vSphere 6.0 – Page 11

Subscribe to vGhetto Nested ESXi Template Content Library in vSphere 6.0

04.08.2015 by William Lam // 23 Comments

During the early development of vSphere 6.0, one of the features that I got an early sneak preview of was the Content Library which originated from vCloud Director's Content Catalog capability and has now been pushed down into the core vSphere platform as part of VCD's "Convergence" plan.

Although there are some initial limitations with this first release of Content Library such as not being able to mount an ISO directly from the Content Library as example, which I do agree it should have just worked and not requiring a manual datastore browse for this operation to work. I know the Engineering team is aware of this as it was something our team had also provided feedback among other things, so hopefully this will be fixed very shortly.

Having said that, I do see a huge potential with the Content Library and all the interesting use cases it can enable not only for vSphere but also for other products such as vRealize Automation as well as vCloud Air. One area that caught my attention when I first heard about Content Library is the the fact that the publishing and subscription capability works over simple HTTP(s). I immediately had a light-bulb moment and thought would it not be cool if you could have a custom Content Library that would be hosted on some external cloud storage such as Amazon S3 as en example and be able to publish that so others could subscribe to it in their vSphere environment?

Fortunately, because Content Library works over standard HTTP(s) and with the help of one of the Content Library Engineers I was able to create my very own vGhetto Nested ESXi Template Content Library for both vSphere 6.0 and vCloud Directory based environments which is currently being hosted on Amazon S3.

vSphere: https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/vghetto-content-library/lib.json
vCD: https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/vghetto-content-library-vcd/lib.json

The library contains all of my Nested ESXi / VSAN OVF Templates that I have created over the years and by publishing them in in my public Content Library, anyone can now easily subscribe and pull down the latest OVF templates to deploy directly in their vSphere/vCD environment. You no longer have to manually download the OVFs and as I add new content, the Content Library will automatically synchronize the changes to your local environment.

The vGhetto Nested ESXi Template Content Library currently contains the following 7 OVF's which total to 1.43MB:

Nested-ESXi-3-Node-VSAN-6.0-All-Flash-Template
Nested-ESXi-3-Node-VSAN-6.0-Template
Nested-ESXi-3-Node-VSAN-Template
Nested-ESXi-32-Node-VSAN-Template (not available when subscribing from VCD)
Nested-ESXi-6-Node-VSAN-6.0-FD-Template
Nested-ESXi-64-Node-VSAN-6.0-Template (not available when subscribing from VCD)
Nested-ESXi-VM-Template

Here are the instructions for subscribing to my vGhetto Content Library using the vSphere 6.0 Web Client:

Step 1 - In the main Home page, click on the Content Library icon

Step 2 - Create a new Content Library which will be used to subscribe to my vGhetto Content Library.

Step 3 - Select "Subscribed content library" and enter the following URL: https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/vghetto-content-library/lib.json and make sure to select "Download all library content immediately". There is currently a limitation in the way the metadata is read from OVFs that prevents the on-demand setting to be used when subscribing to 3rd party Content Libraries.

Step 4 - Select the storage which will be backing your Content Library. This can be either a local filesystem path on your vCenter Server or by using a vSphere Datastore.

Step 5 - If the new Content Library had been successfully created, the content will start to synchronize to your local system and once the OVF/VM icon appears, then you know the Nested ESXi / VSAN OVFs templates are ready to be deployed in your environment as seen in the screenshot below.

Note: You will notice that even though we are pulling down all seven OVF templates, they are only consume a measly 1.43MB as these are empty VMs shells and I am also using the OVF Dynamic Disks feature which allows you to specify the size of the VMDK upon deployment.

UPDATE (4/24) - It turns out that 3rd Party Content Libraries can also be subscribed from within vCloud Director but because it does not support Dynamic Disks, the synchronized will fail. I have created a separate library specifically optimized for vCD which you can find the URL at the top and you can then subscribe to my vGhetto Content Library as seen in the screenshot below. You will notice that the 32 and 64 Node VSAN Template is not available and the reason for this is that apparently there is a limitation in the number of elements it can parse.

This is a pretty powerful feature in my opinion and I can already see custom content libraries not only from VMware but also from our partner eco-systems providing their latest solutions (Virtual Appliances) as well as other file content as Content Library can store pretty much anything. In a future blog post, I will go through the details on how you can create your own custom Content Library, so stay tune. In the mean time, if you are using vSphere 6.0 and and would like to be able to quickly pull down the latest Nested ESXi / VSAN OVF templates, be sure to subscribe to my vGhetto Content Library!

vCenter Server 6.0 Tidbits Part 1: What install & deployment parameters did I use?

04.06.2015 by William Lam // 6 Comments

This is the first part in a new blog series that I will be working on in which I will be sharing some simple tips and tricks that I learned along the way while working with vCenter Server 6.0, these especially came in handy during the early development of vSphere 6.0. These tidbits will include information covering both the vCenter Server for Windows (VCS) as well as the vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA).

When installing VCS or deploying the VCSA, you are prompted to fill out a variety of inputs based on the deployment type, SSO Domain, database information, etc. These "install parameters" are then fed into the configuration of either your vCenter Server (Embedded) or separated out with vCenter Server Management Node and Platform Services Controller Node.

After you successfully deployed your vCenter Server and say a couple of weeks has passed and you are now wondering what install parameters you used either for auditing, informational purposes or more likely you may need to know one of these parameters for adding additional instances say for Enhanced Linked Mode, how might you go and retrieve this information?

Luckily, VMware has made finding this information extremely easy by providing a tiny little utility called "install-parameter" and here are the locations for both platforms:

Windows:

"C:\Program Files\VMware\vCenter Server\bin\install-parameter.bat"

VCSA:

/bin/install-parameter

The utility accepts the name of a well defined set of installation parameters, an example would be "vmdir.domain-name" which specifies the name of the SSO Domain that you had configured:

You can see the complete list of available installation parameters under the following paths in the two platforms:

Windows:

C:\ProgramData\VMware\vCenterServer\cfg\install-defaults

VCSA:

/etc/vmware/install-defaults

For your convenience, I have also listed all the installation parameters in the table at the very bottom of this post.

In addition to these installation parameters, there are two additional ones that I would like to mention which are not part of this list.

Database Type

The information is stored in a file called db.type with possible values of: embedded, oracle and mssql and here are the paths for the two platforms:

Windows:

C:\ProgramData\VMware\vCenterServer\cfg\db.type

VCSA:

/etc/vmware/db.type

The possible values for this files is: embedded, oracle and mssql

Deployment Type

The information is stored in a file called deployment.node.type with possible values of: embedded, management and here are the paths for the two platforms:

Windows:

C:\ProgramData\VMware\vCenterServer\cfg\deployment.node.type

VCSA:

/etc/vmware/deployment.node.type

For those with a critical eye, you might have noticed there is one installation parameter that is not available in any of these files and that would be the SSO Domain Site Name. This property is not really important (outside of troubleshooting) unless you need to add additional Platform Services Controller and replicate with an additional one or adding additional vCenter Servers for enabling Enhanced Linked Mode support. This property is one of the required parameters when performing a scripted install but is not needed if performing the deployment using the guided install method. In the next blog post, I will show you how you can retrieve this property.

vCenter Server 6.0 Installation Parameter

autodeploy.ext.managementport
autodeploy.ext.serviceport
cis-license.int.http
cm.int.cmhttp
cm.url
cm.url.path
db.dsn
db.instance
db.presetupdone
db.provider
db.servername
db.serverport
db.user
eam.int.http
invsvc.int.http
mbcs.int.http
netdumper.ext.serviceport
netdumper.int.webport
perfcharts.int.https
rhttpproxy.cert
rhttpproxy.conf.path
rhttpproxy.ext.port1
rhttpproxy.ext.port2
sca.hostid
sca.int.scahttp
sps.int.pbmhttp
sps.int.pbmhttps
sps.int.smshttp
sps.int.smshttps
sps.int.spshttp
sps.int.spshttps
sshd.ext.port1
syslog.ext.port
syslog.ext.tls
syslog.int.http
syslog.int.port
system.hostname
system.hostname.type
system.urlhostname
system.vm0.hostname
vapi.int.endpoint-http
vapi.int.jmx-port
vc.conf.path
vc.home.path
vc.instance.cfg.path
vmafd.ext.port1
vmca.cert.dir
vmca.ext.port1
vmdir.admin-dn
vmdir.domain-dn
vmdir.domain-name
vmdir.ext.port1
vmdir.ext.port2
vmdir.ldap-port
vmdir.ldu-guid
vmdir.site-guid
vmdir.username
vmkdc.ext.port1
vmkdc.ext.port2
vmkdc.ext.port3
vpostgres.int.server_port
vpxd.ext.port1
vpxd.ext.port2
vpxd.int.sdk-port
vpxd.int.sdk-tunnel-port
vsan-observer.ext.port1
vsm.int.http
vsm.int.https
vsphere-client.ext.port1
workflow.int.jmx-port
workflow.int.service-port
workflow.int.vapi-port

Easily automate ESXi 6.0 Active Directory join using domainjoin-cli

04.06.2015 by William Lam // 9 Comments

A nice little enhancement that I recently came across in ESXi 6.0 is the inclusion of the Likewise utility called domainjoin-cli which allows you to join a system to an Active Directory Domain. Previously, if you wanted to automate the process of joining an ESXi host to an Active Directory Domain, you had to either manually configure it using the vSphere Web/Client, using Host Profiles or creating an external script using the vSphere APIs.

All of these options were mostly executed during the post-provisioning process and if you wanted to include Active Directory configuration as part of the provisioning process, you may have had to resort to something like calling into the vSphere MOB within a Kickstart script as I had shown back in 2011 in this article here. The solution I came up with was not ideal but it worked for those that did not want to have additional steps after initial provisioning.

With the domainjoin-cli utility now included in the ESXi Shell of ESXi 6.0, you easily automate the joining an Active Directory Domain with just a couple of lines added to your Kickstart or provisioning scripts. Before you can use the command-line utility, you will need to ensure the Likewise Service Manager Daemon is running by running the following two commands which will start the service and also ensure the service automatically starts up:

/etc/init.d/lwsmd start
chkconfig lwsmd on

Next, to join to your Active Directory Domain, you will need to specify the following 3 parameters:

join - Specifying the operation is a join versus a leave
AD Domain Name - Active Directory Domain to join
AD Username - Active Directory username to join to the domain
AD Password - Active Directory password to join to the domain (optional as you will be prompted if it is not specified)

Here is an example of what the command looks like joining my Active Directory Domain in my lab:

/usr/lib/vmware/likewise/bin/domainjoin-cli join primp-industries.com administrator [PASSWORD]

You should see a success message if the ESXi host was successfully joined to the Active Directory Domain and you will want to reboot your ESXi host for the changes to take full effect. This is definitely a simpler method to include into an ESXi Kickstart script to automate the joining of an Active Directory Domain and hopefully you will find this handy when using ESXi 6.0.