Vmware on BAFM

VMware Auto Deploy already registered / RuleEngine

Sun, 03 Sep 2017 19:19:28 +0000

I had this weird plugin error the other day which bothered me on Friday. I decided to go fixing it. So after poking around in the vCenter installed software list. I couldn’t find the Auto Deploy in the list, so I figured due to my recent vCenter reinstallation while keeping the database, I forgot to reinstall Auto Deploy.

I went ahead and started the Auto Deploy setup from the DVD again, until I received this weird looking error. Apparently the setup thought (and decided correctly) that Auto Deploy was already installed in my vCenter.

PowerCLI: Delete all snapshots by name

Mon, 23 Feb 2015 19:45:22 +0000

I have the issue that we use a cloud automation software, which for whatever reason failed to delete the hypervisor snapshots.

Now I was looking into a quick way to delete all those 520 snapshots with PowerCLI, and I found something pretty quick.

Based on that, I came up with my own quick PowerCLI one-liner, that’ll list all VMs and their snapshots:

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Get-VM | Get-Snapshot | Where { $_.Name -like "201502*" } | Format-Table -Property VM, Name, Created, Description, SizeMB -AutoSize

Now, I could use another one-liner to delete all snapshots, that’ll look like this:

Quick-Add a bunch of Virtual Machine Port-Groups from CSV

Sat, 03 Jan 2015 08:06:07 +0000

Well, I’m currently migrating between different cluster layouts, and I had to create the new PortGroups on the old hosts, in order for me to switch between old and new hosts.

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$vmhosts = Get-Cluster "UCSCL01-02" | Get-VMHost
foreach ($vmhost in $vmhosts) {
 import-csv -Delimiter ";" .\pg.csv | foreach {
 $vmhost | Get-VirtualSwitch -Name "vSwitch3" | New-VirtualPortGroup `
 -Name $_.portgroup -VLanId $_.vlanid
 }
}

And the corresponding CSV would look like this:

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portgroup;vlanid
1700_routers;1700
1701_routers;1701
1702_routers;1702
1703_routers;1703
1704_routers;1704
1705_routers;1705
1706_routers;1706
1707_routers;1707
1708_routers;1708
1709_routers;1709
1710_routers;1710
1711_routers;1711
1712_routers;1712
1713_routers;1713
1714_routers;1714
1715_routers;1715
1716_routers;1716
1717_routers;1717
1718_routers;1718
1719_routers;1719
2000_virtual-machines;2000
2001_virtual-machines;2001
2002_virtual-machines;2002
2003_virtual-machines;2003
2004_virtual-machines;2004
2005_virtual-machines;2005
2006_virtual-machines;2006
2007_virtual-machines;2007
2008_virtual-machines;2008
2009_virtual-machines;2009
2010_virtual-machines;2010
2011_virtual-machines;2011
2012_virtual-machines;2012
2013_virtual-machines;2013
2014_virtual-machines;2014
2015_virtual-machines;2015
2016_virtual-machines;2016
2017_virtual-machines;2017
2018_virtual-machines;2018
2019_virtual-machines;2019

VMware: New VirtualCenter 2-5 Update 4

Fri, 08 Aug 2014 08:47:01 +0000

As many people on the VM-Planet already blogged about this, I ain’t gonna write just about it. Let’s turn the clock back a few months, to January 2008.

As the institution I work for, is part of the DFN we took the opportunity to be a part of the " I want you to run our RA"-gang. In January 2008 we thought about changing the vCenter certificate. Now, apparently there’s a slight difference between the DFN-PCA and what VMware considers common practice.

VMware templates: post-processing for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and openSUSE

Thu, 21 Nov 2013 16:31:40 +0000

Well, I’ve been fiddling around with SLES and openSUSE VMware templates. I know it’s a stupid idea when you have a PXE server from which you could install this in a matter of minutes (seriously the SLES PXE installation takes about 5 minutes).

However, when dealing with DMZ’s (yeah, they exist!) you usually don’t have any PXE servers there. So I decided to go with simple VMware templates (like we do with Windows already), but had to iron out a few kinks.

vmware-config-tools-pl finished with Could not find Parent Node

Mon, 09 Sep 2013 19:15:53 +0000

Well, today I encountered a old problem (or so I thought). Basically a specific udevadm version causes the vmware-config-tools.pl script to error out like this:

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The vmblock enables dragging or copying files between host and guest in a
Fusion or Workstation virtual environment. Do you wish to enable this feature?
[no]

!!! [EXPERIMENTAL] !!!
VMware automatic kernel modules enables automatic building and installation of
VMware kernel modules at boot that are not already present. By selecting yes,
you will be enabling this experimental feature. You can always disable this
feature by re-running vmware-config-tools.pl.

Would you like to enable VMware automatic kernel modules?
[no]

No X install found.

Could not find Parent Node...

I’ve had encountered this before in the past, and before there was some explanation on the VMware forums, which I couldn’t locate. Lucky me, the VMware Tools updater keeps modified versions of vmware-tools-config.pl around. So I ended up creating this short diff, so that I may find it in the future - if I still need it:

VMware ESXi - Free memory limits corrected

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 18:33:36 +0000

Well, a coworker of mine asked me about this. Since I didn’t know (yeah, I don’t know everything) I went to my trusted friend - Google - and searched for it. There seems to be a lot of confusion about this, so I thought I’d clarify this.

I ended up putting a license to one of my hosts in vCenter.

Yeah well, the host has a bit more memory than the allowed 32GB vRAM per Socket (the host has two sockets) - thus you’re allowed to have 64GB RAM if your host has two sockets.

Installserver: Publish a VMware ESX ISO - register-vmware

Tue, 24 Jul 2012 16:21:12 +0000

Here’s an old script, that also uses the magic provided by pxe-menu-generation (the script I posted before), but for VMware ESX/ESXi.

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#!/bin/bash

TFTP_DIR=/srv/tftp
INSTSRC_DIR=/srv/instsrc

if [ -z $@ ] ; then
 echo "Usage: register-vmware <path to iso-file> labelname"
 exit 1
fi

#set -x

ISO_FILE=$1
mkdir /mnt/loop
mount -o loop $ISO_FILE /mnt/loop

if [ -f /mnt/loop/packages.xml ] ; then
 # Determine ISO information
 OS_LABEL="$( grep "<name>" /mnt/loop/packages.xml | sed -e "s,<name>,," -e "s,</name>,," )"
 OS_NAME="$( grep "<ProductLineId>" /mnt/loop/packages.xml | sed -e "s,<ProductLineId>,," -e "s,</ProductLineId>,," )"
 OS_RELEASE="$( grep "<version>" /mnt/loop/packages.xml | sed -e "s,<version>,," -e "s,</version>,," )"
 OS_BUILD="$( grep "<release>" /mnt/loop/packages.xml | sed -e "s,<release>,," -e "s,</release>,," )"

 shopt -s extglob
 OS_LABEL=${OS_LABEL##*( )}
 OS_NAME=${OS_NAME##*( )}
 OS_RELEASE=${OS_RELEASE##*( )}
 OS_BUILD=${OS_BUILD##*( )}
elif [ -f /mnt/loop/README.txt ] ; then
 OS_LABEL=""
 OS_NAME=""
 OS_RELEASE=""
 OS_BUILD=""
fi

# Create directories
mkdir -p $TFTP_DIR/boot/$OS_NAME/$OS_RELEASE-$OS_BUILD
mkdir -p $TFTP_DIR/pxelinux.cfg/$OS_NAME
mkdir -p $INSTSRC_DIR/$OS_NAME/$OS_RELEASE-$OS_BUILD

#set +x

# Copy CD/DVD content
rsync -av /mnt/loop/* $INSTSRC_DIR/$OS_NAME/$OS_RELEASE-$OS_BUILD

# Copy the PXE boot file (initrd/kernel)
cp $INSTSRC_DIR/$OS_NAME/$OS_RELEASE-$OS_BUILD/isolinux/initrd.img
 $TFTP_DIR/boot/$OS_NAME/$OS_RELEASE-$OS_BUILD/initrd.img

cp $INSTSRC_DIR/$OS_NAME/$OS_RELEASE-$OS_BUILD/isolinux/vmlinuz
 $TFTP_DIR/boot/$OS_NAME/$OS_RELEASE-$OS_BUILD/vmlinuz

# Create the PXE boot menu
cat > $TFTP_DIR/pxelinux.cfg/$OS_NAME/$OS_NAME-$OS_RELEASE-$OS_BUILD.menu << EOF
#LABEL $OS_LABEL $OS_RELEASE - build $OS_BUILD
#OSNAME $OS_NAME
#OSARCH x86_64

MENU TITLE VMware Installservice
MENU BACKGROUND addons/background-vmware.png

MENU COLOR screen 37;40 #80ffffff #00000000
MENU COLOR border 0 #ffffffff #ee000000 std
MENU COLOR title 0 #ffffffff #ee000000 std
MENU COLOR unsel 0 #ffffffff #ee000000 std
MENU COLOR sel 0 #ffffffff #85000000 std
MENU COLOR scrollbar 30;44 #40000000 #00000000
MENU COLOR tabmsg 0 #ee000000 #ffffffff std
MENU COLOR cmdmark 0 #ff00ff00 #00000000 std
MENU COLOR cmdline 0 #ee000000 #ffffffff std
MENU COLOR timeout_msg 0 #ee000000 #ffffffff std
MENU COLOR timeout 0 #ee000000 #ffffffff std
MENU COLOR disabled 0 #ffffffff #ee000000 std
MENU COLOR pwdheader 0 #ff000000 #99ffffff rev
MENU COLOR pwdborder 0 #ff000000 #99ffffff rev
MENU COLOR pwdentry 0 #ff000000 #99ffffff rev
MENU COLOR hotkey 0 #ff00ff00 #ee000000 std
MENU COLOR hotsel 0 #ffffffff #85000000 std

LABEL DESC
MENU LABEL $OS_LABEL $OS_RELEASE
MENU DISABLE

MENU SEPARATOR

LABEL kickstart
MENU LABEL ^Kickstart Installation
KERNEL boot/$OS_NAME/$OS_RELEASE-$OS_BUILD/vmlinuz
APPEND initrd=boot/$OS_NAME/$OS_RELEASE-$OS_BUILD/initrd.img vmkopts=debugLogToSerial:1 mem=512M ks=http://install.home.barfoo.org/kickstart/$OS_NAME-$OS_RELEASE-$OS_BUILD.cfg HOSTNAME=
IAPPEND 1

TEXT HELP
Es ist zu beachten, das mit TAB der Hostname angepasst werden muss!
ENDTEXT

LABEL netinst
MENU LABEL ^Netzwerkbasierte Installation
KERNEL boot/$OS_NAME/$OS_RELEASE-$OS_BUILD/vmlinuz
APPEND initrd=boot/$OS_NAME/$OS_RELEASE-$OS_BUILD/initrd.img vmkopts=debugLogToSerial:1 mem=512M url=http://install.home.barfoo.org/instsrc/$OS_NAME/$OS_RELEASE-$OS_BUILD
IAPPEND 1

MENU SEPARATOR

LABEL back
MENU LABEL <-- ^Vorherige Ansicht
KERNEL addons/vesamenu.c32
APPEND pxelinux.cfg/$OS_NAME.menu
EOF

umount /mnt/loop
rmdir /mnt/loop

Reoccurring memory limits in vCenter

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 15:00:20 +0000

We recently had, after we migrated from vSphere 4 to vSphere 5, a memory limit in size of the configured memory on each and every VM. Since memory limits on VM level pretty much destroy performance, I went ahead an wrote this simple script to remove all memory limits on all VMs that don’t have “Unlimited” configured:

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param( [string] $vCenter )

# Add the VI-Snapin if it isn't loaded already
if ( (Get-PSSnapin -Name "VMware.VimAutomation.Core" -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue) -eq $null )
{
 Add-PSSnapin -Name "VMware.VimAutomation.Core"
}

If ( !($vCenter) )
{
 Write-Host
 Write-Host "cluster-remove-mem-limits: <vcenter-server>"
 Write-Host
 Write-Host " <vcenter-server> - DNS name of your vCenter server."
 Write-Host
 exit 1
}

Connect-VIServer -Server $vCenter

Get-VM | Get-VMResourceConfiguration | Where-Object { $_.memlimitmb -ne '-1' } |`
 Set-VMResourceConfiguration -memlimitmb $null

Disconnect-VIServer -server $vCenter -Confirm:$false

This script is basically what the guy over at get-admin.com did, just only for memory limits.

PowerCLI undamp; Windows jump list for recent items set to zero

Tue, 05 Jul 2011 17:22:27 +0000

Today I had to install PowerCLI on my workstation. When I tried launching it for the first time, it simply opened and closed again instantly. After browsing the VMware community for this error and not finding a useful solution, I ended up googling the error. As it turns out, this only happens when you did set the " Number of recent items to display in jump lists" to something less than 4.

VMware Consolidated Backup and TRANSPORT_MODE=hotadd

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 17:03:38 +0000

As the title says, I’ve been playing with vCB (inside a VM) and the TSM integration with newer (>6.0) clients for work. Result of all this work should be a feasibility study. We’re currently thinking about replacing our VMware server(s) with ESXi. But as most of you know, if you install ESXi, you simply can’t install anything (well, you can .. on ~100KB of disk space, which is compared to a TSM client weighing roughly 120MB nothing!). As we would like the possibility to backup VMs on image-level, I went looking at solutions.

VMware vSphere: Safely remove network controller

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 18:24:01 +0000

Well, it’s another day another fight. As we started migrating our VM’s from the old VMware ESX farms to the new environment, and upgraded the hardware suddenly the network devices were hot-plug-able, thus they did turn up in the “Safely Remove” dialog.

I myself don’t have any trouble with that. The trouble I do have is the people working with those VM’s and their possibly hazardous “uuuh, what’s this ? I don’t need this! <click-click, network-device unplugged>”

VMware Data Recovery

Tue, 05 Jan 2010 17:11:35 +0000

I’ve been tinkering with VMware’s Data Recovery for the last two weeks (as in configured it some time before Christmas) and had it running all that time. I have to say the integration into the vCenter Client GUI is amazing, I’d love to see that for VCB also. The Changed Block Tracking is a neat way to minimize the amount backup data as well as your backup window (which is nearly zero anyhow due to vDR using snapshots).

VCP410 exam

Thu, 24 Dec 2009 20:25:55 +0000

I’ve been learning for my VCP-410 exam the last week or so, and what can I say ? It helped … 463 points of a total of 500 points ain’t that bad at all (considering I spend twenty minutes doing it).

Sure, I could have spent more time, and do better than 92,6%, but then again: why should I ?

The achieved points (nor the percentage) don’t appear on the certificate (or at least it didn’t on the old one), so why bother. Anyway, that was my christmas present to myself, it that light; happy christmas ya’ll.

PXEBoot the VMware ESXi installer

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 20:19:46 +0000

Some of you may know, that VMware released vSphere 4.0 Update 1 yesterday. I took this as a reason, to finally wrap my head around booting the VMware ESXi installer from my PXE/TFTP box. Since VMware was kind enough to provide (a somewhat worthless) document, that explains how to extract the necessary files on Windows. But that quite doesn’t work with Linux – and VMware just states that you should be using mount and it’s option offset.

ESX: Query CDP information from the command line

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 17:20:46 +0000

I’m just tracing some troubles I’m having with a backup server and two (independent) network adapter ports (as in two ports on two different dual-port nics). If I enable the port and set it to auto configuration, it’ll get 100MBit/Half-Duplex, but the Portgroup becomes unavailable.

In order to get the connection back, I need to logon on the console (thank god even the backup server got an iLO2), and manually (as in esxcfg-nics -s 1000 -d full vmnic1) configure the adapter to 1GBit/s and full-duplex.

Custom certificates in VMware vSphere

Fri, 24 Jul 2009 13:34:57 +0000

Finally, after about 6 months (I last talked about that on February 25th, when Virtual Center 2.5U4 was released) our troubles with our " custom" certificates seems to be resolved! As it turns out, it really was our fault and not VMware’s.

When generating the pfx from the signed certificate and the key-file, you need to supply a password, otherwise the vCenter service is unable to utilize the private key of the pfx, since it’s unable to access the PFX with the default password ( testpassword is the default for Virtual Center as well as vSphere).

Updating a Linux VM from Virtual Infrastructure to vSphere

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 13:51:50 +0000

Well, if you’re gonna update a SLES10 (or even a SLES11) VM, you created with Virtual Infrastructure, you’re gonna run into a snag (like I do). Grub (or rather the kernel itself) is gonna barf.

Now, I searched for a while and didn’t find anything specific on the net, so I’m gonna write it down. Up till 3.5U4 the maximal resolution you’d be able to enter within a virtual machine was vga=0x32d (at least for my 19" TFT’s at work). But now, after the upgrade to vSphere that isn’t working anymore.