Increasing VMware VMFS Volume

With vSphere-4, you have option to increase the VMFS Volume similar to the way you expand the disk using Snap Drive/DiskPart on Window servers.

Here are the steps for doing this:

1. Increase the LUN (and Volume if applicable) size to new size on Neap Side.
2. Select a particular host that has access to this Shared VMFS Volume -> Configuration -> Storage -> Properties
3. Verify that the ‘Device Capacity’ and ‘Primary Partitions Capacity’ shows the difference in size that’s increased above.
4. Choose ‘Increase’ -> select the desired Volume to be expanded and ensure its showing that free space will be added to expand the disk.
5. Perform Storage Refresh on other hosts in the Cluster to get the new disk size reflected (can use Get-VMHostStorage –Refresh cmdlet to do this task)

These steps can only be done by directly connecting to any of the hosts in the cluster.

Administering ESXi 4.1

1. Choose the right version
   1. ESXi free – unlimited use but with features limitations
   2. ESXi Installable – commercial version of ESXi and supports all advanced features. Can be installed on any choosen server.
   3. ESXi Embedded – preinstalled as firmware so that you don’t have to install it again.  The downside is you can’t transfer the license to other physical hardware.
2. Requirements (for ESX Installable version called VMware VMvisor)
   1. With x64 bit x86 processor (i.e., x86-64).  x86-64 is an extension of the x86 instruction set. Examples: AMD Opteron’s and Intel Xenon and Nehalem processors. With VT enabled.
   2. Minimum of 2 GB RAM. For upgrades, 3GB RAM is required if the ESXi host is managed by vCenter Server.
   3. One or More 1 Gb network adapter.
   4. Create the DNS entry for the static IP with host A record entry.  Note IPv6 is not supported for ESXi “PXE” installation.
   5. Hardware Storage Controllers (Basic SCSI Adapter, FC Adapter, Internal RAID Controller, SAS, or SATA)
   6. Storage/Disk space
      1. Basic SCSI Controller or SCSI disk drives
      2. SATA disk through supported SAS contollers, or RAID LUN with unpartitioned space.
      3. SAS disk drives
      4. FC or iSCSI
   7. Download ESXi Installable version bootable image (ISO/CD)
3. Installation
   1. Insert the ESXi bootable CD or connect the ISO via server remote management applications like
      1. HP Integrated Lights-Out (iLO),
      2. Dell Remote Access Card (DRAC),
      3. IBM management module (MM), and IBM Remote Supervisor Adapter II (RSA II), etc.,
   2. Boot the server to start the ESXi bootable device
   3. Choose the boot image from the VMware VMvisor Boot Menu
      1. ESXi Installer (enter by default with in 10 seconds)
      2. Boot from the Local Disk
      3. Press [Tab] to edit Options
   4. Choose the Install option from the  Welcome screen options
      1. [ESC] to Cancel
      2. (R) Repair
      3. (Enter) Install
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   5. Press F11 to “Accept EULA and Continue”
   6. Select a Disk
   7. Choose the right disk from the displayed list and press Enter
   8. Press F11 to confirm the selection
   9. Installation Proceeds and once it’s done
      1. ESXi will be installed in Evaluation mode
      2. There is no Host based Licensing for ESXi
   10. Removable the install disk and Press Enter to reboot
   11. Once server/hypervisor boots up, Press F2 to “Customize System” from “Direct Console Mode”
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4. Post Install Configuration
   1. Configure Password (Default Not Set)
   2. Configure Lockdown Mode (Default Disabled)
      1. Prevents remote users from logging on to host using “root” user (like disable SSH)
   3. Network Configuration Options
      1. Configure Management Network
         1. Network Adapters
         2. VLAN
         3. IP Configuration (Default gets a IP address from DHCP, you have to set a Static IP here)
         4. IPv6 Configuration
            1. In case if IPv6 is enabled or disabled it’s will restart the HOST
         5. DNS Configuration
            1. Type Primary and Secondary DNS servers
            2. Provide the ESX host name in FQDN format
         6. Custom DNS Suffixes
         7. Confirm the network changes by press <Y> yes to “Apply changes and restart management network?”. You may notice a brief network outage on for that host and it’s guests.
      2. Restart Management Network
         1. May be required to restore networking or to renew DHCP lease.
         2. If DHCP renew results in a new identity, the remote management software will be disconnected
      3. Test Management Network
         1. Ping the configured Default Gateway
         2. Ping the configured Primary and Secondary DNS servers
         3. Resolve the configured host name
      4. Disable Management Network
      5. Restore Standard Switch
   4. Configure keyboard
   5. View Support Information
      1. Server serial number
      2. License serial number
      3. SSL Thumbprint
      4. VMware Global Support Services URL
   6. View System logs
      1. <1> Messages
      2. <2> Config
      3. <3> Management Agent (hostd)
   7. Restart Management Agents
      1. Are the programs that allow remote management software to monitor and control this host
      2. This will disconnect all the remote management software
   8. Reset System Configuration
      1. All the system parameters will be reverted to their software defaults. Including any parameters customized by the hardware manufacturer.
      2. The root password will be reset to nothing
      3. All Virtual Machines will be unregistered
      4. This operation requires a HOST restart so migrate your VMs to other hosts if needed
   9. Remove Custom Extensions
   10. Press Alt+F12 to view the real time Kernel Logs/Activities use Alt+F2 to return to Direct Console User Interface
   11. Login to Tech Support mode: (which unsupported if run without VMware support consultation)
       1. Press Alt+F1 to go to Text mode console (unsupported Tech support mode)  from Direct Console User Interface
       2. You don’t get a login prompt there and none of the keys will be echo’ed back
       3. Type unsupported
       4. Then type root account password at the Password prompt
       5. Type Exit to exit
       6. Then Press Alt+F2 to return to Direct Console User Interface
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Administering ESX 4

1. Requirements
   1. With x64 bit x86 processor (i.e., x86-64).  x86-64 is an extension of the x86 instruction set. Examples: AMD Opteron’s and Intel Xenon and Nehalem processors. With VT enabled.
   2. Minimum of 2 GB RAM
   3. One or More network adapter.  The ESX installer needs a live network connection to properly detect certain network settings, such as the host name under DHCP.
   4. IPv4 static IP address. Create the DNS entry for the static IP with host A record entry. IPv6 is not supported for ESX installation.
   5. Hardware Storage Controllers (SCSI Adapter, FC Adapter, or Internal RAID Controller)
   6. Storage/Disk space
      1. SCSI disk, FC LUN, or RAID LUN with unpartitioned space.
      2. A hardware iSCSI, a disk attached to an iSCSI controller, such as the QLogic qla405x. Software iSCSI is not supported for booting or installing ESX.
      3. The service console must be installed on a VMFS datastore that is resident on a host’s local disk or on a SAN disk that is masked and zoned to that particular host only. The datastore cannot be shared between hosts.
      4. ESX at least requires 1.25 GB. If the service console is installed on the same machine at least 9.5 GB is required.
      5. Must be at least 10GB if you install the components on a single disk.
   7. Download ESX bootable image (ISO/DVD) (Note that it’s a DVD image not a CD, if you have to burn it use DVD only)
2. Installation
   1. Insert the ESX bootable CD or connect the ISO via server remote management applications like
      1. HP Integrated Lights-Out (iLO),
      2. Dell Remote Access Card (DRAC),
      3. IBM management module (MM), and IBM Remote Supervisor Adapter II (RSA II), etc.,
   2. Boot the server to start the ESX bootable device
   3. Choose the install mode from below options
      1. Install ESX in graphical mode
      2. Install ESX in text mode
      3. ESX Scripted Install using USB ks.cfg file
      4. ESX Scripted Install to first disk
      5. ESX Scripted Install to first disk (overwrite VMFS)
      6. Boot from first hard disk
      7. F2 to other options
   4. Choose the Keyboard layout (Required)
   5. Install Custom drivers (Optional).  In case, if you have any hardware that is not on VMware’s hardware compatibility list, then you should install the respective device drivers provided by the device vendor for ESX platform. You can install the custom drivers via CLI later.
   6. ESX will load the default and specified drivers
   7. vSphere license key (Optional).  Primarily for Host based Licensing.  For centralized licensing select later and activate the host via vSphere. If not provided ESX will be installed in Eval mode and you need to activate the host by valid license within 60 days period.
   8. Choose the Network Adapter.  (Required)
   9. Specify VLAN ID (Optional) if you want the host to be in a specific vLAN.  Use MAC address to verify which adapter it’s referring to.
   10. Configure Network Adapter.  You can allow DHCP to configure the network  during installation. After installation, you can change the network settings. Thus below details are Optional if you use DHCP.
       1. IP address
       2. Subnet mask
       3. Gateway
       4. Primary DNS
       5. Secondary DNS
       6. Host name (provide a FQDN )
   11. Use “Test these settings” tab to verify the network accessibility
   12. Choose the Setup type
       1. Standard Setup  (Setup ESX on a single hard drive or LUN)
       2. Advanced Setup
          1. Virtual disk partitions.  View and customize the individual ESX partitions
          2. The installer creates three basic partitions: /boot, vmkcore, and VMFS.
          3. The service console VMDK file (The name of this file is esxconsole-<system-uuid>/esxconsole.vmdk) resides on  the VMFS partition. The service console VMDK file contains /, swap, and /var/ log, by default, and any other partitions that you specify.
          4. Configure bootloader automatically (leave checked if unsure)
             1. Bootloader kernel options
             2. Bootloader password
   13. Select the Install location (Required)
       1. By default lists Local Storage
       2. If you have hardware iSCSI target attached disk then you will see the Remote Storage Location
   14. Choose Datastore. Specify if you already have a datastore created for the host or let the installer create the new Datastore by specifying the name for the new datastore to be created.
   15. Create on the same device as ESX
   16. Then configure the Service Console virtual disk image
   17. Increase the /var/log partition size to a good number say 5 GB instead of default 2 GB
   18. Time zone
   19. Configure Date and Time
       1. Use Automatically and specify the NTP server.
          1. Specify your internal NTP server name
          2. You can use the global NTP server pool.ntp.org
          3. Then click Synchronize to get the date and time automatically set
       2. Manually. Specify the right time
   20. Set Administrator (Root) password. Password must be at least 6 character long
   21. Additional user accounts. This is required if you want to immediately REMOTE into the ESX host via ssh since default root account will be denied for remote ssh.
   22. Review the Summary of Installation Settings
   23. Click Finish to reboot the server and start ESX
   24. Use URL via browser to manage the server
   25. After the server boot up, verify that all the boot checks  passed with status OK
   26. Press ‘I’ to enter the interactive startup
   27. Press Alt+F1 for console login and Alt+F11 to return back to standard server console
3. Patching
4. Upgrading
5. Retiring
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Software vs. hardware iSCSI for VMware ESX

1. Hardware iSCSI Features and Limitations

Below are some items to consider if you are planning to use the iSCSI hardware intitiator.

1. ESX Server host booting from iSCSI SAN is possible only with hardware iSCSI initiator
2. Multipathing support for failover only, no load-balancing by using multiple QLA4010s
3. Support for VMotion, VMware HA, and VMware DRS
4. Support for RDMs
5. No support for Microsoft Cluster Server
6. No VMware Consolidated Backup over iSCSI

2. Software iSCSI Features and Limitations

Below are some items to consider if you are planning to use the iSCSI software intitiator.

1. No support for booting ESX Server from software iSCSI
2. Software initiator supports only a single storage interface (vmhba40)
3. Multipathing support for failover only, no load balancing by using multiple physical network adapters (NIC teaming)
4. Support for VMotion, VMware HA, and VMware DRS
5. Support for RDMs
6. No support for Microsoft Cluster Server
7. No VMware Consolidated Backup over iSCSI

3. Step to enable MultiPath failover for iSCSI storage

If you plan to use NIC teaming to increase the availability of your network access to the iSCSI storage
array, you must turn off port security on the switch for the two ports on which the virtual IP address is shared.
The purpose of this port security setting is to prevent spoofing of IP addresses. Thus many network
administrators enable this setting. However, if you do not change it, the port security setting prevents failover
of the virtual IP from one switch port to another and NIC teaming cannot fail over from one path to another.
For most LAN switches, the port security is enabled on a port level and thus can be set on or off for each port.

 

iSCSI SAN Design Considerations

1. A basic difference between iSCSI and Fibre Channel is that when an iSCSI path is overloaded, the TCP/IP protocol drops packets and requires them to be resent. Fibre Channel communications over a dedicated path are not at risk of being overloaded. When a network path carrying iSCSI storage traffic is oversubscribed, a bad situation quickly grows worse and performance further degrades as dropped packets must be resent.
2. Another potential disadvantage with implementing software-initiator iSCSI (but not hardware-initiator iSCSI) is that standard 10/100 Ethernet interfaces do not have enough throughput for practical iSCSI work. Gigabit Ethernet interfaces are required, and those interfaces tend to consume large amounts of CPU time. One way of overcoming this demand for CPU resources is to use TOEs (TCP/IP offload engines).
3. TCP/IP offload engines shift TCP packet processing tasks from the server CPU to specialized TCP processors on the network adapter or storage device. The QLA4050 hardware initiator, which is supported on ESX Server 3.0, uses a TOE.
4. iSCSI does not work well over most shared wide area networks. one should consider iSCSI a local-area technology, not a wide-area technology, because of latency issues and security concerns.
5. One should also segregate iSCSI traffic from general traffic. Layer 2 VLANs are a particularly good way to implement this segregation.
6. Best practice is to have a dedicated LAN for iSCSI traffic and not share the network with other network traffic.
   It is also best practice not to oversubscribe the dedicated LAN.
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VMware HA

HA stands for one of the critical enterprise cluster feature of VMware called “High Availability”. It can be configured on a VMware cluster to auto recover VM’s from a ESX host failure.

1. When you configure HA via vCenter Server on VMware cluster, it
   1. installs Automated Availability Manager (AAM)  (VMware HA agent) on individual ESX host
   2. The HA agent (AAM) runs a heartbeat mechanism on each host in a cluster to signal that the host is running and is a part of the cluster.
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KickStart automated ESX install

1. Extract the ESX media from the bootable ISO/DVD received from VMware
2. Copy them to a network location and make them accessible
3. Create the ks.cfg (kickstart configuration file) answer file with custom values to installation options. The main sections of the ks.cfg file are as below
   1. accepteula or vmaccepteula (required)
   2. autopart (required)
   3. clearpart (optional)
   4. dryrun (optional)
   5. install (required)
   6. keyboard (optional)
   7. serialnum or vmserialnum (optional)
   8. network (optional)
   9. paranoid (optional)
   10. part or partition (optional)
   11. rootpw (required)
   12. %include or include
   13. %pre (optional)
   14. %post (optional)
   15. %firstboot
4. The previous version to 4.0 of ESX server used to support incomplete ks.cfg file by which it uses the defined values for settings in the ks.cfg and prompt user for configuring the rest. This is now changed from ESX[i] 4.0 where you should have all the responses specified in ks.cfg or don’t have the ks.cfg at all. So ESXi only allows a zero-touch builds via ks.cfg.
5. To have readily setup solution, refer to Virtaul Applicances  “ESX Deployment Appliance (EDA)“
6. References:
   1. http://communities.vmware.com/blogs/vmwareinsmb/2010/07/13/esxi-41-scripted-installation-via-pxe-and-kickstart
   2. http://www.virtuallyghetto.com/2010/09/automating-esxi-41-kickstart-tips.html for ks.cfg setup tips
   3. http://www.kendrickcoleman.com/index.php?/Tech-Blog/esxi-41-kickstart-install-wip.html
   4. autodeploy_fling.pdf (application/pdf Object)
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Setting up Virtual Infrastructure using VMware

1. ESX server
   1. Administering ESX 4
      
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2. ESXi server
   1. Virtual Center (vCenter) server (is the centralized management server for complete infrastructure)
      1. Installed on a Windows server that is part of AD domain
   2. vSphere client (VMware-viclient.exe)
      1. Download from any of ESX server URL, vCenter server or ISO from VMware
      2. Install on vCenter server or any workstation
      3. Choose to install “Host Update Utility 4.0″
         1. This tool allows you to upgrade ESX 3.x to ESX 4.0 and ESXi 3.5 to ESXi 4.0. The utility also allows you to patch and update ESXi hosts.
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3. Using Software
   1. vSphere Client is a single GUI application to
      1. Connect to specific ESX host and administer
      2. Connect to vCenter server to manage multiple ESX hosts
      3. You can to the remote server using
         1. IP Address or host name
         2. Logon using
            1. vCenter administrator logon credentials or
            2. loggedon Windows session credentials if it has all permissions
            3. Configure AD security group and assign permission to your Windows logon account and use that account
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Virtualization

Definition in simple terms referring to practical understanding:

Process of separating physical components of computing infrastructure from the logical components that demand the resources.

1. Types of Virtualization:
   1. Server :  Where you use Virtual machines to separate hardware from virtual operating systems, allowing you to run the multiple operating systems on a single machine, all at the same time.
   2. Storage:  Removing physical mapping of storage and moving storage into logical objects, which can be easily managed
   3. Network: process of combining hardware and software network resources and network functionality into a single, software-based administrative entity, a virtual network. There two types of N/W Virtualizations
      1. Internal: Network functionality provided by software
      2. External: combining multiple network functions into one unit
   4. Application: Process of encapsulating applications to be able to run on another system without actually installing them, allowing applications to run without conflicts
   5. Desktop: consolidation of desktop computers into virtualized server systems
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2. How server virtualization can help?….
   1. Consolidate data center servers, desktops,
   2. efficient h/W resources utilization,
   3. less energy and cooling,
   4. less IT staff to maintain and increased IT productivity
   5. respond faster to business needs by faster server deployments
   6. HA and load-balancing

PXE booting to RIS servers after migrating to WDS PXE in VM infrastructure

1.       Create a new VDI with

a.       Latest NIC VMXNET3, you need latest version in order to boot to WDS server.  The default NIC ‘Flexible’ doesn’t work

b.      Use SCSI controller of BUS logic. None of the latest LSI logic SCSI controller work with RIS builds

2.       Boot the VDI to Win7 build

3.       Have a computer account created with all the required options (through pre-setup.bat)

4.       Change the netbootMachineFilePath attribute to point to RIS build servers (say buildserver1.org.com).

a.       AD object ‘Attribute Editor’ tab is not visible via dsa.msc, use adsiedit instead.

b.      Move computer to respective AD site OU.

5.       Remove the latest version NIC

6.       Add a Flexible NIC to let the computer to boot to RIS server

7.       Build computer with Automatic setup in RIS.  Custom setup doesn’t work.