Script to check if VMs part of DRS-Groups

by woifgaung, posted in VMware, VMware | CLI

Recently I needed to check, if every VM of a cluster is part of at least one DRS-VM-Group. Typically this is a useful check if you operate a two (or more) site datacenter and/or stretched cluster. You then create DRS-groups for VMs and hosts. For each site a host- and at least a VM-group. At creation time of groups, every VM will be added to a VM-group. But for every new VM, you have to put it to a VM-group manually.

Continue reading “Script to check if VMs part of DRS-Groups” →
Advertisements

Errors when installing SimpliVity Deployment Manager

by woifgaung, posted in HP, HP & VMware, HP | Proliant, HP | Storage

To deploy new HPE SimpliVity nodes, you need to run Deployment Manager. Current version at writing: 3.7.6.244. Requirements to run Deployment Manager are: .NET 4.7.1 and Java 1.8. When .NET is not installed during installation, wizard links to Microsoft and starts the download. When Java is not installed or too old, an message is shown at first start. Sounds very simple. Anyway I had some problems.

I tried on Windows Server 2012 R2 and two Windows 10 Clients. During installation I got the error:

Input string was not in a correct format.

SVT_DeployMan2

When starting the Manager, I got the error:

Simplivity.DM.View has stopped working.

SVT_DeployMan1

The problem is caused by language settings in Windows. Even when just one language is installed, the problem can occur. To work around this issue, configure:

Control Panel –> Language –> Advanced settings –> Override for Windows display language –> select a language, do not  use “Use language list”.

SVT_DeployMan3

At lease starting the program works fine, during installation the same error is shown.

Errors when edit proxy settings in VCSA 6.7

by woifgaung, posted in VMware

When needed, you can configure a proxy server to automatically download VCSA updates in Appliance Management Interface (VAMI) [Port 5480] under Networking –> Proxy Settings. You have the options to configure proxy for HTTP, HTTPS and FTP.

When set a proxy server in VAMI, you could see these errors:

Error 1 (Syntax error)

VCSA_proxy_error1

[HTTP Error in method invocation expected string or bytes-like object]

Problem: You have to put protocol in front.
Solution: Instead of eg.: proxy_address set http://proxy_address

Error 2 (not reachable)

VCSA_proxy_error2

[HTTP Proxy server unreachable.]

Problem: Set address cannot be “ping”. So either ICMP or Echo request/reply is blocked by firewall.
Solution: Let ICMP traffic pass the firewall.

Notes for proxy settings in VCSA 6.7

  • What works: enable Echo request/reply, set proxy and deny Echo request/reply again.
  • IMHO it is not necessary to block ICMP/ping wherever possible. There are other ways to check available services behind an IP-address. ICMP furthermore eg. can  send control-messages for too long packages, which can be very useful. This does not work, when ICMP is blocked.
  • When user authentication is necessary, password is saved in clear-text in /etc/sysconfig/proxy.
  • Alternatively to setup proxy in GUI, configure proxy settings in /etc/sysconfig/proxy. To save user and password, use this syntax: HTTP_PROXY="http://user:password@proxy_address:80/"
  • When you try to setup proxy in API-Explorer: https://vcsa_address/apiexplorer/#/networking_proxy_ you will also get an error when server is not ping-able.
  • In VCSA 6.5 there was a bug when using HTTPS-proxy (here). This bug seems to be fixed in 6.7.
  • According to appliance configuration guide (here, page 36), you can use API commands within VCSA to configure proxy settings. This seems to be a copy/paste error in documentation because these commands do not work anymore.

3PAR: configure AFC with SSDs only for AFC

by woifgaung, posted in HP, HP | Storage

When initialize a new 3PAR, depending on your protection level, at least the size of one disk per disk-type will be reserved as spare. Also when you add disks to a running system, spare-chunklets are created. This is done by admithw. For example when you initialize a system containing 2 SSDs for adaptive flash cache (AFC) the size of one SSD is reserved for spare. So without writing any byte to SSDs, 50% is already used! So how to be able to get the most space for AFC?

  1. Check the capacity of you physical disks (PDs) by running showpd -c. You see free and used chunklet-counts. Also spare-chunklet are listed.
  2. Remove spare-chunklets from disk by running: removespare n:a. n stands for PD-ID of your SSD.
  3. Check again capacity by running showpd -c. You can see, free is the same as before, but uninit is the size of previous spares.
  4. Wait a few minutes and you can see, uninit decreases and free increases. Chunklets get initialized automatically.
  5. When all chunklets are initialized and therefore free, go ahead and create cache for AFC in GUI or CLI (createflashcache). SSMC needs a few minutes to see new free space on PDs.

“Download failed” when using proxy for VCSA update

by woifgaung, posted in VMware

There is still a bug in current VCSA 6.5 U1g. When you use a proxy server in management interface (Port 5480) to access VMware repository for updates, you get a “Download failed” error. The problem is that in configuration file https-proxy setting will not be set. To resolve the issue, do the following:

  1. Log in to VCSA shell
  2. Edit /etc/sysconfig/proxy
      • set entry HTTPS_PROXY like HTTP_PROXY
      • example:
        • HTTP_PROXY="http://proxy:3128/"
        • HTTPS_PROXY="http://proxy:3128/"

     

No reboot or service restart is necessary. Just re-try to scan repository.