Tag: ESXi

ESXi 6.0 to 6.5 Upgrade Failed

The Problem

I am currently running vCenter 6.5 with a mix of 6.0 and 6.5 clusters.  I uploaded the latest Dell customized ESXi 6.5 image to update manager, and had no issues updating my first cluster from 6.0 to 6.5.  In the past I have had some weird issues with update manager, but since 6.5 was integrated into vCenter it has been a lot more stable.  I then proceeded to migrate the next cluster to 6.5 and received this weird error.

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I then tried to mount the ISO to the host and install it that way, but now I get a much more detailed error.

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The Solution

  1.  SSH into the host and run the following command to see list of installed VIB’s

esxcli software vib list

2. Remove the conflicting VIB.

esxcli software vib remove –vibname=scsi-mpt3sas

3. Reboot!

Now that the conflicting VIB has been removed you can proceed with installing the updates.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Strange Issues With Microsoft Clustering and ESXi

I have some legacy applications that require Microsoft Clustering which are running on ESXi 6.0.  Using Microsoft Clustering on top of VMware does not give you many benefits.  Things like HA and moving workloads across nodes is already available using virtualization.  What clustering does do is create more places for things to break and give you downtime.  Really the only benefit I see with clustering in a virtualized environment is the ability to restart a server for system updates.

RDM’s are required for using Microsoft Clustering.  RDM “Raw Device Map” gives the VM control of the LUN such as it was directly connected to it. To set this up you need to add a second SCSI controller and set it to physical mode.  Each disk must then share the same SCSI controller settings for every VM in the cluster. The negative side to doing this is that you lose such features as snapshot and vmotion.  When using RDM’s with physical mode you should treat those VM’s as if they were physical hosts.

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The problem occurred when one of the clustered nodes was rebooted.  The node never came back online, and when checking the console it looked like the Windows OS was gone.  Powered off the VM and removed the mapped RDM’s.  When powering on the VM Windows booted up fine.  I Found that very strange so powered it off again and added the drives back.  That is when  I got the error invalid device backing.  VMware KB references the issue, and it basically says there is an issue with inconsistent LUN’s The only problem was I did have have consistent LUN’s.  I put in a ticket with GSS, and the first level support was not able to help.  They had to get a storage expert to help out. He quickly found this issue which was the LUN ID had changed. I am not sure how that occurred, but it was not anything I could change  When adding the drives in the VM’s the config it makes a mapping from the VM to the LUN.  When the LUN ID changed the mapping did not.  The only fix was to remove the RDM’s from all VM’s in that cluster and then add them back.

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2 Node vSAN Design for a Remote Site

I was recently asked to design a solution for a remote site.  The requirements were it had to be cheap, run a few virtual machines, fail over capability and have shared storage The workloads are going to be very light so there is no need for powerful servers.  I had a few options with this.  Technically one server could run the entire workload, but that does not allow for any failure so I needed at least two servers.  This would provide a fail over capacity of only 1.  Bare minimum but acceptable for this use case.  These two servers would need some kind of shared storage. One option would be using a small storage array such as the DELEMC VNXe.  I have used these previously, and they were a great solution for the time, but the times are changing and I think hyperconvergence is the future.  With vSAN 6.5 there were a lot of new features that it would make it a perfect solution.

Previously with any Hyperconvereged solution you needed 3 nodes.  3 nodes are used to check for everything being online.  If 1 out of the 3 nodes goes down the other two nodes can check with each other to verify that the node actually went down.  To get away with using 2 nodes you use an external witness.  This external witness could run on a separate server on the site or at the main data center.

With vSAN you have one SSD per Disk Group (DG) to be used for cache.  Since this had to be a cheap solution my area on constraint was cost, and everything had to be a minimal design to get the job done.  Each server would have 1 DG with an 800GB SSD and 4 4TB 7.2k HHD.  This allowed for FTT=1 or only 1 host could be lost.  There is some risk with this design.  There is always a chance that in a maintenance situation one of the host would be in maintenance mode, and  this would leave a single point of failure.  Because there would only be 1 DG available on the one online host, but this is an acceptable risk for the constraint of cost.

One of my favorite new features with 6.5 is direct connect.  With this you can now directly connect two hosts to each other instead of running through a switch.  Each of these server have 2 1GB ports and 2 10GB ports. The remote site switch infrastructure is only 1GB.  Now 1GB can be a serious limitation for storage, and I wanted to avoid that.  With direct connect you can directly connect the two host to each other, and all storage traffic would then go across that link.  Leaving the 1GB ports to be used by the VM traffic.

As you can tell this is an bare minimum design for vSAN and hyperconvergence.  It does meet all the requirements such as Cost, Availability, Share Storage.  In the event of a host going down HA can restart all the VM’s on the second node providing minimal downtime.  This provides the optimal solution for the requirements of the design.

 

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Set NTP on all host in vCenter

Here is a Powershell script that will set NTP on all the ESX host connected to your vCenter.

First connect to the vCenter using Connect-VIserver then run the following code.

 

#Get Host
write-host “Gathering ESX Host”
$esx = get-vmhost

#Configure NTP server
write-host “configuring NTP”
Add-VmHostNtpServer -VMHost $esx -NtpServer 10.10.16.220

#Allow NTP queries outbound through the firewall
wrtie-host “Setting Firewall Permissions”
Get-VMHostFirewallException -VMHost $esx | where {$_.Name -eq “NTP client”} | Set-VMHostFirewallException -Enabled:$true

#Start NTP client service and set to automatic
write-host “Starting NTP service”
Get-VmHostService -VMHost $esx | Where-Object {$_.key -eq “ntpd”} | Start-VMHostService
Get-VmHostService -VMHost $esx | Where-Object {$_.key -eq “ntpd”} | Set-VMHostService -policy “automatic”

 

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Configuring ESXi 6 (vSphere Setup Part 2)

This is part 2 of a series on setting up vSphere.  If you missed the first part you can find it here.

Now that you have installed ESXi 6 it is time to start configuring.

  1. Once the host reboots you will be greeted with this screen.  Press F2 to go to the setup screen where you will login with root and the password you provided earlier.2016-06-03 14_17_49-OFFICE - TeamViewer - Free license (non-commercial use only)2016-06-03 14_19_16-OFFICE - TeamViewer - Free license (non-commercial use only)

 

2. Now its time to configure the management network. Go to Configure Management Network and then to Network Adapters.

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3. Make sure all the NIC’s you want to use for management are selected.  Since this is in an nested lab I only have one to use.

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4. Now for a test lab this option is not really needed, but here is where you can configure the VLAN for the management network.

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5. Set the IP to static and fill in the appropriate IP information for your environment.  Unless you want to you use it is best to disable IP6.

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6. Set the appropriate DNS  and hostname information.

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7. Setup the custon DNS suffix which would be your domain name.

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8.  Now its time to reboot the host so all of the configuration can take affect.

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In part three of setting up ESXi I will go over the deployment of the VCSA.

 

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Installing ESXi on Bare Metal (vSphere Setup Part 1)

Installing ESXi is a simple and straight forward process, but there are a few things you need to keep in mind.  The hardware compatibility list is very important.  You should always make sure your hardware is on it if you are using it in an production environment. In a test environment the setup will probably work, but there could always be some issues you may encounter.

We will cover the following items.

  • Check hardware compatibility
  • Download the ESXi image
  • Create bootable image
  • Install
  • Configure

Hardware Compatibility

  1. Check for hardware compatibility here.  If your system is not listed and your using this for test  then have no fear.  You will probably be able to install and run everything without and issues.

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2. Go into the BIOS and make sure the CPU virtualization support is turned on.

Download ESXi

  1. Download ESXi from the VMware website.

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Once you have the ISO you can burn it to a CD or create a bootable USB drive.  If you want to create a bootable USB drive Rufus works really well for that.

Installing ESXi

  1. Choose the ESXi installer or wait for it to default to that.

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2.  You will see two different progress screens.

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3. Press enter then F11.

4. Choose location to install it.

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5. Choose language

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6. Choose password

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7. It will not scan your system for its hardware.

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8. Press F11 to insall.

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9. Wait for the progress bar.

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10. Press enter to reboot.

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Now ESXi is installed.  In my next post I will show how to setup the configuration on a ESXi host.

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Adding Power Path 6 to an ESX 6 ISO

I am currently working on migrating all my ESXi host from 5.5 to 6.  I need Power Path to be installed on all these host. The easiest way to do this is to add the Power Path VIB directly into the ISO.  I knew this could be done, but was not sure how to.  I tried searching for an easy way to do this, but could not find any simple guides.  Here is the quick and simple way to add a VIB to and ESXi ISO.

First you should have downloaded your ESXi ISO.  I downloaded the Dell Custom ESXi offline bundle zip. It already contains all the Dell drivers I need and the Dell Open Manage software to help me monitor the hardware.  You need the ZIP and not the ISO to create this image. “Still working on the images.  Click to enlarge them.”

  • First add the Dell ESXi zip. Add-EsxSoftwareDepot “C:\file location” step one
  • Add the PowerPath zip Add-EsxSoftwareDepot “C:\file location”step 2
  • Clone the Dell image this has to be done because it is already an customized image.  (Not sure about the Acceptance Level.  Anyone have any insight on this?) New-EsxImageProfile -CloneProfile Dell-ESXi-6.0.0-2494585-A00 -Name dellesx6withpp -AcceptanceLevel PartnerSupported Step 3
  • Now its time to add the VIB. This will show all the packages from EMC  Get-esxSoftwarePackage | Where-Object Vender -eq “EMC”  Step 4
  • Now add the software package to the Image Profile.  You need all 3 packages. Add-ESxSoftwarePackage
  • step 5
  • Now you can export the image profile to a ISO Export-EsxImageProfile -ImageProfile dellesx6withpp -ExportToIso -FilePath ‘C:\ESX 6 Custom Image\dellesx6withpp.iso’ steap 6
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