PowerCLI – Page 41

Automate Deployment & Configuration of vRealize Operations Manager 6.0 Part 1

12.10.2014 by William Lam // 1 Comment

Yesterday was a huge day for VMware's Management BU which released several updates to their product offerings within their vRealize Suite 6.x including some new products like the new vRealize Code Stream mentioned during this years VMware Europe Conference. Prior to GA, I had already received several Automation questions regarding the upcoming vRealize Operations Manager 6.0 (vROps). Luckily, I had a couple of days to play around with the new release before it was made public and I must to say, I am quite impressed at how easy and intuitive it is to deploy and configure the new vRealize Operations Manager 6.0.

To make it even easier for customers to evaluate the new release, I wanted to take a look at how you can easily automate both the deployment and configuration of the new vRealize Operations Manager. I have broken the process down into three parts: deployment using ovftool which will include both a non-Windows as well as a Windows solutions for my PowerCLI buddies, initial configuration using the command-line via a shell script and finally the same identical initial configuration but using the new vRealize Operations Manager Cluster Mgmt API (also known as the CaSA API which stands for Cluster and Slice Administration).

As mentioned already, this first article will focus on deploying the new vRealize Operations Manager OVA using ovftool. Previously, the vCOps VA was deployed as a vApp that contained two Virtual Machines. The new architecture provides a more dynamic approach and a new capability has been brought into the application that allows you to easily scale out the various vROps "roles" such as the Admin, UI, Data, Data Collector and Replica. This greatly simplifies the initial deployment which is always a plus in my book!

Disclaimer: These scripts are provided for informational and educational purposes only. It should be thoroughly tested before attempting to use in a production environment.

I have created a simple shell script called: deployvROps.sh and there are several variables that need to be edited based on your environment including the path to the OVA. Please take a look at the script prior to executing.

To execute the script, you simply just run the following:

./deployvROps.sh

You will be prompted to confirm the configurations you have specified before the OVA is deployed. If everything was successfully deployed, you should see your new vROps VM power up. Next, open a browser to either the IP Address or hostname of your vROps VM and you should see the following landing page as shown in the screenshot below. At this point, you have completed the deployment of vROps 6.0. As for next steps, you can either manually proceed to configure your new vROps instance or stay tune for Part 2 where I will demonstrate how you can easily automate the initial vROps configurations.

Note: There is a hidden OVF property called guestinfo.cis.appliance.ssh.enabled that will allow SSH to be enabled upon deployment. To be able to configure this property, you must add an advanced ovftool option called --X:enableHiddenProperties which the shell script already takes care of. Unfortunately, for PowerCLI's Get-OvfConfiguration cmdlet, these custom options have not been implemented and hence you will not be able to turn on SSH when using the PowerCLI method. I have already filed an FR internally for this and hopefully see this in a future release of PowerCLI.

Here is a Windows solution to deploying the vRealize Operations Manager called Deployment.ps1 using PowerCLI's Get-OvfConfiguration cmdlet and I have contributed a new sample to Alan Renouf's PowerCLI Deployment Repository. Before running the Deployment.ps1 script, you will also need to edit the variables in the script to match your environment.

Here is a screenshot using the Deployment.ps1 script:

Now that you have your new vRealize Operations Manager deployed, you can manually go through the guided wizard for the initial configuration or stay tune for Part 2 where I will demonstrate you how you can easily automate the initial vROps configurations using the command-line.

How to install ESXi 5.5 Patch03 on the new Mac Pro 6,1?

10.31.2014 by William Lam // 23 Comments

I have received several questions from customers asking how to go about installing the latest ESXi 5.5 Update 2 Patch03 on the Apple Mac Pro 6,1. Luckily, I was able to borrow one of the Apple Mac Pro 6,1 we had within VMware Engineering for a couple of days to document the process.

Step 1 - A prerequisite that must be met prior to installing ESXi is to have the Apple boot ROM update on the Mac Pro 6,1 running on MP61.0116.B05 or higher. This great piece of tidbit came from Josh who discovered issues while trying to install ESXi and found out this was a requirement after opening a case with Apple Engineering. It turns out that there is not an EFI update and the ONLY way to update the boot ROM was to install Yosemite (OS X 10.10) as it contains an update which can be applied to the Mac Pro. Thanks Josh for sharing this tip with us!

You can check the boot ROM by either following this Apple KB here or by running system info with an OS X image on a bootable USB device which is what I did to verify as seen in the screenshot below.

Step 2 - Once you have met the prerequisite, you will need to download the offline bundle for ESXi 5.5 Update 2 Patch03 which contains the Mac Pro 6,1 enablement along with other bug fixes. You can do so by going to VMware Patche portal and under ESXi, you should find ESXi550-201410001.zip at the very top.

Step 3 - Next you need to convert this offline bundle into an ISO image that you can load onto a USB device, this is the simplest way to install ESXi. To do so, you will need a Windows system as it uses a tool called VMware Image Builder which is only available for Windows. Image Builder is part of the PowerCLI toolkit which can be downloaded here.

Step 4 - Once PowerCLI has been installed go ahead and launch the it and we are ready to start authoring our ISO image

Step 5 - Add ESXi offline bundle that we download by running the following command:

Add-EsxSoftwareDepot ESXi550-201410001.zip

Step 6 - You will need to select the particular ESXi Image Profile to create your ISO image from, you can view the four Image Profiles by running the following command:

Get-EsxImageProfile | format-wide

Step 7 - You will want to select the one that contains the all patches including security and VMware Tools called ESXi-5.5.0-20141004001-standard by running the following command:

New-EsxImageProfile -CloneProfile "ESXi-5.5.0-20141004001-standard" -name "ESXi55u2-p03" -Vendor virtuallyGhetto

Step 8 - We now need to export the Image Profile we have selected to an ISO by running the following command:

Export-EsxImageProfile -ImageProfile "ESXi55u2-p03" -ExportToISO -filepath C:\VMware-ESXi-5.5u2p03-Mac-Pro-6-1.iso

Step 9 - Once the ISO has been created, you can now create a bootable USB containing your ESXi installation. I like to use Unetbootin but there are several other tools you can use, select whichever one you are comfortable with.

Step 10 - Plug the USB device into your Mac Pro and make sure to hold down the "ALT" key so you can select the device to boot from and you can start your ESXi installation as you would normally.

Here is a screenshot of the Mac Pro running the latest ESXi 5.5 Update 2 Patch03 release:

Thunderbolt Ethernet Adapter Support

I know there were a couple of questions from folks asking whether the Thunderbolt Ethernet Adapter would be recognized by ESXi on the new Mac Pro 6,1 and I can confirm, it does as shown in the screenshot below:

The Mac Pro 6,1 has two on-board Ethernet ports and comes with 6 x Thunderbolt connections, so you can connect quite a bit of networks if you need to.

GPU Passthru Support

I know a couple of you have asked whether the two Radeon 7870 GPU's could be passthru into a guest OS such as Mac OS X or Windows and it looks like they can from the ESXi point of view, however this is not officially supported by VMware, so YMMV on whether the guestOS can actually make use of the GPU.

For Windows it looks like it was able to properly detect the GPU (as shown in the screenshot) below and for Mac OS X it does not look like it's properly detecting the GPU. I will see if I can investigate this further but there is a good chance that passthru for Mac OS X guest will not work.

If you have made it this far and realize you rather not go through that long process (which is quite short actually), then I you will be quite happy to see that I have done the hard work for you and have created an ESXi 5.5 Update 2 Patch03 ISO which you can download here. Hope you enjoy your new Mac Pro and running ESXi on top of it!

Want to issue a VAAI UNMAP operation using the vSphere Web Client?

09.18.2014 by William Lam // 3 Comments

Recently, I have seen several requests from both customers and partners wanting to be able to run the VAAI UNMAP operation from within the vSphere Web Client. For those of you not familiar with the VAAI UNMAP operation, I recommend you check out this blog post by my colleague Cormac Hogan. Today, the only way to issue the UNMAP operation is by using ESXCLI either remotely or in the ESXi Shell. There is currently not a vSphere API for this operation and therefore it would be difficult to build a native vSphere Web Client Plugin to provide this functionality.

Having said that, one way to provide this capability is through the use of a vCenter Orchestrator (vCO) Workflow which can remotely execute an ESXCLI command whether that is going through ESXCLI using a Linux jump box or through PowerCLI using a Windows jump box. Starting with vSphere 5.5, you can now extend the vSphere Web Client and attach a vCO Workflow to a vSphere Object and be able to execute the workflow right from the vSphere Web Client. This is great if you are already using vCO, but for those that are not, it can be somewhat complex to setup along with a steep learning curve depending on your experience.

Today, there was an exciting announcement from my Automation buddy, Alan Renouf for a new VMware Fling called PowerActions for the vSphere Web Client. This new Fling allows you to easily extend the vSphere Web Client in the following ways:

Access a PowerCLI console directly in the vSphere Web Client
Ability to run a context aware PowerCLI script directly from the vSphere Web Client

The prerequisite for setting up PowerActions is no different than vCO calling a PowerCLI script, you just need a Windows "jump-box" that has PowerCLI installed along with PowerActions. The added benefit, is that you do need to setup another piece of infrastructure like vCO if you are not already using it. This made setting up PowerActions extremely easy to setup and even I was able get it up and running in under 5minutes (minus a quick RTFM moment :)).

Given the number of inquiries regarding VAAI UNMAP operation via the vSphere Web Client, I thought that would be a great use case for my first PowerActions script! Below are the instructions on creating the VAAI UNMAP script for PowerActions:

Step 1 - Click on the PowerCLI Scripts option on the left hand side of the Object Navigator and then click on the "New Script" Icon. Select Datastore as the context aware object for the script.

Step 2 - Provide a name and description for the script. Also make sure to select "Action".

Step 3 - Copy and paste the following script from https://github.com/lamw/vghetto-scripts/blob/master/powershell/unmap-poweraction.ps1 inside the script window and then save the script. What the script does is takes the Datastore object and retrieves a list of ESXi hosts that has access to the Datastore and then randomly selects one of the host. This is required because ESXCLI operations on a per host level and we use that information to pass into Get-EsxCli cmdlet to issue the VAAI UNMAP operation.

Step 4 - To test the script, you just need to right click on a VMFS Datastore and click on PowerCLI->Execute a Script

Note: Please be aware of the impact when running a UNMAP operation, you may want to run this on a non-production datastore for testing purposes or during off hours when your workload may not be as busy.

Step 5 - Select the VAAI UNMAP script you just created and once selected and you will be prompted to specify the number of VMFS blocks to unmap per iteration which is exactly the same input when manually ESXCLI.

At this point, if everything was successful the VAAI UNMAP operation should begin and you can tail /var/log/hostd.log to see the UNAMP operation. Once completed, you should see the prompt return true.

As you can see, it was extremely easy to create my own PowerAction script that expose new functionality and making it available within the vSphere Web Client. I think this is going to be a pretty popular Fling and remember if this is something you would like to see officially in the product, be sure to leave a comment on the PowerAction for vSphere Web Client Fling page, product managers are listening! The only feedback I have is that I would love to see this get extended beyond just PowerCLI and into a generic script extension framework, just imagine the possibilities!