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Step by Step Deployment of vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) 7.0 c

I’m in the process of building a new solution center and figured why not update my how to install VCSA with a fresh 7.0.0c. As always, plan ahead to avoid long delays for issues that could have been planned around or avoided.

If you would like assistance in the below or have general questions about Cloud solutions, VMware, and more, feel free to comment on below to work directly with you.

Download ISO:

https://my.vmware.com/web/vmware/downloads/details?downloadGroup=VC700C&productId=974&rPId=46314

A list of Required Ports for vCenter Server can be found

vSphere/7.0/com.vmware.vcenter.upgrade.doc/GUID-925370DD-E3D1-455B-81C7-CB28AAF20617.html

Pre-Requisites:

• If you want to deploy the appliance on an ESXi host, verify that the ESXi host is not in lockdown or maintenance mode and not part of a fully automated DRS cluster.
• If you want to deploy the appliance on a DRS cluster of the inventory of a vCenter Server instance, verify that the cluster contains at least one ESXi host that is not in lockdown or maintenance mode.
• If you plan to use NTP servers for time synchronization, verify that the NTP servers are running and that the time between the NTP servers and the target server on which you want to deploy the appliance is synchronized.
• To deploy vCenter Server 7.0 appliance you need an ESXi host 6.5 or later, or on a vCenter Server instance 6.5 or later.
• Put the FQDN for the new vCenter into DNS and make sure the workstation you are deploying the vCenter from can reach the DNS server

vCenter Enhanced Linked Mode Pre-Requisites

When deploying a new vCenter Server as part of an Enhanced Linked Mode deployment, create an image-based backup of the existing vCenter Server nodes in your environment. You can use the backup as a precaution in case there is a failure during the deployment process. If the deployment fails, delete the newly deployed vCenter Server appliance, and restore the vCenter Server nodes from their respective image-based backups. You must restore all the nodes in the

environment from their image-based backups. Failing to do so can cause the replication partners to be out of synchronization with the restored node.

The vCenter Server appliance package contains the following software:

• Photon OS 3.0
• The vSphere authentication services
• PostgreSQL
• VMware vSphere Lifecycle Manager Extension
• VMware vCenter Lifecycle Manager
• Version 7.0 of vCenter Server is deployed with virtual hardware version 10, which supports 64 virtual CPUs per virtual machine in ESXi.

Plan a head for the resource requirements:

• Tiny (up to 10 hosts, 100 VMs) – 2 CPUs, 12 GB RAM
• Small (up to 100 hosts, 1000 VMs) – 4 CPUs, 19 GB RAM
• Medium (up to 400 hosts, 4000 VMs) – 8 CPUs, 28 GB RAM
• Large (up to 1000 hosts, 10,000 VMs) – 16 CPUs, 37 GB RAM
• X-Large (up to 2000 hosts, 35,000 VMs) – 24 CPUs, 56 GB RAM

                        The GUI deployment is a two stage process. The first stage is a deployment wizard that deploys the OVA file of the appliance on the target ESXi host or vCenter Server instance. After the OVA deployment finishes, you are redirected to the second stage of the process that sets up and starts the services of the newly deployed appliance.

Unzip the VMware-VCSA-all-7.0.0-16620007.iso.gz file to get to the ISO file > then mount.

Navigate to vcsa-ui-installer > win32 > installer

Click Install – Install a new vCenter Server

Deploy vCenter Server is highlighted by default so just click next

Check I accept the terms of the license agreement > next

Here is were you enter the following information:

ESXi host or vCenter Server name – where the VCSA will go

HTTPS port – 443 is default

User name – root

Password – enter root password to the ESXi host or vCenter

VM name – hopefully you have an environmental code you are following
Set root password – be more creative than Passw0rd! Or P@assw0rd! Or Passw0rd1!
Confirm root password

Deployment size – refer to the above pre-reqs
Storage size – refer to the above pre-reqs

If deploying on a ESXi host in the environment you will default to Install on an existing datastore accessible from the target host
Box for Show only compatible datastores selected by default
Select the datastore where you want to deploy VCSA then next

Now it is time to enter the network information for the VCSA

Network – select the network it will go on

IP version – IPv4

IP assignment – static

FQDN – I always put the FQDN

IP address – put the statically assigned IP

Subnet mask or prefix length – I bet it is a Class  

Default gateway – normally ends in .1 

DNS servers – Hopefully you have two setup

Good old summary page > confirm everything looks right > finish

his process takes around 20-30 minutes most of the time.

Continue

Time for Stage 2 where you set up the vCenter Server > next

Time synchronization mode – Synchronize time with the ESXi host or Select NTP

You have two options either create a new SSO domain (vSphere.local) or you can join an existing SSO domain.

Obviously, check the Join the VMware’s Customer Experience Improvement Program (CEIP)

Summary page once again > Finish

Warning – You will not be able to pause or stop the install from completing once its started.  Click OK to continue, or Cancel to stop the install.

Install begins

This stage can take between 10-20 minutes on average.
Close.

Now you can access via https://FQDN:5480

Confirm everything is healthy and good and you have deployed the desired VCSA version.

Now you can access your vCenter via https://FQDN

This will take you to the LAUNCE VSPHERE CLIENT (HTML5) to log into the vCenter UI

Summary:
As you can see there have been many improvements from 6.5 to 7.0 VCSA.  The install is a lot smoother and simpler than deployments of the past.  As always, I hope y’all find this useful.

How to convert VMware snapshot to memory dump

While managing  server infrastructure we may face server issues like server hang or crash. Most of the times when the server hangs, it will lead to server reboot where we will end up in no data for proper root cause analysis due to lack of enough logs or memory dump after reboot. In that case we have an option to create a memory dump for analysis to identify the root cause of the issue at the Virtual machine level using memory snapshot or VM suspend. This is useful in cases where customers do not want to force a crash or change Windows dump parameters and reboot the machine. This procedure can be done without interrupting the execution of the machine.

This article does not talk about suspend state. I have given steps for converting snapshot to dump file.

Steps:

1. Identify the problematic virtual machine machine and check if it  hangs or crashed.
2. Login to vsphere client or vsphere webclient and take a memory snapshot of the machine.
3. Once you take a snapshot, you will see additional files in the virtual machine working directory (.vmsn  and .vmem) which contains the memory contents of the guest OS at the time of the issue. This data is needed for OS vendors like Redhat or Microsoft for the analysis.
4. confirm the existence of the files and you may proceed to reboot and bring the server under production.
5. Next, we have to convert the snapshot to memory dump file (.dmp) and send it to vendor. This can be done using a tool vmss2core

What is vmss2core:

Vmss2core is a tool to convert VMware checkpoint state files into formats that third party debugger tools understand. It can handle both suspend (.vmss) and snapshot (.vmsn) checkpoint state files (hereafter referred to as a ‘vmss file’) as well as both monolithic and non-monolithic (separate .vmem file) encapsulation of checkpoint state data.

Features

The vmss2core tool can produce core dump files for the Windows debugger (WinDbg), Red Hat crash compatible core files, a physical memory view suitable for the Gnu debugger gdb, Solaris MDB (XXX), and Mac OS X formats. Debugging Virtual Machines with the Checkpoint to Core Tool provides the usage information for the vmss2core tool. Note: This last update has improved support for Win 8.1/Win2012 R2 vmss files.

How to use it:

After following the steps given above, now we have the file .vmem and .vmsn which will be converted to .dmp using vmss2core tool

1. Copy the files  .vmem and .vmsn to any windows machine.
2. Download the tool vmss2core on that machine.
3. Copy the vmss2core.exe utility to the same location as the snapshot files.
4. Open a command line and navigate to the location of the snapshot files and execute the following command:

vmss2core.exe -W snapshot.vmsn [snapshot.vmem]

(this switch W is for Windows , it may vary depends on the OS for which you need to generate dump file)

Refer the guide for additional switches

https://www.vmware.com/pdf/snapshot2core_technote.pdf

If the snapshot file is from a Windows 8 or Windows Server 2012 VM, the command line is

vmss2core.exe -W8 snapshot.vmsn [snapshot.vmem]

Successful output should be a “memory.dmp” file suitable for use with WinDbg

Once you have the dmp file, it can be used for further analysis by vendor.

Reference: https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2003941

Hope this article will help you !

Happy Learning!!!

Dell EMC PowerStore: VMware Site Recovery Manager Best Practices Recommendation by Dell

 Dell EMC PowerStore: VMware Site Recovery Manager Best Practices Recommendation by Dell

*******************************************************************************

<<<You can refer below Dell recommendation to configure SRM site>>>

https://www.delltechnologies.com/resources/en-us/asset/white-papers/products/storage/h18425-dell-emc-powerstore-vmware-site-recovery-manager-best-practices.pdf

How can check physical memory is in vSphere ESXi host?

  If you’re running vSphere on a system you don’t have a vendor-provided out of band management system installed in, aren’t running ESXi 6.0U2+ where physical memory config is visible in the web interface, and you don’t have a monitoring system that tells you, here’s how you can get the physical memory configuration via command line over SSH:

1. Enable SSH via the fat client (since you’re obviously not running a version with web interface available or you’d have been able to get the memory config from that)
2. SSH in
3. Run this:  cim-diagnostic.sh |grep -A21 OMC_PhysicalMemory | egrep “Capacity|Caption”
4. You’ll get output like this:

Caption = A1
Capacity = 8589934592
Caption = A2
Capacity = 8589934592
Caption = A3
Capacity = 8589934592
Caption = A4
Capacity = 8589934592
Caption = B1
Capacity = 8589934592
Caption = B2
Capacity = 8589934592
Caption = B3
Capacity = 8589934592
Caption = B4
Capacity = 8589934592

So the above tells you that you’ve got an 8 GB chip installed in eight slots.  Then, based on model of server, you can figure out what your options are.

Resetting Dell iDRAC password from inside vSphere ESXi

If your server is running an operating system that has a compatible racadm package available for it though, all is not lost if you don’t want to take a trip to the data center.  You’ll be able to reset the root password for your DRAC from within the host OS, or even the entire controller if you need to.  Unfortunately, the tools might require a reboot of that OS, so you may not be able to avoid an outage if you can’t otherwise go to the data center to reset the DRAC via physical buttons (which don’t require host OS interruption).

In my case, I had one DRAC9 on a server with ESXi 6.5 and one on ESXi 6.7.  The package you want to download from Dell is called Dell EMC iDRAC Tools.  

                The same package is used for both 6.5 and 6.7.  My example commands were from the 9.3.0 release where 9.4.0 is now current (April 2020).  Enable SSH on your ESXi host and either SCP the file in, or place it on a remote volume the host has access to.  You’ll want to un-tar/uncompress it:

               [root@esx:~] tar zxvf DellEMC-iDRACTools-Web-ESXi.VIB-9.3.0-3379_A00.tar.gz

iDRACTools/
iDRACTools/racadm/
iDRACTools/racadm/ESXi65/
iDRACTools/racadm/ESXi65/Racadm-Dell-EMC-Web-9.3.0-3379.VIB-ESX65i.zip
iDRACTools/racadm/ESXi67/
iDRACTools/racadm/ESXi67/Racadm-Dell-EMC-Web-9.3.0-3379.VIB-ESX67i.zip
iDRACTools/readme.txt

To install the package, you MUST use the full path to the appropriate install file; if you do not use the full path, you’ll get a weird error like this:
skipping ((‘zip:/var/log/vmware/Racadm-Dell-EMC-Web-9.3.0-3379.VIB-ESX65i.zip?index.xml’, ”, “Error extracting index.xml from /var/log/vmware/Racadm-Dell-EMC-Web-9.3.0-3379.VIB-ESX65i.zip: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: ‘/var/log/vmware/Racadm-Dell-EMC-Web-9.3.0-3379.VIB-ESX65i.zip'”))
url = zip:/var/log/vmware/Racadm-Dell-EMC-Web-9.3.0-3379.VIB-ESX65i.zip?index.xml
Please refer to the log file for more details.
         [root@esx:~] esxcli software vib install -d /iDRACTools/racadm/ESXi65/Racadm-Dell-EMC-Web-9.3.0-33
79.VIB-ESX65i.zip
Installation Result
Message: The update completed successfully, but the system needs to be rebooted for the changes to be effective.
Reboot Required: true
VIBs Installed: Dell_bootbank_racadm_9.3.0.ESXi650-3379
VIBs Removed:
VIBs Skipped:
Ugh, the dreaded “Reboot Required: true” – so I reboot.  On 6.7, that did not occur:
[root@esx:/tmp] esxcli software vib install -d /tmp/iDRACTools/racadm/ESXi67/Racadm-Dell-EMC-Web-9.3.0-3379.VIB-ESX67i.zip

Installation Result
Message: Operation finished successfully.
Reboot Required: false
VIBs Installed: Dell_bootbank_racadm_9.3.0.ESXi670-3379
VIBs Removed:
VIBs Skipped:
Finally, if you’re upgrading ESXi, you’ll need to remove the old package and install the new one (shown above), as they’re version specific (6.5 vs 6.7).  That looks like the following:
[root@esx:~] esxcli software vib remove --vibname=racadm
Removal Result
Message: Operation finished successfully.
Reboot Required: false
VIBs Installed:
VIBs Removed: Dell_bootbank_racadm_9.3.0.ESXi650-3379
VIBs Skipped:
 
So, now that we have the tools installed, here’s some handy commands:
racadm help – spits out the available commands; you can then chain them on after help to get more info on each command
racadm getsysinfo – this one spits out all the info about the DRAC, such as network settings, firmware version, service tag, etc
Resetting the root password:
[root@esx:~] racadm set iDRAC.Users.2.Password NewPassword123
[Key=iDRAC.Embedded.1#Users.2]
Object value modified successfully.

How To Reset The Administrator Password Using The Command Prompt

Hi Readers! This blog will help you to reset the local Administrator password from your Windows machine without any third-party software or Windows password recovery tool.

Here I am just creating one scenario by using the Hyper-V to create one virtual machine with Windows server 2012 R2 and have set a password for the local administrator And just consider I have forgot my password and I could not login using my administrator credentials

There are lots of password recovery tools available in the market and some tool could work correctly but some tool would not.

So, we no need to download or purchase the password recovery tool to reset the user password, by default Microsoft has been given the password reset option in the windows OS itself, just we need to use the repair option from your operating system installer.we just require the .iso format OS file.

On below image, you can see that I have mentioned that Boot from the CD and I have mapped the .iso file

Now I am just booting my machine and installing the new Operating system

Just click the next button on the OS installer

Below you can see the option to Repair your computer, just click it and it will take you to the new window called options

In this just click the Troubleshoot option to see the Advanced option and click the command prompt option which is highlighted below

And execute the below steps on the Command prompt, here we are just locating the Utilman.exe file from the system32 folder

• Rename the Utilman.exe to Utilman.exe.old by using the “ren” command. Ren is nothing but rename
• Then copy the Utilman.exe to the command prompt to execute the password reset command

Then close the command prompt and click continue option to reboot the machine

So far we have copied the utiman.exe file to the command prompt and rebooted the system, keep in mind we haven’t changed the existing operating system and should not switch off the machine at any cost, if the machine is physically switched off, you need to follow the same step which was mentioned above

Once the machine has successfully rebooted it will take you to the authentication windows, here just click Window + U to open the command prompt and Just type net user, this command will help you to identify who are all having the profile on this system

On below you can see, I have Administrator, Guest and krbtgt profiles And type net user Administrator ************ ( here Welcome@123 is my new password)

Then you will receive a message “The command has completed successfully”. Then close the command prompt and type the new password to the administrator login. Now it will allow you to login to the system.

Conclusion

We just enabled the command prompt at the login window to reset the administrator password, you can do the same  in the user's desktop by opening cmd prompt.

How to remove bad sectors from hard disk permanently?

 Here show you two methods of removing bad sectors from hard disk.

Method 1. Remove bad sectors from hard disk via CMD

You can use the Windows built-in tool to remove bad sectors from hard disk. CHKDKS command prompt is a free built-in tool, and it can be used to check the integrity of a file system and bad sectors of a disk. And find and fix bad sectors, errors, or any other disk problems. Here are the specific steps of removing bad sectors from the hard disk via CMD:

1. Press “Windows” + “R” to open the Run box, typing “cmd” in it and press “Enter”.

2. Input “chkdsk g: /f /r /x” and press “Enter”. (Here “g” is the drive letter of the disk you want to check.)

This option will run the CHKDSK to check and repair bad sectors or other disk errors on G: volume. The “/f” parameter tells CHKDSK to fix any errors it finds, “/r” tells it to locate the bad sectors on the drive and recover readable information, and “/x” forces the drive to dismount before the process starts.

And now you can see the information of the disk such as disk space parameters, file size, and the number of bad sectors.

Method 2. Remove bad sectors from hard disk with third party tool

You may find it a bit complicated to use CMD to remove bad sectors. Actually, if you are not familiar with the command line, it may cause other problems like data loss. How to solve this problem? Don’t be worry! You can use a third part bad sector repair software to complete this operation very easily. AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard is a powerful disk manager which provides many powerful functions like Check Partition. And you can use it to easily remove bad sectors from hard disk in Windows 10/8/7, Windows XP, as well as Windows Vista. Free download the software and see the step-by-step guide:

https://www2.aomeisoftware.com/download/pa/PAssist_Std.exe

Step 1. Install and run AOMEI Partition Assistant. Right-click the partition you want to check and select “Advanced” > “Check Partition”.

Thus, you have already successfully remove bad sectors from hard disk permanently.

How to Check, Start, Stop or Restart Windows version of vCenter 6.x

 Something we  rebooted vCenter server and post reboot when tried to connect to vCenter using Web client, end up with following error,

This error is something which usually occurs when there there is some issue with vCenter Web client, probably the service is set to manual or somehow got stopped.

Ideally Web client service should have startup type set as Automatic and in start state.

To verify this, opened Services and to my surprise couldn't find the vCenter Web Client Service listed there, even vCenter service was not there (ideally this shouldn't be the case).

So, here how would you check the status of Web Client Service or for any other service not listed in Services.

For Windows version of vCenter, to list the vCenter Server and/or Platform Services Controller services,

·                     Open command prompt as Administrator and change the directory to C:\Program Files\VMware\vCenter Server\bin (or any other relevant path, if you didn't install vCenter on default location)

  Now we will use Service-control utility, available here to check the status of service or perform a related operation on it.

      To view the available option, run service-control --help

·                     Run following command to list vCenter Server and/or Platform Services Controller services,

          service-control --list-services

·                     Run this command to view the current status of all vCenter Server and/or Platform Services Controller services: 

    service-control --status

 

     To check the status of individual services, use this,

 

      For Web client Service:

    service-control --status vsphere-client

 

  For vCenter service:

         service-control --status vpxd

 From here, you can start, stop any of vCenter Server and/or Platform Services Controller   services using below cmd,

service-control --start 'Service Name'

Or to start all services,

service-control --start --all

Note:To perform a dry run of the command, add the option --dry-run to the command, doing so will display what actions the command will run without executing the actions. 

Hope this would be helpful

Reset the HP iLO Administrator password with hponcfg on ESXi

 Sometimes you need to reset the ILO Administrator password. Sure, you can reboot the server, press F8 and then reset the Administrator password. If you have installed a HP customized ESXi image, then there is a much better way to reset the password: HPONCFG.

Check the /opt/hp/tools directory. You will find a binary called hponcfg.

~ # ls -l /opt/hp/tools/
total 5432
-r-xr-xr-x 1 root root 5129574 Oct 28 2014 conrep
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 108802 Oct 28 2014 conrep.xml
-r-xr-xr-x 1 root root 59849 Jan 16 2015 hpbootcfg
-r-xr-xr-x 1 root root 251 Jan 16 2015 hpbootcfg_esxcli
-r-xr-xr-x 1 root root 232418 Jul 14 2014 hponcfg
-r-xr-xr-x 1 root root 12529 Oct 31 2013 hptestevent
-r-xr-xr-x 1 root root 250 Oct 31 2013 hptestevent_esxcli

All you need is a simple XML file. You can use the VI editor or you can copy the necessary file with WinSCP to the root home directory on your ESXi host. I prefer VI. Change the directory to /opt/hp/tools. Then open the pwreset.xml.

~ # vi pwreset.xml

Press i to switch to the insert mode. Then paste this content into the file. You don’t have to know the current password!

<RIBCL VERSION="2.0">
<LOGIN USER_LOGIN="Administrator" PASSWORD="unknown">
<USER_INFO MODE="write">
<MOD_USER USER_LOGIN="Administrator">
<PASSWORD value="password"/>
</MOD_USER>
</USER_INFO>
</LOGIN>
</RIBCL>

Press ESC and then :wq<ENTER> to save the file and leave the VI. Now use HPONCFG together with the XML file to reset the password.

~ # /opt/hp/tools/hponcfg -f pwreset.xml
HP Lights-Out Online Configuration utility

Version 4.4-0 (c) Hewlett-Packard Company, 2014
Firmware Revision = 1.85 Device type = iLO 3 Driver name = hpilo
iLO IP Address: 172.16.1.52
Script succeeded

That’s it! You can now login with “Administrator” and “password”.