VirtualSlices

Blog issues

Tue, 15 Sep 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Hi all! Unfortunately I’ve been having some issues with my blog - my comments are not working properly and some recent content has gone missing. Please bare with me while I get these issues sorted!

Recovering a vSAN disk group from a failed ESXi host

Thu, 12 Sep 2019 00:00:00 +0000

In this post I’ll run through the steps required to recover a vSAN disk group from a failed ESXi host running vSphere 6.7 U3. If you need to recover data from a vSAN datastore after a situation like an ESXi host has died but the vSAN disks are intact, read on.

What happens when a boot disk fails on a vSAN host?

Sun, 17 Feb 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Have you ever wondered what would happen if an ESXi host lost access to its boot disk? If you expect the host to throw a purple screen of death and all VMs to be restarted on another host by vSphere HA, you might be surprised to find that the host will continue to operate more or less as usual, and virtual machines running on the host will continue to function without any problems.

How to increase storage on a vRealize Log Insight cluster

Tue, 11 Dec 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Increasing the storage capacity on vRealize Log Insight is something that I get asked about fairly often, typically because a customer has a regulatory or business requirement to store log data for x number of weeks or months, and the customer still wants to be able to query the logs interactively. vRealize Log Insight uses its local storage like a rolling cache, which means once the available storage is close to full, vRealize Log Insight will purge the oldest log data in storage so it can store new log data.

PowerCLI 10 - The SSL connection could not be established, see inner exception.

Mon, 05 Mar 2018 00:00:00 +0000

With the release of PowerCLI 10 at the end of February, unless you read the release notes first, I’m pretty sure you’ll have seen the following error message at least once when trying to connect with Connect-VIServer:

Sydney VMUG - Getting started with vRA

Tue, 21 Nov 2017 17:30:34 +0000

Hi everyone!

If you’re reading this, you probably saw my Getting started with vRA presentation at the Sydney VMUG earlier tonight. I hope you found something useful in the short 20-30 minute timeslot I had to work with. Delivering some useful content without blowing the time constraint was my biggest challenge, because vRA can be a bit of a complex topic! As promised, this post contains some information that was discussed tonight and which I hope will help you as you start on your vRA journey.

Searching vCenter events & tasks in vRealize Log Insight

Mon, 22 May 2017 19:27:47 +0000

The list of events and tasks that vCenter maintains for each object in the inventory are extremely useful for forensics analysis in a vSphere environment. For identifying who created or deleted a VM, resized a vmdk, or shut down a VM or host, events and tasks are where you look. In its default state, however, the events and tasks views in vCenter have some major issues (from a forensic point of view).

Configuring syslog on NSX Controllers using PowerShell

Sat, 25 Mar 2017 16:30:39 +0000

I recently needed to configure a number of NSX Controller nodes to forward their logs using syslog to a vRealize Log Insight cluster. Unlike the NSX manager (and most other components of a VMware SDDC), NSX controllers don’t provide a graphical way of configuring syslog. In fact, they don’t even offer a CLI command for syslog configuration. Instead, you need to use the NSX REST API.

Fixing file system corruption in the vCenter Server Appliance

Wed, 23 Nov 2016 12:01:00 +0000

I recently had a storage network outage in my lab environment, and after powering back on my vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) I was rudely greeted with the following information at the console:

Ouch! I’ve never dealt with file system corruption in a VCSA before, and the internet doesn’t seem to contain much information on what to do next. This post is my effort towards changing that.

How to get vCenter updates through a proxy using the Appliance MUI (or VAMI)

Thu, 17 Nov 2016 12:10:51 +0000

In yesterday’s post, I updated my VCSA 6.0 appliance to version 6.5. Today, logged into the Appliance MUI and noticed that my appliance was not able to check for updates using the default web repository.

Before we really start, a quick note on terminology. The Appliance MUI (which means Appliance Management UI) is the new name for the old VAMI (vSphere Appliance Management Interface). The MUI is a HTML5 web interface for configuring basic and low-level settings for the VCSA. It’s accessible by connecting to your VCSA on port 5480.

So, what’s the deal? Well, when browsing to the update section of the MUI and checking for updates, I would receive the following error:

vSphere 6.5 - upgrading your VCSA from version 6.0

Wed, 16 Nov 2016 20:49:55 +0000

With today’s exciting release of VMware vSphere 6.5, I thought I’d celebrate by upgrading the vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) in my lab from version 6.0 u2 to version 6.5. Since I’m doing this more or less blind, without having read any documentation whatsoever, I thought I would write a (hopefully short) post about the problems that arise during the upgrade process, and how to get past them.

Invoke-Sqlcmd - "Mixed mode assembly is built against version 'v2.0.50727' of the runtime” and HP Server Automation

Mon, 11 Jul 2016 21:19:36 +0000

I got this error message when trying to run the Invoke-Sqlcmd powershell cmdlet against a server remotely using HP Server Automation (HPSA). The full error message is:

Invoke-Sqlcmd : Mixed mode assembly is built against version 'v2.0.50727' of the runtime and cannot be loaded in the 4.0 runtime without additional configuration information.

Best practices for vSphere Metro Storage Clustering with 3Par Peer Persistence and Storage I/O Control

Thu, 26 May 2016 13:57:34 +0000

A vMSC - perhaps more commonly known as a “metro cluster” - is an architecture in which individual vSphere clusters will be spread across multiple geographical sites. Since a vSphere cluster requires shared storage to allow VM’s to migrate across hosts, in a vMSC environment this will mean that storage must be shared or replicated across the geographical sites. As you might expect, this kind of architecture comes with a number of gotchas and limitations, especially around the configuration of the storage arrays. For this reason, storage vendors who support vMSC architectures have released best practices documentation specifically for designing vMSC’s with their storage products.

Configuring Windows 10 language and wake settings using Powershell

Sun, 27 Mar 2016 15:42:57 +0000

One of the annoying things about installing new builds of Windows 10 is that the installation process resets a number of settings to default. When you’re on the insider preview “fast ring”, new builds come every 1-2 weeks, and changing those handful of things back to their previous setting gets old pretty fast. After installing a new build today I finally decided to try automating these things using Powershell.

Decommission a PSC or vCenter Server in vSphere 6.0

Thu, 17 Mar 2016 15:23:26 +0000

This is an (extremely) quick post to cover the steps required to decommission a Platform Services Controller (PSC) or vCenter Server from the vSphere single-sign on (SSO) domain. The steps below are for a VCSA; steps for a Windows VC are very similar, and are contained in the VMware KB article I used as a reference for writing this post: KB 2106736.

Query and change the Platform Services Controller being used by vCenter Server in vSphere 6.0

Tue, 15 Mar 2016 19:40:39 +0000

Here’s a quick guide on how to query and change the Platform Services Controller (PSC) being used by vCenter. Querying for the in-use PSC is possible on vCenter 6.0, but changing the PSC is only possible on 6.0 Update 1 or newer. Note that I performed these steps on the vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA), and while I have also included some commands for a Windows-based vCenter server, I haven’t tested them myself.

Increasing the disk size on a vCenter Server Appliance in vSphere 6.0

Fri, 04 Mar 2016 19:24:01 +0000

As VMware continues to push in the direction of unix-based appliances for their vSphere management components, those without a Unix background (like myself) are having to come to grips with the Unix versions of common administrative tasks. Increasing the disk size on a vCenter Server appliance (VCSA) is one such task. In vCenter 6.0 VMware has introduced Logical Volume Management (LVM) which really simplifies the process of increasing the size of a disk, and allows it to be done while the appliance is online. VMware KB 2126276 covers all the steps required to increase the size of a disk, but this guide will cover it in slightly more detail.

Useful Unix commands for managing disk space on VMware appliances

Fri, 19 Feb 2016 14:32:59 +0000

Coming from a Windows background without much knowledge of Unix commands, I often find myself at a loss when trying to figure out how to do things on VMware’s vSphere appliances. Managing disk space from the command line on an appliance is something I’ve had to do more than a few times, so I thought I’d create a quick list of the Unix commands I use most often to identify which partitions are filling up, and then which folders and files on that partition are consuming the most space.

Resolving the "host is not communicating for more than 15 seconds" error when connecting to a vSphere 6.0 appliance with WinSCP

Tue, 05 Jan 2016 13:42:58 +0000

If you’ve set up a vCenter 6.0 appliance or a Platform Services Controller and tried to connect via WinSCP, you will have noticed the following error: test3

Host is not communicating for more than 15 seconds. Still waiting…

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Blog Virtual Slices is the personal blog of Andrew Richardson and is focused primarily on virtualisation and automation within the VMware Software-defined Data Centre (SDDC). Author I’m a Staff Consulting Architect with VMware Professional Services, where I have been since 2017. I specialise in data centre virtualisation and automation. I’m based in Sydney, Australia. Prior to my time with VMware, I was a virtualization and Wintel architect working for Hewlett Packard Enterprise Services (later HPE, then DXC) with similar focus areas.