ESXi boot mode - UEFI or BIOS

Legacy BIOS bootstrapping along with a master boot record (MBR) is uses with x86 compatible systems for ages. The concept of MBRs was publicly introduced in 1983 with PC DOS 2.0. It is unbelievable that we are still using the same concept after more then 30 years.

However, there must be some limitations in 30 years old technology, isn't it?

BIOS limitations (such as 16-bit processor mode, 1 MB addressable space and PC AT hardware) had become too restrictive for the larger server platforms. The effort to address these concerns began in 1998 and was initially called Intel Boot Initiative later renamed to EFI. In July 2005, Intel ceased its development of the EFI specification at version 1.10, and contributed it to the Unified EFI Forum, which has evolved the specification as the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI).

What is EFI (or UEFI) firmware?

UEFI replaces the the old Basic Input/Output System (BIOS). UEFI can be used on

• physical server booting ESXi hypervisor or 
• Virtual Machine running on top of ESXi hypervisor. 

This blog post is about ESXi boot mode however just for completeness I would like to mention that VMware Virtual Machine with at least hardware version 7 supports UEFI as well. For further information about VM UEFI look at [1].

Originally called Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI), the more recent specification is known as Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI), and the two names are used interchangeably.

EFI (Extensible Firmware Interface) is a specification for a new generation of system firmware. An implementation of EFI, stored in ROM or Flash RAM, provides the first instructions used by the CPU to initialize hardware and pass control to an operating system or bootloader. It is intended as an extensible successor to the PC BIOS, which has been extended and enhanced in a relatively unstructured way since its introduction. The EFI specification is portable, and implementations may be capable of running on platforms other than PCs.
 
For more information, see  the Wikipedia page for Unified Extensible Firmware Interface.

General UEFI Advantages

UEFI firmware provides several technical advantages over a traditional BIOS system:

• Ability to boot from large disks (over 2 TB) with a GUID Partition Table (GPT)
• CPU-independent architecture
• CPU-independent drivers
• Flexible pre-OS environment, including network capability
• Modular design
• Since UEFI is platform independent, it may be able to enhance the boot time and speed of the computer. This is especially the case when large hard drives are in use. 
• UEFI can perform better while initializing the hardware devices.
• UEFI can work alongside BIOS. It can sit on top of BIOS and work independently.
• It supports MBR and GPT partition types.

Note: Modern systems are only emulating the legacy BIOS. They are EFI native.

UEFI on ESXi

vSphere 5.0 and above supports booting ESXi hosts from the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI). With UEFI, you can boot systems from hard drives, CD-ROM drives, USB media, or network.

UEFI benefits

• ESXi can boot from a disk larger than 2 TB provided that the system firmware and the firmware on any add-in card that you are using supports it. 

UEFI drawbacks

• Provisioning with VMware Auto Deploy requires the legacy BIOS firmware and is not available with UEFI BIOS configurations. I hope that this limitation will be lifted soon.

Notes: Changing the host boot type between legacy BIOS and UEFI is not supported after you install ESXi 6.0. Changing the boot type from legacy BIOS to UEFI after you install ESXi 6.0 might cause the host to fail to boot.

Conclusion

UEFI is meant to completely replace BIOS in the future and bring in many new features and enhancements that can’t be implemented through BIOS. BIOS can be used in servers that do not require large storage for boot. To be honest, even you can, it is not very common to use boot disks greater then 2 TB for ESXi hosts therefore you may be using BIOS at the moment, but I would recommend shifting to UEFI, as it is the future while BIOS will fade away slowly.

ESXi hypervisor supports both boot modes therefore if you have modern server hardware and don't use VMware Auto Deploy then UEFI should be your preferred choice.

References:
[1] VMware : Using EFI/UEFI firmware in a VMware Virtual Machine 
[2] VMware : Best practices for installing ESXi 5.0 (VMware KB 2005099)
[3] VMware : Best practices to install or upgrade to VMware ESXi 6.0 (VMware KB 2109712)
[4] Usman Khurshid : [MTE Explains] Differences Between UEFI and BIOS
[5] Wikipedia : Unified Extensible Firmware Interface

Role and responsibility of IT Infrastructure Technical Architect

In this article, I would like to describe the infrastructure architect role and his responsibility.

Any architect generally leads the design process with the goal to build the product.  The product can be anything the investor would like to build and use. The architect is responsible to gather all investor's goals, requirements, constraints and try to understand all use cases of the final product.

The product of IT technical infrastructure architect is an IT infrastructure system, also known as a computer system, running an IT applications supporting business services. That's very important statement. Designed IT infrastructure system is usually not built just in sake of infrastructure itself but to support business services.

There is no doubt that the technical architect must be a subject matter expert in several technical areas including computing, storage, networking, operating systems and applications but that's just a technical foundation required to fulfill all technical requirements. However, systems are not impacted just by technology but also by other external non-technical factors like business requirements, operational requirements and human factors. It is obvious that the architect's main responsibility is to fulfill all these requirements of the final product, IT infrastructure system in this particular case, although the last mentioned factor, a human factor, usually has the biggest impact on any systems design because we usually build systems for human usage and these systems has to be also maintained and operated by other humans as well.

Now, when we know what the IT Infrastructure Technical Architect does, let's describe what are his typical tasks and activities.

The Architect has to communicate with investor's stakeholders to gather all design factors including requirements, constraints and use cases. Unfortunately, there are usually also some design factors nobody have a specific requirement. These factors has to be documented as assumptions. When all relevant design factors are collected and revalidated with requestors and investor authorities, the architect starts design analysis and prepare conceptual design. The conceptual design is a high level design which helps to understand the overall concept of proposed product. Such conceptual design has to be reviewed by all design stakeholders and when everybody feels comfortable with the concept the architect can start low level design.

Low level design is usually prepared as decomposition of conceptual design. Low level design should be decomposed into several design areas because it is almost always beneficial to divide complex system into sub-systems until these become simple enough to be solved directly. This decomposition approach is also known as "Divide and conquer" method. The main purpose of low level design is to document all details important for successful implementation and operation of the product. Therefore it must be reviewed and validated by particular subject matter experts - other architects, operators, and implementers - for particular area. The low level design is usually divided into logical and physical design. Logical design is detailed technical design but general logical components are used without using a particular suppliers physical product models. materials, configuration details or other physical specifications. The purpose of logical design is to document general principles principles of overall design or particular decomposed, thus simplified, design area. Logical design is also used for proper product sizing and capacity planning. Physical design, on the other hand, is detailed technical design with specific products, materials and implementation details. Physical design is primarily intended to product builders and implementors because the product is build or implemented based on the physical design.

It is good to mention that there is no product or system without a risk. That's another responsibility of the architect. He should identify and document all risks and design limitations associated with proposed product. The biggest threats are not risks in general but unknown risks. Therefore, potential risks documentation and risk mitigation options is very important architect's responsibility. Risk mitigation plan or at least contingency plan should be the part of product design.

At the end of the day, the design should be implemented therefore the implementation plan is just another activity and document the architect must prepare to make the product real even the implementation is usually out of the architect scope.

It is worth to mention, that here is no proven design without design tests. Therefore the Architect should also prepare and perform the test plan. Test plan have to include validation and verification part. Validation part validates design requirements after product build or implementation. Only after validation, the architect can honestly proof that the product really fulfill all requirements holistically. Verification part verifies that everything was implemented as designed and operational personnel knows how to operate and maintain the system.

There is no perfect design nor product, therefore the architect should continually improve even already built product by communication with end users, operators and other investor stakeholders and take their feedback in to account for future improvements. After some period of time, the architect should initiate design review and incorporate all gathered feedback in to the next design version.

Now, when we know what the architect is responsible for let's summarize what skills are important for any good architect. The architect must have following decent skills and expertise:

• communication skills
• presentation skills
• consulting skills
• cross check validation skills
• documentation skills
• systematic, analytical, logical and critical thinking
• technical expertise
• ability to think and work in different levels of detail
• ability to see a big picture but also have attention for detail because the devil is in the details

Even you have read this article to this point, you can ask what is the architect main responsibility. That's a faire question. Here is short answer.

The architect main responsibility is the happiness of all users and actors using designed product during the whole lifecycle of the product.

Force10 Operating System 9.10 changes maximum MTU size

Force10 operating system (aka FTOS, DNOS) always had the maximal configurable MTU size per port 12000 bytes. I have just been informed by former colleague of mine that it is not the case since FTOS 9.10 and above. Since FTOS 9.10 the maximum MTU size per switch port is 9216. If you used MTU 12000 then after upgrade to firmware 9.10 the MTU should be adjusted automatically. But I have been told that it is automatically adjusted to standard MTU 1500 therefore if you use Jumbo Frames (9000 bytes payload) it is necessary to change configuration before upgrade from 12000 to 9216.

Disclaimer: I had no chance to test it so I don't guarantee all information on this post are correct. 

UPDATE: Please read comments below this article for further information and great Martin's explanation of real MTU behavior. Thanks Martin and Kaloyan for your comments.

Martin's comment:

MTU 12000 in configuration was not reflecting real hardware MTU of underlaying chipset, after upgrade to 9.10 it's just adjusted to reflect real hardware MTU. Tested on S4048 9.10(0.1). When you boot into 9.10 you can see log messages saying that configuration is adjusted to reflect real maximum hardware MTU.
Also in configuration

 ethswitch1(conf-if-te-1/47)#mtu ?  
 <594-12000> Interface MTU (default = 1554, hardware supported maximum = 9216)  
 ethswitch1(conf-if-te-1/47)#mtu   

                                 

ESXi : How to mask storage device causing some issues

I have heard about the issue with ESXi 6 Update 2 and HP 3PAR storage where VVOLs are enabled. I have been told that the issue is caused by issuing unsupported SCSI command to PE LUN (256). PE stands for Protocol Endpoint and it is VVOL technical LUN for data path between ESXi and remote storage system.

Observed symptoms:

• ESX 6 Update 2 – issues (ESXi disconnects from vCenter, console is very slow)
• Hosts may take a long time to reconnect to vCenter after reboot or hosts may enter a "Not Responding" state in vCenter Server
• Storage-related tasks such as HBA rescan may take a very long time to complete
• I have been told that ESX 6 Update 1 doesn't experience such issues (there are entries are in log file but no other symptoms occur)

Below is a snippet from a log file ..

 2016-05-18T11:31:27.319Z cpu1:242967)WARNING: NMP: nmpDeviceAttemptFailover:603: Retry world failover device "naa.2ff70002ac0150c3" - issuing command 0x43a657470fc0  
 2016-05-18T11:31:27.320Z cpu31:33602)WARNING: NMP: nmpCompleteRetryForPath:352: Retry cmd 0x28 (0x43a657470fc0) to dev "naa.2ff70002ac0150c3" failed on path "vmhba0:C0:T2:L256" H:0x0 D:0x2 P:0x0 Valid sense data: 0x5 0x25 0x0.  
 2016-05-18T11:31:27.320Z cpu31:33602)WARNING: NMP: nmp_PathDetermineFailure:2973: Cmd (0x28) PDL error (0x5/0x25/0x0) - path vmhba0:C0:T2:L256 device naa.2ff70002ac0150c3 - triggering path failover  
 2016-05-18T11:31:27.320Z cpu31:33602)WARNING: NMP: nmpCompleteRetryForPath:382: Logical device "naa.2ff70002ac0150c3": awaiting fast path state update before retrying failed command again.  

Possible workarounds

• ESXi hostd restart helps therefore SSH to ESXi hosts was enabled for quick resolution in case of problem
• LUN masking of LUN 256

UPDATE 2016-09-30: There is most probably another workaround. Changing the Disk.MaxLUN parameter on ESXi Hosts as described in VMware KB 1998

Final solution

• Application of HP 3PAR firmware patch (unfortunately patch is not available for current firmware thus firmware upgrade has to be planned and executed)
• Investigation of root cause why ESXi 6 Update 2 is more sensitive then ESXi 6 Update 1

Immediate steps

• Application of workarounds mentioned above  

HOME LAB EXERCISE
I have tested in my home lab how to mask particular LUN on ESXi host just to be sure I know how to do it.

Below is quick solution for impatient readers.

Let's sat we have following device with following path.

• Device: naa.6589cfc000000bf5e731ffc99ec35186
• Path: vmhba36:C0:T0:L1

LUN Masking
esxcli storage core claimrule add -P MASK_PATH -r 500 -t location -A vmhba36 -C 0 -T 0 -L 1
esxcli storage core claimrule load
esxcli storage core claiming reclaim -d naa.6589cfc000000bf5e731ffc99ec35186

LUN Unmasking
esxcli storage core claimrule remove --rule 500
esxcli storage core claimrule load
esxcli storage core claiming unclaim --type=path --path=vmhba36:C0:T0:L1
esxcli storage core claimrule run

... continue reading for details.

LUN MASKING DETAILS
Exact LUN masking procedure is documented in vSphere 6 Documentation here. It is also documented in these KB articles 1009449 and 1014953.

List storage devices

 [root@esx02:~] esxcli storage core device list  
 naa.6589cfc000000bf5e731ffc99ec35186  
   Display Name: FreeNAS iSCSI Disk (naa.6589cfc000000bf5e731ffc99ec35186)  
   Has Settable Display Name: true  
   Size: 10240  
   Device Type: Direct-Access  
   Multipath Plugin: NMP  
   Devfs Path: /vmfs/devices/disks/naa.6589cfc000000bf5e731ffc99ec35186  
   Vendor: FreeNAS  
   Model: iSCSI Disk  
   Revision: 0123  
   SCSI Level: 6  
   Is Pseudo: false  
   Status: degraded  
   Is RDM Capable: true  
   Is Local: false  
   Is Removable: false  
   Is SSD: true  
   Is VVOL PE: false  
   Is Offline: false  
   Is Perennially Reserved: false  
   Queue Full Sample Size: 0  
   Queue Full Threshold: 0  
   Thin Provisioning Status: yes  
   Attached Filters:  
   VAAI Status: supported  
   Other UIDs: vml.010001000030303530353661386131633830300000695343534920  
   Is Shared Clusterwide: true  
   Is Local SAS Device: false  
   Is SAS: false  
   Is USB: false  
   Is Boot USB Device: false  
   Is Boot Device: false  
   Device Max Queue Depth: 128  
   No of outstanding IOs with competing worlds: 32  
   Drive Type: unknown  
   RAID Level: unknown  
   Number of Physical Drives: unknown  
   Protection Enabled: false  
   PI Activated: false  
   PI Type: 0  
   PI Protection Mask: NO PROTECTION  
   Supported Guard Types: NO GUARD SUPPORT  
   DIX Enabled: false  
   DIX Guard Type: NO GUARD SUPPORT  
   Emulated DIX/DIF Enabled: false
  
 naa.6589cfc000000ac12355fe604028bf21  
   Display Name: FreeNAS iSCSI Disk (naa.6589cfc000000ac12355fe604028bf21)  
   Has Settable Display Name: true  
   Size: 10240  
   Device Type: Direct-Access  
   Multipath Plugin: NMP  
   Devfs Path: /vmfs/devices/disks/naa.6589cfc000000ac12355fe604028bf21  
   Vendor: FreeNAS  
   Model: iSCSI Disk  
   Revision: 0123  
   SCSI Level: 6  
   Is Pseudo: false  
   Status: degraded  
   Is RDM Capable: true  
   Is Local: false  
   Is Removable: false  
   Is SSD: true  
   Is VVOL PE: false  
   Is Offline: false  
   Is Perennially Reserved: false  
   Queue Full Sample Size: 0  
   Queue Full Threshold: 0  
   Thin Provisioning Status: yes  
   Attached Filters:  
   VAAI Status: supported  
   Other UIDs: vml.010002000030303530353661386131633830310000695343534920  
   Is Shared Clusterwide: true  
   Is Local SAS Device: false  
   Is SAS: false  
   Is USB: false  
   Is Boot USB Device: false  
   Is Boot Device: false  
   Device Max Queue Depth: 128  
   No of outstanding IOs with competing worlds: 32  
   Drive Type: unknown  
   RAID Level: unknown  
   Number of Physical Drives: unknown  
   Protection Enabled: false  
   PI Activated: false  
   PI Type: 0  
   PI Protection Mask: NO PROTECTION  
   Supported Guard Types: NO GUARD SUPPORT  
   DIX Enabled: false  
   DIX Guard Type: NO GUARD SUPPORT  
   Emulated DIX/DIF Enabled: false  

So we have two device with following NAA IDs

• naa.6589cfc000000bf5e731ffc99ec35186
• naa.6589cfc000000ac12355fe604028bf21

Now let's list paths of both of my iSCSI devices

[root@esx02:~] esxcli storage nmp path list
iqn.1998-01.com.vmware:esx02-096fde38-00023d000001,iqn.2005-10.org.freenas.ctl:test,t,257-naa.6589cfc000000bf5e731ffc99ec35186
   Runtime Name: vmhba36:C0:T0:L1
   Device: naa.6589cfc000000bf5e731ffc99ec35186
   Device Display Name: FreeNAS iSCSI Disk (naa.6589cfc000000bf5e731ffc99ec35186)
   Group State: active
   Array Priority: 0
   Storage Array Type Path Config: {TPG_id=1,TPG_state=AO,RTP_id=3,RTP_health=UP}
   Path Selection Policy Path Config: {current path; rank: 0}

iqn.1998-01.com.vmware:esx02-096fde38-00023d000001,iqn.2005-10.org.freenas.ctl:test,t,257-naa.6589cfc000000ac12355fe604028bf21
   Runtime Name: vmhba36:C0:T0:L2
   Device: naa.6589cfc000000ac12355fe604028bf21
   Device Display Name: FreeNAS iSCSI Disk (naa.6589cfc000000ac12355fe604028bf21)
   Group State: active
   Array Priority: 0
   Storage Array Type Path Config: {TPG_id=1,TPG_state=AO,RTP_id=3,RTP_health=UP}
   Path Selection Policy Path Config: {current path; rank: 0}

Let's mask iSCSI devices exposed as a LUN 1.
So our path we want to mask is vmhba36:C0:T0:L1 and device UID is naa.6589cfc000000bf5e731ffc99ec35186

So let's create masking rule of path above. In this particular case we have just a single path because it is local device. In real environment we have usually multiple paths and all paths should be masked.

 esxcli storage core claimrule add -P MASK_PATH -r 500 -t location -A vmhba36 -C 0 -T 0 -L 1
 esxcli storage core claimrule load  

We can list our claim rules to see the result

 [root@esx02:~] esxcli storage core claimrule list  
 Rule Class  Rule Class  Type    Plugin   Matches                  XCOPY Use Array Reported Values XCOPY Use Multiple Segments XCOPY Max Transfer Size  
 ---------- ----- ------- --------- --------- ---------------------------------------- ------------------------------- --------------------------- -----------------------  
 MP       0 runtime transport NMP    transport=usb                            false            false            0  
 MP       1 runtime transport NMP    transport=sata                           false            false            0  
 MP       2 runtime transport NMP    transport=ide                            false            false            0  
 MP       3 runtime transport NMP    transport=block                           false            false            0  
 MP       4 runtime transport NMP    transport=unknown                          false            false            0  
 MP      101 runtime vendor   MASK_PATH vendor=DELL model=Universal Xport                  false            false            0  
 MP      101 file   vendor   MASK_PATH vendor=DELL model=Universal Xport                  false            false            0  
 MP      500 runtime location  MASK_PATH adapter=vmhba36 channel=0 target=0 lun=1              false            false            0  
 MP      500 file   location  MASK_PATH adapter=vmhba36 channel=0 target=0 lun=1              false            false            0  
 MP     65535 runtime vendor   NMP    vendor=* model=*                          false            false            0  

We can see that new claim rule (500) is in configuration file (/etc/vmware/esx.com) and also loaded in runtime.

However, to really mask our particular device without ESXi host reboot we have to reclaim device

 [root@esx02:~] esxcli storage core claiming reclaim -d naa.6589cfc000000bf5e731ffc99ec35186  

The particular device disappear from ESXi host immediately. ESXi host reboot is not needed.
So we are done. Particular device is not visible to ESXi host anymore.

Note: I was unsuccessful when I was testing LUN masking with local device. Therefore I assume that LUN masking works only with remote disks (iSCSI, Fibre Channel). 

LUN UNMASKING
Just in case you would like to unmask device and use it again here is the procedure.

Let's start with removing claimrules for our previously masked path.

 [root@esx02:~] esxcli storage core claimrule remove --rule 500  
 [root@esx02:~] esxcli storage core claimrule list  
 Rule Class  Rule Class  Type    Plugin   Matches                  XCOPY Use Array Reported Values XCOPY Use Multiple Segments XCOPY Max Transfer Size  
 ---------- ----- ------- --------- --------- ---------------------------------------- ------------------------------- --------------------------- -----------------------  
 MP       0 runtime transport NMP    transport=usb                            false            false            0  
 MP       1 runtime transport NMP    transport=sata                           false            false            0  
 MP       2 runtime transport NMP    transport=ide                            false            false            0  
 MP       3 runtime transport NMP    transport=block                           false            false            0  
 MP       4 runtime transport NMP    transport=unknown                          false            false            0  
 MP      101 runtime vendor   MASK_PATH vendor=DELL model=Universal Xport                  false            false            0  
 MP      101 file   vendor   MASK_PATH vendor=DELL model=Universal Xport                  false            false            0  
 MP      500 runtime location  MASK_PATH adapter=vmhba36 channel=0 target=0 lun=1              false            false            0  
 MP     65535 runtime vendor   NMP    vendor=* model=*                          false            false            0  
 [root@esx02:~]   

You can see that rule is removed from file configuration but it is still running. We have to re-load claimrules from file to runtime.

 [root@esx02:~] esxcli storage core claimrule load  
 [root@esx02:~] esxcli storage core claimrule list  
 Rule Class  Rule Class  Type    Plugin   Matches              XCOPY Use Array Reported Values XCOPY Use Multiple Segments XCOPY Max Transfer Size  
 ---------- ----- ------- --------- --------- --------------------------------- ------------------------------- --------------------------- -----------------------  
 MP       0 runtime transport NMP    transport=usb                        false            false            0  
 MP       1 runtime transport NMP    transport=sata                        false            false            0  
 MP       2 runtime transport NMP    transport=ide                        false            false            0  
 MP       3 runtime transport NMP    transport=block                       false            false            0  
 MP       4 runtime transport NMP    transport=unknown                      false            false            0  
 MP      101 runtime vendor   MASK_PATH vendor=DELL model=Universal Xport              false            false            0  
 MP      101 file   vendor   MASK_PATH vendor=DELL model=Universal Xport              false            false            0  
 MP     65535 runtime vendor   NMP    vendor=* model=*                       false            false            0  
 [root@esx02:~]   

Here we go. Now there is no rule with id 500.

But the device is still not visible and we cannot execute command

esxcli storage core claiming reclaim -d naa.6589cfc000000bf5e731ffc99ec35186

because such device is not visible to ESXi host. We mask it, right? So it is exactly how it should behave.

ESXi host would probably help but can we do it without ESXi host reboot?
The answer is yes we can.
We have to unclaim the path to our device and re-run claim rules.

 esxcli storage core claiming unclaim --type=path --path=vmhba36:C0:T0:L1  
 esxcli storage core claimrule run  

and now we can see both paths to iSCSI LUNs again.

 [root@esx02:~] esxcli storage nmp path list  
 iqn.1998-01.com.vmware:esx02-096fde38-00023d000001,iqn.2005-10.org.freenas.ctl:test,t,257-naa.6589cfc000000bf5e731ffc99ec35186  
   Runtime Name: vmhba36:C0:T0:L1  
   Device: naa.6589cfc000000bf5e731ffc99ec35186  
   Device Display Name: FreeNAS iSCSI Disk (naa.6589cfc000000bf5e731ffc99ec35186)  
   Group State: active  
   Array Priority: 0  
   Storage Array Type Path Config: {TPG_id=1,TPG_state=AO,RTP_id=3,RTP_health=UP}  
   Path Selection Policy Path Config: {current path; rank: 0}  
 iqn.1998-01.com.vmware:esx02-096fde38-00023d000001,iqn.2005-10.org.freenas.ctl:test,t,257-naa.6589cfc000000ac12355fe604028bf21  
   Runtime Name: vmhba36:C0:T0:L2  
   Device: naa.6589cfc000000ac12355fe604028bf21  
   Device Display Name: FreeNAS iSCSI Disk (naa.6589cfc000000ac12355fe604028bf21)  
   Group State: active  
   Array Priority: 0  
   Storage Array Type Path Config: {TPG_id=1,TPG_state=AO,RTP_id=3,RTP_health=UP}  
   Path Selection Policy Path Config: {current path; rank: 0}  

Hope this helps to other vmware users having a need for LUN masking / unmasking.

Storage DRS Design Considerations

This blog post follows blog post "VMware vSphere SDRS - test plan of SDRS initial placement" and summarizes several facts having an impact on SDRS design decisions. If you want to see results of several SDRS tests I did in my home lab read my previous blog post.

SDRS design considerations:

• SDRS Initial Placement algorithm does NOT take VM swap file capacity into account. However, Subsequent Rebalance Calculations are based on free space on particular datastores therefore if Virtual Machines are in PowerOn state and swap files exist then it is considered because VM swap file usage will be decreased from datastore total free space and it has an impact on space load. Space load formula is [space load] = [total consumed space on the datastore] / [datastore capacity]
• Storage Space threshold is just a threshold (soft limit) used by SDRS for balancing and defragment. It is not a hard limit. SDRS is trying to keep free space on datastores based on space threshold but SDRS doesn't guarantee you will have always some amount of free space in datastores. See. Test-3 in my SDRS test plan here [6].
• SDRS defragmentation works but there can be some cases when initial placement fails even the storage was freed up and there will be free continuous space in some datastore after defragmentation. See. Test-2 in my SDRS test plan here [6]. That's up to the component which does provisioning. It is important to understand how provisioning to datastore cluster really works. A lot of people think that Datastore Cluster behaves like a giant datastore. It is true from high-level view (abstracted view) but in reality Datastore Cluster is nothing else then just a group of single datastores where SDRS is "just" a scheduler on top of Datastore Cluster datastores. You can imagine a scheduler as a placement engine which prepares placement recommendations for initial placement and continuous balancing. That means that other software components (C# Client, Web Client, PowerCLI, vRealize Automation, vCloud Director, etc) are responsible for initial placement provisioning and SDRS give them recommendations where is the best place to put a new storage object (vmdk file or VM config file). Here [8] is the proof of my statement.
• When SDRS is configured to consider I/O metrics for load balancing then it is considered also during initial placement. Please, do not mix up SDRS I/O metrics and SIOC. These are two different things even SDRS I/O metrics are leveraging normalized latency calculated by SIOC.
• Q: Do I need to use SDRS I/O metrics for load balancing? A: It depends on your physical storage system (disk array). If you have disk array with modern storage architecture then you will have most probably all datastores  (aka LUNs, volumes) on single physical disk pool. In that case, it doesn't make sense to load balance (do storage vMotion in case of I/O contention) between datastores because it will always end up in same physical spindles anyway and on top of that it will generate additional storage workload. The same is true for initial placement. If you have your datastores on different physical spindles then it can help. This is typically used on storage systems using RAID groups which is not very common nowadays.
• SDRS calculation is done on vmdks, not the whole Virtual Machine. But affinity rules (keep together) tend to keep the vmdks together making it similar behavior as if the was VM. By default, virtual machine files are kept together in the working directory of the virtual machine. If the virtual machine needs to be migrated, all the files inside the virtual machines’ working directory are moved. However, if the default affinity rule is disabled (see. Screenshot 1), Storage DRS will move the working directory and virtual disks separately allowing Storage DRS to distribute the virtual disk files on a more granular level.
• Q: When and how often is SDRS rebalancing kicked in? A: Rebalancing happens 1) at regular interval (default 8 hours - it can be changed see Screenshot 2); 2) when threshold violation is detected like above; 3) user requests a configuration change 4) API call like clicking run SDRS via a client. 
• Multiple VM provisioning can behave differently - less deterministically - because of other SDRS calculation factors (I/O load, capacity usage trend) and also because of particular provisioning workflow and exact timing when SDRS recommendation is called and when datastore space is really consumed. Recall that datastore reported free capacity is one of the main factors for next SDRS recommendations.
• From vSphere 6.0 SDRS is integrated with other relevant technologies like SDRS VASA awareness (array-based thin-provisioning, deduplication, auto-tiering, snapshot, replication), Site Recovery Manager (consistency groups and protection groups considerations), vSphere Replication (replica placement recommendations), Storage Policy Based Management (moves just between same compliant VM storage policies). For further details read reference [9].

The general solution to overcome challenges highlighted above (architects call it risk mitigation) is to have "enough" free space on each datastore. Enough free storage space per datastore gives some more flexibility to SDRS algorithm. What is "enough" and how to achieve it is out of the scope of this blog post but think about following hints

• Thin Provisioning on physical storage. See. Frank Denneman's note here [2] about thin provisioning alarm which should be considered by SDRS algorithm. I'm writing should because I had no chance to test it.
• VVOLs, VSAN - I believe that one big VVOLs datastore (storage container) eliminate the need for datastore free space considerations.

But don't forget that there are always other considerations with potential impacts to your specific design so think holistically and use critical thinking during all design decisions.

Last but not least - I highly encourage you to study carefully the book "VMware vSphere Clustering Deepdive 5.1" to be familiar with basic SDRS algorithm and terminology.

Screenshots:

Screenshot 1: SDRS - Default VM affinity 

Screenshot 2: SDRS - Default imbalance check is 8 hours. It can be changed to X minutes, hours, days 

Videos:

Video 1: VMware vSphere SDRS VM provisioning process 

Relevant resources:

1. Frank Denneman : Storage DRS initial placement and datastore cluster defragmentation
2. Frank Denneman : Storage DRS Initial placement workflow
3. Frank Denneman : Impact of Intra VM affinity rules on Storage DRS
4. Frank Denneman : SDRS out of space avoidance
5. Duncan Epping, Frank Denneman : VMware vSphere Clustering Deepdive 5.1
6. David Pasek : VMware vSphere SDRS - test plan of SDRS initial placement
7. VMware : Ignore Storage DRS Affinity Rules for Maintenance Mode
8. David Pasek : VMware vSphere SDRS VM provisioning process 
9. Duncan Epping : What is new for Storage DRS in vSphere 6.0?
10. VMware KB : Storage DRS FAQ 

VMware vSphere SDRS - test plan of SDRS initial placement

VMware vSphere Storage DRS (aka SDRS) stands for Storage Distributed Resource Scheduler. It continuously balances storage space usage and storage I/O load while avoiding resource bottlenecks to meet application service levels.

Lab environment:
5x10GB Datastores formed into Datastore Cluster with SDRS enabled.
It is configured to balance based on storage space usage and also I/O load.

• Storage Space threshold is 1 GB
• I/O latency threshold is kept on default 15 ms.
• Each "empty" datastore has real capacity 9.75 GB where real free capacity is 8.89 GB because 882 MB is used. 

You can see configuration details on screenshot below.  

Capacity of one particular 10 GB datastore is depicted below.

Used space (882 MB) is occupied by following system files (.sf) ...

In VMFS 5 every datastore gets its own hidden files to save the file-system structure.

Test 1

Test description: Does SDRS Initial Placement algorithm take into account VM swap file capacity?

Test prerequisites:

• All 5 datastores in datastore cluster are empty
• That's mean that each datastore has free capacity 8.89 GB
• Provisioned VM doesn't have any RAM reservation

Test steps:

• Deploy Virtual Machine with 4 GB RAM and 8 GB Disk manually (through Web Client)
• Start deployed Virtual Machine
• Observe behavior 

Test expectations:

• I want to test if swap file is considered during SDRS initial placement
• We have only 8.89 GB free space on datatastores therefore if VM swap file is considered new VM with 8GB disk and 4 GB RAM wont be provisioned because we would need 12 GB space on some datastore which is not our case.
• In other words, if provisioning fails then we will proof that SDRS doesn't take VM swap file into account.

Test screenshots:

Deployed Virtual Machine.

VM PowerOn Failure 

Test Result:

• Virtual machine was successfully provisioned and 8GB was decreased from Datastore 5 available space.
• Virtual machine power on action failed because of not enough storage space for 4 GB swap file. This is expected behavior in case that SDRS doesn't take VM swap into account.

Test Summary:

• We have tested that SDRS Initial Placement algorithm does NOT take VM swap file capacity into account.
• Virtual Machine memory (RAM) reservation would have impact on such test because if VM has for example 100% memory reservation it doesn't need any disk space for VM swap.

Test 2

Test description: How SDRS defragmentation is efficient when datastore cluster is running out of storage space?

Test prerequisites:

• 4 datastores in datastore cluster are almost full
• 1 datastore (Datastore4) has 7.58 GB free space
• In one datastore (Datastore5) we have virtual machine (test1_big) having 8GB disk

Test steps:

• Clone Virtual Machine (test1_big) to datstore cluster (through Web Client)
• Observe behavior 

Test expectations:

• SDRS will free up Datastore4 to have enough space for clone of virtual machine (test1_big)
• Provisioning of virtual machine clone will be successful 

Test screenshots:

Before SDRS defragmentation

After SDRS defragmentation and clone provisioning

Test Result:

• SDRS freed up Datastore4 as expected
• Provisioning of virtual machine clone FAILED because of insufficient disk space on Datastore4. 
• That's unexpected behavior because Datastore4 is empty (thanks to SDRS defragmentation) and another machine with same configuration was successfully provisioned on Datastore5.

Test Summary:

• SDRS successfully freed up the only datastore where virtual machine clone can be placed but VM clone deployment started before storage vMotion finished therefore clone provisioning failed.
• SDRS defragmentation works but there can be some cases when initial placement fails even the storage was freed up and there will be free continuous space in some datastore after defragmentation.
• It is important to understand how VM provisioning to datastore cluster really works. Datastore Cluster is nothing else then the group of single datastores where SDRS is "just" a scheduler on top of Datastore Cluster. You can imagine a scheduler as a placement engine which prepare placement recommendations for initial placement and continuous balancing. That means that other software component (C# Client, Web Client, PowerCLI, vRealize Automation, vCloud Director, etc) is responsible for initial placement provisioning and SDRS give them recommendations where is the best place to put a new storage objects (vmdk file or VM config file).
• In other words, Initial VM provisioning doesn’t have nothing to do with SDRS initial placement. VM initial provisioning process is managed by vSphere Client, vRA, vRO, PowerCLI or other software component over vSphere API. SDRS is just a placement engine gives recommendation where is the best place at the moment when is asked for recommendations. Provisioning process selects one particular SDRS recommendation and continue with provisioning (API method ApplyStorageDrsRecommendation_Task). However, in the mean time there can be some other software doing VM provisioning and selected datastore can be filled by somebody else. There is always some probability for vm provisioning failure and it is exactly where good vSphere / Storage design has crucial role to decrease probability of provisioning failure. 

Test 3

Test description: How is SDRS initial placement balancing among different datastores?

Test prerequisites:

• Storage Space threshold is 1 GB
• I/O latency threshold is kept on default 15 ms.
• Each "empty" datastore has real capacity 9.75 GB where real free capacity is 8.89 GB because 882 MB is used. 
• Usage of PowerCLI script to provision multiple VMs. PowerCLI script is available here.

Test steps:

• Run PowerCLI script to generate 50 virtual machines with following specification (1 vCPU, 512 MB RAM, 1GB Disk - thick) in to datastore cluster with SDRS enabled.
• Observe behavior

Test expectations:

• We have datastore cluster with 5 datastores each having 8.89 GB (9,103 MB) available storage.
• We are deploying VMs with 1000 MB each.
• It is deployed in not power on state - so swap file doesn't need to be considered. 
• Therefore we would expect to end up with 45 VMs balanced in round robin fashion across 5 datastores.  

Test screenshots:

Single datastore capacity

PowerCLI Automated Provisioning.

Datastore free space after automatic sequential provisioning

Test Result:

• 45 VMs was successfully provisioned and 46th-50th VM failed because of "Insufficient disk space on datastore 'Datastore1'." This was expected behavior.
• Following VMs are provisioned on datastores

• Datastore 1: TEST-05, TEST-06, TEST-15, TEST-20, TEST-21, TEST-30, TEST-31, TEST-40, TEST-45 

• Datastore 2: TEST-04, TEST-10, TEST-11, TEST-19, TEST-25, TEST-26, TEST-35, TEST-36, TEST-44

• Datastore 3: TEST-03, TEST-09, TEST-14, TEST-18, TEST-24, TEST-29, TEST-34, TEST-39, TEST-43

• Datastore 4: TEST-02, TEST-08, TEST-13, TEST-17, TEST-23, TEST-28, TEST-33, TEST-38, TEST-42

• Datastore 5: TEST-01, TEST-07, TEST-12, TEST-16, TEST-22, TEST-27, TEST-32, TEST-37, TEST-41

Test Summary: Test passed as expected. Only few details are worth to mention.

• I would expect VMs evenly distributed across datastores.  Recall that we are using artificial sequence provisioning of 1GB vDisks per VM. I would expect VMs TEST-01, TEST-06, TEST-11, TEST-16, TEST-21, TEST-26, TEST-31, TEST-36, TEST-41 on Datastore 5. And similar VM numbering on other datastores. But at the end of the day it doesn't seems to be a big deal.
• Please, note that I observed that different provisioning runs can end-up with slightly different machine placement. I have suspicious that it is because other factors (I/O load, storage usage trend) then are also considered in SDRS algorithm.
• Datastore free space is 103 MB on all datastores. Recall that we have Storage Space threshold set to 1 GB. That's expected behavior. Storage Space threshold is just a threshold (soft limit) used by SDRS for balancing and defragment. 

Test 4

Test description: Will be new VM provisioned to the datastore with the biggest frees space?

Test prerequisites:

• Storage Space threshold is 1 GB
• I/O latency threshold is kept on default 15 ms.
• One datastore (Datastore1) is "empty" has real capacity 9.5 GB where real free capacity is 8.64 GB because 882 MB is used. 
• One datastore (Datastore2) has 5.71 GB free capacity.
• All other datastores (Datastore3, Datastore4, Datastore5) are almost full having only 848 MB empty.

Test steps:

• Usage of vSphere Web Client to provision one VM with 2GB disk into Datastore Cluster.
• Observe behavior. We are interested where new VM will be placed.

Test expectations:

• We expect that new VM disk will be placed on Datastore1 because there is the biggest free (available) space.

Test screenshots:

Datastore cluster capacity before VM provisioning.

Datastore cluster capacity after VM provisioning.

Test Result:

• New virtual machine was provisioned into Datastore1 where was the bigest available storage capacity.

Test Summary: Initial placement behaves as expected. New VM is placed to the datastore with less used space. However, we should be aware that this test was done just for single VM provisioning. Multiple VM provisioning can behaves differently because of other SDRS calculation factors (I/O load, capacity usage trend) and also because of particular provisioning workflow and exact timing when SDRS recommendation is called and when datastore space is really consumed for next SDRS recommendations.

Next steps

See blog post "Storage DRS Design Considerations".

And as always, any comment is appreciated.

ESXi 6 - manual partitioning for multiple VMFS filesystems on single disk device

I have to test SDRS initial placement exact behavior (blog post here) therefore I need multiple VMFS datastores to form an Datastore Cluster with SDRS. Unfortunately, I'm constraint with storage resources in my home lab therefore I would like to use one local 220GB SSD to simulate multiple VMFS datastores.

Warning: This is not recommended practice for productional systems. It is recommended to have single partition (LUN) per single device.

I did not find GUI way how to create multiple partitions per single disks therefore I used CLI.

You cannot use old good fdisk for VMFS partitions. Instead PartedUtil has to be used because of GPT. PartedUtil is included in ESXi so you can login to ESXi over SSH and use partedUtil.

Note: It is worth to mention that you can have maximally 16 partitions in GUID Partition Table (GPT) in ESXi 6. This is what I have tested. When I tried to create 17 partitions the partedUtil failed with message - "Too many partitions (17)". 

In my lab I have Intel NUC with local SSD identified as "t10.ATA_____INTEL_SSDMCEAW240A4_____________________CVDA4426003E240M____".

To get partition table use following command

 partedUtil getptbl "t10.ATA_____INTEL_SSDMCEAW240A4_____________________CVDA4426003E240M____"  

If disk is empty you should see follwoing output:

msdos
29185 255 63 468862128

I would like to have 5 x 10Gb LUNs.

10Gb is 20971519 in sectors. Sector is 512Bytes

First 2048 should be skipped to keep space for GPT and to be aligned with 512B sectors. Below is my partition plan in format [Partition number, Start sector, End Sector]

P1 2048-20973567
P2 20973568-41945087
P3 41945088-62916607
P4 62916608-83888127
P5 83888128-104859647

Following command is used to create these 5 partitions.

 partedUtil setptbl "t10.ATA_____INTEL_SSDMCEAW240A4_____________________CVDA4426003E240M____" gpt "1 2048 20973567 AA31E02A400F11DB9590000C2911D1B8 0" "2 20973568 41945087 AA31E02A400F11DB9590000C2911D1B8 0" "3 41945088 62916607 AA31E02A400F11DB9590000C2911D1B8 0" "4 62916608 83888127 AA31E02A400F11DB9590000C2911D1B8 0" "5 83888128 104859647 AA31E02A400F11DB9590000C2911D1B8 0"  

Now you can list partitions again and you should see following output:

gpt
29185 255 63 468862128
1 2048 20973567 AA31E02A400F11DB9590000C2911D1B8 vmfs 0
2 20973568 41945087 AA31E02A400F11DB9590000C2911D1B8 vmfs 0
3 41945088 62916607 AA31E02A400F11DB9590000C2911D1B8 vmfs 0
4 62916608 83888127 AA31E02A400F11DB9590000C2911D1B8 vmfs 0
5 83888128 104859647 AA31E02A400F11DB9590000C2911D1B8 vmfs 0 

So we have 5 partitions and the last step is to format it to VMFS5 file system. We have to leverage vmkfstools which is also included in ESXi 6 system.

Let's start with first partition and we will use datastore name Datastore1.

 vmkfstools -C vmfs5 -S Datastore1 t10.ATA_____INTEL_SSDMCEAW240A4_____________________CVDA4426003E240M____:1  

The same procedure has to be repeated for each partition.

Here is Perl script which generates commands for partedUtil and vmkfstools based on several variables.

 #!/usr/bin/perl  
 #  
 my $disk_device = "t10.ATA_____INTEL_SSDMCEAW240A4_____________________CVDA4426003E240M____";  
 my $starting_sector = 2048;  
 my $partition_size_in_sectors = 4000000;  
 my $datastore_prefix = "Datastore";  
 my $num_of_partitions = 16; # Maximum is 16 partitions  
 my $partitions;  
 my $start = $starting_sector;  
 my $end;  
 my $i;  
 # Generate command for GPT partitions  
 for ($i=1; $i<$num_of_partitions; $i=$i+1) {  
     $end = $start + $partition_size_in_sectors;  
     $partitions .= "\"$i $start $end AA31E02A400F11DB9590000C2911D1B8 0\" ";  
     $start = $end + 1;  
 }  
 print "partedUtil setptbl \"$disk_device\" gpt $partitions\n";  
 # Generate commands to format partitions with VMFS5 file system  
 #  
 for ($i=1; $i<$num_of_partitions; $i=$i+1) {  
     print "vmkfstools -C vmfs5 -S $datastore_prefix$i $disk_device:$i\n";  
 }  

If you want to unmount 16 datastores it is very handy to use following command line:

 esxcli storage filesystem unmount -l Datastore1   

Hope this helps at least one other vSphere dude in his lab exercises. 

How to manage VCSA services via CLI

VMware vCenter Server Appliance (aka VCSA) is composed from several services. These services are  manageable through Web Client but in case you would need or want to use CLI here are some tips.

First of all you have to connect to VCSA via ssh and enable shell.

shell.set –enabled True
shell

Run the below command to list the services currently present on the VCSA.

service-control --list

If you want to check the status of the services, then run the below command.

service-control --status

Command above will list all the services that are present on the VCSA, even the ones that are not running listed at the end.

If you want start particular service you will have to use following syntax

service-control --start

to stop service

service-control --stop

If you want to start or stop all service use following commands

service-control --start --all
service-control --stop --all

Not very difficult, right?

VCSA is the only VMware vSphere management of the future, so don't be afraid and go VCSA!

NSX Edge Services Gateway Form Factors

NSX ESGs are automatically deployed from NSX Manager and are available in following form factors:

Compact

• 1 vCPU
• 512 MB RAM
• 4,5 GB vDisk + 4 GB swap vDisk
• 64K Connections
• 2K Firewall rules
• 50 concurrent sessions
• Up to 50 users can be authenticated/login via SSL VPN Plus

Large

• 2 vCPU
• 1 GB RAM
• 1M Connections
• 2K Firewall rules
• Up to 100 users can be authenticated/login via SSL VPN Plus

Quad Large

• 4 vCPU
• 1 GB RAM
• 1M Connections
• 2K Firewall rules
• Up to 100 users can be authenticated/login via SSL VPN Plus

Extra Large

• 6 vCPU
• 8 GB RAM
• 1M Connections
• 2K Firewall rules
• Up to 1000 users can be authenticated/login via SSL VPN Plus

For further details read this - NSX EDGE FEATURE AND PERFORMANCE MATRIX

VMware Tools 10.0.8 is now GA

VMware Tools 10.0.8  is now GA and live on www.vmware.com and available to all Customers.

Resolved Issues
Virtual machine performance issues after upgrading VMware tools version to 10.0.x in NSX and VMware vCloud Networking and Security 5.5.x

While upgrading VMware Tools version to 10.0x in a NSX 6.x and VMware vCloud Networking and Security 5.5.x environment, the performance of the guest operating system in the virtual machine becomes slow and unresponsive. A number of operations like, logging in and logging off through an RDP session, response for an IIS website and launching applications become slow and unresponsive.
This issue occured due to a known issue with VMware Tools version 10.0.x. This issue is resolved in this release. For more information see KB 2144236.

Full Release Notes are available here.

Broader context ...
In the past, some customers who did not needed vShield components did not installed these VMtools components to mitigate these performance and unavailability risks. It is possible to remove vShield component from installation process.

 VMware-tools-9.x.x-yyyy.exe /v /qb-! REINSTALLMODE=vomus ADDLOCAL=All REMOVE=Hgfs,WYSE,Audio,BootCamp,Unity,VShield REBOOT=ReallySuppress  

Please be aware, that in newer VMtools version vShiled component was split to two more specific components -  FileIntrospection and NetworkIntrospection.

 VMware-tools-9.4.12-2627939-x86_64.exe /v /qb-! REINSTALLMODE=vomus ADDLOCAL=All REMOVE=Audio,BootCamp,FileIntrospection,Hgfs,NetworkIntrospection,Unity REBOOT=R  

For further information of all Names of VMware Tools Components Used in Silent Installations see. VMware vSphere documentation here.

Keywords:
vmtools, vshield,  fileintrospection, networkintrospection

PowerCLI - Recent servers file is corrupt

This is just short post because I have experiences PowerCLI warning "Recent servers file is corrupt" depicted below.

 PS C:\Users\Administrator> C:\Users\Administrator\Documents\scripts\Cluster_hosts_vCPU_pCPU_report.ps1  
 WARNING: Recent servers file is corrupt: C:\Users\Administrator\AppData\Roaming\VMware\PowerCLI\RecentServerList.xml  
 UTC date time: 04/15/2016 12:32:52 Cluster: Cluster ESX name: esx01.home.uw.cz.Name pCPUs: 2 vCPUs: 19 vCPU/pCPU ratio: 9.5  
 UTC date time: 04/15/2016 12:32:52 Cluster: Cluster ESX name: esx02.home.uw.cz.Name pCPUs: 2 vCPUs: 12 vCPU/pCPU ratio: 6  

Google returns just one result here.

The solution to get out warning message is fairly simple.

Just remove corrupted file  C:\Users\Administrator\AppData\Roaming\VMware\PowerCLI\RecentServerList.xml which will be created during the next PowerCLI run.

Hope this helps some other folks.

ESXi host vCPU/pCPU reporting via PowerCLI to LogInsight

Some time ago I had a discussion with one of my customers how to achieve vCPU/pCPU ratio 1:1 on their Tier 1 cluster. Unfortunately, there is not any out-of-the box vSphere policy to achieve it. You can try to use vSphere HA Cluster admission control with advanced settings to achieve such requirement but it is based on CPU reservations in MHz so it would be tricky settings anyway with some additional risks for example after physical server hardware replacement.

At the end of the day we agreed that the goal can be achieved by Monitoring and Capacity Planning process. One can probably leverage VMware vRealize Operations Manager (aka vROps) or similar monitoring platform but because my customer does not have vROps and I'm not vROps expert I realized there is very simple alternative.

Let's leverage PowerShell/PowerCLI to report vCPU/pCPU ratio of ESXi hosts. 

As you can see in the script below it is pretty easy task to prepare PowerCLI report however the question is how to visualize it and send alerts in case of exceeded threshold.

And that's another simple idea. Why not leverage vRealize LogInsight?

All my readers most probably know what VMware's LogInsight (LI) is but just in case - LI is highly available and scalable syslog server appliance which main business value is an excellent reporting capabilities from unstructured data. I don't want to describe LogInsight in this blog post but another interesting feature of LI besides syslog messages it also accepts JSON messages sent via API. For more details look here.

So the whole solution is conceptually pretty easy. Bellow is the high level process.

1. PowerCLI : Go through each ESXi and calculates vCPU/pCPU ratio
2. PowerCLI : Compose a message including vCPU/pCPU ratio together with additional context information like timestamp, cluster name, ESXi name, number of vCPU and pCPU
3. PowerCLI : Send the message to LogInsight via REST API
4. LogInsight : Prepare custom analytics and create Dashboard
5. LogInsight: Create alert to send e-mail message or trigger web hook when threshold is exceeded    

The latest script version is at GITHUB. Below is complete PowerCLI script ...

 #################################  
 # vCenter Server configuration  
 #  
 $vcenter = “vc01.home.uw.cz“  
 $vcenteruser = “readonly“  
 $vcenterpw = “readonly“  
 $loginsight = "192.168.4.51"  
 #################################  
   
 $o = Add-PSSnapin VMware.VimAutomation.Core  
 $o = Set-PowerCLIConfiguration -InvalidCertificateAction Ignore -Confirm:$false  
   
 #################################  
 # Connect to vCenter Server  
 $vc = connect-viserver $vcenter -User $vcenteruser -Password $vcenterpw  
   
 #################################  
 # Send Message to LogInsight  
 function Send-LogInsightMessage ([string]$ip, [string]$message)  
 {  
  $uri = "http://" + $ip + ":9000/api/v1/messages/ingest/1"  
  $content_type = "application/json"  
  $body = '{"messages":[{"text":"'+ $message +' "}]}'  
  $r = Invoke-RestMethod -Uri $uri -ContentType $content_type -Method Post -Body $body  
 }  
   
 #################################  
 # Count vCPU/pCPU Ratio  
 foreach ($esx in (Get-VMHost | Sort-Object Name)) {  
  $pCPUs = $esx.NumCpu  
  $vCPUs = ($esx | get-vm | Measure-Object -Sum NumCPU).Sum  
  $CPU_ratio = $vCPUs / $pCPUs  
  $date = (Get-Date).ToUniversalTime()  
  $cluster_name = get-cluster -VMHost $esx  
   
  $message = "UTC date time: $date Cluster: $cluster_name ESX name: $esx.Name pCPUs: $pCPUs vCPUs: $vCPUs vCPU/pCPU ratio: $CPU_ratio"  
  Write-Output $message  
  Send-LogInsightMessage "192.168.4.51" $message  
 }  

 disconnect-viserver -Server $vc -Force -Confirm:$false  

The PowerCLI script running in my home lab generate messages depicted below ...

 PS C:\Users\Administrator\Documents\scripts> .\Cluster_hosts_vCPU_pCPU_report.ps1  
 UTC date time: 04/06/2016 12:49:32 Cluster: Cluster ESX name: esx01.home.uw.cz.Name pCPUs: 2 vCPUs: 18 vCPU/pCPU ratio: 9  
 UTC date time: 04/06/2016 12:49:33 Cluster: Cluster ESX name: esx02.home.uw.cz.Name pCPUs: 2 vCPUs: 12 vCPU/pCPU ratio: 6  

I use scheduled tasks to send these messages periodically to LogInsight. You can see LogInsight messages in screenshot below ...

LogInsight Interactive Analysis

It is very simple to create dashboard from the analytic ...

LogInsight vCPU/pCPU Dashboard

And the last task is to create alert in LogInsight when vCPU/pCPU ratio is higher then 1 or you can be informed little bit earlier so you can set an alert when ratio is higher then 0.8 ...

Pretty easy, right?
Hope this helps broader VMware community.

And as always, any comments and thoughts are very welcome.

How to update ESXi via CLI

If you don't want to use VMware Update Manager (VUM) you can leverage several CLI update alternatives.

First of all you should download patch bundle from VMware Product Patches page available at http://www.vmware.com/go/downloadpatches. It is important to know that patch bundles are cumulative. That means you need to download and install only the latest Patch Bundle to make ESXi fully patched.

ESXCLI

You can use esxcli command on each ESXi host.

To list image profiles that are provided by the Patch Bundle use following command

esxcli software sources profile list -d /path/to/.zip

The output will look like this:

[root@esx01:~] esxcli software sources profile list -d /vmfs/volumes/NFS-SYNOLOGY-SATA/ISO/update-from-esxi6.0-6.0_update02.zip
Name                              Vendor        Acceptance Level
--------------------------------  ------------  ----------------
ESXi-6.0.0-20160301001s-no-tools  VMware, Inc.  PartnerSupported
ESXi-6.0.0-20160302001-standard   VMware, Inc.  PartnerSupported
ESXi-6.0.0-20160301001s-standard  VMware, Inc.  PartnerSupported
ESXi-6.0.0-20160302001-no-tools   VMware, Inc.  PartnerSupported

Now you can update the system with a specific profile:

esxcli software profile update -d /vmfs/volumes/NFS-SYNOLOGY-SATA/ISO/update-from-esxi6.0-6.0_update02.zip -p ESXi-6.0.0-20160302001-no-tools 

The output will look like this:

[root@esx01:~] esxcli software profile update -d /vmfs/volumes/NFS-SYNOLOGY-SATA/ISO/update-from-esxi6.0-6.0_update02.zip -p ESXi-6.0.0-20160302001-no-tools 
Update Result   Message: The update completed successfully, but the system needs to be rebooted for the changes to be effective.   Reboot Required: true

The last task is to reboot ESXi host as seen in the output above.

[root@esx01:~] reboot 

After reboot, you can ssh to ESXi host and verify current version.

[root@esx01:~] esxcli system version get   Product: VMware ESXi   Version: 6.0.0   Build: Releasebuild-3620759   Update: 2   Patch: 34

Note 1: The VMware online software depot is located at https://hostupdate.vmware.com/software/VUM/PRODUCTION/main/vmw-depot-index.xml, therefore you can use this online depot instead of local depot downloaded manually from VMware download site. To allow outgoing HTTP (tcp ports 80,443) you have to enable httpClient rule in ESXi firewall.
esxcli network firewall ruleset set -e true -r httpClient

To list profiles ...
esxcli software sources profile list -d https://hostupdate.vmware.com/software/VUM/PRODUCTION/main/vmw-depot-index.xml

To update ESXi host into a particular profile ...
esxcli software profile update -d
https://hostupdate.vmware.com/software/VUM/PRODUCTION/main/vmw-depot-index.xml
-p ESXi-6.0.0-20160302001-no-tools 

you can disable it after update
esxcli network firewall ruleset set -e false -r httpClient

Note 2: You can run an ESXCLI vCLI command remotely against a specific host or against a vCenter Server system.

ESXCLI over PowerCLI

The same can be done via PowerCLI. The code below is optimized for ESXCLI-Version2 releases in PowerCLI 6.3 R1.

#get esxcli object on particular host
$esxcli = Get-EsxCli -VMhost -V2

#list profiles in patch bundle
$arguments = $esxcli2.software.profile.list.CreateArgs()

$arguments.depot = "vmfs/volumes///update-from-esxi6.0-6.0_update02.zip"

$esxcli2.software.profile.update.Invoke($arguments)

#update to patch bundle profile
$arguments = $esxcli2.software.profile.update.CreateArgs()
$arguments.depot = "vmfs/volumes///update-from-esxi6.0-6.0_update02.zip"
$arguments.profile = "ESXi-5.5.0-profile-standard"
$esxcli2.software.profile.update.Invoke($arguments)

PowerCLI Install-VMHostPatch

You can also use special PowerCLI cmdlet Install-VMHostPatch

1. Download the Update file “ESXi Offline Bundle” update-from-esxi6.0-6.0_update02.zip
2. Extract the ZIP file and upload the resulting folder to a datastore on the Virtual Host.
3. Put host in to maintenance mode
4. Open PowerCLI
5. Connect-VIServer
6. Install-VMHostPatch -HostPath /vmfs/volumes/Datastore/update-from-esxi6.0-6.0_update02/metadata.zip

Note: For Install-VMHostPatch method Patch Bundle must be explicitly unzipped. 

References:

VMware Product Patches

VMware : Are ESXi Patches Cumulative 

Andreas Peetz : Are ESXi 5.x patches cumulative?

Quickest Way to Patch an ESX/ESXi Using the Command-line

Install-VMHostPatch

Home Lab Upgrade to 6.0u2

What's new in PowerCLI 6.3 R1?

PowerCLI 6.3 R1 introduces the following new features and improvements:

Get-VM is now faster than ever!

The Get-VM Cmdlet has been optimized and refactored to ensure maximum speed when returning larger numbers of virtual machine information. This was a request which we heard time and time again, when you start working in larger environments with thousands of VMs the most used cmdlet is Get-VM so making this faster means this will increase the speed of reporting and automation for all scripts using Get-VM. Stay tuned for a future post where we will be showing some figures from our test environment but believe me, it’s fast!

New-ContentLibrary access

New in this release we have introduced a new cmdlet for working with Content Library items, the Get-ContentLibraryItem cmdlet will list all content library items from all content libraries available to the connection. This will give you details and set you up for deploying in our next new feature…. 

The New-VM Cmdlet has been updated to allow for the deployment of items located in a Content Library. Use the new –ContentLibrary parameter with a content library item to deploy these from local and subscribed library items, a quick sample of this can be seen below:

$CLItem = Get-ContentLibraryItem TTYLinux
New-VM -Name "NewCLItem" -ContentLibraryItem $CLItem -Datastore datastore1 -VMHost 10.160.74.38

Or even simpler….

Get-ContentLibraryItem -Name TTYLinux | New-VM -Datastore datastore1 -VMHost 10.160.74.38

ESXCLI is now easier to use

Another great feature which has been added has again come from our community and users who have told us what is hard about our current version, the Get-Esxcli cmdlet has now been updated with a –V2 parameter which supports specifying method arguments by name.

The original Get-ESXCLI cmdlet (without -v2) passes arguments by position and can cause scripts to not work when working with multiple ESXi versions or using scripts written against specific ESXi versions.

A simple example of using the previous version is as follows:

$esxcli = Get-ESXCLI -VMHost (Get-VMhost | Select -first 1)

$esxcli.network.diag.ping(2,$null,$null,“10.0.0.8”,$null,$null,$null,$null,$null,$null,$null,$null,$null)

Notice all the $nulls ?  Now check out the V2 version:

$esxcli2 = Get-ESXCLI -VMHost (Get-VMhost | Select -first 1) -V2

$arguments = $esxcli2.network.diag.ping.CreateArgs()

$arguments.count = 2

$arguments.host = "10.0.0.8"

$esxcli2.network.diag.ping.Invoke($arguments)

Get-View, better than ever

For the more advanced users out there, those who constantly use the Get-View Cmdlet you will be pleased to know that a small but handy change has been made to the cmldet to enable it to auto-complete all available view objects in the Get-View –ViewType parameter, this will ease in the use of this cmdlet and enable even faster creation of scripts using this cmdlet.

Updated Support

As well as the great enhancements to the product listed above we have also updated the product to make sure it has now been fully tested and works with  Windows 10 and PowerShell v5, this enables the latest versions and features of PowerShell to be used with PowerCLI.

PowerCLI has also been updated to now support vCloud Director 8.0 and vRealize Operations Manager 6.2 ensuring you can also work with the latest VMware products.

More Information and Download

For more information on changes made in vSphere PowerCLI 6.3 Release 1, including improvements, security enhancements, and deprecated features, see the vSphere PowerCLI Change Log. For more information on specific product features, see the VMware vSphere PowerCLI 6.3 Release 1 User’s Guide. For more information on specific cmdlets, see the VMware vSphere PowerCLI 6.3 Release 1 Cmdlet Reference.

You can find the PowerCLI 6.3 Release 1 download HERE. Get it today!