Yellow Bricks

by Duncan Epping

esxi

Bluebear’s Kodiak, what’s all the fuss about…

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Kodiak is a cross platform application(Windows, Linux, Mac) with which you can manage your virtual environment. Why would one want to use this instead of the VIC? Well you can run it from your Linux box without having to run a VM. What do you need? Well I tested it with Ubuntu and Windows and you should start with installing Adobe Air. For Windows it’s pretty straighton, but I couldn’t even find a download link for Ubuntu. After a couple of seconds on Google I found this Howto. It gave me a link and provided me with the info needed to install, although chmod and running the executable is pretty straight forward.

After the installation there was still the AIR package left to install that Bluebear provided. So I started Adobe Air, pointed towards the air package and that’s about it. It installed within a few minutes and I was ready to go.

So I wanted to do some extensive testing with Bluebear’s Kodiak and started out with Windows. Well after a couple of minutes all the “certificate” related messages started to irritate me so I quit with the Windows version and went straight on to Ubuntu. Luckily Ubuntu gave me the option to select “Always” when the same certificate message was dropped. (There’s a workaround for the certificate problem by the way, check this article)

So the next screen was sort of an inventory, the ESX host with it’s vSwitch and the VM attached to it. Reminds me a lot of the VMware maps functionality. But the cool thing about the map is that you can drag, drop and rotate in 3D. So as you can see in the screen below there’s a VM running…

So now what, what can we do with Kodiak? Well to be honest, not that much at this moment. Power Off and Power On a VM works fine, but that’s about it for now. I can’t edit any config settings, I can’t do vmotion, I can’t add or remove a VM, I can open a console to the VM but there’s no response or whatsoever. The interface looks cool, but like Carlo said in his article, what will it look like when you’ve got over a dozen VM’s. The arcs around the VM represent the current CPU / MEM resource usage by the way. I opened up a couple more windows and this is what it looked like:

Is this tool worth checking out? I do think so, there’s not much you can do with it at this point but it’s got a nice “look and feel” that seems to be promissing for the future. Let’s hope these guys can incorporate some new functionality a.s.a.p. I think it will be really useful for the SMB’s out there that do not have a VirtualCenter server but do have more than 1 ESX(i) host. And the Linux/Mac users, although with the new VMware Workstation it’s possible to run the VirtualCenter client as a seamless app.

So for the bluebear people reading this, I would like to be able to edit VM config’s for starters and a couple of power on / power off / restart buttons at the top of the console would be handy.

Release notes:
Manual Installation for Windows
Download and install Adobe Air for Windows if you don’t already have it on your computer
Download the Kodiak Air Package
Locate the downloaded Air file and run it, the Air installer should automatically begin
Release Notes
Kodiak Beta 0.0.1 Release Notes:

Thanks for downloading Kodiak! Kodiak is beta software, and no functionality is guaranteed, and is all subject to change.

We’ve really only validated functionality on Mac platforms. Our testing on Windows & Linux has been limited, but we haven’t encountered any problems. Your mileage may vary.

We’re completely interested in your feedback.

Here’s a quick idea of Kodiak usage, subject to change.

By default, Kodiak will open to a login screen. Enter your server address, your username/password, and off you go.

Kodiak will come up to a network map display, with a small server tab on the left-hand side of the screen. Double-clicking this tab will expand it into a list where you can view your VMs/Virtual switches/Resource Pools/Datastores, and for VMs, you’ll be able to power a VM on/off, and get to a console.

We added (today) a console dock on the right hand side where you can dock your consoles.

Kodiak’s map (in the background) is completely interactive, and will display resource usage information that’s updated on the fly. Click it, drag it, select it, poke it, launch consoles from it!

To use the map: Left click will select an individual VM. Left click + drag selects a group of VMs/hosts/networks Right Click + drag will pan the map around. Right Click + shift + drag will rotate the map in 3D.

To connect to a new server with kodiak, click the top-level “Connections” button that you see up in the upper-left hand corner, then click the “new” button you see there.

This will bring you to a new login screen. (FYI, Kodiak will keep track of your server names so you don’t have to type them in all the time.) Log in, and Kodiak will return your server into a new tab.

Currently, Kodiak WILL connect to a Virtual Center server, but we cannot guarantee that it will find all available hosts/VMs/resources.

If anyone wants an invite to the beta program than just drop your email here, or send me your email on duncan[@]yellow-bricks.com and I will hook you up. It’s still limited so be quick!

I’m all out. So you guys should help each other… over 60 invites within 24 hours. Bluebear is hot!

Back to business again, patches!!

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So it’s back to business again after a couple of crazy days during VMworld. All the blogs can return to their normal “technical” writing.

VMware just released a whole bunch of patches for ESX(i) 3.5, so for you SysAdmins it’s also back to work again. You can find them here.

There’s also a new release for VMware’s Lab Manager available, version 3.0 Patch 1. There’s a KB article about this patch release, read it before you run it.

Virtual Infrastructure Management Assistant aka VIMA

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I was just catching up and read this blog from Scott about managing ESXin a COS-less environment. The most interesting part of this blog is the following:

The subject of deployment is a key issue when we think about losing the Service Console. One approach to handling these issues is deploying physical machines; another would be to deploy virtual machines to handle these tasks. Partners could wrap up the agents that would typically be deployed in the Service Console as a virtual appliance, but then users could end up with numerous virtual appliances. What if VMware were to provide a virtual infrastructure management appliance? That’s what VIMA (Virtual Infrastructure Management Assistant) is.

VIMA is a virtual appliance packaged as OVF and is distributed, maintained, and supported by VMware. This is downloaded and installed by the customer according to their management procedures. This will be a well-known deployment environment that partners can rely upon being present. This will be a 64-bit Linux distribution with VMware Tools, VI Perl Toolkit, the Remote CLI (now known as the VI CLI), and a JRE already present. VIMA can be patched for updates, and it allows you to manage one or more VMware ESX hosts directly or through VirtualCenter. VIMA can enable agents to authenticate themselves, and VIMA will rotate its passwords on the hosts. Additionally, sample code and documentation will be available for programming applications to work in VIMA.

Anyone interested in VIMA can e-mail vima_request@vmware.com and request access to pre-GA versions of VIMA. VIMA is expected for general release in the fourth quarter of this year. All VIMA releases will work with both ESX and ESXi

Read the full article for more info, but this is again an exciting addition to the portfolio. Having an virtual appliance which can contain agents and communicate with your vCenter Server and your ESX(i) host is a real benefit. You can keep the number of agents down to a minimum with the same flexibility and usability.

Weird problems with enabling HA on ESXi

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A couple of days ago an ex-colleague phoned me about a weird problem with enabling HA in a ESXi cluster. The following errors occurred:

  1. Configuration of host IP address is inconsistent on host : address resolved to Host misconfigured. IP address of not found on local interfaces
  2. cmd addnode failed for primary node: Internal AAM Error – agent could not start

So the first error(1.) was reported by esxhost01 and the second(2.) by esxhost02.

Let’s start with esxhost01.

So this customer had a VMotion and Management portgroup on two seperate vSwitches. This error seems to indicate that during the configuration HA is using the VMotion portgroup. These hosts have been added to VC with the management portgroup IP(IP+Name also in dns). So how do I make sure that HA isn’t using the VMotion network for HA, it’s easy go to your cluster and open up the advanced options for HA and add the following key with the value false:

  • das.allowVmotionNetworks=false

In other words, don’t use the VMotion network for the HA heartbeat. The weird thing in this case is that it shouldn’t use the VMotion network by default so there seems to be a glitch here…

So now for the second problem.

The HA(AAM) agent could not start. So just to make sure that the USB key wasn’t corrupt the key was recreated. But still this error occurred. As some of you might now, that if you want to use HA with a disk less server you will need to create a userworld swap on the SAN. (Read this KB for more info on that one…) So just to make sure that the swap wasn’t causing this problem the directory was cleaned out and and HA was reconfigured. When the directory was emptied the HA agent installed without any problem at all…

  • When reinstalling ESXi or when strange HA errors occur clean up the userworld swap!

Thanks goes out to Remco for providing me with the additional details!

Another day…

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And more cool stuff announced. I know I have to stay objective and try not to sound like a cheerleader… but man did you see the latest announcements? It’s hard not to get excited, it’s hard not to be enthusiastic, the hell with it I’m not even gonna try it.

And why not one might ask? Well because VMware just announced the fact that vCenter Server will be released as a linux virtual appliance in the future and the vCenter client will be cross platform available. So all you linux minded or mac minded sysadmins out there, keep an eye out for the beta program. This is also a great reason for me to ditch XP on my laptop and start installing Ubuntu, well as soon as it’s available that is! But is definitely one of the best announcements this week in my opinion. I’ve been asked this question, when will VC (client) be available for linux, very very often. Well I still can’t give an answer but it’s on the roadmap! Getting the MS requirement out of the Virtual Environment or should I say vCloud is important for a lot of customers and (most important) SysAdmins.

But that’s not it, the new “limitations” that Dr. Stephen Herrod announced today are overwhelming, 64 nodes in a cluster, 4096 processor cores and 64 TB of RAM. So my question is … what about the current 2TB limitation for LUN’s. Let’s hope that one will be gone soon… And let’s hope VMFS also get’s a make over, no that it’s not functioning at the moment but a VMFS resize option would be nice for instance. Well we will just have to wait and see I guess. But it would fit into the new vStorage initiative. Which, as Chad explained, is also an API where hardware vendors can take advantage off! Like for instance the vCenter SAN Snapshot integration that NetApp, Dell/EQL and EMC announced yesterday.

Well I can rewrite Scott’s entire blog but that just isn’t very useful… So click here and read one of the most extensive live blogs on the VMworld Day 2 Keynote. These were just some random thoughts, I’m going for a walk, just to clear up my mind… a lot of information in a short amount of time.