Here is my session on a quick overview of vCenter Orchestrator.
Thanks to Tony the VMUG Leader for posting the recordings from the Q3 SFL VMUG.
Links I spoke about:
Simple little code snippet that you might find handy to use in vCenter Orchestrator. Â I am working on a workflow that needs to clone a VM and the name should increment by 1 for example, we want to clone appweb1 (but we already have appweb2, 3, 4) so we want the new VM to be appweb5.
Inside a new Scriptable task create an output parameter called newvmname and make it’s source itself. Â Then use this bit ‘o code:
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var vms = System.getModule("com.vmware.library.vc.vm").getAllVMsMatchingRegexp("appweb[0-9]"); for (var i=0; i System.debug("Counting VMs:" + i); } var newvmname = "appweb" + i; |
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px; white-space: normal;">If anyone has a better way to do this I'd love to hear it, I know you should be able to use the getAllVMsMatchingRegexp as an action inside the Schema but it seemed clunky to do that then pass to a Scriptable task when you can do it all in one object.</span> |
We needed a fast way to provision 180+ ESXi servers to boot from SD Cards, ESXi 4.1 introduced Scripted Installation to ESXi (the feature has been in ESX classic for awhile now)
However it is limited:
Uhoh, our plan is to use SD Cards in Dell PowerEdge T610s and Dell PowerEdge 29xx (I’ll explain how on the 29xx in a later post) for our installs.  This isn’t good…
We figured we could build a golden image and clone our SD cards from that, but cloning the SD cards proved difficult. Â I tried a lot of different apps and nothing seemed to work–we had trouble with DD even. Â Then I stumbled across this blog post from Luke: Fast deployment of vSphere ESXi 4.0 running on a 1GB SD-Card
Luke recommended WinImage to do this cloning, I still couldn’t get WinImage to work at first but a quick email to Luke cleared up my troubles (thanks again Luke)
It was good to see my process to create the gold image was similar to how Luke did his just a few minor variations:
Many folks have blogged about building a home lab–I have an old lab that really draws some power and not really giving me what I’d like. Â With that in mind I set out to build a new lab but with the intent of being as cost-effective as possible. Â Lots of folks are running T610s and T110s but those draw a lot of power and cost quite a bit more then I’d like. Â Others white-box some awesome labs for cheap but they still consume a lot of power.
I came across the HP Micro Servers that seem to be gaining alot of popularity, but opted against them for 2 reasons:
If your not using guest customization specifications, get going now!  Some people ask why do this in a VMware Template when you can do it via Active Directory using Group Policy.  We use our templates a lot for test machines which may or may not end up joined to a domain.  This ensures that no unwanted updates get applied  to these test machines. Works great across Windows XP, Server 2003, Vista, Server 2008 and Windows 7 (might also work on Windows 2000 but I didn’t check).  If you don’t know what guest customization specifications are checkout my other posting explaining all about them and howto create one.
To disable Automatic Windows Updates, all you need to do is add this entry to the RUNONCE area of your customization specification:
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reg add “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WindowsUpdate\Auto Update†/v AUOptions /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f |
It’s that simple!
Most folks with well established vSphere environments don’t have many physical machines left kicking around–but incase you do Converter Standalone 5.0 was released a couple of days ago with some awesome new features:
Only LVM2 is supported
You have to manually do this during the P2V–Under data to copy, hit the dropdown at the top and select volumes to copy. Â Then click the Advanced button and select the destination layout tab. Â Pick a disk and click To LVG (Logical-Volume Group)
You can schedule the synchronization for a date/time you specify now instead of only being able to synchronize immediately after cloning.
You set these options under the Options page–click the Advanced options button.
When you are doing a P2V check the box shown below to enable the new alignment feature. Â If you are tweak happy you can hit the Advanced button, then select the destination layout tab. You will notice you can change the NTFS cluster size as well.
This should make the security folk happy.
Take note when using this feature the MAC address will be regenerated, important to note if the machine the VCB image is from was running a licensing server.  Some vendors generate license files based on MAC address, since the MAC address will have changed the license server won’t distribute licenses to clients anymore.  (Products leveraging FlexLM/FlexNet Publisher)  Specific Products that come to mind are: AutoCAD & Rosetta Stone.
Read the full release notes here: Â http://www.vmware.com/support/converter/doc/conv_sa_50_rel_notes.html#whatsnew
So your trying to import a signed certificate that was created with the certificate signing request (CSR) you get an error in vCenter Orchestrator Configuration about the cert not being the correct format. If your using Microsoft Active Directory Certificate Services here are the exact steps:
VMware posts security advisories to notify users of any vulnerabilities or other security issues that effect their products.  You can subscribe to be notified via email whenever they post a new advisory.  Keeping on top of these security advisories so you can evaluate each one and understand any risks is important as a VMware Administrator.
These advisories are posted in a couple of places:
So a user account is getting locked out from your vCenter server? Â Check the windows security event logs, they typically clearly point out the culprit. Â If they are not much help you can start with the common things that are applicable for any server causing account lockouts:
These can be running under the locked out user account
Using the locked out user account credentials
A process can be running that is using the locked out user credentials
Ensure you did not use the user account that is being locked out for an ODBC connection for the vCenter database
Scheduled task(s) can be setup to run as the locked out user
Once you’ve exhausted all of that…
Can be running with out of date credentials and caused the lockout, you can use the sessions area in vCenter to check for active sessions
Uses a specified user account to poll servers to see if they are good candidates for virtualization
Has a proxy configuration area you can define a user account to login to the proxy with
Data Recovery uses stored credentials to connect to vCenter, ensure the specified user isn’t the one being locked out
NetApp’s Vitual Storage Console
I don’t think there is specifically a place you can have cached credentials in here, but I registered this to my vCenter using my account and it ultimately ended up locking me out about a month later when I changed my password due to expiration
Still Stumped?
Look at any Monitoring Tools (especially trials and free utilities you may have forgotten about) you ever installed on the box that might be running with the locked out user account: Veeam tools, vKernel tools, Vizioncore tools, Quest vFoglight Quick View, etc.  You can always disable services and wait to see if the lockouts continue if you really get stumped.
First please know that vCenter being down does not take your whole vSphere environment down. Â It limits you on creating new tasks (like deploying a new VM from template) until vCenter is back up. Â When vCenter is down HA/FT continue to function.
vCenter is the heart of VMware’s virtualized infrastructure, but many folks are reluctant to virtualize their vCenter.  Running vCenter as a VM is completely supported by VMware.  You get all kinds of benefits from running vCenter as a Virtual Machine:
If you are thinking about Virtualizing vCenter glance over this page out of the VMware Library:
VMware Online Library: Install vCenter Server in a Virtual Machine
First the biggest thing is that you should remember  HA/FT will continue to operate without vCenter–all decisions will be made using a snapshot of what the extra resources were in the cluster prior to vCenter going down.
Lets look at the major things vCenter does:
After reviewing those items–does anything stick out that makes you think vCenter needs to be up 24/7?  Would HA be sufficient protection so you only have a small amount of downtime in the event the host running your vCenter VM went down?  I think yes.
Clustered?
You can look into vCenter Server Heartbeat, this is licensed as an addon to vCenter. Â vCenter Server Heartbeat is basically an Active/Passive cluster for vCenter that can be setup to run locally or across your WAN. Â vCenter Server Heartbeat also has the advantage that it can protect more then just the vCenter, it also protects the addons like vCenter Converter and vCenter Update Manager–even Guided Consolidation can be protected. Â It is more costly then just running vCenter as a VM and protecting it with HA but the benefit of having an Active/Passive clustered vCenter + addons across the LAN/WAN may be beneficial for your organization.
vCenter can be protected via “third party solutions” such as MSCS or VCS and VMware will support you to some degree but they do not certify these configurations. Â If you have an issue VMware may determine the cause to be the third party software and not be of much assistance beyond that… Â If you are thinking of going this route read over this VMware KB:Â Supported vCenter Server high availability options
Michael Requeny | 
10 9th, 2011| 