Category: Uncategorized

vSphere 7 VM Template Versioning

This is a very useful feature with vSphere 7.Earlier version when we need to do modification or apply OS patches to template we need to convert template back to vm and had do that, but with vCenter 7 , we can maintain versioning.

How to do that?

1. First thing these templates should be in content library

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2. I have created my template and its in my content library. If I click on template , we can see the version tab

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3. Now I’m going to install Windows patches on this template, therefore I select the template and click on Check out VM From This Template on versioning tab. Then I have to give temporary name for this vm

Continue reading “vSphere 7 VM Template Versioning”

Identify VMDK sharing

Some times we may need to find out whether VMDK files are shared with some other vms. Using below script we an easily find that. We just need to give the vm name & it  will check for all the vmdk paths in all the VMS

 

connect-viserver vcentername

$vmname=read-host -Prompt “Enter the VM Name”

 

if (get-vm $vmname -erroraction SilentlyContinue)

{

$vdisk=get-vm $vmname |Get-VMHardDiskDrive

 

 

$allvms=get-vm

 

 

foreach ($allvm in $allvms)

{

if ($allvm.name -ne $vmname)

{

$vmdiskpath=get-vm $allvm |get-harddisk

foreach($disk in $vdisk)

{

if ($vmdiskpath.filename -eq $disk.filename)

{

$msg=”There is a VMDKS sharing with ”

$msg2=$allvm.name

$fullmsg=$msg+$msg2

Write-Host $fullmsg -ForegroundColor DarkGreen

}

}

}

 

}

}

else

{

Write-Host “VM is not available in the vCenter, please check the vm name”

}

Some useful commands for ESXi

We can use df -h command to get the file system usage.

When can we use it-Most of the time I had to use it to check the file system usage on vCenter appliance.

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We can use find command to find files in the ESXi or vCenter file system

In my below example I have used it to find all the vmx files

Ex

find / -name *.vmx

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We can use cat command to open a file and read the data

In my below example I have opened one of the main log file(vmkernel.log) using cat viewer

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We can use grep command to search something inside the file

In my below example I used grep commands to find logged errors in the vmkernel.log

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We can use ps command to fine running vm’s process

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How to configure iSCSI on vSAN

iSCCI is one of the best option where we can use our vSAN datastore from outside. We an configure our vSAN enabled ESXi hosts as iSCSI target.This help us to configure guest level clustering also.

Login to vCenter

Select the cluster

Select Configure

Click on edit button which in line with vSAN iSCSI Target Server option under vSAN services configuration

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Select vmk0 adapter from Default iSCSI net(Here I have selected my default management network)

I’m using default port(3260)

I’m not using authentication for this lab setup.

Also I have selected default vSAN policy

Continue reading “How to configure iSCSI on vSAN”

How to use VMDK sharing for Guest OS clustering

Operating system clustering is one of the major and popular high availability mechanism in system infrastructure products. Advantage of the os clustering is it can identify the application level failure.

As a systems administrators most of the time we may need to work with MS windows failover clusters. Most of the file servers and SQL clusters are depend on this failover cluster technology. Most of the situation one of the main requirement is this failover cluster is shared lus/disk. Earlier most of the time we sued to have minimum two physical servers for this cluster operation which is directly connect to SAN device(Shared storage). But to get the benefits of virtualization platform and reduce the cost , now we have to use same cluster features on top of the virtualization platform.

1. In my below example Im using two test virtual machines.

image

2. Now we need to add new scsi controller per this vm

Continue reading “How to use VMDK sharing for Guest OS clustering”

ESXI shell register all the *.vmx files in datastore/s

Using below bash script we can register all the vms in datastores with ESXi host.This has tested in vSphere 6.5 & 6.7 Hol

 

for myvm in $(find / -name *.vmx);

do

vim-cmd solo/registervm $myvm

done

if we want we can find on specific datastore. please refer the below example

find /vmfs/voluems/datastore10R10/ -name *.vmx

(datastore10R10 is my datatore name)