Recently, we have an ongoing issue where the NSX Plugin in VRO is not populating one page out of 4 pages and this is messing up our VRO Code to create and put Security Tags (NSX-V) on our VMs.
Below is a screenshot of the issue
I have already deleted and re-installed the NSX-V Plugin using the VRO Control Center to no resolution.
The issue is not resolved yet and I will update this post with the resolution soon.
Recently, I had to Search for an QLogic 2x25GE QL41262HMCU CNA NIC driver to update it on multiple Dell R740XD hosts. It’s been a while since I used the Update Manager (vSphere 6.7 environment) and hence writing this post.
First thing is to SSH into an esxi host and then execute the following commands to check the firmware/driver version of the vmnic you want to update (In my case all my vmnics are Qlogic CNA NIC’s)
esxcli network nic get -n vmnic2
Things to note is the Driver Name/Type, Firmware Version (First Part of it is sufficient), Version (This is the actual driver version on the esxi host).
In the Above screenshot the driver is ‘qedentv’, the firmware version is 8.53.3.0 and the version is 3.11.16.0
Now, we need to find the entries/numbers to search for the exact driver on the VMware compatibility website.
Execute the following command on the ESXI SSH session
vmkchdev -l | grep vmnic2
The highlighted portion is the one we require to search for the driver on VMware Compatibility website
Let us go to the VMware Compatibility website and IO section
VID, DID, SVID and Max SSID to get the exact driver for your nic.
Let us fill in the values from our vmkchdev output
Select the vSphere version and click on the version to display the different driver versions we can download
I have selected vSphere version 6.7 U3 in this case and the screenshot is below
As you can see, the esxi nic driver version and the physical nic adapter firmware versions are different on this Host. (Typically you should update the esxi nic driver once you upgrade the physical nic firmware as a best practice)
In this case my esxi nic driver version is 3.11.16.0 and the Qlogic NIC Physical firmware version is 8.53.x.x
To download the correct driver, you need to make sure that the esxi nic driver coincides with the Physical nic driver firmware for best compatibility. We will need to download the ‘qedentv’ driver.
Download the driver.zip file using your my vmware credentials and you can use this zip file in the offline patches in Update Manager to create a baseline for your esxi hosts so this driver can be updated.
NOTE: Put the Host in Maintenance mode before you update the nic driver as this will reboot the esxi host.
Recently I had to get rid of multiple vms through VRA, However, I found that some of the vms status was showing as missing. This happens if the VM has already been deleted through the vCenter and VRA can’t find that VM in the vCenter.
The way you can see the missing status is you go to the deployments tab, check the Status if its ON, OFF or Missing (?) as the screenshot shows below:
Some of the info in the screenshot has been removed to protect my Organization Data and the VM Names have also been changed for the same purpose.
In VRA 7.6, you can unregister it easily using the GUI, You click on the Deployment Name
Hope this post helps, as I was not able to see any blog posts regarding this simple unregister procedure in VRA 7.6
I have recently been working with esxi hosts and to decommission them and recommission them into new projects and had to use the command vmkping to test the MTU of certain types of vmkernel ports like VMOTION, VSAN, VTEPs etc.
Here is a refresher for the vmkping commands which are very useful for a day to day Virtual Administrator
Command to check the MTU of 9000 with a certain amount of packets and with a certain interval and using a certain vmkernel port
vmkping -I vmk3 -d -s 8972 -c 1000 -i 0.005
vmkping -d -s 1472 <IP_Address>In one of the above command vmkernel port is vmk3, for MTU 9000, we will be using 8972 as the packet size , -c is the count of packets and -i is the interval for which the ping will work (In the above example it is 0.005 seconds)
The second command is to test the MTU 1500 and the IP to test. You can also add -I (Interface) and vmkernel port through which you want to ping the IP
Command to check the communication of an IP address through an vmkernel port
vmkping -I vmk# IP address of the hostCommand to get all the network adapters and the type of tcp/ip stack assigned to the nics
esxcfg-vmknic -lUsing the above command you can check the netstack which will be used in the below command to ping a vmotion vmkernel port
vmkping -S vmotion -I vmk1 <IP_Address_to_ping>The -S is for netstack name like vmotion and this is the only command to be used if we use a NetStack
List of arguments:
vmkping [args] [host/IP_Address]
args:
-4 use IPv4 (default)
-6 use IPv6
-c <count> set packet count
-d set DF bit (IPv4) or disable fragmentation (IPv6)
-D vmkernel TCP stack debug mode
-i <interval> set interval (secs)
-I <interface> outgoing interface – for IPv6 scope or IPv4 bypasses routing lookup
-N <next_hop> set IP*_NEXTHOP – bypasses routing lookup
for IPv4, -I option is required
-s <size> set the number of ICMP data bytes to be sent.
The default is 56, which translates to a 64 byte
ICMP frame when added to the 8 byte ICMP header.
(Note: these sizes does not include the IP header).
-t <ttl> set IPv4 Time To Live or IPv6 Hop Limit
-v verbose
-W <timeout> set timeout to wait if no responses are received (secs)
-X XML output format for esxcli framework.
-S The network stack instance name. If unspecified the default netstack instance is used.
VMware has released a new Product Lifecycle Matrix website so that we can check the validity of all the software from VMware like General Availability, End of General Support, End of Availability etc in one page.
Previously, this was a tedious process to check the end of support cycle for some of the VMware products, but now its all in one place !!
The link is —
https://lifecycle.vmware.com/#/
You can even filter by Product or Filter on any of the columns on the site.
This website can definitely help the Virtual Administrator to check for End of Life/End of mainstream support in their environments.
Looks like the new Visio diagrams and Stencils for VMware SDDC 6.0 are out at communities.vmware.com and created by the author Gary JBlake.
The link to download the diagrams is below:
This has been referenced from communities.vmware.com forum under VMTN > SDDC > VMware Validated Designs > Validated Designs for SDDC 6.x > Documents
https://communities.vmware.com/t5/Documents/Visio-Diagrams-for-VMware-Validated-Design-for-SDDC-6-0/ta-p/2782683
Here is the direct link to the API Reference Guide for VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF)
This is the Generic API Reference Guide for VCF instead of being Version Centric.
Updated – 2/16/2022
From Version VCF 4.3.1 (Non-VxRail), VMware has moved their API Guides to a new location which is a better format than before and more user friendly.
VCF 4.3.1 New API Reference Guide
VCF 4.4.0 New API Reference Guide
Updated – 1/25/2022
For Version Centric API Guides
NOTE: These Reference Guides and their versions are for NON VXRAIL implementations. They are valid for Regular VCF Implementation with VSAN Ready nodes.
I recently came across an issue where the vRealize Life Cycle Manager 2.1 has the Deploy option greyed out in SDDC Manager in VCF 3.10.x and the issue looks like the screenshot below:
The issue happened as we were using VLAN Backed Network for vRealize products instead of AVN in this version of VCF
The solution is as follows:
Log in to SDDC Manager by using a secure shell (SSH) client, use the account vcf to login into SSH session
Type su to elevate to root and enter the root_password.
Enter the following and press enter.
cd /home/vcf
echo "feature.vrealize.enable.non.avn.deployments=true" >> feature.properties
chown vcf:vcf feature.properties
chmod 644 feature.properties
/opt/vmware/vcf/operationsmanager/scripts/cli/sddcmanager_restart_services.sh
When prompted enter Y to confirm. vRealize Suite deployments using SDDC Manager will now be deployed to VLAN backed networksThis is taken from the VMware KB Article https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/79267
Hope this helps if you are using VLAN Backed Network for vRealize Components when deploying a new VCF 3.10.x version in your environment.
I have recently come across an issue in our new VCF 3.10.x build that when we try to deploy the VRA using SDDC Manager, we get an error that the AD Account we have provided can’t validate with the Domain.
The warning is as shown in the picture below:
Note That I had to change a few details and also blur some details from my environment due to privacy reasons.
The Error basically states that VRA is not able to communicate to my domain lab.com with the service account lab\svc_vra_adm because it is trying to contact test.lab.com instead of lab.com Domain
test.lab.com is a DNS Zone in our actual root Domain lab.com and all our VRA Appliances have the host records added to test.lab.com instead of the root domain.
After multiple tries and VMware support, we got to know that VRA (7.x and 8.x) doesn’t support explicit identification of the Active Directory domain name. The kb article which mentions this issue is
https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/59128
The Solution is to make sure that the host records of your VRA is the same as your ‘Actual‘ Domain, in this case lab.com and then retry the validation using the SDDC Manager with the same service account lab\svc_vra_adm
This time, the validation should pass.
Next, We Create a New Environment and then create an New VRA environment using vRLCM
Go to Home and Click on Create Environment to get started
Agree to the EULA, click Next
Enter the License
Select the Certificate which we have generated before and click Next
This is where things have gotten tricky in this version as we have multiple options to define the VRA environment including the windows template to create new vms themseleves.
let us go step by step process
Under Product Properties, provide the windows server username and password which you want to access after the box has been provisioned using the windows template.
In the above configuration, We have only 3 VMs being deployed in VRA Simple Configuration.
Once all the Product details of VRA are put in, we will proceed to the precheck phase.
Next, we click on Validate & Deploy option to deploy the vms
Make sure you disable UAC in the windows template and then click on Validate & Deploy option to continue.
NOTE: The re-validation took more than 30 mins in my lab to complete. Not sure why it took a lot of time, but I suggest you all to be patient during this process as there is no way to speed it up.
NOTE that at this point, I haven’t installed SQL Software on the SQL Server, but VRSLM has created an windows server for both the db and iaas install. I will have to install SQL Server on the db windows VM and see how it goes.
This Post is pending and I will be updating it soon once I have some clarification on if I need to install and configure the SQL software in the vRA SQL server windows machine or will the scripts do it if I provide the SQL ISO file. Stay Tuned …….
Converged, Hyperconverged Infrastructure & Virtualization 