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.

ViewMenu

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.

Clienttab

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

Quick and Easy Setup of Active Directory Authentication for VMware vSphere 5.1 SSO (Single Sign On)

VMware vSphere vCenter Server 5.1 now uses a new SSO (Single Sign On) service to authenticate with Microsoft Active Directory when deploying vCenter. If you do not install this services and configure it for AD then you will not be able to use your domain accounts with vCenter 5.1 During the initial install you may get errors when installing SSO. KB 2034374 reports that a error of ” Error 29155 Identity source discovery error” is due to a failed attempt to automatically discover your Active Directory domain. Verify that the domain name and DNS are setup correctly.

Now lets setup an AD server in vCenter to allow our Domain Accounts. First we will login to vCenter Web Client (https://127.0.0.1:9443) if you used the default ports for the web client installs. The default login is admin@system-domain and the password you set for SSO during the install process. Once you are logged in to the web client you can continue.

Now Select [Administration]

vCenter SSO-login

Now Select [Sign-On and Discovery] -> [Configuration]

SSO Configuration

Under the Identity Sources Tab in the right pane select the PLUS symbol to add a new AD source. This will pop up a “Add Identity Source” window, select the active directory radio button and fill out the requested information with you AD Domain name and the “OU” the holds your users and groups.

Here is the generic information you will need just replace the sesenviron.local with your domain and then place your AD credentials at the bottom.

Adding identity source

Now that we have a AD server assigned as a source we must now add this newly created connector to our “Default Domains ” list.

Add AD to Default Domains list

Now that we have it in our Default Domains list lets move it up to be our primary source. To do this highlight the AD domain name and select the blue arrow head pointing up and move the domain name to the top of the list .

Set priority of the domains

Now lets select the small floppy disk icon to save the changes to the default domain list box. Once this is complete we should be able to open up the vSphere client application and log in with domain access. You should be using a domain level admin to access vCenter.

I hope this helps some people out there.

Cubert 😎

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.

RetrieveStorageInfo request is ignored because the VM is in an invalid state: bad config = false

RetrieveStorageInfo request is ignored because the VM is in an invalid state: bad config = false could be produced as a possible error when the VMX file is invalid. During different activities that the ESX system is doing and during this activity the ISCSI disks are lost or something get in the way where a snaphot or some other process gets funked up. Can leave items in your VMX file that are invalid. When you recover from a loss you may find a system in a “Unknown” state.

Look throught your VMX file for odd spaces or items that may have invalid data in it.

Then re-attach the VM and see if it will showup correctly in your Vcenter server.

Kaseya 2 Agent procedures and free scripts

www.kaseya.com

Do you run Kaseya RMM and need some free scripts?

Here is a compilation of scripts I have created for Kaseya to do different tasks, feel free to use them but keep in mind there is no guarantee. Use at your own discretion!

# Blackberry Enterprise Server ( BES

www.kaseya.com

Do you run Kaseya RMM and need some free scripts?

Here is a compilation of scripts I have created for Kaseya to do different tasks, feel free to use them but keep in mind there is no guarantee. Use at your own discretion!

# Blackberry Enterprise Server ( BES ) server services restart script.

This script uploads a bat file “Blackberry_Restart.bat” that stops and restarts the Blackberry Enterprise server services in the correct order they need to be done. It the writes a event log entry to the local application event log on windows and then to the script log in Kaseya. Lastly it sends a email to help desk to let them know it ran. Download the zip file, unzip and import the XML file into Kaseya then upload the bat file to your public side Kaseya.

BlackberryES_Restart

# Retrieve IE History

Use this script to collect a logged in users IE history. When the boss wants to know what a users been surfing you can run this against the system and have it email all the links the user has gone to.

This script uploads and executes a VB scrpt (iehistory2.vbs) on the remote system that uses NirSoft’s IE History View utility (iehv.exe) to dump IE URL history addresses for all user profiles on the system into a text file (history.txt). The contents of the text file are then captured into a Kaseya variable and emailed to an address or addresses specified in STEP 7. Download the zip file, unzip and import xml file in to scripts on Kaseay server then upload the vb script and iehv.exe to Kaseya public file store. Edit the Kaseya script at line item 7 and place in your email address.

IEHistory

# VMware VCenter Health Check

The script grabs the basic state of things on your VMware ESX VCenter VSphere server and posts an HTML file to the “get file” area in Kaseya KLC. It uses a PowerTools Shell to collect the data and create the file. Download the zip, unzip and import the XML file it scripts. Upload the ps1 file to Kaseya Public folder and then edit script and locate the file in script and save script. This will update the script with the location of where you saved the ps1 file.

VMWare VCenter Health Check

#Windows Systems CCleaner Script

This script is a great tool for cleaning of temp files and caches from a users profile on any Windows system. The script looks at the system and determines if it is 64 bit or 32 bit, then it downloads the correct ccleaner.exe file and runs it against the system. In auto mode this script does not clean the registry so it is safe to schedule and run on a regular bases. This works on all 32 and 64 it windows including Windows 2008 R2. A user must be logged in for script to run on users profile.

Kaseya-CCLeaner-Script

Look for more of my scripts here on Squidworks.net

Enjoy

Cubert