WilliamLam.com

VMware Labs releases Proactive DRS Fling from last years Fling Contest

by // 1 Comment

Last year, the VMware Labs team ran an Open Innovation contest where users could submit ideas for Flings that they would like to see get built. In addition to that, one lucky winner will be selected and their idea will actually be sponsored internally within VMware R&D and VMware Engineers would then implement that idea. The winner of that contest was Mike Preston on an idea called Proactive DRS:

“What I would like to see is some sort of appliance/script that can hook into both the vCenter Operations API’s as well as the vSphere APIs and merge these two technologies together. By interpreting vCenter Operations predictions for what is going to happen within your environment and then leveraging vMotion/DRS/DPM to prepare for this before it happens we could be left with a more proactive approach. (I.E. Historically VM1 will utilize 100% CPU at 4am in the morning, let’s be sure these resources are available on the host at 3:45 by migrating other VMs off, rather than waiting for DRS to kick in at 4:05 – At 6am everyday my workload normally increases to the point where DPM kicks in and turns on some hosts, let’s turn these on at based on the vCenter Operations stats rather than having to manually configure a setting to do so).”

Today at the VMware R&D Innovation booth at VMworld, the VMware Labs team has just announced that they will be releasing the Proactive DRS Fling (download coming very soon!). I think this is pretty awesome, I mean how cool is that, an idea that you came up with was implemented by a group of VMware Engineers? Congrats on the awesome idea Mike!

Here is a bit more details on how Proactive DRS works:  

It is a way for DRS to react to changes in the virtual cluster, and to act on predicted changes in resource demands before hosts become stressed. For example, if you have a VM that historically uses 100% CPU at 8am every morning, ProactiveDRS  makes  sure that the CPU resources will be available for that VM before 8am. These actions ensure that your cluster runs smoother and reduces the amount of reactive VM rebalances that occur.

Features

  • Given an advance forecast/prediction of each VM’s resource demands, e.g., CPU and Memory, ProactiveDRS seeks to reorganize the placement of VMs to best balance the current resource demands while taking early actions to accommodate the future/predicted resource demands.
  • Sample actions include, but are not limited to, proactive vMotions (migrations) and proactively powering on a new physical host to accept VMs whose resource demands are expected to spike beyond the available resources of their current physical host.

The VMware Labs folks did not stop there, they are also running a new 2013 Fling Contest and if you are at VMworld, you can drop by the VMware R&D Innovation booth which is behind the main VMware booth to submit your ideas. Another lucky winner will be selected and their idea will also be built by VMware Engineers which includes a free ticket to VMworld 2014. I recommend you either drop by the booth if you are at VMworld or go online to submit an idea and you could be the next person with their very own Fling!

How to Change the IP Address for vCenter Operations 5 vApp

by // 11 Comments

There was an interesting question on twitter from Matt Cowger yesterday asking how to modify the IP Address of the Analytics VM in the new vCenter Operations 5 vApp after it has been deployed. The new VC Ops 5 is actually composed of two virtual machines: UI and Analytics VM. As part of the initial deployment, they're is an exchange of information between the two VMs to properly get setup which includes the IP Addresses of each other. Simply modifying the IP Address of either VM will result in VC Ops not functioning correctly.

I personally have not had to re-IP my home deployment of VC Ops, but I did have some experience with CapacityIQ before it was combined into the VC Ops product and there was a nifty CLI tool called ciq-admin that was not very well known. I thought I check to see if the new VC Ops had something similar and to my surprise, an updated version of the tool exists and has been renamed to vcops-admin.

After a few minutes of looking around, it was clear that one could modify the IP Address of the Analytics VM and here are three simple steps.

Disclaimer: This is for educational purposes only, this is not officially supported by VMware. Please ensure you test and backup your system before making any changes in a real production system. Data that was previously collected will still be available after the change of an IP Address.

Modifying IP Address for Analytics VM:

Step 1 - First we need to shutdown VC Ops, you can do this from the administrator page by going to https://[vcops-ip]/admin and stopping the service under the Status tab. In this example, I will be showing you how to so using the CLI on the UI VM (this is primary system you use to access VC Ops)

You will need to sudo to "admin" user to run the command "vcops-admin stop". If you accidentally logged into the analytics VM and try to run the command, you will receive an error as the CLI is only available on the UI VM.

Step 2 - Log into the remote console of the analytics VM, this is required as you will be changing the IP Address and may possible impact network traffic. You will need to edit /etc/sysconfig/network/ifcfg-eth0 using an editor such as "vi" and specify the IP Address you wish to change to. Once you are done, you will need to restart the network interface for the changes to take effect. To so so, run the following command "service network restart".

Step 3 - Go back to the UI VM (you will need to sudo over to "admin" account if you are not already) and you will now need to "repair" the connection between the UI and Analytics VM to ensure they can communicate with each other. To do so, you will run the following command "vcops-admin repair --ipaddress [new-analytics-ip]". If the UI VM is able to successfully connect to the new IP Address of the Analytics VM, it will automatically start up the VC Ops service. Once the service has been started, VC Ops is now running and operational.

Now what if you want to change the UI VM's IP Address? I thought this should be pretty straight forward right? Well, it took me a bit longer than I was expecting but the process is just four easy steps.

Modifying IP Address for UI VM:

Step 1 - Stop VC Ops service, you can do this using the admin portal or via SSH as shown in Step 1 of Analytics VM

Step 2 - Login to the remote console of the UI VM this is required as you will be changing the IP Address and may possible impact network traffic. You will need to edit /etc/sysconfig/network/ifcfg-eth0 using an editor such as "vi" and specify the IP Address you wish to change to. Once you are done, you will need to restart the network interface for the changes to take effect. To so so, run the following command "service network restart".

Step 3 - Login via SSH to UI VM using the new IP Address (you will need to sudo over to "admin" account if you are not already) and you will now need to "repair" the connection between the UI and Analytics VM to ensure they can communicate with each other. To do so, you will run the following command "vcops-admin repair --ipaddress [new-analytics-ip]". If the UI VM is able to successfully connect to the Analytics VM, it will automatically start up the VC Ops service.

Step 4 - The last step is to update the vCenter VC Ops plugin information so when you navigate to the VC Ops extension, it knows the new IP Address. This step can be done by logging into the admin portal and under "Registration" tab, you will need to click on the "update" button for each and every vCenter that is attached to the VC Ops. In this example, I will show how to do so using the "vcops-admin" CLI. You will need to run the following command:

vcops-admin register update --vc-name [vc-name] --vc-server [https://vc-server/sdk] --username [vc-username] --password [vc-password] --force

Note: This process may take a few minutes for each vCenter that you need to update, also if you  have a dedicated service account for the collector, you can specify --collection-user and --collection-password agruments.

Though the process of modifying the IP Address is not available through the UI today, it is a feature that I will be requesting as this should be a trivial task for users.