vCenter Operations Manager (vcops) installation steps

vCenter Operations Manager (vcops) installation steps

1) Download the vApp from VMware.com.

2) Using the vSphere Client, connect to the vCenter Server with the cluster where you are installing the vApp.

3) Set up the IP Pool:

1. Select the DataCenter which has the cluster where the vApp is to be hosted, and click the IP Pools tab.
2. Click Add... at the top of the page. A dialog box opens.

3. Enter a name for the IP Pool. (For example, vCOps.)
4. Enter the subnet (not the subnet mask) that the vCenter Server resides on.
5. Enter the subnet mask as a bit. (For example, a mask of 255.255.255.0 is equivalent to a /24 network.)
6. Enter the Gateway IP.
7. Do not enable the IP Pool, as this is not required for proper use.

8. Click the DNS tab and enter the appropriate DNS information for this network.
   
   Note: You can enter multiple DNS servers by separating them with a comma.

9. Click the Associations tab and select the Port Group the vCenter Server is attached to, or one that can easily reach vCenter.
10. Click OK.

4) Deploy the vApp:

1. In the vSphere Client, click File > Deploy OVF Template...
2. Follow the prompts in the Deploy OVF Template wizard.
   
   Note: When specifying a disk format, VMware recommends using Thick Provisioned Eager Zeroed in vSphere 5.

3. When specifying an IP allocation scheme, select Fixed (recommended) or DHCP.
   
   Note: Fixed IP allocation requires you to provide two IP addresses for the two virtual machines in the vApp. DHCP allocation requires that you enable DHCP in your IP pool. Transient is not supported at this time.
4. Click Finish and wait for the deployment process to complete.

5) (Optional) Set up a DRS affinity rule:

Note: These steps may be necessary for distributed vSwitch communication issues. Skip these steps unless you experience difficulties with initialization.

1. Right-click the cluster which will host the vApp, and select Edit Settings.
2. Click Rules.
3. Click Add.
4. Enter a name for the Rule. (For example, vCOps.)
5. Select Keep Virtual Machines Together.
6. Click Add.
7. Select the UI VM and Analytics VM virtual machines.
8. Click OK.

6) Power on the vApp.

7) Set up vCenter monitoring:

1. Browse to http://IP_address/admin, where IP_address is the IP address or fully qualified domain name (FQDN) of the vApp.
   
   Note: You can confirm this address on the console of the UI virtual machine.

2. Update the administrator password ("admin") which provides access to the Administration Portal and SSH access to the vApp.
   
   Note: The password requires a minimum of eight characters that include at least one letter and one digit or special character.
3. Update the root password ("root") for the operation system of the vApp.
   
   Note: The admin password and root password are different. Please document your root password.

4. Enter a human-friendly name for the vCenter Server system.
5. Enter the FQDN (recommended) or IP address of the vCenter Server system to collect information from and monitor.
6. Enter the registration credentials for vCenter Operations Manager to use when connecting to the vCenter Server.
   
   Note: The user credentials you provide must have administrator privileges within vCenter. VMware recommends the use of a service account.
7. (Optional) Enter the collection credentials for vCenter Operations Manager to use for collecting data from vCenter Server.
   
   Note: Using separate collection credentials can be used to increase security, and only require read-only privileges within vCenter.

8. Click Test to verify that vCenter Operations Manager can connect to the vCenter Server.
   
   Note: If this step fails, verify that you are able to log into the vCenter Server using the credentials used in step f.
9. (Optional) If you have linked vCenter Server systems, select the appropriate members of the linked group to register with, and provide a name for each system. Each vCenter Server must be registered individually.
   
   Note: You can register vCenter Operations Manager with a subset of vCenter Server systems for scalability or inventory management purposes.
10. (Optional) If vCenter Operations detects that you have vCenter Operations 1.x or Capacity IQ 1.x installed, provide the appropriate credentials to import the data from the older installations.
    
    Note: This can only be performed during installation, and will not be presented in the Admin page after the installation. If this information must be imported post-installation, you must deploy a new vApp to do so.

8) After the installation is complete, browse to http://IP_address, where IP_address is the IP address or fully qualified domain name (FQDN) of the vApp.

9) To license vCenter Operations Manager:

1. Using the vSphere Client, connect to the vCenter Server with the cluster where you are installing the vApp.
2. Go to Home > Licensing.
3. Verify that a vCenter Operations asset is listed.
4. Click Manage vSphere Licenses.
5. Enter the License in the top field and click Next.
6. Click the Solutions tab and select vCenter Operations.
   
   Note: If the solution is not visible, toggle Show all at the top of the list.
7. Click Next.
8. Click Next.
9. Click Finish.

How High Availability works on vSphere 5.x

How High Availability works on vSphere 5.x

When vSphere HA is created in a ESX cluster, one of the host is automatically elected as the master host. The master host communicated with vCenter Server and monitors the state of all virtual machines & slave hosts. When one of the ESX host fails in the cluster, the master host must distinguish between a failed host and one that is in a network partition or that has become network isolated. The master host uses network and datastore heartbeating to determine the type of failure.

When a host is added to a vSphere HA cluster, an agent is uploaded to the host and configured to communicate with other agents in the cluster.

HA election process

1) All active hosts participates in the election to choose the cluster's master host
2) Hosts with more number of datastores has an advantage in the election
3) In a cluster, there could be only one master host.
4) If the master host fails (or) shut down (or) in standby mode (or) removed from cluster, a new election is held.

Master host responsibilities

1) Monitors the state of slave hosts.
2) If a slave host fails or becomes unreachable, the master host identifies which virtual machines need to be restarted.
3) Monitoring the power state of all protected virtual machines. 
4) If one virtual machine fails, the master host also determines where (on which host) the restart should be done.
5) Manages the lists of cluster hosts and protected virtual machines.
6) The master host has the list of protected virtual machines in the cluster's datastores.

Slave host responsibilities

1) The slave hosts contributes to the cluster by running virtual machines
2) Reports the state updates to the master host.
3) A master host can also run and monitor virtual machines. 

Virtual to Physical (V2P) migration using PlateSpin Migrate 9.3 - Step by step guide

Virtual to Physical (V2P) migration using PlateSpin Migrate 9.3 - Step by step guide

Discovering Source Machine in Plate Spin

1) Log in to the PlateSpin server with domain account or local system account privileges.

2) Open the PlateSpin Migrate Tool “PlateSpin Migrate Client” and click on Actions -> Discover Details.

3) "Discover Details" window opens up

a) Enter the “Host Names & IP Addresses – Use Semicolons” field with Server name of the source machine and its IP Address

b) Select the Machine Type as "Windows"

c) Enter local system account credentials in the "Credentials" field.

d) Click on “Discover”.

4) Discover windows pops up. Once virtual machine is discovered, click on “Close”.

5) Discovered virtual machine gets listed in the "Servers" view pane.

Discovering Destination Machine in PlateSpin Migrate

1) Log in into the Destination Machine (physical) through ILO.

2) Go to Remote Console –> Integrated Remote Console –> Mount the Windows "PlateSpinBoot.iso" image. (Download the PlateSpin boot ISO image from Novell Downloads)

3) Command prompt opens up and it prompts for PlateSpin server URL.

4) Enter PlateSpin server URL as "http://platespin_server/platespinmigrate" and click “Enter”.

5) Enter user name of "platespin_server" and click “Enter”.

6) Enter password of "platespin_server" and click “Enter”.

7) Choose available NIC card and enter the digit associated to the particular NIC Card and click “Enter”.

8) Enter the IP address, subnet mask and default gateway and click “Enter”. (to get the physical server available in network)

9) It prompts for below details:

        a) “Host name for current server” – [Default] Leave it as blank

        b) “SSL Encryption on your plate spin server” – type ‘n’ [NO]

        c) Plate Spin Server Network – [Default] Leave it as blank

10) Physical server detects the network card and identifies the IP address and registers with PlateSpin server.

11) Click refresh button in PlateSpin tool and wait for some time till Physical server detects in PlateSpin Migrate tool.

Copying Workload from Virtual to Physical

1) Right click on the virtual machine  and click “Copy”.

2) Action wizard opens up – Select the target machine on Action wizard.

3) Click “start wizard” and "Conversion wizard" appears. In the "Conversion wizard", Enter the source machine credentials and click “Test”.

4) Click “Next” and Select Transfer method as “Block Based” and again click “Next”, "Network Identification" wizard appears.

5) In "Network identification" wizard, enter the destination host name and domain admin account credentials in “Domain credentials” column and click “Next”.

6) "Ethernet NIC Configuration" wizard opens up. In networking section, select the NIC card and enter the IP address of destination machine.

7) "Clean up VMware tools" section appears. In "Clean up VMware Tools", enter the system account credentials to clean up activates and click next.

8) "Volume configuration" windows opens up. In "Volume configuration" window,  Keep the default settings and click “Next”.

9) "Physical disk configuration" wizard appears. In "physical configuration" window, change other drives to Disk 2 (depends on your requirement) and click “Next”.

10) "Service configuration" window appears. In "Service configuration" wizard, disable the unwanted services and click “Next”.

11) "Transfer services" window opens up. In "Transfer services" wizard, select the unwanted services that needs to be stopped during transfer and click “Next”.

12) "User Post Conversion Action" window pops up. In "User Post Conversion Action" wizard, keep the default settings and click on “Advanced”.

13) In "Advanced" option. Select the disk drives option and change the other drives to disk 2.

14) In "additional items" wizard, keep the default settings and click on “next”. Below screen appears. Click start to initiate conversion process.

15) Conversion process initiated.

16) On "starting job" wizard, Click “Hide” and go to jobs in PlateSpin migrate tool.

17) Conversion process completed.

Virtual to Physical (V2P) migration checklist using PlateSpin

Virtual to Physical (V2P) migration checklist using PlateSpin

Pre-Migration Checklist

1) Execute full backup of the source server.
2) Check the event logs for any errors. If so, fix it. 
3) Perform a reboot of the server to complete any pending tasks and make sure server reboots successfully.
4) Run a check disk to ensure no disk errors.
5) Capture IP information.
6) Capture application Port dependencies.
7) Ensure required capacity exists on destination VM for migration.
8) Analyze the time to be taken to migrate data and calculate downtime accordingly.
9) Identify VLAN requirements.
10) Capture the information regarding number of virtual processors, capacity and virtual memory.
11) Defragment the drives to speed up the conversion rates.
12) Verify the Windows Security Patches and Anti Virus are up-to-date. 
13) Stop the unneeded services like RDP, Symantec, etc.
14) Stop any application & database services.

Migration Checklist

1) Check the availability of PlateSpin Workload license.
2) Add the license to Source machine.
3) Add the VM Machine to PlateSpin server (Discover).
4) Add the Physical Machine to Plate spin server  (Discover).
5) Copy the work load from source machine (VM) to target machine (Physical Server).
6) Select Block based option in Transfer Mode for data disk migration.
7) Choose Disk to appropriate Hard disk in Physical box.
8) Enter appropriate migration details when prompted during PlateSpin migration process.
9) Check the option to uninstall VMware Tools.
10) Stop application services.
11) Stop VMware tools.
12) Check the option for powering off the VM once the migration completes.

Post-Migration Checklist

1) Power down the virtual machine.
2) Power on the physical machine.
3) Check the Event logs and Services.
4) Check the Disk errors.
5) Uninstall the VM tools.
6) Install HP Drives if needed.
7) Install NIC teaming.
8) Start the application related services.

Important VMware links

VMware Tools

To download Operating system specific VMware tools packages, visits the links below:

http://packages.vmware.com/tools/index.html

To find the VMware Tools for ESX/ESXi version-number codes, visits the links below:

http://packages.vmware.com/tools/versions

VMware Logs

KB Article - Location of log files for VMware products

ESX Patches

VMware Patch portal - Search tool to find patches available for VMWare products

Exploring ESXTOP

VMware Free Tools

RV Tools - gets information about your virtual machines and ESX hosts
Veeam Backup Free Edition - backup, archive or copy a VM
Veeam ONE Free Edition - real-time monitoring and alerts
VMware vSphere PowerCLI - powerful command-line tool
VMware vSphere Management Assistant (vMA) - manage ESXi & vCenter server through command-lineVMware Player - runs multiple OS at the same time on your PC
VMware Converter - transforms physical machines to virtual machines
ESXPlot -  GUI-based tool that lets you explore the data collected by esxtop
VMware Guest Console - used as Task Manager, Mass Deployment, File explorer, Snapshot Manager, VM Manager and Inventory
VMware Boomerang - allows you to use multiple vSphere servers simultaneouslyMagic ISO Maker - powerful CD/DVD image file creating/editing/extracting tool
WinISO Maker - image file editing tool, which allows to make bootable ISO files





Physical to Virtual migration (P2V)

NFS

KB Article - Adding an NFS datastore to an ESX/ESXi host fails with the error.
KB Article - Increasing the default value that defines the maximum number of NFS mounts.
KB Article - Definition of the advanced NFS options

Configuring syslog to a remote syslog server in ESX/ESXi

Configuring syslog to a remote syslog server in ESX/ESXi


For ESXi 5.0 servers

1) Log in as root on the ESXi server.

2) To get the current configuration, run the command

esxcli system syslog config get

3) To set a new syslog configuration, run the command

esxcli system syslog config set --logdir=/path/to/vmfs/directory/ --loghost=RemoteHostname --logdir-unique=true|false --default-rotate=NNN --default-size=NNN

For example, to configure remote syslog using TCP on port 514:

esxcli system syslog config set --loghost='tcp://10.11.12.13:514'

4) To reload the syslog service, run the command

esxcli system syslog reload

For ESXi 4.0 servers

1) Log in as root on the ESXi server.

2) Execute the command

# ps | grep syslog

If there is no output, syslog has stopped.

3) To restart syslog, just type the command

# syslogd

4) Again, check the status of syslogd using the command

# ps | grep syslog

output should be something like this

<process number> busybox   syslogd

(OR)

1) To reload the syslog services, execute the command below:

kill -HUP $(cat /var/run/syslogd.pid)

2) If no process is found from the above command, execute the below command:

syslogd


For ESX 3.5

1) Log in as root on the ESX server.

2) Open the /etc/syslog.conf file using a text editor.

3) Add this entry at the end of the file:

*.*     @IP_address_of_syslog-server

For example:

*.*     @10.0.5.25

Note: If you are changing from the default syslog port 514 to a different port, the entry should appear similar to:

*.*     @10.0.5.25:Port_Number

For example, if you are changing the port to 520, the entry should be:

*.*     @10.0.5.25:520

4) To restart the syslog service

service syslog restart

5) Run this command to check if the ESX firewall has been opened for the syslog traffic:

esxcfg-firewall -q|grep syslog

6) If the firewall is open, you see an output similar to:

syslog              : port 514 udp.out

If the firewall is closed, you do not see any output.

7) To open the firewall on the ESX host for syslog traffic, run this command:

esxcfg-firewall -o 514,udp,out,syslog && esxcfg-firewall -l 

For ESX servers

1) Log in as root on the ESXi server.

2) To start the syslog service

esxcli system syslog start

3) To check the status 

esxcli system syslog status

4) To restart the service

esxcli system syslog restart

5) To modify syslog config

vi /etc/syslog.conf

6) Check the syslog firewall port is open

esxcfg-firewall -q

7) To open the syslog firewall port UDP 514

esxcfg-firewall -o 514, udp, out, syslog

8) Send test log message to remote syslog server

logger testlogmessage123

How to enable SSH in ESXi 4.0 ?

How to enable SSH in ESXi 4.0 from tech support mode?

1) Log in directly on the console of the ESXi server.

2) Press Alt + F1 to enter to Tech Support Mode (TSM).

3) Type unsupported and enter root password.

4) Edit the inted.conf file using VI Editor.

vi /etc/inetd.conf

5) Remove the # in front of SSH to uncomment the line.

6) Press ESC and type :wq to save and exit.

7) Then restart either the host or inetd process.

8) To restart inetd run below command to determine the process ID for inetd process.

ps | grep inetd

Output will be something like below:

4966    4966   busybox    inetd

9) Then run below command to kill the process

kill -HUP <process_id>

for example:

kill -HUP 4966

10) SSH is now enabled in ESXi 4.0 host.