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Feedback needed for the future of VCSIM

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Last week, I had a chance to catchup with a couple of folks over in our Performance Engineering team to talk about VCSIM. For those of you who have not heard of VCSIM before or would like to know how to get started, I highly recommend you check out this article here and here for more details. We had a discussion on a variety of topics including how I and some of our customers are using VCSIM today.

As some of you already know, VCSIM is an internal tool originally developed by VMware Engineering for a very specific set of use cases, it was never intended to be used by our customers. Having said that, I think after talking to Engineering, they understood the value in having such a tool which could be useful to both our customers and partners. In fact, I have even shared a couple of use cases that I believe VCSIM can greatly benefit everyone:

  • Exploring and learning about the vSphere API and the basic inventory hierarchy of vSphere objects
  • Environment to develop and create various inventory reporting scripts (vCLI, PowerCLI, etc)
  • Developing performance metric gathering tools
  • Developing vSphere Web Client plugins and being able visualize large inventory of objects

There were some thoughts on how VCSIM could evolve over time from its current implementation as it was designed for a very specific purpose, but it was too early to tell and it would be based on some assumptions. Instead, I thought it might be useful to get feedback into Engineering so they could better understand how VCSIM was currently being used today. To help with this, I have created a very short survey below or you can also directly access it using the link here. Please take a few minutes to provide some feedback on how you currently use VCSIM today. Thanks in advance!

Additional VCSIM Resources:

Completely automating vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) 5.5 Configurations

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As promised, here is a new script called configureVCSA55.sh that I have put together after learning about a couple new VCSA automation tips here and here. This script will fully automate the configuration of a vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) 5.5 and once the script has completed, you will have a fully functional vCenter Server Appliance. There are several variables at the top of the script that you will want to edit prior to running the script.

Here is a summary of the high level operations the script is performing and not all operations will be performed, it will depend on the variables that you have configured.

  • Accept EULA
  • vSphere Inventory Size Configuration
  • Active Directory Configuration (optional)
  • DNS Search Domain Configuration
  • NTP Configuration
  • vCenter Server Database Configuration
  • vSphere SSO Configuration
  • vSphere SSO Identity Source Configuration for Active Directory (optional)
  • Active Directory default Identity Source Configuration (optional)
  • VMware Telemtry Configuration (optional)

To run the script, you can either SCP the script to a newly deployed VCSA and run it locally in the shell or remotely via SSH using the following command:

ssh root@[VC-IP] < configureVCSA55.sh

completely-automate-configuration-vcsa55.0
I almost never go through a manual configuration of the VCSA anymore (since 5.0) as it just takes way too long! Hopefully you will find this script handy when needing to quickly test something or automating the deployment of a few dozen VCSA which I know of a few customers that are doing on a regular basis 🙂

Quick Tip - Automate JVM Heap configurations after increasing VCSA memory

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If you are using the VCSA (vCenter Server Appliance) and you wish to increase the VM memory settings to one of the three supported memory configurations: 8-16GB, 24GB & 32GB, there is on additional configuration change before the new memory configuration can take effect. This change is adjusting the JVM Heap memory settings for the following vCenter Server Services: vSphere Web Client, Inventory Service and SPS (vSphere Profile-Driven Storage). If you would like to do this from the UI, you can access the VCSA's VAMI interface and under vCenter Server->Services tab, there is a "Inventory Size" toggle that you will need to set based on your VCSA's configured memory. Once you have save the settings, you will need to restart the vCenter Server for the changes to take effect.

increase_memory_on_vcsa
Note: The text in the VAMI states that the appliance requires at least 16GB of RAM for a Medium configuration which is actually incorrect, it should actually say 24GB for Medium configuration. The correct supported VCSA memory configuration maximum can be found here.

The UI is great but what if you wish to automate this change? This is especially handy if you have already automated the memory increase for the VCSA itself. Luckily, we can turn to our handy vpxd_servicefg command which supports modifying the JVM Memory based on the three supported vSphere Inventory Sizes. Below is the chart with the respective Inventory Size and command to issue within the VCSA. The parameters reflect the JVM Heap configurations for the vSphere Web Client, Inventory Service and SPS (vSphere Profile-Driven Storage).

Inventory Size VCSA Memory Command
Small 8-16GB /usr/sbin/vpxd_servicecfg 'jvm-max-heap' 'write' '512' '3072' '1024'
Medium 24GB /usr/sbin/vpxd_servicecfg 'jvm-max-heap' 'write' '512' '6144' '2048'
Large 32GB /usr/sbin/vpxd_servicecfg 'jvm-max-heap' 'write' '1024' '12288' '4096'
Once the command has successfully completed, you can refresh the VCSA VAMI interface and you should see the appropriate size has been configured. For the changes to take effect, you will need to restart the vCenter Service by issuing one of the following commands:

/usr/sbin/vpxd_servicecfg service restart

or

/etc/init.d/vmware-vpxd restart