ElasticSky

18. July 201921. July 2019

vSwitch rescue from the CLI

Virtual Distributed Switches have many advantages over standard switches. Because you have a centralized configuration over all hosts they’re less error prone to configuration errors than standard switches. Call me old fashioned but I prefer to have at least the hosts management interface on a standard switch. In case something bad happens, you can still access the host and make changes on the interface.

Recently a customers host had failed. After restoring configuration, for some reason vmnics were swapped between vdSwitches and it wasn’t possible to configure that host neither with hostclient nor with vCenter. The customer was short on vmnics in the past and has configured Management Network on a distributed Portgroup on a distributed vSwitch. This is legal and usually not a problem. In that special case it was a problem. I was literally locked out of the host. Reassigning NICs in the DCUI didn’t work, because they were all claimed by Distributed-vSwitches thus not available for standard switches.

What now ?

There’s help, but you need to access the CLI of DCUI.
Login to DCUI console, select “Troubleshooting Options” in the main menu.

4. July 201918. July 2019

VCSA 6.7 archive partition filling up

During a cluster routine check with RVtools I’ve seen a warning.

Warnings like this on a vCenter appliance let my alarm bells ring. Partitions filling up close to 100% are not a desirable condition. But let’s have a look into VAMI (vCenter Appliance Management Interface).

https://<vcsa_FQDN>:5480

Now that’s strange. Everything seems to be in a green state. It’s a VCSA 6.7 Update 2a (6.7.0.31000). Older versions did show a storage warning. “File system /storage/archive is low on storage space“. But this appliance seems to be happy. Let’s have a look at the shell, to see what’s really happening.

It looks like mount point /storage/archive is almost filled up.

30. June 201930. June 2019

Login to VCSA VAMI not possible

To manage a vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) there’s a special user interface called Virtual Appliance Management Infrastructure (VAMI). You can access it by entering the FQDN of your vCenter into a browser, followed by port 5480.

https://<mycenterFQDN>:5480

This UI helps you to monitor your vCenter Virtual Appliance. You can change basic settings, apply updates and watch system status.

After updating a VCSA to the latest version of vCenter, I had to reboot the appliance. After the reboot process had finished, I wasn’t able to login to VAMI. Sometimes services need quite some time to become available, but even waiting for a longer period of time (a cup of coffee) nothing happened. VAMI presented a login screen, so obviously the webserver was up and running. But each time I entered the (correct) credentials I got the message “unable to login”. Screenshot is in German but you’ll most likely get the point ;-).

Translation from German: Unable to login.

21. June 201921. June 2019

Runecast 2.7.0 with ESXi Upgrade Simulator

If you’ve ever had the task to upgrade a number of ESXi servers, you’ll know that it’s a hell lot of work to be done even before you can upgrade the first host. Is the host still on the VMware Hardware Compatibility List (HCL)? Are my PCIe cards (NIC, HBA, SCSI-controller) still supported? Does the current firmware match the future driver?

Finding answers all of these questions might take hours of research. Especially if you have non-uniform clusters.

Runecast got you covered

We have good news for those of you who already use Runecast-Analyzer to scan their cluster against KB issues. The latest beta (2.7.0) of the HW compatibility tool can now simulate host upgrades. Wow cool is that!