Yellow Bricks

by Duncan Epping

Various

vCLS VMs not powering on, insufficient resources error

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This week I had someone internally me asking about a situation where vCLS VMs (learn more about vSphere Cluster Service here.) were not powering on and an error was thrown stating “insufficient resources”. I had seen this issue before at some point and I knew it had something to do with the VM version and EVC. The details of the error messages seem to support that. The UI showed the following on the “power on virtual machine” task:

Insufficient resources

And then when you would look at the details of the error you could see the following:

The target host does not support the virtual machine's current hardware requirements.

Or you could see:

Feature 'MWAIT' was absent, but must be present.

So how do you solve this problem? First of all, this could be two different problems. We solved it the following way, please note that the second option was just us fiddling around to get the VMs provisioned and powered-on, and this is not the official VMware procedure to get it working. I have reported this to the engineers to figure out why this happens, and to get it fixed. There are two options, please use Option 1, as this is a requirement for EVC and the recommended method when you see the “MWAIT” error:

Option 1:

Verify if “Monitor/MWAIT” is set to Enabled in the BIOS. If it is set to Disabled, then this is why the power-on fails. vCLS has per-VM EVC enabled on the VM.

If you can’t enable Monitor/MWAIT, then below is the procedure for disabling “per VM EVC” for the provisioned vCLS VMs.

Option 2:

  1. Upgrade the VM’s “Compatibility” version to at least “VM version 14” (right-click the VM)
  2. Click on the VM, click on the Configure tab and click on “VMware EVC”
  3. Click on “Edit” and click on “Yes” when you are informed to not make changes to the VM
  4. Disable “EVC”
  5. Repeat for the other vCLS VMs

I want to mention cosmin.gq, as it seems the issue (and resolution with regards to disabling EVC) was also reported on that blog, and considering they reported it in October already it only seems fair to mention them here also.

Virtual Events I will be presenting/speaking at the upcoming months

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The past year has been really strange for me. As you know a lot of time goes into speaking at events, or doing a series of customer meetings. Due to COVID that all rapidly changed in March of this year. Fortunately, it didn’t mean I was out of work, we had to figure some stuff out in the first few weeks, but quickly everyone shifted towards this virtual approach. We (Cormac, Frank, and I) have presented at some great events the past 8 months, and there are some very interesting events coming which I will be speaking at (some with Cormac and Frank, and some without them).

Even though many of these events are listed/advertized as regional events, as they are all virtual it means anyone can tune in. I wanted to share a few events I have planned before Christmas, which could be worth attending! In some cases my session is in Dutch, but I called that out in the list.

So if you are interesting in hearing about things like vSAN, Cloud Native Storage, vSphere, and much more, make sure to sign up for one of these events!

How to login to the vCLS VMs!?

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I was asked this question this week, how you can login to the vCLS VMs. Now before I share the video, I want to mention that I do not encourage people doing this, but as it is documented and supported I do want to provide a simple “how to” for how this works. If you want to login to the vCLS VM, maybe for troubleshooting if needed or for auditing, you can do so by SSH’ing first into your vCenter Server. When logged in to the vCenter Server you run the following command, which then returns the password, this will then allow you to login to the console of the vCLS VM. Again, I do not want to encourage you to do this. Either way, below you find the command for retrieving the password, and a short demo of me retrieving the password and logging in.

/usr/lib/vmware-wcp/decrypt_clustervm_pw.py

 

Virtual Events, my thoughts.

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Over the past 9 months, I have done more “zoom” sessions / “virtual events” than I have in the past 5 years. I have seen all the complaints from regular presenters (and attendees) about virtual events, and the flood storm of Zoom requests many have been getting, but personally I seem to be part of the other side of the spectrum as I thoroughly enjoy the virtual events. First and foremost, it helped to relieve stress. To the point where my family noticed a significant change in my mental state/wellbeing, not just the mental aspect, also the physical aspect. It is much easier to have a consistent diet and training regime when you don’t need to hop on a flight to go to an event every other week.

But not only that, I just like the virtual event format. Well, the format which Cormac, Frank, and I developed for our Virtual VMUG Roadshow. Also, the format of the Virtual TAM Roundtable sessions which Cormac and I have been presenting has worked really well. Now, don’t get me wrong. I always enjoyed going to events, having dinner with (new) friends, and talking to people at/during the event… but is it sustainable when you do 20+ events per year as a presenter? And is this model sustainable for attendees when employers are expecting more with less? Not really in my opinion, hence my preference for this virtual world. But that doesn’t answer the question of why I think it has worked for us very well, while it hasn’t worked as well for some others? [Read more…] about Virtual Events, my thoughts.

Alan Renouf, and his family, need your help. Please support/donate!

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Some of you may have spotted a tweet by Alan Renouf earlier this week, most of you have probably heard about the wildfires in California. If you haven’t, just do a google search… Or take a look at this devastating picture of Alan Renouf’s home:

Yes, on the left is the lovely house Alan and his family owned, on the right is what is left after he and the family had been evacuated due to the wildfires. Unfortunately, as you can see, the only thing that is left is ashes. As they were evacuated, in a rush, at the middle of the night they could barely take anything with them. This means they will need to buy a lot of stuff. You name it, they need it. And yes, of course they have insurance, but as we all know these things will take a significant amount of time and will not cover everything.

Now, we have probably all used some of Alan’s work at some point. His PowerCLI scripts (vCheck etc) have made all of our life’s easier, and if there’s ever a time to give back, this would be it.

One of the Renouf’s friends just created a Go Fund Me page, please consider donating, please share this blog and/or the Go Fund Me page!