vNiklas Virtualization blog

I have been exploring the System Center Orchestrator Integration Pack for vSphere and this is some good stuff! I have several customers that have bought Windows Datacenter Licenses with the System Center bundle and that is quite beneficial from a economical perspective! This means that they can use the System Center all parts with all VM´s and hosts. Several customers also use VMware vSphere as their virtualization platform and they can use System Center Orchestrator to build automation without any extra license cost.

In the System Center family there is only Virtual Machine Manager and Orchestrator that has connections to VMware vSphere without third party software (In Operations Manager you can use SNMP to get alarms from vCenter though).

So what can we do with Orchestrator IP for vSphere? This is the activities that is in the pack with version number 7.1.3010:

And what do we need to configure, well of course we need connection settings to a vCenter server and that is found under the “Options” and then you add your vCenter or if you have several and want to use them you will have to add one configuration for each.

And here is an simple example of a runbook that changes all VM´s memory to 384 MB, in the runbook I check if the VM is on or off and do an graceful power off activity depending on that status. For each activity in the runbook we have to add what configured vCenter we want to use or the runbook will fail!

The possibilites are almost endles as you can combine these activitiy with the others and interact with for example SCCM and deploy VM´s and OS. If this list of activities in the IP is not enough it can be extended by either creating your own IP or calling PowerCLI scripts from your runbook. Together with System Center Service Manager we can build nice self service portals that also does stuff on the VMware VM´s based on what the user order.

There is a new version of the free Dell vKernel Server Explorer and now the version number is 6.3

What has been added to this valuable tool:

• Storage Explorer
• Change Explorer

So with the storage explorer view I can get valuable information about the capacity and also the configuration of the datastores, such as what path selection, number of VM´s and IO etc

With the Change Explorer I get an overview of what has changed in my environment, this is data from the latest 7 days and if I want more I can always activate the vOPS server trial and then buy an license.

The Server Explorer can be installed/imported into VMware vSphere or Microsoft Hyper-V and also Redhat Enterprise Virtualization, and you can connect it to several vCenter servers and also Hyper-V and RHEV at the same time

I have tested to install it on Microsoft Hyper-V, I tried to use the guide and import the VM on a Windows 2008 R2 Hyper-V, this worked excellent. On windows 2008 r2 it is important that the config.xml file is present in the folder of the VM you try to import or it will fail, this is not a problem on windows 2012 hyper-v where you can import VM´s without exporting them first.

I changed the settings for the imported VM to

• 4096 MB (I have also been able to start it with 2048 MB)
• removed the legacy Network Adapter and replaced it with a Network Adapter (the synthetic)

Updated: The synthetic Network Adapter cannot be used when deploying on windows 2012 Hyper-V because the IC for linux on the vKernel Server Explorer appliance is version 3.1 and the OS is OpenSuse 11.4, and the IC 3.4 which is needed for 2012 cannot be installed on that OS. You can find out the version on your Linux VM by typing modinfo hv_vmbus or modinfo hv_netvsc for the network adapter. The recommendation from Microsoft is that you should use the Network Adapter when possible.

Then I started it and although the VM/VHD´s says 6.0 the VM after start says 6.3 So I know it is the latest and it starts successfully.

Next step is to configure the vKernel Hyper-V Collector, as you can see this is kind of mandatory before adding the System Center in the vOPS Server Explorer.

There are two different folders on the download and if you have System Center 2012 you should install the Hyper-V Collector 2012. If I had chosen the internal vOPS database I will use the SQL Server type PostgreSQL, the ip adress of the vOPS Server Explorer and the username and password postgres / postgres

Next step is to configure the connections tab where we add a connection to the SCOM server and when that is done we can after a while check the data in the web, the address is http://ip_of_the_vOPS , the name of my SCOM server is VMM12 so it is not the VMM server I connect to, although this server do have vmm and scom on the same OS.

Free tools are always nice and with these new change and storage explorers you get more insight into your environment and this for free!!

Good luck in your deployment of this updated tool!

Yesterday I too the challenge from VMware Sweden to be the first presenting an image of an working Thinapp 4.7.3 packaged Internet Explorer 6.0 on a Windows 8.

This function within ThinApp is quite powerfull. Think of the enterprise applications that have an legacy webapp and that does not allow you to upgrade your web browser cause then it stops working. So how do you do when your users also are connected to the internet and the vulnerabilities out there when you do not have an updated web browser.

Here the ThinApped Internet Explorer comes in to play. You can use the ThinApp ThinDirect for those url containing the corporate web sites that require an older web browser and without the user needing to do anything they get the virtualized IE6 connecting to that site.

Here is a screendump on the configuration dialog for the Internet Explorer, and if I want the Internet Explorer 6 extracted from the OS ( in this case I am getting mine from a win 2003 Sp1)

And here you can see when I am running the IE6

I think that it is really easy to create ThinApped packages and also so powerful as you can see!

I have tested to install the new VMware ESXi 5.1 in a VM on my Macbook pro, next step was to get the vCenter 5.1 working on Windows 2012.

I downloaded the evaluation ISO from technet and when using the Easy Install I got an error trying to install the OS on the VM, as you can see on the screendump I get a licensing error, my first thought was that it was an error with my iso download and I then downloaded it again but the error persisted.

When I try to set up a new VM without the Easy Install I get the license agreement without error and could deploy the VM without any errors. Did I say that I am using the latest fusion 5.0.1

So to continue with the install, when the OS is upp and running I also need to download/install .net 3.5 (this is not by default available in win 2012 so I need the Media or an Internet connection). This as the .Net 3.5 is a requirement when installing vCenter.

Then I run the simple install from the media that will install the vCenter server, Single sign-on and Inventory service together.

When the installation is finished everything seems to be installed but the vCenter service will not start. It complained about a service that it depended on that was not existing.

I investigated a bit and the Protected Storage Service was deprecated in windows 2008 and only in read-mode and I could not find it for Windows 2012. So I wanted to remove the dependent services.

So how to do this, I type sc config vpxd depend= “” to remove all dependencies and then I typed sc start vpxd and the service took a bit to start but eventually it got to a running state.

Then I installed the vSphere Client and tried to log in and when the client opened I added the vSphere host without any issues.

Now when I got this running I will continue to install PowerCLI 5.1 and test it with PowerShell 3.0

There is a new version of the vKernel Server Explorer that has a Environment Explorer view, this can handle multiple hypervisors (current support is Hyper-V, VMware vSphere and RHEV). The tool gives you as an administrator or consultant the insight in the environment and can give you answers if there are some issues and if you are running out of capacity.

The software is packed as an OVF and imported into your vSphere environment, as the vOPS server Readme text file describes there will also be an Hyper-V appliance that will be importable into an Hyper-V host and that with an collector for Hyper-V, do not know when that will be released though.

I have imported it with PowerCLI and then edited the vCPU to 2 instead of 4 and memory to 4 GB instead of 8 because my lab machines has limited resourses, It is really easy to deploy as you can see.

After import and configure I start it and then use a browser to the IP adress and configure, with this current version I can only add vSphere vCenter and RHEV

To add a vCenter I have to set the vCenter statistic level to at least 2 on all intervals

When that is done I successfully add the vCenter to the Server Explorer

With this you get three free tools in one, Environment Explorer, vScope Explorer and SearchMyVM Explorer that all can help you get the initial info you need. and If you want you can activate a free vOPS trial to extend the functionality.

In my small test/lab environment it looks like this

Download the Server Explorer and test yourself -> vOPS Server Explorer 5.1

I have made a function to set reservations on VM´s in PowerCLI. The function takes a VM as parameter and also percentage of CPU and Memory you want to reserve.

The function checks the Mhz of the physical CPU from the Host the VM is running on and makes the reservation from this.

In the function I can set both memory and cpu reservation or just one of them

here is a screendump of the function being used

and here is the PowerCLI

function Set-VMReservation{
<#
.SYNOPSIS
Set VM Reservation on Memory and/or CPU

.DESCRIPTION
Use this function set VM reservations 

.PARAMETER MemoryMB
Use this parameter to set the percent of memory reserved for the VM

.PARAMETER CpuMhz
Use this parameter to set the percent of CPU Mhz from the host CPU to be reserved

.NOTES
Author: Niklas Akerlund
Date: 2012-07-19
#>
    param (
   [Parameter(Position=0,Mandatory=$true,HelpMessage="A VM",
    ValueFromPipeline=$True)]
    $VM,
	$MemoryMB = 0,
	$CpuMhz = 0
    )
	$VM = Get-VM $VM
	if ($MemoryMB -ne 0 -and $CpuMhz -ne 0){
		$MemoryMB = $MemoryMB/100
		[int]$MemoryMB = $VM.MemoryMB*$MemoryMB
		$CpuMhz = $CpuMhz/100
		[int]$CpuMhz = ([math]::truncate(((Get-VMHost -id $VM.extensiondata.summary.runtime.host).ExtensionData.Hardware.CpuInfo.hz)/1000000))*$VM.NumCpu*$CpuMhz
		$VM | Get-VMResourceConfiguration |Set-VMResourceConfiguration -CpuReservationMhz $CpuMhz -MemReservationMB $MemoryMB
	}elseif ($MemoryMB -ne 0 -and $CpuMhz -eq 0){
		$MemoryMB = $MemoryMB/100
		[int]$MemoryMB = $VM.MemoryMB*$MemoryMB
		$VM | Get-VMResourceConfiguration |Set-VMResourceConfiguration -MemReservationMB $MemoryMB
	}elseif ($MemoryMB -eq 0 -and $CpuMhz -ne 0){
		$CpuMhz = $CpuMhz/100
		[int]$CpuMhz = ([math]::truncate(((Get-VMHost -id $VM.extensiondata.summary.runtime.host).ExtensionData.Hardware.CpuInfo.hz)/1000000))*$VM.NumCpu*$CpuMhz
		$VM | Get-VMResourceConfiguration |Set-VMResourceConfiguration -CpuReservationMhz $CpuMhz
	}elseif ($MemoryMB -eq 0 -and $CpuMhz -eq 0){
		$VM | Get-VMResourceConfiguration |Set-VMResourceConfiguration -CpuReservationMhz 0 -MemReservationMB 0
	}
}

In this example I have set the CPU reservation to 60 % and Memory to 40 %

A colleague wanted a script that could make a Host-VM affinity rule so that certain VM´s that resided on one storage at one site would run on the hosts on that site, the cluster spanns over two sites so the VM´s can run at both sites but one datastore is primary at the first site and the other at the second site.  So He wanted to get the VM´s that have their storage on datastoreLocation1 to be in an host-vm affinity rule “Should Run” on the hosts that is in that site. In this community post I found most of the code, I made som adjustments but mostly the cred goes to @lucd22 and GotMoo.

Here you can see the screendump from the cluster settings

Here is the powerCLI that has been run

One thing here was also that this VMgroup should be updated once a day if there was new VM´s that needed to be included. So this lines should be run in a scheduled task, this will make the DRSVMGroup VMLocationDC1 to be updated with the VM´s currently located at that datastore:

$VM = get-datastore delad02 | get-vm
Update-DrsVMGroup -cluster vmw* -VMs $VM -groupVMName VMLocationDC1

Here are the PowerCLI functions for doing this. As you can see I have an switch parameter for -MustRun, that will create the rule as a Must Run on these hosts.

function New-DRSGroupRule{
<#
.SYNOPSIS
Create a new DRSGroupRule for VMs to reside on some hosts in a cluster

.DESCRIPTION
Use this function to create vms in a group and hosts in a group and a host-vm affinity

.PARAMETER  MustRun
A switch that will create the rule with Must Run on these host, if not set it will create the rule with should run.

.NOTES
Author: Niklas Akerlund / RTS (most of the code came from http://communities.vmware.com/message/1667279 @LucD22 and GotMoo)
Date: 2012-06-28
#>
	param (
	[Parameter(Position=0,Mandatory=$true,HelpMessage="A Cluster",
	ValueFromPipeline=$True)]
	$cluster,
	$VMHosts,
	$VMs,
	[string]$Name,
	[switch]$MustRun
	)
	
	$cluster = Get-Cluster $cluster

	$spec = New-Object VMware.Vim.ClusterConfigSpecEx
	$groupVM = New-Object VMware.Vim.ClusterGroupSpec 
	$groupVM.operation = "add" 
	$groupVM.Info = New-Object VMware.Vim.ClusterVmGroup
	$groupVM.Info.Name = "VM$Name"

	Get-VM $VMs | %{
	$groupVM.Info.VM += $_.Extensiondata.MoRef
	}
	$spec.GroupSpec += $groupVM

	$groupESX = New-Object VMware.Vim.ClusterGroupSpec 
	$groupESX.operation = "add"
	$groupESX.Info = New-Object VMware.Vim.ClusterHostGroup
	$groupESX.Info.Name = "Host$Name"

	Get-VMHost $VMHosts | %{
	$groupESX.Info.Host += $_.Extensiondata.MoRef
	}
	$spec.GroupSpec += $groupESX

	$rule = New-Object VMware.Vim.ClusterRuleSpec
	$rule.operation = "add"
	$rule.info = New-Object VMware.Vim.ClusterVmHostRuleInfo
	$rule.info.enabled = $true
	$rule.info.name = $Name
	if($MustRun){
		$rule.info.mandatory = $true
	}else{
		$rule.info.mandatory = $false
	}
	$rule.info.vmGroupName = "VM$Name"
	$rule.info.affineHostGroupName = "Host$Name"
	$spec.RulesSpec += $rule

	$cluster.ExtensionData.ReconfigureComputeResource($spec,$true)
}

function Update-DrsVMGroup {
<#
.SYNOPSIS
Update DRS VM group with a new collection of VM´s

.DESCRIPTION
Use this function to update the ClusterVMgroup with VMs that are sent in by parameters

.PARAMETER  xyz 

.NOTES
Author: Niklas Akerlund / RTS (most of the code came from http://communities.vmware.com/message/1667279 @LucD22 and GotMoo)
Date: 2012-06-28
#>
	param (
	$cluster,
	$VMs,
	$groupVMName)
	
    $cluster = Get-Cluster $cluster
    $spec = New-Object VMware.Vim.ClusterConfigSpecEx
    $groupVM = New-Object VMware.Vim.ClusterGroupSpec 
    #Operation edit will replace the contents of the GroupVMName with the new contents seleced below.
    $groupVM.operation = "edit" 

    $groupVM.Info = New-Object VMware.Vim.ClusterVmGroup
    $groupVM.Info.Name = $groupVMName 

    Get-VM $VMs | %{
        $groupVM.Info.VM += $_.Extensiondata.MoRef
    }
    $spec.GroupSpec += $groupVM

    #Apply the settings to the cluster
    $cluster.ExtensionData.ReconfigureComputeResource($spec,$true)
}

When I get the time I might add some more functionality to also remove rules and groups.

I made a blog post some time ago, where i created a powerCLI function for creating a VM affinity rule that would keep my VM´s in a vApp together in the cluster for better VM-VM performance. I then checked for MoRef to get the VM correlated between vCloud Director and vCenter.

The answer to my problem was much closer than I thought, the vCloud director creates a folder in the “VM´s and Template view” for each vApp and guess what, all VM´s are in there.. so I do not need to ask the vCloud Director anymore (well if I want the Cloud vApp name I do need to ask it..) but ironically I had not looked there and found out that the folders actually where created for each deployed vCloud vApp :-/

So the code is a bit simpler and to get all VM´s from a folder I just type this, the asterisk is because the folder also gets a unique id

Get-Folder | where {$_.Name -like "ProdvCPod*"} | Get-VM

And then I just need to put those VM´s into an array and create a DRS rule, and here is the function that does this

<#
.Synopsis
   Add an affinity rule for a vCloud Director vAPP
.DESCRIPTION
   This function takes a vApp name (string) as parameter and creates an affinity rule for them to keep them together
.EXAMPLE
   Add-vAppAffinity -CIVApp ProdCust01
.NOTES
Author: Niklas Akerlund
Date: 2012-06-21
#>
function Add-vAppAffinity
{
    Param
    (
        # Parameter for the vAPP
        [Parameter(Mandatory=$true,
                   ValueFromPipelineByPropertyName=$true,
                   Position=0)]
        $CIVApp,

        # If the rule should apply on a different cluster
        $Cluster = "Cluster01"
    	)

	if ($CIVApp -ne " " -or $CIVApp -ne $null -or $CIVApp.length -ne 0 ){
		$Cluster = Get-Cluster $Cluster
		$VAppname = $CIVApp + "*"
		$VMs =  Get-Folder | where {$_.Name -like $VAppname} | Get-VM	
		
		if (!(Get-DrsRule -Cluster $Cluster -Name $CIVApp -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue)){ 
			New-DrsRule -Name $CIVApp -Cluster $Cluster -KeepTogether $true -VM $VMs
		}else{
			Remove-DrsRule -Rule (Get-DrsRule -Cluster $Cluster -Name $CIVApp) -Confirm:$false
			New-DrsRule -Name $CIVApp -Cluster $Cluster -KeepTogether $true -VM $VMs
		}
	}
}

To run it:

and it looks something like this if I check the cluster settings

preferably you have set your DRS cluster to fully automated or not so much will happen

Today my adventures continues, I had to test and install the PowerCLI on a Windows 2012 RC to see if it works and also if it could be used in the new Windows 2012 feature PowerShell Webaccess.

In an earlier post I showed how to configure the PowerShell Webaccess, then I was not successful to run the PowerCLI, the difference here is that I now installed the PowerCLI on the Win 2012 server.

To be able to install i had to enable the .net 2.0 (why the PowerCLI is built on that version is another discussion we will not go into here), as you can see on the dialog I had to enable that

Ok, and that should be done with PowerShell or? My server did not have an active Internet connection so I got a failure when trying to enable the .Net Framework, I had to use the Dism tool with the install media to get the .Net installed as it otherwise downloads the files necessary from MS.

dism /online /enable-feature /featurename:NetFx3 /all /source:D:\sources\sxs

When this is enabled then there was no problem installing the PowerCLI and when installed I can use for example the V3 functions Get-VM | where powerstate -eq “PoweredOn” <- notice I am not using any curly brackets and $_

Now to the Webaccess, I connect to the site https://pstest.vniklas.com/pswa and log on with an authorized account. After that I run Add-PSSnapin VMware.VimAutomation.Core to enable the PowerCLI functionality . Then i need to get the credential before connecting to the vCenter because the pswa could not show the promt for credential.

But that is easily fixed by using $cred = Get-Credential and then Connect-VIServer vc.vniklas.com -Credential $cred and as you can see I can now connect and use the PowerCLI in a web browser.

May the PowerCLI be with you!

This week I have been teaching my first vSphere 5 ICM, I have been trying to show the students the wonderful world of PowerCLI and all good you can do with it.

When we got to the virtual networking I tested if I could add a switch with any number of ports

get-vmhost esxi01* | New-VirtualSwitch -Name TestNumPorts -NumPorts 12 -Nic vmnic0

When I try to add 12 ports with the -NumPorts parameter, powerCLI tells me that my switch has been created with 16 ports, but look here in my vSphere Client screen dump

hmm smells like a bug? or ?

Well now I wanted to test if I could add more than 4 VM´s and connect them and then start them, first I have to create a Portgroup that i can connect and then a nice for loop to create 10 VM´s

get-vmhost esxi01* | Get-VirtualSwitch -Name TestNumPorts | New-VirtualPortGroup -Name Test

for ($i=1;$i -le 10;$i++){New-VM -VMHost (Get-VMHost esxi01*) -Name ("VM01" + $i) -Datastore (Get-Datastore delad02) -NetworkName Test}

The last  oneliner creates a standard VM with 256 MB ram and a 4 GB vmdk disk, and then I want to start them to actually connect them to the network I created to see if anyone of them does not get connected.

So to get them connected I start them

And check the last command where we can see that my number of available ports has not decremented?

Here you can see in the vSphere client that all my new VM´s are connected to the Test portgroup

In this screenshot you can see why my vSwitch got 16 ports (as 8 are allocated by the vmkernel) and the options are 8/24/56/120/248/504/1016 and so on, but still it does not explan why the powercli does not show that i have used 10 of the ports, or?

To see maybe what causing this I changed the number of ports to one of the “allowed” and when I changed the number to 16 ports, directly my free ports changed to 4, but I have 10 machines + 8 reserved?

The following powerCLI command shows the VM´s and if they are connected if you do not believe the gui

Get-VM VM01* | Get-NetworkAdapter | select parent, connectionstate

 The conclusion is that I have no answer if this is as it should be or if it is a bug, maybe someone out there could clarify

Now time to prepare for tomorrow and the modules in the course