Just released on the VMware Flings site is a fling which is designed to help when you make the move from ESX to ESXi, this tool will help you check hardware software and also that there are no lingering scripts or locally stored VMs etc.

A great tool to download and run against your environment to ensure you have caught everything before the move to the next version of ESXi.

From the official description:

The ESX System Analyzer is a tool designed to help administrators plan a migration from ESX to ESXi. It analyzes the ESX hosts in your environment and, for each host, collects information on factors that pertain to the migration process:

• Hardware compatibility with ESXi
• VMs registered on the ESX host, as well as VMs located on the host’s local disk
• Modifications to the Service Console
  • RPMs which have been added or removed
  • Files which have been added
  • Users and cronjobs which have been added

This tool also provides summary information for the whole existing environment

• Version of VMware Tools and Virtual Hardware for all VMs
• Version of Filesystem for all datastores

By having this information, administrators can determine what tasks need to be done prior to the migration. Examples include:

• Relocate VMs from local datastores to shared datastores
• Make note of what agent software has been added to the host and obtain the equivalent agentless version
• Replace cronjobs with equivalent remote scripts written with PowerCLI or vCLI

Download

Make sure you visit the fling site here and use this fling against your environment:

http://labs.vmware.com/flings/esx-system-analyzer

Migrating ESX to ESXi is a post from: Virtu-Al.
Virtu-Al is one of the authors of VMware vSphere PowerCLI Reference: Automating vSphere Administration"

Buy it now from: Amazon USA Amazon UK Sybex

Those who attended the Hands on Lab were lucky enough to grab a poster bought to you by VMware Technical Marketing, this year VMware were giving out two posters, the first is the “VMware Management with PowerCLI 5.0” poster which can be downloaded here.

The second was a new poster which was designed to help you  move to ESXi 5.0, this is called the “VMware ESXi 5.0 Reference” poster, it includes handy quick references to advise people of common tasks like upgrading to the latest version…

Or the new ESXCLI name spaces…..

How do I get the new poster ?

The new “VMware ESXi 5.0 Reference” poster can be downloaded as a PDF from the ESXi Chronicles blog, While you are there I suggest you subscribe to the RSS feed, from here: http://blogs.vmware.com/esxi/2011/09/vsphere-50-cli-reference-poster.html

Or if you dont have a large enough printer and will be at VMworld Europe in Copenhagen make sure you visit the Hands on Labs for your chance to grab this great reference poster already printed and ready to hang on your office wall.

ESXi 5.0 Reference Poster is a post from: Virtu-Al.
Virtu-Al is one of the authors of VMware vSphere PowerCLI Reference: Automating vSphere Administration"

Buy it now from: Amazon USA Amazon UK Sybex

The system image is a unified image which is the same whether booting from USB, Hard Disk, PXE or any other media. The logic in the first boot will provide auto configuration based on the kind of installation you have.

One thing to remember about ESXi is that it is memory based, so once booted the system image is entirely loaded into memory, ESXi doesn’t care if the original media disappears after boot, there is no reliance on the boot device for running after booting.

ESXi is essentially made up from a number of tardisks (VM TAR files) or archives, these tardisks are mounted into the empty root filesystem in order of enumeration, one of these is called the state tardisk or state.tgz.

The state tardisk is made up of any file in /etc which is marked as sticky, VMware uses the sticky bit to flag the files which are to be included as part of this tardisk but only if they reside under /etc, these are files like esx.conf, inetd.con, passwd….  These are the files which will be persisted after boot.

As said earlier the entire system image is loaded into memory on boot so how is the state tardisk persisted ?

Periodically there is a deamon in the background which looks for changes in the config files, when these are found the state tardisk is rebuilt and saved back to the bootdisk, so why are these files not written directly to disk each time ?  The main reason is the USB disk, if these files were written constantly to the USB flash disk then the life expectancy of the disk would not be very long at all, VMware worked with a number of USB flash OEM’s to calculate the best frequency to write these files back to disk.  This is key to remember as the frequency is around once every 10 minutes, obviously if the system crashes and reboots you may loose any configuration which may have been made in the previous 10 minutes.

So knowing this we can effectively back up the configuration of our ESXi hosts (- 10 minute changes worst case) simply by backing up the state tardisk, then if the worst happens we can restore this and have our ESXi host with complete configuration restored in a matter of minute.  Luckily PowerCLI makes this very easy for us, the below script can be run as a scheduled task and will backup the state tardisk as often as the scheduled task is run.

$RootFolder = "C:\Support\"
Get-VMHost | Foreach {
	Write-Host "Backing up state for $($_.Name)"
	$Date = Get-Date -f yyyy-MM-dd
	$Folder = $RootFolder + $Date + "\$($_.Name)\"
	If (-not (Test-Path $Folder)) {
		MD $Folder | Out-Null
	}
	$_ | Get-VMHostFirmware -BackupConfiguration -DestinationPath $RootFolder
	# Next line is a workaround for -DestinationPath not working correctly
	# with folder names with a - in them.
	MV ($RootFolder + "*") $Folder -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
}

Research has been gathered for this post from TA8245 – ESXi Internals by Oliver Cremel

Backing up the ESXi System Image is a post from: Virtu-Al.
Virtu-Al is one of the authors of VMware vSphere PowerCLI Reference: Automating vSphere Administration"

Buy it now from: Amazon USA Amazon UK Sybex

At the moment he was doing this manually every day by using the virtual infrastructure client as can be seen below – you can imagine how long this was taking !

Exporting the logs from the vCenter Client

1.  Select the File menu and then Export, Export System Logs…

2.  Select the hosts which you want to download the system logs for and click OK

So how can we automate this ?

Luckily with the Get-Log cmdlet VMware gave us a –bundle parameter which allows us to produce these support bundles, the following code can be run as a scheduled task and simply creates a folder structure to save the bundles for each host every day, the folder layout is set as follows:

RootFolder \ Date \ Hostname \ Supportfile.tgz

This can be seen from the below screenshot:

The code for this script can be seen below, it is also only 10 lines of code – man I love PowerShell !

You can obviously change the root folder by altering the first line.

The Code

Connect-VIServer MYvCenter
$RootFolder = "C:\Support\"
Get-VMHost | Foreach {
	Write-Host "Collecting Support Bundle for $($_.Name)"
	$Date = Get-Date -f yyyy-MM-dd
	$Folder = $RootFolder + $Date + "\$($_.Name)\"
	If (-not (Test-Path $Folder)) {
		MD $Folder | Out-Null
	}
	Get-Log -VMHost $_ -Bundle -DestinationPath $Folder
}

Automated support bundles is a post from: Virtu-Al.
Virtu-Al is one of the authors of VMware vSphere PowerCLI Reference: Automating vSphere Administration"

Buy it now from: Amazon USA Amazon UK Sybex

Whilst delivering a presentation on the new features in vSphere 4.1 – Of which there are tons (should have been 4.5 in my opinion), I came across the ability to be able to enable SSH from the DCUI (Direct Console User Interface).

This has also been made available as a service in vCenter now where they can be remotely started and stopped….

OK, so this is probably not new news for the people who have had time to play with 4.1 but the cool thing is that that this is now also available via PowerCLI too, we can see this if we retrieve the VMHost and then run a Get-VMHostService on it….

This is great news, so now if we needed to we could start the SSH service for each of our hosts with just a simple piece of code:

Get-VMHost | Foreach {
  Start-VMHostService -HostService ($_ | Get-VMHostService | Where { $_.Key -eq "TSM-SSH"} )
}

We can also do this for any of the other services in the list including restarting the vCenter Agent – Now that’s a cool new feature in 4.1 !

We can also list all of our hosts and see if the service is running using the following one-liner:

Get-VMHost | Get-VMHostService | Where { $_.Key -eq "TSM-SSH" } |select VMHost, Label, Running

Enabling ESX SSH via PowerCLI is a post from: Virtu-Al.
Virtu-Al is one of the authors of VMware vSphere PowerCLI Reference: Automating vSphere Administration"

Buy it now from: Amazon USA Amazon UK Sybex

Unfortunately there was an issue getting the audio of this session so it looks like we will have to stick with the slide deck but please do not be disappointed as this is 59 deep dive slides on esxtop including some of the new counters only relevant to 4.1, please check it out its great stuff.

If you are interested in esxtop then make sure you also check out these great resources:

• Interpreting esxtop Statistics
• Duncan’s excellent esxtop page
• VMware community podcast on esxtop

Previous presentations in this series are here:

VMware Session 1: Exploring VMware APIs

VMware Session 2: vSphere APIs for Performance Monitoring

VMware Session 3: PowerCLI & Onyx

VMware Session 4: Advanced performance troubleshooting using esxtop is a post from: Virtu-Al.
Virtu-Al is one of the authors of VMware vSphere PowerCLI Reference: Automating vSphere Administration"

Buy it now from: Amazon USA Amazon UK Sybex

Other presentations given:

VMware Session 1: Exploring VMware APIs

VMware Session 2: vSphere APIs for Performance Monitoring

This presentation focused on PowerCLI and Onyx, they skipped some of the easy stuff that normally goes at the start of a PowerCLI deck mainly because the London crowd is used to me force feeding them PowerCLI on a regular basis !

Its a great deck and a good listen on the MP3, some interesting questions and comments made throughout the deck.

This presentation was given by Vladimir Goranov and Yavor Boychev who are both part of the PowerCLI team. (See if you can spot the mistake on slide 7 )

The MP3 file can be downloaded from here and the presentation is embedded below:

VMware Session 3: PowerCLI & Onyx is a post from: Virtu-Al.
Virtu-Al is one of the authors of VMware vSphere PowerCLI Reference: Automating vSphere Administration"

Buy it now from: Amazon USA Amazon UK Sybex

If you have been using previous versions of this report then its time to update, I have added lots of cool new features and checks which make this report (even if I do say so) awesome !

Some of the highlighted features of v5 are:

Comments

Each section now has comments telling you why I think it may be an issue, there are often links to blog posts and useful information for further reading, an example is below:

Obviously for the experts among you these comments can easily be removed in the script by changing the $comments = $true to $false

Automatic searching for log warnings

There is now a handy link to both the VMware KB site and Google which will automatically search for the errors found on these sites, no longer do you have a reason for not investigating those errors !

Multiple new checks

There are so many new checks that I have now created a dedicated page on my site for this script which lists some basic information, this will of course change over time as more detail is needed and I hope to shoot some video soon showing how to change some of the key areas.

To access the page click the “Featured Scripts” area above and select “vCheck (Daily Report)” or click here.

Thanks

I have been bugging various people to help me with this script, whether it be for information or html help, thanks to everyone who helped me out and also to the beta testers.

To mention a few of the people specifically, thanks goes to:

Raphael Schitz – As always he has contributed some great checks for v5 and thought of areas I would never have.  Amazing job my friend.

Duncan Epping – I have bothered him more than once for clarification on the way things work, cheers mate.

Andy Grant – He did a great job helping me tidy up my HTML and add new areas.

The beta testers – you know who you are !

Sorry if I missed anyone !

vCheck v5 is a post from: Virtu-Al.
Virtu-Al is one of the authors of VMware vSphere PowerCLI Reference: Automating vSphere Administration"

Buy it now from: Amazon USA Amazon UK Sybex

At the moment I am investigating moving to ESXi from ESX, after resolving the DSET issue I was then faced with the management of the ESXi hosts, currently the full fat ESX hosts have the Dell open management agent installed on them and SNMP configured, this allows the Dell management server to keep track of the underlying hardware and report any hardware issues or firmware updates.

But what happens with ESXi 4.0 and the removal of the service console ?

Earlier with ESXi 3.5, OpenManage component were integrated with the downloadable Dell ESX3i ISO image
but from ESXi 4.0 onwards, VMware introduced a new concept called vSphere Installation Bundle (VIB), this allows the end users to download VIB files and install it directly into ESXi 4.0. Dell are now posting their OpenManage component as a VIB on support.dell.com.

To help reduce the system footprint and to simplify deployment, the ESXi software does not have a traditional service console management interface where Dell OpenManage agents are installed. Instead, to provide the required hardware manageability, VMware has incorporated the standard Common Information Model (CIM) management profiles into the ESXi software.

The CIM framework is an open standard framework that defines how managed hardware elements in a system are represented.The CIM framework consists of CIM providers developed by hardware vendors to enable monitoring and managing of the hardware device. By representing the hardware elements using standard CIM, ESXi provides any management tool (that implements the same open standards) the ability to manage the system.

The installation manual takes you through the install of this VIB using the RCLI and the vihostupdate command but if you are like me and wish to automate these tasks you could use the following PowerCLI script to install the VIB, this script not only installs the VIB but will also setup SNMP and the Advanced Configuration setting which tells ESXi to use the installed Dell components to report on the hardware via CIM.

# Set the following variables
$ESXHost = "testesx4i"
$SNMPCommunity = "public"
$SNMPTargetHost = "192.168.0.50"
$FolderName = "oem-dell-openmanage-esxi_6.2.0-A00"
$DellOMSA = "c:\temp\$FolderName"

Connect-VIServer $ESXHost
Write "Retriving $ESXHost object"
$VMHostObj = Get-VMHost $ESXHost
Write "Checking for OMSA install files"

if (-Not (Test-Path "$DellOMSA\metadata.zip")){
	Write "$DellOMSA does not exist, please make sure this is the OMSA zip file extracted contents."
	Exit
} Else {
	Write "Install files found"
}
Write "Copying OMSA client to the host datastore"
$ds = $VMHostObj | Get-Datastore | Select -first 1
Copy-DatastoreItem $DellOMSA $ds.DatastoreBrowserPath -Recurse

Write "Installing Dell OMSA"
$DSName = $ds.Name
$InstalledOMSA = $VMHostObj | Install-VMHostPatch -HostPath /vmfs/volumes/$DSName/$FolderName/metadata.zip

Write "Enabling CIM OEM Providers"
Set-VMHostAdvancedConfiguration -Name UserVars.CIMOEMProvidersEnabled -Value 1 | Out-Null

Write "Removing Install files"
$urlPath = "https://" + $esxhost + "/folder/" + $FolderName + "?dcPath=ha-datacenter&dsName=" + $dsName
$fileMgr = Get-View (Get-View ServiceInstance).Content.FileManager
$fileMgr.DeleteDatastoreFile_Task($urlPath,$null)

If ($InstalledOMSA.NeedsRestart -eq $true){
	$Reboot = Read-Host "A reboot is needed type YES to reboot now or press enter to complete the install:"
	If ($Reboot -eq "YES"){
		Write "Putting host into maintenance Mode"
		Set-VMHost $VMHostObj -State Maintenance -Confirm:$false | Out-Null
		Write "Rebooting host now"
		Restart-VMHost $VMHostObj -Confirm:$false | Out-Null
	} Else {
		Write "A reboot is needed before the DELL OMSA will work correctly"
	}
}

If ((Get-VMHostSnmp).ReadOnlyCommunities -ne $SNMPCommunity){
	Write "Setting SNMP Configuration"
	$VMHostObj | Get-VMHostsnmp | Set-VMHostSnmp -TargetHost $SNMPTargetHost -TargetCommunity $SNMPCommunity -AddTarget -ReadOnlyCommunity $SNMPCommunity -Enabled:$true
}

Write "OMSA Install Completed"

To use the above script:

• Download the latest version of the VIB (currently 6.2.0 here)
• Extract the downloaded zip to a folder with the same name
• Adjust the Foldername and DELLOMSA variables to reflect the path and folder name
• Alter the ESXHost variable with the hostname or IP address of the server you will be installing to
• Alter the SNMPCommunity variable to your settings
• Alter the SNMPTargetHost variable to your setting (ITA server)
• Run the script from a PowerCLI prompt.

The hardware management data is provided to management applications using CIM Extensible Markup Language (XML) as well as WS-Management (WSMAN).

The VMware Infrastructure (VI) client provides hardware health status of various hardware devices. The VI client uses CIM XML to read hardware information provided by the CIM providers. Each of the monitored hardware devices are listed along with the health status.

Once this has been installed you will still not be able to access the normal OMSA website which is accessed via https://<hostname>:1311/ if you do want to access this you will need to install the ‘Dell OpenManage Server Administrator Managed Node’ onto a windows or linux box which acts as a proxy and relays the information back to the webpage as below:

You will also be able to discover the host in your Dell OpenManage IT Assistant (ITA) using SNMP but it will not have the full functionality which was offered in the full fat version of ESX with OMSA installed, you can add limited network discovery and health monitoring by using the DRAC card and allowing ITA to find this, the below diagram gives an overview of ESXi management for Dell systems:

So the conclusion is just to keep in mind that the management interfaces which you may use at the moment for Dell servers to report on hardware and health performances may have changed and this will require your internal processes and monitoring to be adapted when adopting ESXi.

For further information on Dell system management for ESXi please see this document.

Dell ESXi Management is a post from: Virtu-Al.
Virtu-Al is one of the authors of VMware vSphere PowerCLI Reference: Automating vSphere Administration"

Buy it now from: Amazon USA Amazon UK Sybex

With the improved vSphere API’s and using PowerCLI we are slowly able to replace most of the things which used to be performed at the service console, a few of these can be read about here.

But what happens when PowerCLI can not help ?

At a recent engagement with a customer we pretty much got rid of all reasons why we couldn’t move to ESXi apart from one.

Being based on Dell hardware the customer needed to be able to send a detailed report on what the issue was with the physical host, the Dell readers amongst you will be familiar with a Dell System Extraction Tool (DSET), this is a utility which is run on the host (through the service console) which looks at the logs, the Dell management agents and the system to create a packaged hta file which can be sent to Dell, in our case the customer often found it very hard to get hardware components replaced unless a DSET was sent, if not impossible.

The obvious part of this statement was the fact that it ran in the service console, when checking the Dell documentation it was clearly stated that the DSET application was not supported in ESXi:

So when reading the above statement “The server can be rebooted to a supported Linux environment to use DSET” gave me an idea: Live-CD.

After searching for a while I managed to find a nice repository of Dell Live boot CD’s with various different versions of the Dell Open Manage Client already pre-installed, just booting from this CD not only enabled the web interface which you can normally view by accessing the https://<ip address>:1311 url but also allowed me to design a support mechanism where we could boot to a supported operating system via the live boot CD and copy the DSET app over to the box which runs and produces our hardware report for us.

This might sound simple but believe me, it was nearly a show stopper when moving to ESXi, I hope this post helps others in the same predicament this customer was in.

Another reason to upgrade to ESXi is a post from: Virtu-Al.
Virtu-Al is one of the authors of VMware vSphere PowerCLI Reference: Automating vSphere Administration"

Buy it now from: Amazon USA Amazon UK Sybex