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Dr. Arbitrary posted:I got asked to write some Powershell scripts to be used by vRealize Orchestrator. vRO is not a very fun tool to use. I have not really found a whole lot of good resources online, the little I know is from a vRA class I took a while back and just jumping in head first and pounding at the keyboard until something good happens. Is vRA in your mix at all? What is going to be triggering these workflows?
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Jun 20, 2016 20:02
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stubblyhead posted:vRO is not a very fun tool to use. I have not really found a whole lot of good resources online, the little I know is from a vRA class I took a while back and just jumping in head first and pounding at the keyboard until something good happens. Is vRA in your mix at all? What is going to be triggering these workflows? Dr. Arbitrary posted:I got asked to write some Powershell scripts to be used by vRealize Orchestrator. You guys take a look at this course, it's brand new as of this month I believe. There has definitely been a lack of vRO focused courses from VMware, but this should help. It's a 5 day course too, so *should* be chock full of content. I'll post my thoughts after I can carve out some time to take it if anyone is interested. Data Center Automation with vRealize Orchestrator and PowerCLI https://mylearn.vmware.com/mgrreg/courses.cfm?ui=www_edu&a=one&id_subject=71972
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Jun 20, 2016 21:29
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VDI sizing according to ms: This is a MS lab provided for a (pretty expensive) MS course.
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Jun 21, 2016 12:58
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Definitely don't overspec VMs for class labs. That might give customers a good impression!
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Jun 21, 2016 13:11
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evil_bunnY posted:VDI sizing according to ms: One brand new shiny 7200 rpm drive for each student!
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Jun 21, 2016 14:37
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BangersInMyKnickers posted:One brand new shiny 7200 rpm drive for each classroom!
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Jun 21, 2016 15:35
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BangersInMyKnickers posted:One brand new shiny 7200 rpm drive for each student!
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Jun 21, 2016 16:39
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I have an ESXi 6.0 box, and using the command line, remotely over the network, need to automate (do this 2-12 times a day, forever):
This is likely not an uncommon task. What's the best way to go about doing this? Straight up vmware command line utility? Ansible script(s)? I'm happy to google the poo poo out of this, I just want to avoid falling in to the wrong google hole, as there's a poo poo-ton of  out there on vmware stuff, most of it ancient. The second result for "vmware api bash" yields a slackware article from 2009 that's painful to read in 2016.Also, I'm planning on creating the VM with the same host name over and over again, maybe even using the same IP? Presumably if I wipe all trace of the VM away before starting anew, this shouldn't be a problem, right?
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Jun 22, 2016 09:37
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All of that should be scriptable (it is from powershell, but obviously that's not an option for you).
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Jun 22, 2016 10:19
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Can you hook it to vsphere? If you know perl, Python, ruby or Java you can do it with the XXvmomi where XX is rb/py. Powershell is even easier if you're a windows guy. Mechanic is the vsphere API and VMware tools to run commands inside the container, no ip needed. If you know ruby, DM me and I'll give you some example scripts. From the command line directly? Good luck. Bhodi fucked around with this message at 12:21 on Jun 22, 2016 |
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Jun 22, 2016 12:17
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If you're in vSphere, isn't this what Orchestrator was built to do?
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Jun 22, 2016 15:48
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evil_bunnY posted:All of that should be scriptable (it is from powershell, but obviously that's not an option for you). PM sent Yeah Ruby is fine, golang would be ideal. We're not at all a Windows shop and while I have a ton of powershell experience, you can't run powershell scripts from a Linux based container in our infrastructure Is the long term strategy for VMware to stay focused on Windows control software? I never really saw them as being a Windows shop
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Jun 22, 2016 20:06
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Hadlock posted:PM sent Their long term strategy is for you to use a cloud management application that interacts with the vsphere environment through rest APIs.
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Jun 22, 2016 20:13
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NippleFloss posted:Their long term strategy is for you to use a cloud management application that interacts with the vsphere environment through rest APIs.
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Jun 22, 2016 20:20
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Martytoof posted:If you're in vSphere, isn't this what Orchestrator was built to do? Pretty much. It's not the most pleasant orchestration tool out there, but it should be up to this task.
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Jun 22, 2016 21:20
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Hadlock posted:PM sent My personal favorite: You can run commands through vmware tools but there's no way to get the stdout/stderr, just the return code. I'm pretty sure I asked here a while back if it was possible. It's not. However, I found that you CAN save the output to disk then grab it from the hypervisor then curl it down. So I wrote a thing that does that. Also for some dumb reason the datacenter's findvm method doesn't traverse vm directories when searching for for a VM. So I wrote a thing that does that, too. Bhodi fucked around with this message at 21:55 on Jun 22, 2016 |
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Jun 22, 2016 21:51
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Does anyone know if it's possible to migrate auto deploy images and rules from one vcenter server to another? I was able to get the cache onto the new server with scp, though I suspect there's metadata in there somewhere linked to the old one. I've been tinkering around with the powercli cmdlets, and haven't been able to make much headway. Pulling rules off a server is easy enough, but one of the object's properties refers to the name of the original server, and is read-only. If you try to add it to server2, it'll bitch that the object exists on another server. Is there some other approach I can take, or am I out of luck? e: I talked with the guy actually working with the client on this one, and there's only one software image and a handful of deployment rules. Even starting over it shouldn't take long to recreate everything from scratch. stubblyhead fucked around with this message at 18:41 on Jun 23, 2016 |
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Jun 23, 2016 03:02
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Just a heads up if anyone is using the Reliable Memory VMware feature (on the Dell side its called Fault Resilient Memory/FRM, other vendors probably have a different name for it). It appears to be broken on the latest gen of Intel processors with multiple NUMA nodes per socket. Check your VMKwarning logs for stuff like this at the top: TSC: 32774268 cpu0:1)WARNING: NUMA: 1688: A significant memory (DRAM) imbalance (more than 30 percent) was detected between NUMA nodes 1(65536 MB) and 0(32670 MB). This may impact performance 0:00:00:04.397 cpu0:1)WARNING: NumaCodeRep: 613: Could not replicate kernel code on node 1 0:00:00:04.403 cpu0:1)WARNING: NumaCodeRep: 613: Could not replicate kernel code on node 3 0:00:00:07.552 cpu0:32768)WARNING: IOAPIC: 748: pin 0 is not masked That's with full NUMA FRM mode where the hypervisor kernel pages should be replicated to memory on all 4 nodes. Only nodes 0 and 2 are working when all 4 should be replicated. It's even worse if you run standard FRM where only one of the two nodes per socket should get the replicated pages: TSC: 26702786 cpu0:1)WARNING: NUMA: 1688: A significant memory (DRAM) imbalance (more than 30 percent) was detected between NUMA nodes 1(65536 MB) and 0(32670 MB). This may impact performance 0:00:00:04.794 cpu0:1)WARNING: NumaCodeRep: 613: Could not replicate kernel code on node 1 0:00:00:04.794 cpu0:1)WARNING: NumaCodeRep: 613: Could not replicate kernel code on node 2 0:00:00:04.794 cpu0:1)WARNING: NumaCodeRep: 613: Could not replicate kernel code on node 3 Whoopsie doodles, feature doesn't work at all and there's no indication unless you're digging through the logs. BangersInMyKnickers fucked around with this message at 18:33 on Jun 23, 2016 |
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Jun 23, 2016 17:44
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Just a heads-up for the Vancouver-area folks: Vancouver Laptops has a bunch of Lenovo S30 workstations in stock again for $427. It comes with a Xeon E5-1620 and it has a ton of SATA ports and 8 DIMM slots that'll take cheap ECC RAM. I bought one a few months ago and it's great as a starting base for a virtualization lab setup.
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Jun 25, 2016 19:04
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Quick question for people in the know: I just stood up a full install of Windows Server 2008 R2 on ESXi and it's slow. Clicking on Explorer can sometimes take 5-10 seconds for the Explorer window to appear. The host has 4gb of RAM allocated to it and has unlimited reign on the i3-4170 (which scores 5149 on passmark). The host also has a fairly slow 7200 RPM hard drive. I did install the VMware tools. I know the hardware is unimpressive for virtualizing a full install of Windows, but I expected it to be snappier. Were my expectations too high, or do I possibly have a configuration issue somewhere that is causing the slowness?
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Jun 28, 2016 01:09
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are you getting paravirtualized devices after you installed the VM tools?
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Jun 28, 2016 01:10
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adorai posted:are you getting paravirtualized devices after you installed the VM tools? Looks like yes for Disk drives and Display adapters. No for IDE controllers. The slowness feels like a disk access issue. I can see from vSphere Client that the processor is being pushed properly. Part of me wonders whether I've just forgotten how slow spinning drives can be. I have a spare SSD I can migrate the install to tomorrow. Edit: it looks like I didn't install a paravirtualized SCSI adapter as indicated here: https://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1010398 Going to follow that procedure and see if that helps. Thanks for the tip! bobfather fucked around with this message at 01:49 on Jun 28, 2016 |
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Jun 28, 2016 01:36
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A yup. Changing the storage controller to a paravirtualized controller improved the response significantly. It's still a bit slow, but I think that will be resolved by migrating it to a SSD tomorrow. Thank you!
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Jun 28, 2016 02:15
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Kind of a broad question, but where's my best place to get started in getting my VCP? I've been at my current job (heavy VMware environment, 90% virtualized) as the main VMware guy for about a year, and before that I worked in not-so-virtualized environments using VMware for 3-5 years. I figure at this point I've got a decent amount of experience and wouldn't mind getting my VCP as I think my boss would pay for it.
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Jun 28, 2016 20:33
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Another quick question about ESXi to people in the know: Is there a way to have the free version of ESXi keep a datastore in software RAID 1, assuming I have 2+ drives to support the mirror? I'm basically trying to avoid having to shell out $$$ for an LSI or Adaptec hardware controller. Edit: Or barring being able to do this, am I able to use passthrough to give Windows Server 2008 R2 direct access to 2 identical drives, and then use Windows Server to mirror those drives? If I do this, are those drives still seen as datastores? I know If I use passthrough the drives would not be usable by any other VMs. bobfather fucked around with this message at 20:54 on Jun 28, 2016 |
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Jun 28, 2016 20:44
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Not really. If this is just something you want to mess around with, a PERC 6 and all the trimmings is around $30 on eBay and I'm pretty sure still supported. Could you install Windows Server on bare metal and run ESXi in Hyper-V?
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Jun 28, 2016 21:12
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bobfather posted:Another quick question about ESXi to people in the know: What's your end goal look like here?
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Jun 28, 2016 21:19
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bobfather posted:Another quick question about ESXi to people in the know: There's probably simpler ways to manage whatever you're trying to do here. Vulture Culture fucked around with this message at 21:27 on Jun 28, 2016 |
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Jun 28, 2016 21:25
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Thanks Ants posted:What's your end goal look like here? The business has an SQL database that is used on a regular basis during business hours. I just want there to be redundancy on the drive with that database. They do regular daily backups of the database, but if the drive fails I want them to be able to continue working that business day without a significant hitch.
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Jun 29, 2016 00:46
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Vulture Culture posted:You can put a pair of VMDKs on different datastores and RAID-1 them in the OS without having to pass anything through. You'll have to manually remediate all of your VMs' missing disks to manage them (start, etc.) if one of the datastores goes poof, though. Basically, I want to mirror a VMDK that contains Windows Server 2008 R2 and the SQL database I mentioned above. What you're saying (I think) is I can add a second drive / datastore to the host, make that datastore available to Windows Server 2008, and then from within WS it will allow me to mirror to that drive? Since it essentially sees that second datastore as an empty drive? If so, I think that's my ticket if we aren't willing to drop the money for a hardware RAID controller.
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Jun 29, 2016 00:52
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If it is for a business do not do this without a compatible hardware RAID controller.
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Jun 29, 2016 00:55
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Internet Explorer posted:If it is for a business do not do this without a compatible hardware RAID controller. It's for the business I work for, and they were satisfied with only having software RAID1 via Windows Server 2008, with daily on-site backups, prior to me proposing a switch to ESXi, so I can virtualize an Asterisk PBX, also for the business. I appreciate the concern, and I'm absolutely aware of how to do it the best and right way, but it's a non-profit with small margins, and my ESXi box is a Lenovo H50-50 because that's what we have to work with! I think we'll be ok with a software-based RAID solution, and ESXi will even give us the flexibility to instantly move Windows Server and the SQL database to another computer if a power supply or motherboard fails, which is already 100% better than their previous solution of WS 2008 on a bare metal Core2Duo-era serve with no computer hardware backups or redundant anything except a redundant power supply. I guess what I'm saying is, I know money solves my problem easily. There just isn't any. bobfather fucked around with this message at 01:07 on Jun 29, 2016 |
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Jun 29, 2016 01:04
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bobfather posted:Basically, I want to mirror a VMDK that contains Windows Server 2008 R2 and the SQL database I mentioned above. While I would have no issue doing something like this, I have a lot of experience and have confidence I could fix it if something went wrong. By virtue of merely asking this question and getting the wording wrong, I do not believe you fall into this camp. Make sure you set this up in a lab setting first, so you understand exactly what your configuration will result in. Also, don't assume this is a backup, because it is not. bobfather posted:I guess what I'm saying is, I know money solves my problem easily. There just isn't any.
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Jun 29, 2016 01:20
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adorai posted:I think you know what you want but I want to clarify your wording. You will have two VMware datastores, each of which housing a VMDK that is attached to the guest. The guest can use Windows software raid1 to add redundancy for the data. Thanks for the vote of confidence! I only just started reading about ESXi last week, so I'm short on the terms admittedly. I've done a lot of reading over good solutions for my problem over the past couple days, but I didn't see much in the way of a $20 controller that is compatible with ESXi. More like $100+, and ideally I'd like 4 SATA ports to do 2 RAID1 mirrors. Do you know of a $20 controller with 2+ ports you could recommend? I don't mind doing things the right way - in fact I'd prefer to. But not if the company can't afford it at the moment.
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Jun 29, 2016 01:27
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How much will it cost to lose that database and/or have to spend a day rebuilding the server and restoring from backup?
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Jun 29, 2016 01:37
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bobfather posted:Basically, I want to mirror a VMDK that contains Windows Server 2008 R2 and the SQL database I mentioned above. bobfather posted:Thanks for the vote of confidence! I only just started reading about ESXi last week, so I'm short on the terms admittedly. What the data in the database worth ? Or the downtime when this breaks ? Doing unsupported hacky things with other peoples data is not going to be career advancing
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Jun 29, 2016 01:45
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Internet Explorer posted:How much will it cost to lose that database and/or have to spend a day rebuilding the server and restoring from backup? Losing the database would be bad. Which is why I'm going to be advocating off-site backups next. As for spending time to rebuild the server and restore from backup, that will obviously cost money and time, if it fails. The if being the thing, because the boss has never had a failure in 6 years of software RAID1 plus nightly backups. I find that it's super easy to argue from the enterprise-level position that money buys fail-proof systems. Let's try something else though - let's figure out the least-likely-to-fail solution if throwing money at the problem isn't a possibility.
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Jun 29, 2016 01:46
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jre posted:What the data in the database worth ? Or the downtime when this breaks ? I'm not sure that using software RAID on a virtualized OS is any more hacky than using software RAID on a bare metal OS. I'm essentially trying to get ESXi up to par with Windows Server's own software RAID. We can't do better unless better is really cheap (like $20 RAID1 controllers).
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Jun 29, 2016 01:49
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bobfather posted:I'm not sure that using software RAID on a virtualized OS is any more hacky than using software RAID on a bare metal OS.
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Jun 29, 2016 01:50
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Thanks, this is manageable! Edit: just to be clear I would need a mini-SAS to SATA cable to use SATA drives, correct? bobfather fucked around with this message at 02:18 on Jun 29, 2016 |
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Jun 29, 2016 02:02
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