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vSphere Management Assistant (vMA)

This guide will help you install the vMA server into your environment.

You can download and deploy the vMA ZIP file or deploy from URL.

Please view the release notes if you have any problems.

– Downloading and deploying the vMA ZIP file

1. Download the vMA ZIP file and unzip the file.

2. In the vSphere Client, choose Virtual Appliance > Deploy.

3. When prompted by the Wizard, click Deploy from File and point to the OVF in the folder to which you extracted the ZIP file

– Deploying from URL

1. In the vSphere Client, choose Virtual Appliance > Deploy.

2. When prompted by the Wizard, click Deploy from URL and enter the following URL: www.vmware.com/go/importvma/vma4.ovf

3. You should get a status bar showing the download completion. After the download completes your vMA should be ready to go.

Deploying from the URL is obviously quicker if you haven’t downloaded it yet.

Posted in CLI, Tools.

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By Wes – May 6, 2010

How to Re-Enable Network After Loss of Connection to a vDS

I wouldn’t suggest copying a Host Profile template from a Nexus vDS host. Well, unless you know what you are doing anyways, or enjoy searching with help from google. Personally, I wanted to see how host profiles would break the server. I had read that it is not best practice to use host profiles with Nexus. Things not covered by Host Profiles are:
– Licensing
– vDS policy configuration
– iSCSI
– Multipathing
So far, I was amazed on how vSphere was so streamlined for network. So, I was a little disappointed that I couldn’t get it to work on the first try. Below is the end result of what happens if you do this incorrectly.
esxcfg-vswitch -l (use ctrl c to stop it before it scrolls off the page)

So now both of my uplinks are set to the distributed switch and I have lost total communication with the server. After consoling directly to the server, my goal is to get one NIC back to the vSwitch from the dvSwitch.
Find out dvSwitch name, PortID and Uplink I need. Replace this command below with the information above: In my case I want the uplink = vmnic0; dvportID = 2945; dvswitchName = N1kv
esxcfg-vswitch -Q $uplink -V $dvportId $dvswitchName

So in my case I want to use this command in order to remove the NIC.
esxcfg-vswitch -Q vmnic0 vmnic0 -V 2945 N1kv

Now I can look back at my dvSwitch to make sure that “vmnic0” has been removed, I can proceed to add it to vSwitch.

Looking at my information I can see that I will have to add a vSwitch. Then I will need to link “vmnic0” to the Service Console. I usually use my standby Planetvm article. However, I have taken you this far.

First issue the following command to create the vswitches
esxcfg-vswitch -a vSwitch0

Next create your port groups
esxcfg-vswitch -A “Service Console” vSwitch0

Thent recreate the vswif interface
esxcfg-vswif -a vswif0 -p “Service Console” -i {your IP Address here} -n {Your Subnet Mask here}

And finally link your uplink to the vswitch
esxcfg-vswitch -L vmnic0 vSwitch0

This should get your network connectivity back up to reconnect it however you would like.

Posted in Cisco, CLI, ESX Host, vCenter.

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rev="post-53" 3 comments

By Wes – May 4, 2010

Cannot Manage Datastores after vSphere Upgrade

After upgrading Virtual Center server from 2.5 to 4, I could no longer manage Datastores.  I checked my permissions on the Datastore and it was set to “datastore upgrade”.  There was no way I wanted to keep logging out of vCenter every time I needed to move servers around.  So I logged onto vCenter using local admin credentials of the Virtual Infrastructure Server.  From there I went to Inventory -> Datastores and set the appropriate permissions to the “datastore-upgrade” folder.

Here is a link to the KB article from VMware.

Posted in Datastores, vCenter.

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By Wes – May 4, 2010

Move a vCenter Server or Database to a New EVC Enabled Cluster with Nexus 1000v

I recently came across an issue regarding moving a server that holds our vCenter database to a new cluster.   The big issue was that moving this server to the  EVC (Enhanced vMotion Compatibility) cluster meant not using Virtual Infrastructure.   As you can see, this took a little preparation before I dived right into it.    Not using vCenter meant I couldn’t just drag and drop the servers into the new cluster.  To make things more discombobulated, we had just configured Nexus on our primary cluster as well.   This could have attributed to the amount of time I spent trying to fix the issue.  I tried everything from removing the server from inventory and adding it back in from another host.   I did this by connecting directly to a host instead of the vCenter server directly.   If you have never done it then it is a great fallback tool that helps you get around in case of disaster.

When I tried to re-add the server to inventory on a host in the new cluster I started getting error messages.    When I tried connecting the NIC under “Edit Settings”, I got the error invalid configuration for device “0”. Remember, I am trying to link it with a cluster that is configured with a Distributed Switch (aka. Nexus) instead of the Virtual Switches.   After talking with support for a few hours they told me to just clone it from one cluster to the other.   I couldn’t believe it was that simple, but it worked perfectly!  It took about an hour for the clone to take place.   The server was a Windows 2008, so I did not even have to keep it shut down in order to clone it.    They never helped me understand why my method did not work since it was actually quicker.   I did hear one of them say the once added in the cluster, the server didn’t have permission to add the NIC.  That is because I was connected directly to the ESX host and not vCenter Server.

UPDATE

The error actually came back after the host was migrated.   This time I moved the same server off of the host it was origionally cloned to.   This brought back “Invalid configuration for device “0””.  This time I was not able to migrate it anywhere else in the cluster.   vCenter was down and I wasn’t going to clone it somewhere else.   The resolution was to create a vSwitch on the host and connect an extra NIC to it.   Connect the server client to the switch and then move it back to the Nexus.  This must be a bug with our current version of Nexus.

Posted in Datastores, ESX Host, vCenter.

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rev="post-29" 3 comments

By Wes – May 2, 2010