vCenter Server – Page 17

Quick Tip - Start & Stop order for vCenter Server Services

12.04.2014 by William Lam // 9 Comments

A couple weeks back I had worked on something that required me to shutdown all the vCenter Server Services on a VCSA (vCenter Server Appliance). There is no high level service that can be stopped which would properly shutdown all the different services in the appropriate order. Luckily, one can easily derive the start and stop order by just taking a look at the runlevel scripts (S* for start and K* for Kill scripts). I have extracted the order in which the vCenter Server Services must be stopped and started which is shown below:

Stop Order:

vmcad
vmdird
vmkdcd
vmware-inventoryservice
vmware-logbrowser
vmware-netdumper
vmware-vpxd
vsphere-client
vmware-stsd
vmware-sts-idmd

Start Order:

vmcad
vmdird
vmkdcd
vmware-netdumper
vmware-sts-idmd
vmware-stsd
vmware-inventoryservice
vmware-logbrowser
vmware-vpxd
vsphere-client

Note: Although I mention the VCSA, the ordering also applies to a vCenter Server for Windows which has the exact same services.

Here is a simple shell script snippet that can be used to stop all vCenter Server Services in the appropriate order:

VMWARE_SERVICE_STOP=(
vmcad
vmdird
vmkdcd
vmware-inventoryservice
vmware-logbrowser
vmware-netdumper
vmware-vpxd
vsphere-client
vmware-stsd
vmware-sts-idmd
)

for i in ${VMWARE_SERVICE_STOP[@]};
do
  /etc/init.d/$i stop
done

}

Here is a simple shell script snippet that can be used to start all vCenter Server Services in the appropriate order:

VMWARE_SERVICE_START=(
vmcad
vmdird
vmkdcd
vmware-netdumper
vmware-sts-idmd
vmware-stsd
vmware-inventoryservice
vmware-logbrowser
vmware-vpxd
vsphere-client
)

for i in ${VMWARE_SERVICE_START[@]};
do
  /etc/init.d/$i start
done

Automating VCSA 5.5 Configurations including SSO Administrator password

11.03.2014 by William Lam // 3 Comments

As many of you know, I am a huge fan of the VCSA (vCenter Server Appliance), not only for its ease of deployment and setup but also the fact that I can easily automate the entire deployment in just under a couple of minutes. I have written about this topic in the past using the vpxd_servicecfg command to automate both VCSA 5.0 and VCSA 5.1. I figured it was probably a good idea to update this for latest VCSA 5.5 which includes several new enhancements to vpxd_servicecfg command such as the VMware Customer Experience Improve Program configuration (vTelemtry) among other options that you can explore by simply running the vpxd_servicecfg on the VCSA.

The other reason I wanted to update this for the latest VCSA 5.5 is that I was working with Engineering last week on a project and several of them did not know about this capability of being able to automate the VCSA configuration. Instead of providing them with the raw commands, I thought I would create an updated script that can be shared with the community so that others could also benefit from it. Lastly, I also did this for myself as I deploy a large amount of VCSA for all sorts of testing that I am doing on a regular basis and this would allow me to quickly speed up my deployment by simply going to my own blog 🙂

Below is a shell script that contains several variables that can be edited based on your environment setup and you can run this script over SSH using something like: ssh root@[VCSA-IP] < configureVCSA.sh

#!/bin/bash
# William Lam
# www.virtuallyghetto.com
# Script to automate VCSA 5.5+ Configurations

# User Configurations

# SSO Administrator password (*protected email*)
SSO_ADMINISTRATOR_PASSWORD=VMware1!

# Join Active Directory (following 5 variables required)
JOIN_AD=0
AD_DOMAIN=primp-industries.com
AD_USER=administrator
AD_PASS=mysupersecurepassword
VCENTER_HOSTNAME=vcenter51-1.primp-industries.com

# Enable NTP
ENABLE_NTP=0
NTP_SERVERS=192.168.1.1

# Enable VMware Customer Experience Improvement Program
ENABLE_VC_TELEMTRY=1

################ DO NOT EDIT BEYOND HERE ################
 
echo "Accepting VMware EULA ..."
/usr/sbin/vpxd_servicecfg eula accept

if [ ${JOIN_AD} -eq 1 ]; then
        echo "Configuring vCenter Server hostname ..."
        SHORTHOSTNAME=$(echo ${VCENTER_HOSTNAME} |  cut -d. -f1)
        /bin/hostname ${VCENTER_HOSTNAME}
        echo ${VCENTER_HOSTNAME} > /etc/HOSTNAME
        sed -i "s/localhost/${SHORTHOSTNAME}/g" /etc/hosts
 
        echo "Configuring Active Directory ..."
        /usr/sbin/vpxd_servicecfg ad write "${AD_USER}" "${AD_PASS}" ${AD_DOMAIN}
fi

echo "Enbaling Time Synchronization ..."
if [ ${ENABLE_NTP} -eq 1 ]; then
	/usr/sbin/vpxd_servicecfg timesync write ntp ${NTP_SERVERS} 
else
	/usr/sbin/vpxd_servicecfg timesync write tools 
fi 

echo "Configuring vCenter Server Embedded DB ..."
/usr/sbin/vpxd_servicecfg db write embedded
								 
echo "Configuring vCenter Server SSO w/custom *protected email* password ..."
/usr/sbin/vpxd_servicecfg sso write embedded ${SSO_ADMINISTRATOR_PASSWORD}

echo "Starting the vCenter Server Service ..."
/usr/sbin/vpxd_servicecfg service start

if [[ -e /var/log/vmware/phonehome ]] && [[ ${ENABLE_VC_TELEMTRY} -eq 1 ]]; then
	echo "Enabling vCenter Server Telemtry ..."
	/usr/sbin/vpxd_servicecfg telemetry enable
fi

Quick Tip - Steps to shutdown/startup VSAN Cluster w/vCenter running on VSAN Datastore

07.08.2014 by William Lam // 11 Comments

I know Cormac Hogan already wrote about this topic awhile ago, but there was a question that was recently brought up that included a slight twist which I thought it would be useful to share some additional details. The question that was raised: How do you properly shutdown an entire VSAN Cluster when vCenter Server itself is also running on the VSAN Datastore? One great use case for VSAN in my opinion is a vSphere Management Cluster that would contain all your basic infrastructure VMs including vCenter Server which can be bootstrapped onto a VSAN Datastore. In the event that you need to shutdown the entire VSAN Cluster which may also include your vCenter Server, what is the exact procedure?

To help answer this question, I decided to perform this operation in my own lab which contains a 3-Node (physical) VSAN Cluster that had several VMs running on the VSAN Datastore including the vCenter Server VM that was managing the VSAN Cluster.

Below are the steps that I took to properly shutdown down a VSAN Cluster as well as powering everything back on.

UPDATE (4/27) - Added instructions for shutting down a VSAN 6.0 Cluster when vCenter Server is running on top of VSAN.

Shutdown VSAN Cluster (VSAN 6.0)

Step 1 - Shutdown all Virtual Machines running on the VSAN Cluster except for the vCenter Server VM, that will be the last VM you shutdown.

Step 2 - To help simplify the startup process, I recommend migrating the vCenter Server VM to the first ESXi host so you can easily find the VM when powering back on your VSAN Cluster.

Step 3 - Ensure that there are no vSAN Components being resync'ed before proceeding to the next step. You can find this information by going to the vSAN Cluster and under Monitor->vSAN->Resyncing Components as shown in the screenshot below.

Step 4 - Shutdown the vCenter Server VM which will now make the vSphere Web Client unavailable.

Step 5 - Next, you will need to place ALL ESXi hosts into Maintenance Mode. However, you must perform this operation through one of the CLI methods that supports setting the VSAN mode when entering Maintenance Mode. You can either do this by logging directly into the ESXi Shell and running ESXCLI locally or you can invoke this operation on a remote system using ESXCLI.

Here is the ESXCLI command that you will need to run and ensure that "No Action" option is selected when entering Maintenance Mode:

esxcli system maintenanceMode set -e true -m noAction

Step 5 - Finally, you can now shutdown all ESXi hosts. You can login to each ESXi hosts using either the vSphere C# Client / ESXi Shell or you can also perform this operation remotely using the vSphere API such as leveraging PowerCLI as an example.

Shutdown VSAN Cluster (VSAN 1.0)

Step 1 - Shutdown all Virtual Machines running on the VSAN Cluster except for the vCenter Server VM.

Step 2 - To help simplify the startup process, I recommend migrating the vCenter Server VM to the first ESXi host so you can easily find the VM when powering back on your VSAN Cluster.

Step 3 - Place all ESXi hosts into Maintenance Mode except for the ESXi host that is currently running the vCenter Server. Ensure you de-select "Move powered-off and suspend virtual machines to other hosts in the Cluster" as well as selecting the "No Data Migration" option since we do not want any data to be migrated as we are shutting down the entire VSAN Cluster.

Note: Make sure you do not shutdown any of the ESXi hosts during this step because the vCenter Server VSAN Components are distributed across multiple hosts. If you do this, you will be unable to properly shutdown the vCenter Server VM because its VSAN components will not available.

Step 4 - Shutdown the vCenter Server VM which will now make the vSphere Web Client unavailable.

Step 6 - Finally, you can now shutdown all ESXi hosts. You can login to each ESXi hosts using either the vSphere C# Client / ESXi Shell or you can also perform this operation remotely using the vSphere API such as leveraging PowerCLI as an example.

Startup VSAN Cluster

Step 1 - Power on all the ESXi hosts that is part of the VSAN Cluster.

Step 2 - Once all the ESXi hosts have been powered on, you can then login to the ESXi host that contains your vCenter Server. If you took my advice earlier from the shutdown procedure, then you can login to the first ESXi host and power on your vCenter Server VM.

Note: You can perform steps 2-4 using the vSphere C# Client but you can also do this using either the API or simply calling vim-cmd from the ESXi Shell. To use vim-cmd, you need to first search for the vCenter Server VM by running the following command:

vim-cmd vmsvc/getallvms

You will need to make a note of the Vmid and in this example, our vCenter Server has Vmid of 6

Step 3 - To power on the VM, you can run the following command and specify the Vmid:

vim-cmd vmsvc/power.on [VMID]

Step 4 - If you would like to know when the vCenter Server is ready, you can check the status of VMware Tools as that should give you an indication that system is up and running. To do so, you can run the following command and look for the VMware Tools status:

vim-cmd vmsvc/get.guest [VMID]

Step 5 - At this point, you can now login to the vSphere Web Client and take all of your ESXi hosts out of Maintenance Mode and then power on the rest of your VMs.

As you can see the process to shutdown an entire VSAN Cluster even with vCenter Server running on the VSAN Datastore is fairly straight forward. Once you are comfortable with the procedure, you can even automate this entire process using the vSphere API/CLI, so you do not even need a GUI to perform these steps. This might even be a good idea if you are monitoring a UPS and have an automated way of sending remote commands to shutdown your infrastructure.