Yellow Bricks

by Duncan Epping

Server

VirtualCenter 2.5 Update 3 may fail to start after upgrade

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I just wanted to point you guys out to the following:

Issue: After attempting to upgrade to VirtualCenter 2.5 Update 3 using the VirtualCenter Update Wizard, and not the VMware Unified Installer, the VirtualCenter service may fail to start. The issue is caused by an incomplete update of the database information for VirtualCenter resulting in incorrect database versioning, which is verified, and required to be correct, by the VirtualCenter service upon startup.

I’m not gonna post the answer to this problem, cause the article might change over the next day and than this info will be outdated and misleading. So check this KB article for more info.

Release notes VC U3

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There seems to be an incorrect advanced option in VC U3.

HA network compliance check
During the configuration of HA in VirtualCenter 2.5 Update 2, the Task & Events tabs might display the following error message and recommendation:
HA agent on <esxhostname> in cluster <clustername> in <datacenter> has an error Incompatible HA Network:
Consider using the Advanced Cluster Settings das.allowNetwork to control network usage.
Starting with VirtualCenter 2.5 Update 2, HA has an enhanced network compliance check to increase cluster reliability. This enhanced network compliance check helps to ensure correct cluster-wide heartbeat network paths. VirtualCenter 2.5 Update 3 allows you to bypass this check to prevent HA configuration problems. To bypass the check, add das.bypassNetworkVerification=yes to the HA advanced settings.

The described option should actually be “das.bypassNetCompatCheck with the values  “true” or “false. So keep this in mind!!!

Deploying the VMware Infrastructure

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Two months ago I blogged about an upcoming book! This book was written by John Arrasjid(VMware), Daniel Conde(VMware), Karthik Balachandran(VMware), Gary Lamb(INX) and Steve Kaplan(INX) and released during VMworld.

It was up for sale during VMworld and they did a great job cause they ranked 4th on the top selling books list at VMworld. John was so kind so send me a copy of the book and I managed to read it completely today. The fact that I read it completely today says something about the size of the book. Deploying the VMware Infrastucture holds 86 pages and is number 18 in the “Short Topics in System Administration” series by Usenix/SAGE.

This book isn’t like most VMware books out today. Most books are heavily technical and don’t talk about when to use which feature or product. This book is for those relativately new to virtualization and are in need of a guideline to write or come up with deployment strategies and use cases. Although I don’t consider myself a “newbie” I thought it was still useful to read cause it gives a nice clear overview in layman’s terms. I can imagine managers and architects also use this book to fresh up on their virtualization knowledge.

The structure of the book is good, starting out with an Intro on Virtualization and going from the benefits in terms of Capital Expense, ROI and TCO to Advanced Capabilities like HA and DRS. I can’t think of a single thing that’s left out that should have been in these 86 pages. So if you’re looking for a general guideline or writing a deployment plan than this book should be on your “must have” list.

You can find more info on the website of SAGE about the book and purchase it over there or here.

Update: HA Advanced Options

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A while back I wrote down all the HA advanced options. With VirtualCenter 2.5 Update 3(and the ESX patch that came with it) VMware added another extra advanced options, this is the complete list:

  • das.failuredetectiontime – Amount of milliseconds, timeout time for isolation response action(with a default of 15000 milliseconds).
  • das.isolationaddress[x] – IP adres the ESX hosts uses for it’s heartbeat, where [x] = 0-9. It will use the default gateway by default.
  • das.usedefaultisolationaddress – Value can be true or false and needs to be set in case the default gateway, which is the default isolation address shouldn’t be used for this purpose.
  • das.poweroffonisolation – Values are False or True, this is for setting the isolation response. Default a VM will be powered off.
  • das.vmMemoryMinMB – Higher values will reserve more space for failovers.
  • das.vmCpuMinMHz – Higher values will reserve more space for failovers.
  • das.defaultfailoverhost – Value is a hostname, this host will be the primary failover host.
  • das.failuredetectioninterval – Changes the heartbeat interval among HA hosts. By default, this occurs every second (1000 milliseconds).
  • das.allowVmotionNetworks – Allows a NIC that is used for VMotion networks to be
  • considered for VMware HA usage. This permits a host to have only one NIC configured for management and VMotion combined.
  • das.allowNetwork[x] – Enables the use of port group names to control the networks used for VMware HA, where [x] = 0 – ?. You can set the value to be ʺService Console 2ʺ or ʺManagement Networkʺ to use (only) the networks associated with those port group names in the networking configuration.
  • das.isolationShutdownTimeout – Shutdown time out for the isolation response “Shutdown VM”, default is 300 seconds. In other words, if a VM isn’t shutdown clean when isolation response occured it’s being powered off after 300 seconds.
  • das.bypassNetCompatCheck – Disable the “compatible network” check for HA that was introducedwith Update 2. Default value is “false”, setting it to “true” disables the check.Virtual Machine Monitoring HA advanced options
  • das.failureInterval = The polling interval for failures. Default value is 30.
  • das.maxFailureWindows = Minimum amount of seconds between failure. Default value is 3600 seconds, if VM fails within 3600 seconds VM HA doesn’t restart the machine.
  • das.maxFailures = Maximum amount of VM failures, if the amount is reached VM HA doesn’t restart the machine automatically. Default value is 3.
  • das.minUptime = The minimum uptime in seconds before VM HA starts polling. The default value is 120 seconds.

VirtualCenter 2.5 Update 3 and HA networks

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I wrote about a new patch for ESX(i) 3.5 yesterday and the fact that VirtualCenter 3.5 Update 3 was mentioned. Well today VirtualCenter 2.5 Update 3 has been released! You can pick it up here.

I think the most important fixes are the ones for HA. With Update 2 VM started checking the subnets of the heartbeat network for HA. If these weren’t compatible than HA bailed out. With Update 3 a new advanced option has been introduced ,”das.bypassNetworkVerification”. When this setting is set to “true” the Network compatibility check isn’t done and thus it’s possible to have an incompatible but routable HA heartbeat network.

Another important one is that as of U3 it’s possible again to delete HA advanced options, this problem was introduced in U2 and has been fixed.

An error that was also much talked about on the VMTN forum was the fact that VM’s weren’t vmotioned when maintenance mode was entered even if the admision control was disabled. This error has also been fixed.

These are three most important fixes in U3 in my opinion. Be sure to update and read the release notes for more info and fixes. Please not that the plugins for Update Manager and Converter has also been updated.