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Upgrade vCenter Server Appliance to vSphere 7

Recently I’ve upgraded my homelab from 6.7U3 to vSphere7. The workflow is straightforward and very easy. The VMware Design team did a very good job with the UI.

First steps

I cannot point that out enough: check the VMware HCL. Just because your system is supported under your current vSphere version, doesn’t mean it’ll be supported under vSphere7 too. On the day I’ve upgraded, vSphere7 was brand new and there were just a few entries in the HCL. But it’s a homelab and if something breaks I don’t care to rebuild it from scratch. Don’t do this in production!

Although my Supermicro E300-9D is not yet certified for version 7.0, it works like a charm. I guess it’s just a matter of time, because the VMware Nano-Edge cluster is based on that hardware.

Before we can start, you need to download the vCenter Server Appliance 7.0 (VCSA) from VMware downloads (Login required). You also need to have new license keys for vCenter, ESXi and vSAN (if yor cluster is hyperconverged).

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Replace Intel igbn Driver

There have been issues with VMware network driver igbn which is responsible for Intel 82580, I210, I350, and I354 Gigabit Ethernet Controllers. Under certain conditions this can lead to a PSOD, which makes it a critical issue for all hosts with one of the ethernet controllers mentioned above.

Currently there’s no VMware patch to solve the problem. It is recommended to replace the VMware driver with a newer version (1.4.10) of Intels native driver.

If we start SSH service on the host, we can check the installed igbn version.

esxcfg-module -i igbn 

esxcfg-module module information
input file: /usr/lib/vmware/vmkmod/igbn
License: ThirdParty:Intel Propietary
Version: 0.1.1.0-5vmw.670.3.73.14320388

Updating the driver

First we have to download the driver package from VMware (login required) and extract the archive. It contains a documentation with release notes and update guide, a VMware Installation Bundle (VIB) and an offline bundle (ZIP). While it is possible to install the VIB on a command shell from an ESXi host, it is more convenient to use VMware Update Manager (VUM). The latter is the procedure I will explain here.

Open vSphere-Client and go to Menu > Update Manager. If you’re not running vSphere 6.7 U1 or later, you’ll have to use the infamous Web-Client (Flash-Client). Select Updates and click on “Upload from File”.

Select the extracted ZIP File (Offline Bundle). Just to avoid some confusion: The file you’ve downloaded from VMware is a ZIP-archive. Extract it once. Within that archive there’s another ZIP-archive. Do not extract that one! From the dialogue we select that ‘inner’ ZIP-file for upload to VUM.

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vSAN Health – vSAN Disk Balance

If you have joined VMware Customer Experience Improvement Program (CEIP), you’re able to use Skyline-Health in your cluster. In older versions of vSphere/vSAN this feature used to be called vSphere-Health and vSAN-Health respectively. They both have been renamed to Skyline Health. You can access Skyline-Health in the vSphere-Client by navigating to Monitor > vSAN > Skyline-Health.

Today I’ve seen a warning after powering on up my homelab.

Drilling into details showed one of 4 hosts issued a warning: “Proactive rebalance is needed”.

Usually a vSAN cluster will distribute load amongst capacity disks automatically. For some reason that wasn’t the case in my homelab. But there’s help. You can click on “Configure Automatic Rebalance” directly from Skyline-Health (see picture below).

You’ll be redirected to vSAN cluster configuration. As you can see in the screenshot below, my cluster wasn’t configured for automatic rebalance.

Just move the slider and vSAN will automatically start to balance disks. A couple of minutes later the warning had switched to green. Depending on the cluster load and how imbalanced the capacity disks are, this process might take a while.

Links

VMware KB 2149809 – vSAN proactive rebalance

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Runecast free Analytics for Healthcare & VMware Horizon

Runecast will respond to COVID-19 crisis by offering free licenses to healthcare institutions and companies with VMware Horizon.

Helping companies to protect employees by letting them work from home and thus slowing down the rate of new infections is an important step in the battle against SARS-CoV-2.

Running an Horizon infrastructure in these days is a challenge for any IT team when the workloads shift from on premises to remote access. It is also vitally important to keep healthcare infrastructures up and running. Medical staff does a very good but demanding job these days aroud the globe. But they cannot do their job without IT infrastucture. Lives depend on that. So it’s a good initiative by Runecast to help making these infrastructures a bit safer.

I know a lot of people at Runecast and I’d like to express my personal thanks to everyone of them.

Not all heroes wear capes.

Free full VMware Horizon insights for EVERYONE

Work from your home office without any limitation.

  • Who does this apply to? Any organization running VMware Horizon that needs better tools or solutions for visibility into VMware Horizon environments (for remote office enablement).
  • How does it work? You’ll have full & immediate visibility of your VMware Horizon issues during the 14-day trial period. After the standard Runecast Analyzer free 14-day trial, Horizon issues analytics will continue to work for you until 15 September 2020.

Enable VMware Horizon scans now

Free full license of Runecast Analyzer for Healthcare institutions

  • Who does this apply to? IT Sys-Admins running VMware and/or AWS who need better tools or solutions for HIPAA security compliance and downtime mitigation.
  • How does it work? Create an account and send an email to healthcare@runecast.com for license activation.

Runecast Analyzer for Healthcare