Yellow Bricks

by Duncan Epping

Scripting

ESX Deployment Appliance

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A couple of weeks ago I was working on a project together with a consultant from PQR, Herco aka Brugh. He told me about a Virtual Appliance he created called “EDA”. It took a couple of minutes before I knew what he was talking about… ESX Deployment Appliance. I’ve played around with it for a while about half a year ago but because we were actively using UDA(ultimate deployment appliance) I didn’t had much time to actually get used to it and introduce it to my colleagues.

During the project Herco showed me what he had actually created and how easy it was to deploy ESX with his appliance. I don’t think there’s a reason to tell you guys again why you need to do a scripted install. EDA is a PXE Boot Virtual Appliance build on JeOS. In other words, boot your ESX installer / iso via the PXE appliance. So no need for burning modified iso’s or hosting your scripts on a random webserver. EDA does all of that for you. Because JeOS was used the appliance is small and doesn’t contain any slack.

The cool thing about EDA compared to UDA is that EDA is specifically created for ESX. It contains a lot of sample code which will make your life a lot easier when creating scripts. EDA also works a lot more intuitive than UDA in my opinion, the GUI looks solid. Besides that, EDA is actively being developed and UDA seems to have died.

If you want to have a better understanding of what EDA is take a look at this video that Herco made:

Herco also started a topic on the VMTN forums, if you’ve got any questions contact him via the forums. He usually responds very quick. And if you’ve got good tips / scripts / modification he will look into it and might integrate it with the new upcoming version. For a short guide on howto install and using the appliance check Herco’s blog. Herco told me that there’s a new version coming up soon. Add his blog to your favorites and keep checking it.

By the way, Herco is also the guy who created the X-M0n0wall Virtual Appliance. His colleague Ruben Spruijt also wrote an article on EDA a couple of months ago, you can find read it here.

Add RDM Size info to VI Client using Powershell

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Hugo keeps on going writing and updating his powershell scripts! This time Hugo created a script that adds a custom field to your VC with RDM disk size info:

In the VMware VI Toolkit Communities, a request was made for a similar script that adds the total size of all Raw Device Mappings (RDMs) on a VM to a Custom Field in the VI Client.

Visit his article for the script and the complete blogpost. Don’t forget to download the updated versions of the other custom field related scripts.

Health Check tools I use

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A few days ago Scott Lowe asked me which tools I use to deliver a health check engagement. A health check is a standard VMware PSO engagement, a VMware Consultant will be on site to check the status of your environment and will draw up a report.

I personally use the following tools:

  • Health Check script by A.Mikkelsen → for a quick overview of the current situation and setup, small files and easy to carry around, runs from the Service Console.
  • VMware Health Analyzer Appliance → A linux appliance that can connect to your VC/ESX and analyze log files. At this point in time it’s only available for VMware Employees or Partners with access to Partner Central.
  • Powershell: Report into MS Word → Alan Renouf created this great reporting powershell scripts. It dumps info into a word document. (And i’ve heard he’s also working on a Visio export)
  • Powershell: Health Check Script → Create an html report with datastore, cpu, memory and snapshot info… and more.
  • RVTools → Gives a quick overview of current VM setup like snapshots, memory, cpu etc.
  • Common sense → I hardly encounter really huge problems, mainly decreased availability cause of choices made during implementation / design phase without following VMware’s guidelines. Use common sense is the best advise in this case and read the best practice documents and VMware’s collection of pdf’s!
  • And when there are some disturbing errors in one of the various log files you have the option to run it through one of the many toolkits we internally have.

I’m not using the following tools actively during engagements because of licensing but they can be very usefull in your enviroment:

Scripts, scripts, scripts… come and get them!

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I was just pointed out to this amazing topic on the VMTN Forums by William Lam and Tuan Duong. These guys created a whole bunch of scripts and decided to share them with the rest of the world:

My colleague (Tuan Duong) and I (William Lam) have been working on a virtualization/VDI deployment project over the last six months. The result of this work is a set of scripts that assist in provisioning and managing the server and lab environment for the Residential Networking Services (ResNet) at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

We took the approach of developing scripts that would be free in nature to support a variety of offerings that currently exist in the enterprise space. One such tool that we would like to share with the VMware community is our Linked Clones script that was developed at the beginning of the summer of 2008. This script functions similarly to the View Composer component in the recent release of VMware View 3 but with relatively relaxed requirements.

A description and more details of the Linked Clones script can be found at:

http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-9020

Another script that complements the Linked Clone’s script is our custom management script “*my-vmware-cmd*” which can be found at:

http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-9061

An example of our implementation of these scripts can be found at:

http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-9201

We also have other scripts and resources that have been consolidated onto a webpage and would like to share it:

http://www.engineering.ucsb.edu/~duonglt/vmware/

We hope that the community finds some of these scripts to be useful in aiding VI administrators to manage their virtual infrastructure and look forward to any feedback that is provided.

Thanks
William lamw and Tuan tlduong

Check these scripts out if you’re looking for a linked clone solution on a non View Composer environment. Their website also contains a bunch of scripts, tips and tricks. One that really stands out is the RDM script, believe me this is a must have for your toolkit:

Download: rdm.sh – 11/03/08
Compatiable with: ESX 3.5+ and ESXi

This script is used to locate all virtual machines that have an RDM mapping and provides the VMs Name, Hard Disk label shown on the VIC/VC, Datastore, LUN UUID, HBA/LUN, Compatibility Mode (Phys/Virt), DiskMode and Capacity.

Add Custom Fields to VI Client with Powershell Part 2!

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Yesterday I blogged about the Powershell script that Hugo Peeters created for adding a snapshot Column to your VI Client with Powershell. Hugo used a custom field to show this data and I wrote the following:

Some of you might say that this lacks the detail one would love to see within vCenter. Well knowing Hugo my guess it that this will evolve fast, and I expect some cool additions coming up.

Well I wasn’t expecting Hugo to be this quick, but he just blogged about four new additions:

Total Snapshot Size

The number of snapshots is quite interesting, but even more interesting, is the total size of the delta files all snapshots are occupying. They might be eating up all your precious SAN space. Plus, reverting to or committing a large snapshot is tricky. Add-VMSnapshotSize.ps1

Host Hardware Model

Want to see what models of hardware you are using in your datacenter? You could look at the summary tab of each host. Or run this script to add the info to the every Hosts tab in the VI Client. Select your Datacenter, select the Hosts tab and enjoy! Add-VMHostModel.ps1

Host ESX Version

Did you update all your ESX Servers to the latest version? Check it quickly using this script. Add-VMHostVersion.ps1

Host LUN Count

Last but certainly not least: are you sure every datastore you are using is available to all your ESX Servers? It is visible at a glance when you add the LUN Count to your VI Client! Add-VMHostLUNCount.ps1

So what can we expect in the future? I really don’t know… but my guess is that we can expect a lot more coming up over the next few days.

[update: if any of the links fail, here’s the source article.]