ESX/ESXi/vCenter Ports

Here is a link to a great PDF diagram outlining all of the network port requirements for your virtual environment. Great resource to have, and your firewall admin will love you! vSphere Network Ports

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Network Ports

ESX vs Hyper-V…VMware vs Microsoft

Like most others out there, I have recently started hearing the ESX/VMware vs Hyper-V/Microsoft questions popping up throughout my day. Check here to get my thoughts!

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Microsoft vs VMware

ESX/ESXi root login over SSH

This is an old one, but worthy of documentation… By default root login over SSH is disabled in ESX 3.X and vSphere 4.X. While it is best practice for security to leave this disabled, from time to time a situation [...]

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putty

SRM/EMC Clariion Consistency Group name – Length Limitation

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I recently had an issue during SRM testing where the “Test Recovery” passed, but when we ran the actual recovery, it failed. Looking through the logs it looked like SRM or the SRA did not see the full name of the consistency group on the CX. Once we renamed the consistency group with a shorter name, things worked fine. Im just surprised this wasnt detected during the test so I forwarded it off to my VMware rep…  Please see below where I have pasted the logs generated (for your reference) and a link to my vmware communities post regarding the issue.

[#1] [002828][003828][10/05 10:47:59 061][Failover.cpp @001219 GetMirrorsFromInputLUNS ] Exit. hr:0×0

[#1] [002828][003828][10/05 10:47:59 061][Failover.cpp @000011 PromoteConsistancyGroups ] Enter

[#1] [002828][003828][10/05 10:47:59 061][Failover.cpp @000034 PromoteConsistancyGroups ] Consistancy Group CG_for_LUN235_VM_SATA_30B_Mirro

[#1] [002828][003828][10/05 10:47:59 061][Failover.cpp @000055 PromoteConsistancyGroups ] Promoting Consistancy Group CG_for_LUN235_VM_SATA_30B_Mirro

[#1] [002828][003828][10/05 10:48:10 327][Failover.cpp @000070 PromoteConsistancyGroups ] CG_for_LUN235_VM_SATA_30B_Mirro(Array:APM00073403079) normal promote failed. Error Details: The Mirror Group name specified cannot be found

 

Please see my vmware communities post regarding this issue, and corrective action to fix it.

http://communities.vmware.com/message/1385235 

 

Broadcom Static IP Issue – Update

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The fix I posted yesterday appears to work in certain configurations. After hours of troubleshooting, researching, and being frustrated, I have found an alternate fix that appears to work 100% of the time. The directions here are Dell specific, but can easily be modified for any make/moel.

Dell Community Site

  • Uninstall Windows Server 2003 Scalable Network Pack (SNP) KB912222 (if exists)
  • Uninstall Driver and reboot.  Click cancel when the detected hardware window comes up.
  • Reload Dell driver via Setup.exe in latest driver pack.
  • Click Start > Run > Regedit
  • Delete:
    HKLM\System\CurrentContolSet\Services\Winsock
    HKLM\CurrentContol Set\Services\Winsock2
  • Open %winroot%\inf\nettcpip.inf in Notepad
  • Edit [MS_TCPIP.PrimaryInstall] section as follows:
    Characteristics = 0×80
  • Save edits
  • Start > Control Panel > Network Connections > Local Area Connection > Properties > General > Install > Protocol > Add > Select “Have Disk” > C:\Windows\Inf > OK > TCP/IP > OK  

    Note: You should be at the Local Area Connection Properties screen at this point. The Uninstall button should also be available now.

  •  Reboot
  •  Start > Control Panel > Network Connections > Local Area Connection > Properties > General > Install > Protocol > Add > Select Network Protocols > Have Disk > C:\Windows\Inf > TCP/IP > OK
  •  Reboot
  •  Reload SNP

    • Broadcom NetXtreme ii Driver Issues – Static IP won’t stick

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    Today I setup a Windows Server 2003 32bit system, and windows did not have any drivers for my network card. This system was a Dell M600 blade (which uses the same Broadcom 57XX series NIC as the rest of Dell’s blade offerings, and 9th generation servers). I downloaded the NetXtreme II drivers directly from Broadcoms site, put them on my flash drive, and then installed on my M600 blade. The drivers were installed, NIC was working, I set a static IP and everything was GREAT! ….

    …Until I checked my TCP/IP settings and the system and saw that the system was set to DHCP. Now I was confused. I quickly went to a cmd prompt and did an ipconfig /all. Wait a minute, the IP IS set to my static address. Back to my GUI TCP/IP settings, it’s set to DHCP. Doh! What’s going on here?

    “Broadcom NetXtreme II devices have a driver that is intended only for Remote Installation Services (RIS) text mode use and WinPE environments. This driver does not perform well and is not intended for a fully installed Windows® operating system.  In some cases, installing this RIS-only driver in the fully installed operating system may lead to some issues:

    Additional NetXtreme II devices in Broadcom Advanced Controller Suite (BACS) Inability to assign a static IP address to a NetXtreme II device or NetXtreme II adapters Adapters that are supposed to have a static IP address obtaining Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) addresses .The Broadcom InstallShield Installer does not remove the inf entry or reg entry for the RIS driver created device. The failure to remove this  adapters entries in the operating system creates conflicting information about NetXtreme II Network Interface Card (NICs).

    To check for this condition:

    On the Network Properties page, right-click a NetXtreme II adapter and configure the TCP/IP entry for that device.

    Set a static IP address.

    Click OK twice to apply the address to the adapter.

    Open the device properties again, select TCP/IP and check the static condition versus the dynamic condition.

    A system that is experiencing the issue reverts to DHCP and does not maintain the static IP assigned earlier.

    To fix this problem, download the ZIP file:    BCOMRemove

    Follow process.txt which will advise you to run 2 VBS files that will clean your system of all old Broadcom drivers, installations, registry entries, etc. You can then install the drivers suggested for your system (in my case, directly from Dell).

    SRM – Trusted Certificates

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    Today I began my work with VMware’s DR product, SRM. I’ll be using this tool to migrate a few hundred virtual machines from one datacenter to another, not for DR purposes.

    The first issue I ran into took me quite a bit of time to figure out. It turns out that if you are not using the supplied/default VC SSL certs (you’ve created your own via your own CA), you MUST create certificates for the SRM servers.

    The VIOPS site has a great pdf that helps walk you through the process.

    http://viops.vmware.com/home/docs/DOC-1261

    Here are a few other helpful links that will save you a few hours when trying to figure this out…

    http://support.microsoft.com/kb/931351

    http://edmckinzie.spaces.live.com/Blog/cns!687C72A5909E4230!338.entry

    Note: By default, a CA that is configured on a Windows Server 2003-based domain controller does not issue certificates that contain the Subject Alternative Name (SAN) extension. If SAN entries are included in the certificate request, these entries are omitted from the issued certificate. To change this behavior, run the following commands at a command prompt on the server that runs the Certification Authority service. Press ENTER after each command.

    certutil -setreg policy\EditFlags +EDITF_ATTRIBUTESUBJECTALTNAME2
    net stop certsvc
    net start certsvc

    Changing the Service Console VLAN ID via Command Line

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    To set the VLAN ID of your service console (if you entered the wrong ID, forgot to enter an ID, etc.), you can use the esxcfg-vswitch command!

    esxcfg-vswitch vSwitch0 -v XX -p “Service Console” (where XX is your VLAN ID and Service Console is the name of the Service Console). To remove any VLAN ID from the Service Console, use 0 as the ID.

    To verify which vSwitch the Service Console belongs to, and to see what the VLAN ID associated to the Service Console is, use esxcfg-vswitch -l

    vCenter Task Timeout

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    By default, tasks in vCenter (such as snapshot deletion) will time out in 900 seconds (15 minutes). If you’d like to modify this setting, it can be done easily…

    Modify the vpxd.cfg (C:/Documents and Settings/All Users/Application Data/VMware/VMware VirtualCenter/vpxd.cfg)  file by adding:

    <vpxd>
         …
         <task>
              <timeout>timeout_value</timeout>
         </task>
         ….
    </vpxd>

    The timeout value is specified in seconds.

    Note: You must restart VirtualCenter Server after making changes to the vpxd.cfg file.

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