vSphere

Host Disconnects from vCenter in a vCloud Director Environment

So I ran into an issue the other day regarding host disconnects within vCenter in a vCD environment.  SSH’d into the host and noticed right off the bat that vmkernel.log was showing the following error:

WARNING: VisorFSObj: 893: Cannot create file tmp:/current.png5557 for process vmx-mks:Cell Profiler x64 (b9d6aa64-d789-4954-bde9-f2875406c159) because the visorfs inode table is full. 2012-10-05T12:38:49.808Z cpu27:6014573)WARNING: VisorFSObj: 893: Cannot create file /etc/vmware/esx.conf.LOCK for process esxcfg-advcfg because the visorfs inode table is full.

And in hostd.log I saw this:

WARNING: VisorFSObj: 893: Cannot create file /etc/vmware/esx.conf.LOCK for process hostd because the visorfs inode table is full.
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vCenter Orchestrator: Operation Automate – Part One

As promised, here is the first of a series of post regarding using VMware vCenter Orchestrator to add a new host to vCenter and later in another workflow, deploy a VM to that host.  Let’s lay out the requirements first so we know where we are going:

  1. Minimal data input: This is the minimize the possibility of typos and errors.  This will also allow us to utilize just about anyone to deploy these virtual machines.
  2. Automatic generation of hostnames:  This goes hand-in-hand with the above requirement.
  3. Email notifications on completion and on exceptions:  This will allow us to “walk away” from it and know the outcome.

Continue reading “vCenter Orchestrator: Operation Automate – Part One” »

vCenter Orchestrator: Operation Automate

First, I want to thank the vCOteam for their help and all the others on the VMTN forums that helped me learn more about vCO and what it can do.  Secondly, I want to thank Cody Bunch from ProfessionalVMware.com for inspiring me to write this, a little push from a tweet can go a long way.  Thanks again and now on to the fun stuff…

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Tool: UBERAlign by Nick Weaver

Tool: UBERAlign by Nick Weaver

We all know that one of the biggest performance killers in our virtual environments is the wonderful alignment of partitions so that they may work in harmony and produce many I/Os with our SANs.  There are a few good tools out there for us to use but we are often caught in the middle of having to purchase the product or only have access to a vendor specific application for doing this.

The wait is over!  Let the alignment begin!

Presenting UBERAlign, a tool for VMware Virtual Machine alignment and Space Reclamation

Some of the features:

    • Allows for fast alignment checking of virtual machines with detailed logging.
    • Can perform alignment to any offset you want. Even the crazy ones that you shouldn’t choose.
    • Works with both Windows 2000/XP/2003/2008 (NTFS) and Linux Distros (EXT2/EXT3/EXT4).
    • Is able to work on NTFS boot drives perfectly. It does this by rewriting NTFS Metadata (the right way).
    • Auto detects Windows 2008 and Windows 7 native installs (alignment not needed). Will not touch a System Reserved Partition (important for Windows 2008).
    • Preserves all Windows drive mapping (AFAIK only one to do so). This means no having to remap drive letters and complete support for non “C:\”  system drives with some Windows builds (some Citrix stuff).
    • Completely Storage Array agnostic. That’s right: if it connects to vSphere and host storage UBERAlign will work with it.

That list is only a small portion of the feature list.  The best part of all of this is that this tools is completely free.  Thanks to Nick over at Nickapedia (http://nickapedia.com) for taking the time to develop such a great tool and bring it into the community for that awesome price of FREE!

Head over to Nickapedia to read more and download the tool.  The link is: http://nickapedia.com/2011/11/03/straighten-up-with-a-new-uber-tool-presenting-uberalign/

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