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Archive for the ‘vCenter’ Category

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Building vCloud Suite POC – Part 14: Configure vCenter Operations Manager

Posted by Marek.Z on 15 May 2013

Now the vCenter Operations Manager vApp is deployed, we can proceed with the initial configuration.

Initial Setup

  1. Open the vSphere Client and log in to the vCenter Server where the vCenter Operations Manager vApp is located.
  2. Select the vApp and from the Summary tab click the Available link to open the vCenter Operations Manager Administration page.P14-S1-Available
  3. Accept the SSL security warning and log in with username admin and password admin.
  4. In the Initial Setup Wizard, provide the vCenter Server address which will be monitored and a username and password. Click Next. Note that the IP address of the Analytics VM is already present.P14-S2-vCS
  5. Click Yes on the SSL security alert to accept the authenticity of the vCenter Server.
  6. Next, change the password for the admin account (for the vCenter Operations Manager Administration Portal) and the root password (for the vCenter Operations Manager virtual appliance console).P14-S3-Pass
  7. Specify the details for vCenter Server that will be monitored. Provide a display name, FQDN or IP address, username, password for the registration user and optionally for the collector user. Click Next.P14-S4-Monitor
  8. Click Next on the Import Data section. This is only available if you already running a legacy version of vCenter Operations Manager or vCenter CapacityIQ.
  9. In the next step, you can register vCenter Servers that are in Linked Mode with your vCenter Server. In my case there are no vCenter Servers in Linked Mode. Click Finish to complete the initial setup.

When the registration of the vCenter Server instance is completed you will be redirected to the vCenter Operations Manager Administrations user interface. This process can take some time to complete.

Configure Email Notifications

The vCenter Operations Manager can send email notifications when a problem with its operation occurs. An Administrative alert is sent when the vCenter Operations Manager detects a problem with one or more of its components and cannot collect data from the monitored objects.

  1. On the vCenter Operations Manager Administration UI select the SMTP/SNMP tab and enable SMTP and/or SNMP.P14-S5-SMTPSNMP
  2. Click Update.
  3. Close the vCenter Operations Manager Administration page.

Enable Plug-in

  1. Open the vSphere Client and log in.
  2. From the Plug-ins menu, select Manage Plug-ins.
  3. In the Plug-in Manager, scroll down to vCenter Operations Manager plug-in.
  4. If not enabled, right click the plug-in and select Enable.
  5. The plug-in should now be enabled.
  6. Click Close to close the Plug-in Manager.
  7. You should now see a vCenter Operations Manager icon under the Solutions and Applications section.

Assign License

The final step in the initial vCenter Operations Manager setup is assigning a valid license key. This must be done in the vCenter Server.

  1. Open vSphere Client or vSphere Web Client and log in to you vCenter Server. In this case I will use the Web Client.
  2. From the Home page, select Licensing under Administration.
  3. Next, select the Solutions tab.
  4. Highlight the vCenter Operations Manager and click Assign License Key.P14-S6-Key
  5. From the drop-down menu, choose if you want to assign an existing key or if you want to assign a new one.
  6. Enter a new key or choose one, if you already entered one.
  7. Click OK to assign the license key.

This concludes the initial setup of the vCenter Operations Manager. Proceed to part 15 (coming soon) where we will create a custom user interface dashboard.

Cheers!

- Marek.Z

Posted in How To, Operations Manager, vCenter, vCloud Suite, VMware | Tagged: , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Building vCloud Suite POC – Part 13: Add vCenter Operations Manager

Posted by Marek.Z on 7 May 2013

So far the vCloud Suite proof of concept has been installed and configured with the vCloud Director with vCloud Networking and Security, vCloud Connector and vCenter Chargeback Manager. In this part we will take a look on how to proactively manage the health of vSphere infrastructure, virtual machines and applications. But also how to spot potential bottlenecks and how to remediate the problems. To do this, VMware offers vCenter Operations Manager, which is also part of the vCenter Operations Management Suite, to address these questions. Before we jump into installation and configuration of vCenter Operations Manager, let’s define what it actually is.

VMware vCenter Operations Manager is the key component of the vCenter Operations Management Suite. It provides a new and much simplified approach to operations management of vSphere, physical and cloud infrastructure. Using patented, self-learning analytics and an open, extensible platform, vCenter Operations Manager provides you with operations dashboards to gain deep insights and visibility into health, risk and efficiency of your infrastructure, performance management and capacity optimization capabilities.

Source: VMware vCenter Operations Manager Overview

Architecture

The vCenter Operations Manager is a virtual appliance and comes as an OVA downloadable from VMware. It can be deployed using the vSphere Client and the Web Client. Once deployed the vCenter Operations Manager is a vApp containing two virtual machines.

  • UI VM: this virtual machines provides you with access to the analytics using a web-based application.
  • Analytics VM: this virtual machine is responsible for gathering data from one or multiple vCenter Servers or vCenter Configuration Manager of any other third party data resources.

Licensing

The vCenter Operations Manager comes in four versions:

  • Foundation
  • Standard
  • Advanced
  • Enterprise

The license model is either per processor with unlimited virtual machines which is advisable for environments with high consolidation ratio or per virtual machines on physical server which is suitable for environments with low consolidation ratio. Other option is the “a la carte” license which contains a 25 virtual machine instance license pack. More information about licensing can be found on VMware website.

Tip: if you are (re)building or upgrading your infrastructure, consider buying vCenter Operations Manager as part of vCloud Suite or as part of vSphere with Operations Management.

Network Ports

The vCenter Operations Manager uses the following ports for communications. Make sure these ports are open before the deployment on the firewalls.

  • Port 22: SSH access to vCenter Operations Manager vApp
  • Port 80: redirects to port 443
  • Port 443: SSL access to the Admin portal and the application
  • Port 1194: tunnel between the UI VM and the Analytics VM

Supported Browsers

At the time of this writing, the vCenter Operations Manager supports the following browsers:

  • Internet Explorer 8.0 and 9.0
  • Mozilla Firefox 18 and 19
  • Google Chrome 24 and 25
  • Apple Safari 6

Deploy vCenter Operations Manager

The deployment of vCenter Operations Manager vApp is quite easy and straightforward, it is just basically like deploying any other vApp on you vSphere infrastructure. I assume you already downloaded the OVA file from VMware. In my case I am using version 5.7 which is the latest at the time of this writing.

  1. Before you begin the deployment, you must configure an IP Pool which will provide network identity to the vApp. The vCenter Operations Manager vApp can then use this IP Pool to automatically provide an IP address to the UI and Analytics VM. Also, the IP Pool facilitates the use of a static IP address during the vApp deployment process.
  2. Connect to the vCenter Server where you want to deploy the vCenter Operations Manager. In my case I used the vSphere Web Client.
  3. Navigate to Hosts and Clusters, select the datacenter object, click the Manage tab and select the Network Protocol Profiles (this is the IP Pool tab in the vSphere Client).P13-S1-NPP
  4. Click the green plus button to create a new profile.
  5. In the Add New Protocol Profile wizard, provide a name and select a network association from the list.P13-S2-Select
  6. Next, specify the subnet, gateway address and DNS servers. DO NOT select the “Enable IP Pool” checkbox and DO NOT specify a range of IP addresses. Those will be specified in the deployment of vCenter Operations Manager vApp.P13-S3-Specify
  7. Enter the DHCP server if there is one available on your network, but in this case it is not necessary. Click Next.
  8. Leave the IPv6 Configuration and the Other Network Configuration as default.
  9. Review the settings and click Finish to complete the wizard.
  10. Now the Network Protocol Profile is created, we can proceed with the vCloud Operations Manager Deployment.
  11. With the datacenter object still selected, click the Action button and select Deploy OVF Template.
  12. Select the source and click Next.
  13. Review the details and click Next.
  14. Accept the EULA and click Next.
  15. Provide an intuitive name and select datacenter or folder for the deployed vApp.P13-S4-Name
  16. Next, chose the deployment configuration. You can chose from small, medium or large. Each option displays its limits in the window below. Click Next.
  17. Select a resource in your datacenter and click Next.
  18. Select a location on your storage for the files and select the virtual disk format.P13-S5-Storage
  19. Next, in the network setup, chose the network destination from the drop-down menu and make sure the IP allocation is set to Static-Manual.P13-S6-Network
  20. In the Customize Template window, set the appropriate time zone setting and provide static IP addresses for the UI and the Analytics virtual machines. Click Next.P13-S7-IPs
  21. Review the settings, select “Power on after deployment” checkbox and click Finish to start the deployment. When it is finished, the vApp and the virtual machines should be powered on.

This concludes the overview and deployment steps for the vCenter Operations Manager. Continue to part 14 where we will configure vCenter Operations Manager for the first time.

Cheers!

- Marek.Z

Posted in How To, Operations Manager, vCenter, vCloud Suite, VMware | Tagged: , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Calculating Percentage of Cluster Resources Admission Control Policy for an unbalanced vSphere 5.x cluster

Posted by Marek.Z on 21 November 2012

I’ve been working lately on a project for one of our customers and one of the requirements was to reuse as much hardware as possible. This led of course to a HA/DRS cluster configuration with hosts with different memory and CPU sizes. As you probably all know this will lead to an unbalanced cluster. I’ve done some research about unbalanced clusters but beside the VMware vSphere 5.1 Clustering Deepdive by Duncan Epping and Frank Denneman there wasn’t much info about this subject and how to correctly calculate the values. So, first let`s define what an unbalanced cluster is.

Hosts with different sizes of memory and processor create an unbalanced cluster. The percentage of memory and processor resources should be equal or larger than the largest host in the cluster.

Okay, now, consider the following scenario. The hosts that will be part of the new cluster without any running VMs looks like this:

  • 2 hosts with 72 GB memory and 24 GHz of CPU
  • 10 hosts with 98 GB memory and 40 GHz of CPU
  • 8 hosts with 128 GB memory and 42 GHz of CPU

As you can see, the hosts have different sizes of memory and CPU resources. If we create a new cluster with these hosts, the cluster will be unbalanced and we have to calculate the correct percentage of cluster resources that will be reserved as failover spare capacity.

First, let’s calculate the total resources available.

Note: virtualization overhead and memory/CPU reservations are not taken in to account in this calculation.

Memory

((2×72 GB)+(10×98 GB)+(8x128GB)) = 144 GB+980 GB+1024 GB = 2148 GB

CPU

((2×24 GHz)+(10×40 GHz)+(8×42 GHz)) = 48 GHz+400 GHz +336 GHz = 784 GHz

Okay, now let’s assume that the cluster will tolerate a maximum of 3 host failures. How do you calculate the correct percentage of resources that should be reserved as failover spare capacity? Well, we have to calculate how much percent every single host contributes to the total capacity of the cluster.

Memory

Host A: 72 GB of 2148 GB = (72/2148) x 100 = 3.35%

Host B: 98 GB of 2148 GB = (98/2148) x 100 = 4.56%

Host C: 128 GB of 2148 GB = (128/2148) x 100 = 5.96 %

Total: ((2×3,35%)+(10×4,57%)+(8×5,96%)) ≈ 100% (round)

CPU

Host A: 24 GHz of 784 GHz = (24/786) x 100 = 3,05%

Host B: 40 GHz of 784 GHz = (40/786) x 100 = 5.1%

Host C: 42 GHz of 784 GHz = (42/786) x 100 = 5.34%

Total: ((2×3,05%)+(10×5.1%)+(8×5,34%) ≈ 100% (round)

To make it a little bit clearer, take a look at the following picture. Thanks to Frank Denneman for letting me borrow his design of the drawings he used in one of his blog posts about this matter. :)

As stated above, the percentage of memory and processor resources should be equal or larger than the largest host in the cluster. The largest host has 5,96% memory and 5,34% CPU. To accommodate a 3 host failure the percentage of memory and CPU will be (3×5,96%) = 17,88% and (3×5,34%) = 16,02% respectively. But to be safe, I would round the number, add some extra percentage and configure the admission control policy as depicted below.

This is however not a recommended cluster configuration. I have briefly discussed this scenario with Frank Denneman at the Belgium VMUG meeting. Mixing hosts with different CPU speeds could potentially lead to performance issues on the virtual machines when moved from one host to another.

Anyway, if you or your customer chooses to implement an unbalanced cluster, I hope this example will help you calculate the correct percentage of cluster resources when building an unbalanced cluster.

Cheers!

- Marek.Z

Posted in vCenter, VMware, vSphere 5 | Tagged: , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Tweaking Java.exe memory usage on vCenter Server 5.1

Posted by Marek.Z on 27 September 2012

During the upgrade of my home lab from vSphere 5.0 to vSphere 5.1 I have noticed that there is more memory consumption on my vCenter Server than before the upgrade. According to the vSphere Installation and Setup Guide, this happens because vCenter Server includes several Java services in the installation (VirtualCenter Management Webservices, Inventory Service, Profile-Driven Storage Service and Single Sign On) and when you install vCenter Server, you have an option to select the size of your vCenter Server inventory to allocate memory for these services. The inventory size determines the maximum Java Virtual Machine (JVM) heap settings for these services. Since I only have 3 hosts in my lab and just a couple of VMs I was surprised by the high memory consumption.

The default values for JVM heap settings in vSphere 5.1 can be found in table 2-5 of the vSphere Installation and Setup Guide.

Source: table 2-5 vSphere Installation and Setup Guide.

I think these values are a bit high for a small, home lab environment. Especially when you have limited resources. You can adjust the settings of the services after the installation by editing the corresponding  configuration file.

vCenter Server

Change the wrapper.java.additional.9 setting in the wrapper.conf file located in <installation_directory>\VMware\Infrastructure\tomcat\conf folder.

  1. Open the file and search for wrapper.java.additional.9
  2. Change the setting to desired value, in my case 512 MB.
  3. Save and close the file.

vCenter Single Sing On

Also here, change the wrapper.java.additional.9 setting in the wrapper.conf file located in <installation_directory>\VMware\Infrastructure\SSOServer\conf folder.

  1. Open the file and search for wrapper.java.additional.9
  2. Change the setting to desired value, in my case once again 512 MB.
  3. Save and close the file.

vCenter Inventory Service

Change the wrapper.java.maxmemory setting in wrapper.conf located in the <installation_directory>\VMware\Infrastructure\Inventory Service\conf folder.

  1. Open the file and search for wrapper.java.maxmemory
  2. Change the setting to desired value, in my case 1024 MB.
  3. Save and close the file.

Profile-Drive Storage Service

Also here, change the wrapper.java.maxmemory setting in wrapper.conf located in the <installation_directory>\VMware\Infrastructure\Profile-Driven Storage\conf folder.

  1. Open the file and search for wrapper.java.maxmemory
  2. Change the setting to desired value, in my case 512 MB.
  3. Save and close the file.

Now that you have changed the settings, restart the services or the vCenter Server for the changes to take effect. Try to tweak around with the settings and find out what best suits your environment.

Cheers!

- Marek.Z

Posted in vCenter, VMware, vSphere 5 | Tagged: , , , , , , , | 14 Comments »

Configure vSphere ESXi Dump Collector

Posted by Marek.Z on 24 September 2012

Here is a quick post about configuring the vSphere Dump Collector for your ESXi hosts. I’m not going to cover the installation process because it is really simple and straightforward. You can install the Dump Collector as stand-alone instance or integrated with vCenter Server. If you choose the last option you will have to provide the IP address, port and log in credentials for the vCenter Server. After the installation, you can configure the Dump Collector using:

  • Host Profiles or
  • ESXCLI

And probably PowerCLI but I didn’t look it up yet! :)

Host Profiles

  1. Edit the host profile you want to configure or create a new one if you don’t have one.
  2. Navigate to Network Configuration –> Network Coredump Settings and select Fixed Network Coredump Policy.
  3. Make sure that the Network Coredump Collector is enabled, provide the Host NIC to use, Network Core Server IP and Network Coredump Server Port. 
  4. Click OK to save the settings.
  5. Apply the profile to your hosts.

ESXCLI

  1. Open console session to your host or log in through the ESXi Shell.
  2. Log in as root user.
  3. Check the current configuration of coredump settings:#esxcli system coredump network get
  4. Configure the coredump with: #esxcli system coredump network set --interface-name <VMkernel_Interface> --server-ipv4 <Server_IP_Address> --server-port 6500
  5. Enable the coredup by typing: #esxcli system coredump network set --enable true
  6. Verify that the coredump server is running (only available in ESXi 5.1): #esxcli system coredump network check
  7. You should see a message stating the following: “Verified the configured netdump server is running”.
  8. Log out from the host.

Note: mind the double dashes in the command syntax.

Check the firewall

Verify that the Dump Collector port is enabled in the ESXi firewall. 

Test

To test if your host will dump the PSOD data to your Dump Collector force a PSOD on your host.

  1. Log in to the host locally or remotely.
  2. Type: #vsish and press Enter
  3. Next, type: set /reliability/crashMe/Panic followed by Enter.
  4. This will cause a PSOD. Note that the dump is being send over the network. 
  5. Wait until the dump is ready. Navigate to the directory where the dumps are stored and you should see the dump file that was just created.

Cheers!

- Marek.Z

Posted in Dump Collector, ESXi 5.1, vCenter, VMware, vSphere 5 | Tagged: , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

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