESXi-6.5.0-4564106-standard
2017-02-16T12:38:54Z esxupdate: 73899: imageprofile: INFO: Adding VIB VMware_bootbank_esx-vxlan_6.5.0-0.0.4987428 to ImageProfile (Updated) ESXi-6.5.0-4564106-standard
2017-02-16T12:38:54Z esxupdate: 73899: vmware.runcommand: INFO: runcommand called with: args = '['/bin/localcli', 'system', 'maintenanceMode', 'get']', outfile = 'None', returnoutput = 'True', timeout = '0.0'.
2017-02-16T12:38:54Z esxupdate: 73899: HostInfo: INFO: localcli system returned status (0) Output: Disabled Error:

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