Yellow Bricks

by Duncan Epping

VirtualCenter

vCenter Administrator Portal! (multi VC console)

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I’ve been offline for most of the day and when I just switched on my laptop I noticed a new section(including downloads) on the VMTN forums. This section is about a single console multiple vCenter servers. VMware vCenter Administrator Portal (VCAP) is a web-based console that provides a central view into the VMware Infrastructure environment across multiple vCenter Server (VirtualCenter) instances. VCAP is delivered as a virtual appliance based on Linux. If you’re not comfortable with a virtual appliance you can also download the installable version.

This is, besides a linux vCenter client/server, an ofter requested feature. Keep in mind that it’s a preview of what will be available in one of the next versions. You can find a PDF with more detail here: 

VirtualCenter Administrator Portal (VCAP) Overview (pdf).

Tech Preview – VirtualCenter Administrator Portal – Installation Guide – 2008 10 13.pdf (87.6 K)

What can you expect at this moment:

  • Single sign-on to multiple vCenter Servers
  • Monitor events and alarms across multiple vCenter Servers
  • Search and track inventory across multiple vCenter Servers
  • Launch VI Client in context to manage vCenter Servers
  • Search for virtual machines across multiple vCenter Servers
  • Launch virtual machine consoles
  • Utilizes permissions setup in vCenter Servers
  • Unified view for: vCenter Servers, Datacenters, Clusters, Hosts, Virtual Machines
  • Access summary view of inventory objects, rolled up across vCenter Servers, for comparison and monitoring purposes

VirtualCenter Memory Statistic Definitions

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I just received a great PDF on memory statistic defintions for VirtualCenter:

It is important to note that some definitions refer to guest physical memory while others talk about machine memory. “Guest physical memory” is really virtual-hardware “physical” memory presented to the VM. “Machine memory” is the actual physical RAM in the ESX host. Each definition below will explicitly specify the type of memory to which it applies. See [2] pages 139 – 141 for more information about guest physical memory versus machine memory.

This distinction plays out in interesting and potentially confusing ways. The final section, “Differences between Memory Granted/Consumed and Memory Shared/Shared Common”, expands on the differences between guest physical memory and machine memory metrics.

Read this document, it really contains a lot of useful information!!!

VirtualCenter 2.5 Update 3 may fail to start after upgrade

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I just wanted to point you guys out to the following:

Issue: After attempting to upgrade to VirtualCenter 2.5 Update 3 using the VirtualCenter Update Wizard, and not the VMware Unified Installer, the VirtualCenter service may fail to start. The issue is caused by an incomplete update of the database information for VirtualCenter resulting in incorrect database versioning, which is verified, and required to be correct, by the VirtualCenter service upon startup.

I’m not gonna post the answer to this problem, cause the article might change over the next day and than this info will be outdated and misleading. So check this KB article for more info.

Release notes VC U3

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There seems to be an incorrect advanced option in VC U3.

HA network compliance check
During the configuration of HA in VirtualCenter 2.5 Update 2, the Task & Events tabs might display the following error message and recommendation:
HA agent on <esxhostname> in cluster <clustername> in <datacenter> has an error Incompatible HA Network:
Consider using the Advanced Cluster Settings das.allowNetwork to control network usage.
Starting with VirtualCenter 2.5 Update 2, HA has an enhanced network compliance check to increase cluster reliability. This enhanced network compliance check helps to ensure correct cluster-wide heartbeat network paths. VirtualCenter 2.5 Update 3 allows you to bypass this check to prevent HA configuration problems. To bypass the check, add das.bypassNetworkVerification=yes to the HA advanced settings.

The described option should actually be “das.bypassNetCompatCheck with the values  “true” or “false. So keep this in mind!!!

Update: HA Advanced Options

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A while back I wrote down all the HA advanced options. With VirtualCenter 2.5 Update 3(and the ESX patch that came with it) VMware added another extra advanced options, this is the complete list:

  • das.failuredetectiontime – Amount of milliseconds, timeout time for isolation response action(with a default of 15000 milliseconds).
  • das.isolationaddress[x] – IP adres the ESX hosts uses for it’s heartbeat, where [x] = 0-9. It will use the default gateway by default.
  • das.usedefaultisolationaddress – Value can be true or false and needs to be set in case the default gateway, which is the default isolation address shouldn’t be used for this purpose.
  • das.poweroffonisolation – Values are False or True, this is for setting the isolation response. Default a VM will be powered off.
  • das.vmMemoryMinMB – Higher values will reserve more space for failovers.
  • das.vmCpuMinMHz – Higher values will reserve more space for failovers.
  • das.defaultfailoverhost – Value is a hostname, this host will be the primary failover host.
  • das.failuredetectioninterval – Changes the heartbeat interval among HA hosts. By default, this occurs every second (1000 milliseconds).
  • das.allowVmotionNetworks – Allows a NIC that is used for VMotion networks to be
  • considered for VMware HA usage. This permits a host to have only one NIC configured for management and VMotion combined.
  • das.allowNetwork[x] – Enables the use of port group names to control the networks used for VMware HA, where [x] = 0 – ?. You can set the value to be ʺService Console 2ʺ or ʺManagement Networkʺ to use (only) the networks associated with those port group names in the networking configuration.
  • das.isolationShutdownTimeout – Shutdown time out for the isolation response “Shutdown VM”, default is 300 seconds. In other words, if a VM isn’t shutdown clean when isolation response occured it’s being powered off after 300 seconds.
  • das.bypassNetCompatCheck – Disable the “compatible network” check for HA that was introducedwith Update 2. Default value is “false”, setting it to “true” disables the check.Virtual Machine Monitoring HA advanced options
  • das.failureInterval = The polling interval for failures. Default value is 30.
  • das.maxFailureWindows = Minimum amount of seconds between failure. Default value is 3600 seconds, if VM fails within 3600 seconds VM HA doesn’t restart the machine.
  • das.maxFailures = Maximum amount of VM failures, if the amount is reached VM HA doesn’t restart the machine automatically. Default value is 3.
  • das.minUptime = The minimum uptime in seconds before VM HA starts polling. The default value is 120 seconds.