vNiklas Virtualization blog

I got the question from a colleague if i could add a parameter in my function, no problem, just some dividing..

So you can either set percent CPU/Memory or number of hosts and from that get a percent on the policy. I have not taken care of the case if you have more than 100 hosts in your cluster (as this is not possible, at least not yet )

function Set-HAAdmissionControlPolicy{
<#
.SYNOPSIS
Set the Percentage HA Admission Control Policy

.DESCRIPTION
Percentage of cluster resources reserved as failover spare capacity

.PARAMETER  Cluster
The Cluster object that is going to be configurered 

.PARAMETER numberHosts
When this parameter is set the percentage is set based on number of hosts in cluster

.PARAMETER percentCPU
The percent reservation of CPU Cluster resources

.PARAMETER percentMem
The percent reservation of Memory Cluster resources

.EXAMPLE
PS C:\> Set-HAAdmissionControlPolicy -Cluster $CL -percentCPU 50 -percentMem 50

.EXAMPLE
PS C:\> Get-Cluster | Set-HAAdmissionControlPolicy -percentCPU 50 -percentMem 50

.EXAMPLE
PS C:\> Set-HAAdmissionControlPolicy -Cluster $CL -numberHosts 5

.NOTES
Author: Niklas Akerlund / RTS
Date: 2012-01-25
#>
   param (
   [Parameter(Position=0,Mandatory=$true,HelpMessage="This need to be a clusterobject",
    ValueFromPipeline=$True)]
    $Cluster,
	[int]$numberHosts = 0,
    [int]$percentCPU = 25,
    [int]$percentMem = 25
    )

    if(Get-Cluster $Cluster){

        $spec = New-Object VMware.Vim.ClusterConfigSpecEx
        $spec.dasConfig = New-Object VMware.Vim.ClusterDasConfigInfo
        $spec.dasConfig.admissionControlPolicy = New-Object VMware.Vim.ClusterFailoverResourcesAdmissionControlPolicy
		if($numberHosts -eq 0){
        	$spec.dasConfig.admissionControlPolicy.cpuFailoverResourcesPercent = $percentCPU
        	$spec.dasConfig.admissionControlPolicy.memoryFailoverResourcesPercent = $percentMem
 		}else{
			$spec.dasConfig.admissionControlPolicy.cpuFailoverResourcesPercent = 100/$numberHosts
        	$spec.dasConfig.admissionControlPolicy.memoryFailoverResourcesPercent = 100/$numberHosts
		}
        $Cluster = Get-View $Cluster
        $Cluster.ReconfigureComputeResource_Task($spec, $true)
    }
}

I am attending a VMware vSphere ICM 5 course this week, this because I am planning to become a VCI.

As I am a bit of PowerCLI fan i am trying to do all the labs in the course from the powerCLI console

In the HA laboration i found that the default implementation of the powerCLI does not allow you to set the HA Admission Control Policy Percentage, only the Host failure the cluster tolerates, here is a link to the powerCLI reference page for Set-Cluster. In the slides VMware recommends that you set percentage in a HA setup.

This led me to develop a powerCLI function that can configure this. The function has a default value for CPU and Memory that is 25 %, so if you only give the Cluster parameter the Capacity setting will be 25 %.

function Set-HAAdmissionControlPolicy{
<#
.SYNOPSIS
Set the Percentage HA Admission Control Policy

.DESCRIPTION
Percentage of cluster resources reserved as failover spare capacity

.PARAMETER  Cluster
The Cluster object that is going to be configurered 

.PARAMETER percentCPU
The percent reservation of CPU Cluster resources

.PARAMETER percentMem
The percent reservation of Memory Cluster resources

.EXAMPLE
PS C:\> Set-HAAdmissionControlPolicy -Cluster $CL -percentCPU 50 -percentMem 50

.EXAMPLE
PS C:\> Get-Cluster | Set-HAAdmissionControlPolicy -percentCPU 50 -percentMem 50

.NOTES
Author: Niklas Akerlund / RTS
Date: 2012-01-19
#>
   param (
   [Parameter(Position=0,Mandatory=$true,HelpMessage="This need to be a clusterobject",
    ValueFromPipeline=$True)]
    $Cluster,
    [int]$percentCPU = 25,
    [int]$percentMem = 25
    )

    if(Get-Cluster $Cluster){

        $spec = New-Object VMware.Vim.ClusterConfigSpecEx
        $spec.dasConfig = New-Object VMware.Vim.ClusterDasConfigInfo
        $spec.dasConfig.admissionControlPolicy = New-Object VMware.Vim.ClusterFailoverResourcesAdmissionControlPolicy
        $spec.dasConfig.admissionControlPolicy.cpuFailoverResourcesPercent = $percentCPU
        $spec.dasConfig.admissionControlPolicy.memoryFailoverResourcesPercent = $percentMem

        $Cluster = Get-View $Cluster
        $Cluster.ReconfigureComputeResource_Task($spec, $true)
    }
}

Here is a screenshot when running the function

If you are running too many VM´s on your datastores in your vSphere environment you can have some problems, this if your SAN is not VAAI compliant and can handle SCSI locking etc.

Alan Renouf has made a blog post about how to get a report about how many VM´s you have on every datastore, I have extended to only report on running VM´s as these are the interesting number..

Get-Datastore | Select Name, @{N="NumVM";E={@($_ | Get-VM | where {$_.PowerState -eq "PoweredOn"}).Count}} | Sort Name | Export-Csv -Path C:\temp\vms-datastore.csv -NoTypeInformation -UseCulture

And the report loooks like this when imported into excel

I was thinking of how to get an report after reading about the converter best practice from Vladan and he also has this blog post about how to change the HAL, but first i want to know what running guests are there that has the wrong HAL running. I have selected to get an report out of the running windows 2003 ( windows 2008 and later has an uniform HAL that is the same for one or more cpu´s).

I have made an little script somewhat alike to Alan Renouf´s to get the HAL of the VM guest running in your environment, the difference in my approach is that i use invoke-script and get the info from inside the VM, as i have a case where the VMs are isolated and i can not get the wmi info from the network, Arnim Van Lieshout has made one blog post about  running wmi queries this way.

# Check the HAL in the VM with invoke-VMScript
#
# Niklas Akerlund / RTS

$VMs = Get-VM | Where {$_.Guest.OSFullName -eq "Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Standard (32-bit)" -and $_.PowerState -eq "PoweredOn"}
$guestcred = get-Credential
$report = @()

foreach ($VM in $VMs){
    $HAL = Invoke-VMScript "wmic path Win32_PnPEntity WHERE ""DeviceID='ROOT\\ACPI_HAL\\0000'"" GET NAME /VALUE" -VM $VM -GuestCredential $guestcred -scripttype "bat"
	$HAL = $HAL.Split('=')[1]
    $data = New-Object PSObject -property @{
        VMName=$VM.Name
        vCPUs=$VM.NumCPU
        HAL=$HAL.Trim('')
    }
    $report +=$data
}

$report | Export-Csv -path c:\temp\hal4.csv -NoTypeInformation -UseCulture

And the simple report looks like this:

Today i added some fields in my little reportscript for the VM and their NICs, the reason was because of a customer that had an issue with duplicate MAC´s on their network.

We had earlier this year moved some VMs from an old vCenter to a new, i have made a blog post about the migration and the script we ran there.

Now when they started to deploy new VMs on the old vCenter it gave out the same MAC addresses as the ones on the VM´s that we had moved.. not so good, there is a fix that can be implemented on the old vCenter so it will start using new MAC´s instead, if you have this issue you can read the following KB 1024025 and set a new ID on the old vCenter and restart the service

But to check the VMs on both vCenter servers i ran the following script to get the data, the customer wanted both the VM name and the hostname/fqdn from the vm, also for every nic if it was generated or assigned.

# Get the Virtual Network Adapter
#
# Niklas Akerlund / RTS

$VMs = Get-VM *
$Data = @()

foreach ($VM in $VMs){
 	$VMGuest = Get-View $VM.Id
	$NICs = $VM.NetworkAdapters
	foreach ($NIC in $NICs) {
		$into = New-Object PSObject
		Add-Member -InputObject $into -MemberType NoteProperty -Name VMname $VM.Name
		Add-Member -InputObject $into -MemberType NoteProperty -Name VMfqdn $VM.Guest.HostName
		Add-Member -InputObject $into -MemberType NoteProperty -Name NICtype $NIC.Type
		Add-Member -InputObject $into -MemberType NoteProperty -Name MacAddress $NIC.MacAddress
		Add-Member -InputObject $into -MemberType NoteProperty -Name AddresType $NIC.ExtensionData.AddressType
		$Data += $into

	}

}
$Data | Export-Csv -Path c:\powercli\VMNICinfo.csv -NoTypeInformation

Matt Boren that has the site vnugglets.com helped me with an more efficient way of getting the data, my script took about 5-10 minutes and Matt´s took 30 seconds, his key to lower time is using the Get-View for everything (i was only using it to get the vm.guest.hostname)

&{Get-View -ViewType VirtualMachine -Property Name, Guest.HostName, Config.Hardware.Device | %{
    $viewThisVM = $_
    $viewThisVM.Config.Hardware.Device | ?{$_ -is [VMware.Vim.VirtualEthernetCard]} | %{
        New-Object -Type PSObject -Property @{
            VMname = $viewThisVM.Name
            VMfqdn = $viewThisVM.Guest.HostName
            NICtype = $_.GetType().Name
            MacAddress = $_.MacAddress
            AddressType = $_.AddressType
        } ## end new-object
    } ## end foreach-object
} ## end foreach-object
} | Select VMname,VMfqdn,NICtype,MacAddress,AddressType | Export-Csv -Path C:\VMNICinfo2.csv -NoTypeInformation -UseCulture

And the result when imported into excel looks something like this:

I have created a simple report-script that gives a list of what kind of format and how many vmdk each VM has. The report tells me if the disks are Thin or Thick and what size they are i GB.

after some magic in Excel it looks like this

And the powerCLI script looks like this, it is quite simple but still gives me information that i need for all my VMs on all datastores and quickly i can tell which machines that uses a lot of disk on my precious SAN

# Get data about vmdk and format
#
# Niklas Åkerlund / RTS

$VMs = Get-VM *
$Data = @()

 foreach ($VM in $VMs){
	$VMDKs = $VM | get-HardDisk
	foreach ($VMDK in $VMDKs) {
		if ($VMDK -ne $null){
			$CapacityGB = $VMDK.CapacityKB/1024/1024
			$CapacityGB = [int]$CapacityGB
			$into = New-Object PSObject
			Add-Member -InputObject $into -MemberType NoteProperty -Name VMname $VM.Name
			Add-Member -InputObject $into -MemberType NoteProperty -Name Datastore $VMDK.FileName.Split(']')[0].TrimStart('[')
			Add-Member -InputObject $into -MemberType NoteProperty -Name VMDK $VMDK.FileName.Split(']')[1].TrimStart('[')
			Add-Member -InputObject $into -MemberType NoteProperty -Name StorageFormat $VMDK.StorageFormat
			Add-Member -InputObject $into -MemberType NoteProperty -Name CapacityGB $CapacityGB
			$Data += $into
		}
	}

}
$Data | Sort-Object VMname,Datastore,VMDK | Export-Csv -Path C:\temp\VM-VMDKs.csv -NoTypeInformation

Hi

I was informed that my script in the last post was not enough because @pfuhli has a bit more complex environment and then the Move-VM cmdlet is not sufficient because it moves the whole vm to the new datastore, no matter if the vmdk´s where located on different before.

As in some cases you have an virtual platform with different datastores for different performance levels and one VM has it´s vmdk configured to get the best throughput. So i  did this with help from a script that Luc Dekens did in a communities post, mine added some functionality as his only moved the config file.

please comment if you find something crazy, I have now started to get the hang of why I would use functions , yes i should add some error-checking, that will be in version 0.3

Probably it would take some time to get through 500 VM´s but instead of manual work it is worth it.

# Move VMs with sVMotion where vmdk is on different datastores and
# lastly move the config file to the same datastore as hard disk 1
#
# Niklas Åkerlund / RTS 20111127
# Part of code from Luc Dekens http://communities.vmware.com/message/1680735

# Here i extended Luc´s function for moving only config
function Move-VMs{
    param($vm)
	Write-Host $vm
    $HDDs = Get-HardDisk -VM $vm
	# a foreach loop to move vmdk
	$HDDs | %{
		# Get the datastore name of the old
		$oldDS = $_.Filename.Split(']')[0].TrimStart('[')
		# as @pfuhli said the new lun has a preceding letter that differs from the old.
		$newDS = "N" + $oldDS
		# Here i check which is the first hdd to later move the config there
		if ($_.Name -eq "Hard disk 1"){
			$dsNameHDD1 = $newDS
		}
		$newDS = Get-Datastore $newDS
		Set-HardDisk -HardDisk $_ -Datastore $newDS -Confirm:$false
	}

	# This part is for moving the config file
	$HDDs = Get-HardDisk -VM $vm
	$spec = New-Object VMware.Vim.VirtualMachineRelocateSpec
	$spec.datastore = (Get-Datastore -Name $dsNameHDD1).Extensiondata.MoRef
    $HDDs | %{
        $disk = New-Object VMware.Vim.VirtualMachineRelocateSpecDiskLocator
        $disk.diskId = $_.Extensiondata.Key
        $disk.datastore = $_.Extensiondata.Backing.Datastore
        $spec.disk += $disk
    }
    $vm.Extensiondata.RelocateVM_Task($spec, "defaultPriority")
}

Get-VM | %{
	Move-VMs $_
}

Before running it on all VM´s i would test it on a few and then when feeling comfortable, you can move all

I have after reading a tweet written the simplest script for a SAN exchange, my script just look for the VMs associated with one datastore and storage vmotion them to an new datastore with no downtime of course this requires Enterprise or higher in your vSphere licensing.

I have done some assumptions that there is equally many datastores provisioned in the new as the old and that no VMs have RDMs and vmdk on several datastores.

The Get-Datastore cmdlet can filter using wildcards like *c2* if your naming convension is complex and you need to find your old/new datastores objects.

For each old datastore i wait 30 minutes before starting on the next, maybe this must be set a bit higher depending on how long the storage vmotion takes and how large the datastores/vmdk´s are. Maybe we should put a sleep after starting move of each VM?! I have not yet had the pleasure testing in a large environment yet..

# Move VMs to new datastore using SVMotion
#
# Niklas Akerlund /RTS
#

# I want all old and new datastores as objects in arrays
$OldDatastores = Get-Datastore vmfs-volumes-old0*
$NewDatastores = Get-Datastore vmfs-volumes-new0*
$i = 0

# Get all VMs in each old datastore and move them
Foreach ($OldDatastore in $OldDatastores){
	$VMs = Get-VM -Datastore $OldDatastore

	Foreach ($VM in $VMs)
	{
		# Move the VM to a new datastore
		$VM | Move-VM -Datastore $NewDatastores[$i] -RunAsync

	}

	$i++
	# we want to give the SVMotions a little time before taking the next datastore
	Start-Sleep 1800
}

I would recommend testing on a single datastore or a few VMs and when feeling comfortable running on all datastores..

I have today started creating a script that is sort of a check that when installing new hosts, all of them are configured the same.

It is still very simple but yet kind of powerfull, we can easily see in the html report if some vmk nic is on the wrong IP subnet or not Jumboframes activated, the following screen dump shows the report, yes it is no fancy headlines and stuff yet

I am going to work a lot more such as built in error checking and try to get some nice colors if a value differs with the other hosts, and also reporting on vSwitches and portgroups that they have the right uplinks etc, but that will have to be tomorrow or another day

# Check for Host Configuration and report
#
# Niklas Åkerlund / RTS
#

$vCenter = "vcenter.demo.local"
$AdvConf = @()
$Cluster = "Cluster1"

# We only want to get info from hosts that are online
Connect-VIServer $vCenter

$VMHosts = Get-Cluster -Name $Cluster | Get-VMHost | where {$_.ConnectionState -eq "Connected" }

# Get the cluster config
$ClusterConf = Get-Cluster -Name $Cluster | Select-Object Name,HAEnabled,HAAdmissionControlEnabled,HAIsolationResponse,VMSwapfilePolicy,DrsEnabled,DrsMode,DrsAutomationLevel | ConvertTo-Html -Fragment

# Get Basic Conf
$BaseConf = $VMHosts | Select-Object Name,Model,NumCPU,MemoryTotalMB,Version,Build,VMSwapfileDatastore | Sort-Object Name | ConvertTo-Html -Fragment

#adv config settings
foreach ($VMHost in $VMHosts){
		$into = New-Object PSObject
		Add-Member -InputObject $into -MemberType NoteProperty -Name VMHost $VMHost.Name
		$AdvScratch = Get-VMHostAdvancedConfiguration -VMHost $VMHost -Name ScratchConfig.ConfiguredScratchlocation
		$AdvScratch = [string]$AdvScratch.Values
		Add-Member -InputObject $into -MemberType NoteProperty -Name ScratchLocation $AdvScratch
		$AdvSwap = Get-VMHostAdvancedConfiguration -VMHost $VMHost -Name ScratchConfig.CurrentSwapState
		$AdvSwap = [string]$AdvSwap.Values
		Add-Member -InputObject $into -MemberType NoteProperty -Name Swapstate $AdvSwap
		$AdvSyslogRemote = Get-VMHostAdvancedConfiguration -VMHost $VMHost -Name Syslog.Remote.Hostname
		$AdvSyslogRemote = [string]$AdvSyslogRemote.Values
		Add-Member -InputObject $into -MemberType NoteProperty -Name SyslogRemote $AdvSyslogRemote
		$AdvSyslogLocal = Get-VMHostAdvancedConfiguration -VMHost $VMHost -Name Syslog.Local.DatastorePath
		$AdvSyslogLocal = [string]$AdvSyslogLocal.Values
		Add-Member -InputObject $into -MemberType NoteProperty -Name SyslogLocal $AdvSyslogLocal
		$AdvConf += $into

}

$AdvConf = $AdvConf | Sort-Object VMhost | ConvertTo-Html -Fragment

# Vmk ports and their MTU

$NetConf = $VMHosts | Get-VMHostNetworkAdapter | where {$_.Name -match "vmk"} | Select-Object VMHost,Name,IP,VMotionEnabled,FaultToleranceLoggingEnabled,ManagementTrafficEnabled,Mtu,PortGroupName | Sort-Object Name,VMHost | ConvertTo-Html -Fragment

# Create the html report from the different parts
ConvertTo-Html -body "RTS Install documentation <p> $ClusterConf <p> $BaseConf <p> $AdvCOnf <p> $NetConf" -Title "RTS Installationscheck" | Out-File install.html

I got a question what network card some VMs had in a datacenter, as a best practice you should use VMXNET 3 where it is possible because it gives the best performance.

So i wrote this very simple script in a few lines that do a csv export of all VMs and what kind of NIC they have, of course one could extend it with OS and stuff but that will have to be next time cause my schedule is kind of tight.

When you use the wizard to set up a Windows 2008 R2 the vSphere set an E1000 NIC by default and that is not what we want, so set up a correct template or remove this nic and add a new when installing single machines!

# Get the Virtual Network Adapter
#
# Niklas Åkerlund / RTS
$VMs = Get-VM *
$Data = @()
foreach ($VM in $VMs){
$NICs = $VM.NetworkAdapters
foreach ($NIC in $NICs) {
$into = New-Object PSObject
Add-Member -InputObject $into -MemberType NoteProperty -Name VMname $VM.Name
Add-Member -InputObject $into -MemberType NoteProperty -Name NICtype $NIC.Type
$Data += $into
}
}
$Data | Export-Csv -Path e:\temp\admna\NICs.csv -NoTypeInformation