VMWare ESX Hardware Health monitor for Labtech

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Plugins4LabTech has created a new plugin that will monitor the CIM data announced by the hardware running VMWare ESX software. We can report on any hardware that follows CIM standards and makes it’s hardware statuses known to VMWare. This simple to use plugin deploys in just minutes and can be setup by anyone with little or no knowledge of LabTech functions and processes. If you want to see in action the easiest ESX Hardware Health Monitor available for LabTech then have a peek at our video on our YouTube Channel.

Never be in the dark again over hardware health!

Get alerts and tickets when hardware failures are detected. Using the monitor agent supplied with the plugin get quick responses to failures and warnings directly from VMWare. When alarms happen get emails, tickets and messaging alerting you to the failure that is taking place on the hardware.

Plugins4LabTech’s VMWare Health Monitor plugin for Labtech uses an agent to talk to VMware ESX hosts and retrieves the CIM data for the hardware the ESX host is running on. The plugin processes this data and stores it in LabTech’s database to be used in the views and alarms the plugin issues when failures are seen. You will see data on your RAID arrays and SCSI controllers, Power Supplies failures and system overheats. If the hardware is reporting it to VMWare we can see it.

Main ESX Health Monitor Console

The main view lets you see all the ESX hosts under management sorted by Client. In this view you are able to turn on and off the collection of data, set the interval of how often the data is collected and enable alerting for any seen failures.

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ESX Health Monitor Client Console Tab

The Client Console tab is where you would add and delete the ESX Hosts you want to monitor. You are able to force the update of ESX CIM data by selecting to rescan ESX hosts and you can view the full CIM data list of any ESX Host.

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ESX Health Monitor CIM Data

The CIM Data view shows all the collected CIM data on a given ESX host. If any data is in a state not considered ok then those lines will be represented with warning and alarming icons. You will also get the hardware manufactures data back and in the case of Dell that is the Hardware type and Service Tag.

CIMData

ESX Health Monitor Internal Agent

Under the main view you can select to enable alerts. When you do this agent is created in the internal monitors of LabTech. You can use this monitor to email, ticket, alert or message anyone when failures are picked up.

A simple plugin all self contained and easy to deploy. Just a few clicks to configure and you have data. So easy to use anyone can setup and have it working in just a few minutes.

The plugin is currently with the Squid Squad getting a final review before we release the new plugin. Follow our release notes at http://support.plugins4labtech.com

Fix: Remove all snapshots Unable to access file since it is locked

Solved!

You are running ESX and have a VDR or 2 setup to do backups? Somewhere the VDR was rebooted or stopped working during backup and now has left snapshots on you VMs. You try to manually remove the snapshots and BAMB!

Error: Remove all snapshots Unable to access file <unspecified filename> since it is locked.

Here is how to fix it:

Shutdown your VDRs and then try to remove your snapshots. If they fail to remove then take another snapshot then try using the removing all “Delete All” function. This is a safe process at this point, the delta files are not deleted until the successful merge of the delta and the flat file. This means if it fails you should still be no worse off than you are currently, no data was lost.

Now once all snaps are deleted, you may get a similar error trying to start your VDR. The VDR mounts the VM disks and does it’s backup . The mounts may still exist and this will cause the VDR issues booting. Edit the settings in the VDR and look for Hard disks 2+ and remove them from the VM (Do NOT Delete Then!!! Just Remove them leaving HardDisk1) .

Once all but HardDisk1 has been removed from the VDR VM then reboot the VDR and you should be ready to start backing up again.

I hope this helps someone out there..

Cubert.

How-to: ESX4.1 using Vmotion with Local Host Only Storage

Can you vMotion using local ESX host storage?

Oh man the VCPs out there are screaming “No!!! You can’t vMotion Local Storage!”. Oh to the contrary my friend, with a wee bit of ingenuity you can do many things. Now before I go any further I will state the obvious. As any VCP will tell you, you can’t vMotion the local host storage. But… but.. You can convert the local storage in to shared storage. This is not supported by VMware so do not expect a lot of tech support but let me lay it out for you.

You have several ESX or ESXi hosts running on “Local” storage and have a license in vCenter for the vMotion abilities, but if you don’t want or can’t afford to buy some big ISCSI SANS unit, you will not be able to use your vMotion. The standard Dell Power Vault cost a few pennies and you just don’t have the doe. Here is what you can do.

Virtualize the Local Storage with a SAN VM

That’s right!! Create a single VM that consumse all your local storage and let it present ISCSI LUNS back to your ESX hosts.

We will build our first VM on the ESX host as a virtual SANdevice. The reason we do the first VM as we will be using it’s storage to build the rest of our VMs on. Leveraging the power of open source software and using the google archive of information on how to setup and use the Openfiler SANS OS is imperative. You want to look at Open Filer. It is a simple ISO image you can run from CD or just mount using NFS or from your vCenter client. It installs very easily and can be configured in less than 20 minutes.

You would build the first VM with all the storage you have available giving this storage then to the Openfiler system to use for your SANS storage. I will not go in to the install of Openfiler here but if you follow the simple instructions you will have a ISCSI SANS with the total amount of available storage of your host system.

You will now have the first host storage shared out as ISCSI and you will connect all hosts via ISCSI to these new LUNs you created in the SANS. See VMware knowledge base for information on how to do this. (It is simple, just outside the scope of this conceptiul article). Now repeat this on all host in your infrastructure. You now have some number of host all with 1 VM installed as a virtual SAN with ISCSI sharing out LUNs to all the host in your infrastructure.

You will now in vCenter set the priority boot options to make sure that the SAN VM is the first to boot and has time to come up and get going before any other VMs boot and you can now install VMs on any of the ISCSI LUNs presented to the hosts. Do vMotion, Storage vMotion, HA, DRS and the new FT on any of the VMs.

ESX is available to download as a 60 day full eval, so give it and vCenter a try for sixty days while trying this platform layout. You can use VMware workstation to virtualize the whole thing, from the ESX Hosts to the vSAN VM and any VMs after that. That is also correct… You can virtualize ESX hosts now and then run VMs on those ESX VMs. Is that not just the bomb! I can create and test different ESX deployments inside a VM group inside of VMware workstation. Build and test complex layouts with out bringing your production environments in to the picture.

Now that I have your mind turning and thinking of all the posibilities, get out and VM something!

Good luck and enjoy…

Cubert