A couple of days ago I wrote about the problems with VST and the Intel Quad-port nics. I tested the work around, using “access ports” on the physical switch(EST, external switch tagging) and it seems that the problem is “solved”. A couple of hours ago VMware posted a knowledge base article about this problem, so if you are experiencing these problems keep track of this KB article!
3.0.x
VMware ESX healthcheck
One of the most useful scripts for ESX in my opinion is health_check.sh. This scripts generates an html file which contains a enormous amount of useful info on how the ESX host was installed. Besides that it contains 30 lines of the most important log files and for instance if there are snapshots and much much more. I just tested the script on ESX 3.5 and it still works great. The script is created by two guys of the Danish VMUG one of them is A. Mikkelsen, check his blog for more scripts! Be sure to check out this script, it’s worth it! By the way, you can schedule it and have the html emailed to you via the use of smtp_send.pl.
Intel quad-port nic and VST
This week I implemented a couple of Dell 2950 Servers which contained an Intel quad-port nic. The physical switch ports were setup as a trunk so I used VST(Virtual Switch Tagging). I combined the onboard Broadcom ports with the Intel quad-port nics to have the most redundant setup. When I started testing the HA and DRS functionality I noticed that not everything worked like expected. After some basic troubleshooting it seemed that about half of the packets going via the Intel quad-port nics got dropped. [Read more…] about Intel quad-port nic and VST
Howto: Sending html email from the service console
*** This article is from 2008, this does not work for ESXi, look at vCheck from Alan Renouf instead ***
When writing the “Checking the diskspace on your VMFS volumes” blog I assumed that most of you knew how to send an email from the service console. I received a bunch of emails from people who were interested in how to setup the html email functionality. Well, here it is:
A while back VMGuru.com hosted a script which enabled you to send email from the service console. I just browsed their site and it’s nowhere to be found. So I hosted it on my site, mind: I changed the script so that you are able to send HTML emails. [Read more…] about Howto: Sending html email from the service console
Checking the diskspace on your VMFS volumes
On a regular basis I noticed that people forget to monitor the free diskspace of their VMFS volumes. I created a script that can easily be scheduled with crontab and mailed with smtp_send. You can send it as an html based email if you setup MIME correctly. (For more info on how to set this up, check this blog) The script creates an html file with a table in which the necessary info is dumped, if a VMFS volume has less than 10% free space that specific line will be yellow and if it’s less than 5% than that line will be red… [Read more…] about Checking the diskspace on your VMFS volumes