Yellow Bricks

by Duncan Epping

scripts

NFS based automated installs of ESX 4

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Just something I noticed today while testing an automated install from NFS. The arguments I pass to the installer are:

initrd=initrd.img mem=512m ksdevice=vmnic1 ip=192.168.1.123 netmask=255.255.255.0 gateway=192.168.1.1 ks=nfs://192.168.1.10:/nfs/install/ks.cfg quiet

Let’s focus on the part that’s incorrect, with ESX 3 the following bit(part of the bootstrap above) would work:

ks=nfs://192.168.1.10:/nfs/install/ks.cfg

As of ESX 4 this doesn’t work anymore, and when I do an “alt-f2” and go to /var/log and check the esx-installer.log file it shows the following error:

mount: 192.168.1.10::nfs/install failed, reason given by server: Permission denied

After checking the permissions on my NFS share 4 times I was pretty certain that this could not cause this issue. After trying some various combinations I noticed that the format of the string for “ks” has changed. As of ESX 4 you can’t use the second colon(:) anymore. So the correct format is:

ks=nfs://192.168.1.10/nfs/install/ks.cfg

I still receive a warning but the installer does continue. If anyone knows why the following message is displayed please speak up:

No COS NICs have been added by the user

Network loss after HA initiated failover

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I had a discussion with one of my readers last week and just read this post on the VMTN community which triggered this article.

When you create a highly available environment take into account that you will need to have enough vSwitch ports available when a failover needs to occur. By default a vSwitch will be created with 56 ports and in general this is sufficient for most environments. However when two of your hosts fail in a 10 host cluster you might end up with 60 or more VMs running on a single host. If this would happen several VMs would not have a vSwitch port assigned.

The most commonly used command when creating an automated build procedure probably is:

esxcfg-vswitch -a vSwitch1

This would result in a vSwitch named “vSwitch1” with the default amount of 56 ports. Now it is just as easy to set it up with 128 ports for instance:

esxcfg-vswitch -a vSwitch1:128

Always design for a worst case scenario. Also be aware of the overhead, some ports are reserved for internal usage. You might want to factor in some additional ports for this reason as for instance in the example above you will have 120 ports available for your VMs and not the 128 you specified.

VMware vSphere Health Check Report v4.0.0 by @lamw

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William Lam just released version 4 of his Health Check Report. I guess I can talk about it for hours but the sample report that William provides says more in just a few clicks than I can in 1000 words. Below you can find an outtake from the release notes. I clipped it as it was too long, but you can find the complete info here. Make sure this script is part of your standard toolkit as it will most definitely come in handy! Highly recommended.

This script generates a health check report similar to that of vmwareHealthCheckScript but for the new vSphere release of VMware ESX(i) 4.x and VMware vCenter 4.x and it’s managed entities. User’s can now fully customize the report based on the categories that are of importance to their operating environment, including selecting specific set of ESX(i) hosts and/or Virtual Machines.

The script reports on the following:

  • New Report is now completely modular in which categories to display via a configuration file
  • New Ability to specify specific ESX/ESXi host to query
  • New Ability to specify specific Virtual Mchines to query
  • New vCenter HA Advanced Runtime information
  • New vCenter HA Configuration (primary/secondary and node states)
  • New vCenter HA Advanced Configurations
  • New vCenter DRS Advanced Runtime information
  • New ESX/ESXi IP/HOSTNAME of vCenter Management IP
  • New ESX/ESXi Newly improved Hardware and System Health Stuats information
  • New ESX/ESXi Advanced Configurations
  • New ESX/ESXi NUMA information
  • New VM UUID,Bootime,Resource Statistics, Fault Tolerance, Thin provisioned and NPIV information

    • Win an Apple iPad for you and your friends!

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    This is just a reminder. The ESXi scripting contest is still running.  Make sure you enter the competition. So far not many people have so chances of winning are pretty big!

    VMware challenges you to build the best, most creative ESXi management scripts possible. The goal of the ScriptoMania contest is to help our wider community adopt ESXi by providing useful, fun and powerful scripts to manage the ESXi platform. The best part is that we give our winners bragging rights and we put some hard cold cash in your pockets. Are you up to the challenge?

    Contest Overview:

    vSphere Quick Start Guide – PowerCLI and PDF

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    Alan Renouf posted an article on the vSphere Quick Start Guide we recently wrote which triggered this article. First let me quote from Alan’s article:

    I was responsible for adding all the PowerCLI throughout the book, basically if something is explained and there is an easy way to do it in PowerCLI, we have added a code reference, this enables you to see how much is covered by PowerCLI and also how easy it actually is.

    In writing the PowerCLI areas I didn’t actually realise how many we had put in until the book was completed and I extracted them all into a nice zip file which can be downloaded and used from here: http://www.yellow-bricks.com/wp-content/uploads/quickstartguide.zip

    All in all there are 67 scripts, now obviously if you want to know more information about these scripts and exactly where they fit in you will need to buy the book.

    Download these scripts as they will definitely help you manage your environment better and more consistent. Secondly they will help you learn Powershell/PowerCLI faster, especially if you also own the book. Which is the second part of this post, the book… it’s available in print via Amazon and Lulu. But also available as a PDF via Lulu. You can find the links below, but keep in mind that depending on shipping costs sometimes the US one might be cheaper. Let me also be crystal clear about the PDF, it’s a separate item. If you want the PDF you will need to order it. We do however have added it to our “must haves” for the next book, we hope we will be able to offer a printed and pdf version in one package by then.

    Anyway, close to 2000 copies have been sold by now. Amazon has books on stock which should make a fast delivery possible.

    Amazon – US $15.99
    Lulu – Europe: € 14.29
    Lulu – PDF: €7.14 / $9.99