Today I added some vSphere 5.0 u1 hosts in a new created cluster, the SAN will be delivered next week so I didn’t have central storage, to finish my new cluster setup I configured HA and DRS. After configuring HA I received this warning message:

The number of heartbeat datastores for host is 0, which is less than required: 2

Solution:

To (temporary (until the SAN is installed)) hide the warning message I configured the HA – Advanced Option:

1. Log in to vCenter Server
2. Right-click the cluster and click Edit Settings
3. Click VMware HA > Advanced Options
4. Under Option, add an entry for das.ignoreInsufficientHbDatastore
5. Under Value, type: true

More information: VMware

The settings that NetApp recommends (across all ESX hosts) are:

- NFS.HeartbeatFrequency(NFS.HeartbeatDelta in vSphere) = 12
- NFS.HeartbeatTimeout = 5 (default)
- NFS.HeartbeatMaxFailures = 10

When the number of NFS datastores are increased, we also recommend increasing the heap values:
- Net.TcpipHeapSize =>’30′  to Net.TcpipHeapMax  => ’120′

To automate this configuration I’ve wrote a PowerCLI script:

#====================================================================#
#   SCRIPT:        Configure_Advanced_NFS_parameters.ps1             #
#   FUNCTION:      Configure NFS / NetApp best practice              #
#   OWNER:         Sander Daems                                      #
#   VENDOR:        NetApp / FAS2040                                  #
#   VSPHERE:       5.0 Update 1 build 623860                         #
#   CREATED:       07/01/2013                                        #
#   MODIFIED:      20/03/2013                                        #
#   VERSION:       v.1.1                                             #
#====================================================================#
#   CHANGELOG:                                                       #
#                                                                    #
#    v.1.0                                                           #
#    - Created script;                                               #
#                                                                    #
#====================================================================#
#   HOST - Specify host and connect                                  #
#====================================================================#
$ESXiHost = Read-Host "Enter ESXi Host name or IP"
Connect-VIServer $ESXiHost
#====================================================================# 
#   ADVANCED - Update TCP Settings                                   #
#====================================================================#
Set-VMHostAdvancedConfiguration -VMHost $ESXiHost -Name Net.TcpipHeapSize -Value 32
Set-VMHostAdvancedConfiguration -VMHost $ESXiHost -Name Net.TcpipHeapMax -Value 128
#====================================================================#
#   ADVANCED - Update NFS Settings                                   #
#====================================================================#
Set-VMHostAdvancedConfiguration -VMHost $ESXiHost -Name NFS.MaxVolumes -Value 256
Set-VMHostAdvancedConfiguration -VMHost $ESXiHost -Name NFS.HeartbeatMaxFailures -Value 10
Set-VMHostAdvancedConfiguration -VMHost $ESXiHost -Name NFS.HeartbeatFrequency -Value 12
Set-VMHostAdvancedConfiguration -VMHost $ESXiHost -Name NFS.HeartbeatTimeout -Value 5
#====================================================================#
#   SCRIPT FINISHED                                        #
#====================================================================#
Write-Host "Script finished..." -foregroundcolor yellow
#====================================================================#

More information / source: NetApp Whitepaper

More information / source: VMware KB , VMware KB, VMware KB

Last week I was configuring some new vSphere 5.1 (Enterprise) hosts in a dedicated cluster and created some VMFS 5.58 datastores at the Dell Eq. PS6000 SAN with latest firmware, after configuring SIOC I received this error message:

The datastore is connected to one or more pre-4.1 hosts that do not support Storage I/O Control.

That’s weird, I’ve reinstalled all hosts (not updated) and created new datastores, there are no vSphere 4.1 hosts in this cluster (even connected to the datastore) and the PS6000 supports SIOC..

Solution:

Not really a solution.. but you can only configure SIOC with the Enterprise Plus license.. crap!

More information: VMware Product Compare , VMware KB

I’m upgrading some hosts in my lab with vSphere 5 patch 1, I need to upload the zip packages from my laptop to my datastore.. it would be nice to do this via PowerCLI

The code:

$DataStore = Get-VMHost esx02.vmpros.lan | Get-Datastore ESX02_VMFS01
Copy-DatastoreItem C:\vmpros\patch1\ $DataStore.DatastoreBrowserPath -Recurse

Result:

After I placed two new 146 GB SAS hard disks to an ESXi 4.1 host, configured a new array, try to add a new datastore with my vSphere Client I received this warning:

Call "HostDatastoreSystem.QueryVmfsDatastoreCreateOptions" for object "ha-datastoresystem" on ESXi "SERVERNAME" failed.

After reading VMwareKB 1008886 and following the instructions I solved the issue..

Solution:

Commandline:

dd if=/dev/zero of="/vmfs/devices/disks/vml.0000000000766d686261313a313a30" bs=512 count=34 conv=notrunc

Output:

34+0 records in
34+0 records out

More information: VMware

For a SAN to SAN migration I need to list all our datastores and blocksizes, It couldn’t be easier to do this with a script. LucD has written a great script to list VMFS Name, VMFS Version and VMFS Blocksize

New-VIProperty -Name VMFSVersion -ObjectType Datastore `      -Value {           param($ds)           $ds.ExtensionData.Info.Vmfs.Version      } `      -BasedONextensionProperty ‘Info’ `      -Force

New-VIProperty -Name VMFSBlockSizeMB -ObjectType Datastore `      -Value {           param($ds)           $ds.ExtensionData.Info.Vmfs.BlockSizeMB      } `      -BasedONextensionProperty ‘Info’ `      -Force

Get-Datastore | Select Name,VMFSVersion,VMFSBlockSizeMB

Output:

Credits goto: Luc Dekens

Tonight I need to configure the Multipath Policy from “Most Recently Used” to “Round Robin (VMware) on our vSphere 4.1 and HP EVA6400 environment. After reading “Configuration best practices for HP StorageWorks Enterprise Virtual Array (EVA) family and VMware vSphere 4” I decided to change the path status

To check the status of the Multipath Policy you can run the following PowerCLI script:

Per host:

Get-VMhost ESXHOST | Get-ScsiLun -LunType disk

Per Cluster:

Get-Cluster CLUSTERNAME| Get-VMHost | Get-ScsiLun -LunType disk

To change the Multipath Policy you can run the following command:

Per Host:

Get-VMHost ESXHOST | Get-ScsiLun -CanonicalName "naa.6005*" | Set-ScsiLun -MultipathPolicy "roundrobin"

Result in vCenter:

Couple of weeks ago I asked on Twitter “Can anyone explain this #VMware storage view? MP status: Partial/No Redundancy.. Same cluster, same Dell Eql. SAN” .. now I was reading the release notes of vSphere 4.1 update 1 and there’s the fix…

Multipathing status for datastores that have fully redundant paths might be reported as having Partial/No Redundancy:

In the Storage View tab of vSphere Client, under certain conditions, volumes that are reported as “Partial/No Redundancy” actually have fully redundant paths. This type of misreporting occurs on iSCSI volumes with hardware initiators. VMware support called this a display bug

Cool, this issue is solved in vSphere 4.1 update 1

Last week I had some trouble by a customer, 4 of my 8 datastores aren’t visible/accessible on the 6 ESX 3.5u2 hosts connected to a (FC) HP MSA1500.  Some datastores become unavailable and some were not affected. Numerous VMs were down, some of those with warning messages like Orphaned and Inaccessible.

Oke.. let’s troubleshoot:

Checking for active paths: esxcfg-mpath -l | grep -i active

FC 6:2.1 210100e08bb27a58<->500508b30091aac9 vmhba1:0:2 On active preferred
FC 6:2.1 210100e08bb27a58<->500508b30091aac9 vmhba1:0:6 On active preferred
Local 70:0.0 vmhba2:0:0 On active preferred
FC 6:2.1 210100e08bb27a58<->500508b30091aac9 vmhba1:0:1 On active preferred
FC 6:2.1 210100e08bb27a58<->500508b30091aac9 vmhba1:0:5 On active preferred
FC 6:2.1 210100e08bb27a58<->500508b30091aac9 vmhba1:0:3 On active preferred
FC 6:2.1 210100e08bb27a58<->500508b30091aac9 vmhba1:0:7 On active preferred
FC 6:2.1 210100e08bb27a58<->500508b30091aac9 vmhba1:0:0 On active preferred
FC 6:2.1 210100e08bb27a58<->500508b30091aac9 vmhba1:0:4 On active preferred

All online!

Checking for death paths: esxcfg-mpath -l | grep -i death

[root@esxmeri01 /]#

None death paths!

Checking my HBA’s connected to the SAN: cd /vmfs/devices/disks and list:  ls vmh*

vmhba1:0:1:0  vmhba1:0:2:1  vmhba1:0:4:0  vmhba1:0:5:1  vmhba1:0:7:0  vmhba2:0:0:1   vmhba2:0:0:3  vmhba2:0:0:6  vmhba2:0:0:9
vmhba1:0:1:1  vmhba1:0:3:0  vmhba1:0:4:1  vmhba1:0:6:0  vmhba1:0:7:1  vmhba2:0:0:10  vmhba2:0:0:4  vmhba2:0:0:7
vmhba1:0:2:0  vmhba1:0:3:1  vmhba1:0:5:0  vmhba1:0:6:1  vmhba2:0:0:0  vmhba2:0:0:2   vmhba2:0:0:5  vmhba2:0:0:8

All online!

Represent LUN’s from HP ACU to ESX hosts:

I unpresent and represented the LUN’s in the HP ACU to the hosts, did a rescan but no still no success

Read more…