Yellow Bricks

by Duncan Epping

tool

Cool Tool Update: RVTools 3.0

· ·

When I was enjoying some family time yesterday Eric Sloof stole my usual RVTools scoop. Nevertheless I believe it is worth publishing this as RVTools is one of the most valuable free non-vendor tools out there. Rob de Veij released a major version of RVTools. There are couple of major improvements in this version and hence the reason it took Rob slightly longer than expected to come with this update.

Here are the improvements in RVTools 3.0:

  • Pass-through authentication implemented. Allows you to use your logged on Windows credentials to automatically logon.
  • All numeric columns are now formated to make it more readable.
  • On vInfo the columns Commited, Uncommited, Shared and on vSnapshot the column size are now formated in MBs instead of bytes.
  • New tabpage created with service console and VMKernel information.
  • Now using vSphere Web Services SDK 4.1 which supports the new features available in vSphere 4.1
  • Export to csv file now uses Windows regional separator
  • Using NPOI to make it possible to write directly to xls files without the need for a installed Excel version on the system.
  • New menu function to write all information to one excel workbook with for each tabpage a new worksheet.
  • New command line options. Check the documentation!

Download it now,

Cool Tool: vmktree

· ·

Ever since ESX 2.5 I have always been looking for cool free tools to monitor my hosts. I guess one of the oldest free tools out there is vmktree. Especially in the 2.x timeframe vmktree helped me out solving some weird performance issues. Back then vmktree was still dependent on vmkusage (who remembers that one?) but as of ESX 3.0 vmktree utilizes the api to gather the details needed to plot the graphs.

I lost track of vmktree for a while but when I noticed the announcement this week that 0.4.1 was released I decided to give it a spin again. I logged into my vSphere Management Appliance (vMA) and downloaded vmktree with wget. Installed it following the procedures mentioned in the announcement and literally minutes later I could see the first values coming in. To make sure I had something to show you guys I added a limit of 200MB on a virtual machine. As you know I love esxtop but esxtop are still just “dry numbers” which makes it difficult to see a trend. As you can see in the following screenshot, vmktree makes this trend pretty obvious. (Balloon driver is really active and the size of the balloon is increasing._

Besides memory, of course vmktree has more to offer on both per VM and Host level. For instance on a per VM level you can also see CPU and Storage statistics. On a Host level you can see CPU, Storage and Network. Of course these would include things like Latency, Bus resets, dropped packets, disk space usage… you name it, it is in there.

I know there are a lot of vendors these days offering free monitoring solutions, but the cool thing about vmktree is that it is maintained by just a single person Lars Troen. I can only imagine how much work maintaining a tool like this is. Thanks Lars for helping me out by writing this excellent tool! I would like to ask everyone to give it a try, and of course to provide feedback to Lars so that he can possibly improve vmktree over time.

Using opvizor

· ·

I introduced Opvizor a couple of days ago and figured why not give it a spin with a vm-support files of one of my hosts in my lab. I used vCenter to create the vm-support file, for those who have never done that it is really simple:

  • open the vSphere Client
  • Click Administration
  • Click “Export System Logs”
  • Select the server of which you want to dump the system logs and select the location where they need to be uploaded to

The next thing you will need to do is create an account on the opvizor website and login. After that you can simply upload the System Log File of the server. After uploading it takes a few seconds before the System Logs are processed but you can actually see the status at the lower right by clicking the icon. After uploading you can use one of the following two options:

  • isLogViewer
  • isClient

I guess it is pretty obvious what isLogViewer does. It enables you to view the logfiles of VMs and your Host. But not only logfiles, you can for instance also see the vmdk meta files and your vmx files. This can come in handy when troubleshooting issues and I can imagine that at some point opvizor will warn you when invalid or insecure settings / statements are used in those files. The isLogViewer also enables you to search logfiles as shown in the following screenshot where I did a search on “aam”.

Although it isn’t completely intuitive yet; it definitely has potential. Couple of things I would like to see added:

  • color coding for error types
  • direct linking to KB articles for known error codes

The second feature that is currently offered is “isClient”. This feature currently shows you more details about for instance the VM configuration and the host configuration. For me the most valuable feature here is “Issues”. Clearly it still needs to be expanded as many sections are not available, but again this has a lot of potential as you can see in the screenshot below:

Again I would like to see things like color coding added and possibly links to KBs and for instance references to best practices and recommendations. Think about things like Network redundancy, Storage PSP used, HCL check… you can go anyway with this and this could be the ultimate troubleshooting / health check tool. If all of this is added and if it is possible to upload support files of a full environment instead of just a single host.

All in all, I realize that opvizor is just in an early beta phase and because of that some features aren’t fully implemented yet. It clearly has a lot potential though and if everyone takes the time to check it out and give feedback I think this can become a killer tool.

Cool Tool: opvizor

· ·

Recently Dennis Zimmer, which most of you probably know of Icomasoft or from the books he authored, emailed me about a new tool his company was developing. I watched the video that is hosted on opvizor.com and must admit that it looks promising. Especially as most solutions today are reactive or semi-pro-active and opvizor is aiming to be pro-active.

opvizor identifies in advance when the virtualized IT infrastructure is lo osing on performance or might crash. Issues in VMware environments can be analyzed and corrected before they become dangerous. In addition, opvizor provides optimized logfiles and makes it possible to share the infrastructure data with internal and external partners, thus allowing more efficient problem solving. “Our goal is, that opvizor anticipates 60 percent of issues from system behavior.”

Now the tool just entered the Beta stage and opvizor is looking for people willing to give it a testdrive and willing to provide feedback! Funnily enough the tool kind of reminds me of a great tool we use internally to take vm-support files apart and analyze them. I can assure you that with the right amount of work / commitment this can turn into a really powerful tool to monitor / healthcheck your environment on a regular basis.

RVTools updated to 2.9.5

· ·

This tool doesn’t need an introduction anymore. One of the most valuable free tools I know… RVTools. Rob found some spare time again and managed to update RVTools. It includes some bug fixes and new fields. Just download it and try it out, I am certain it will dig up something that you did not know about! Keep it up Rob,

Version 2.9.5 (September, 2010)

  • On vInfo tab new field: Guest heartbeat status. The heartbeat status is classified as:  gray – VMware Tools are not installed or not running, red – no heartbeat, guest operating system may have stopped responding. yellow -intermittent heartbeat, may be due to guest load. green – guest operating system is responding normally
  • On vMemory tab new fields: Ballooned memory, consumed overhead memory, private memory, shared memory, swapped memory and static memory entitlement
  • On vDatastore tab new field: Full device address (controller, target, device)
  • On vInfo tab new fields: Commited storage, uncommited storage and unshared storage
  • Bug fix! A semicolon in the annotations fields are no longer a problem for the export functions
  • Bug fix! Health check “Zombie vmdk” problems solved
  • Bug fix! Health check “inconsistent foldername” problems solved
  • Bug fix! On vport tab the column “notify switch” value solved
  • Bug fix! Sort problem on vNic tab on column “speed” solved