vSphere 5.0 Features

When discussing vSphere 5.0 internally someone came up with the idea to list all new features that vSphere brings. Let me warn you that this is a long list, and the list could even be longer if we would have included all API changes and back-end changes.

via blogs.vmware.com

HP Smart Array Controller Configuration Guide

 

Burning-Hard-Drive-psd48398 Hey look at this harddisk… its on fire.

Anyway here is HP's pdf on how to use configure arrays on Smart Array Controllers. Nice section on hpacucli command line.

 

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bc/docs/support/SupportManual/c00729544/c00729544.pdf

Esxcfg-vswitch Commands

Images
For us Unix guys, the idea of doing everything in ESX via a GUI is very hard to swallow. Especially when it comes to repetitive tasks like setting up vSwitches and Port Groups. Sure you can spend and arm and a leg on Enterprise Advanced licenses so that you can have distributed switches, but why when you can just script your commands and run that script on each box in your cluster. Below are a few examples of how to use the esxcfg-vswitch command.

Delete a Port Group:

esxcfg-vswitch -D “Service Console” vSwitch1

Add a nic (vmnic2) to a vswitch (vswitch1):

esxcfg-vswitch -L vmnic2 vswitch1 


Remove a pnic (vmnic3) from a vswitch (vswitch0):

esxcfg-vswitch -U vmnic3 vswitch0


Create a portgroup (VM Network3) on a vswitch (vswitch1):


esxcfg-vswitch -A “VM Network 3” vSwitch1


Assign a VLAN ID (3) to a portgroup (VM Network 3) on a vswitch (vswitch1):


esxcfg-vswitch -v 3 -p “VM Network 3” vSwitch1

Change your Service Console (vswif0) IP and Subnet Mask:


esxcfg-vswif -i 172.20.20.5 -n 255.255.255.0 vswif0

Add a Service Console (vswif0):


esxcfg-vswif -a vswif0 -p “Service Console” -i 172.20.20.40 -n 255.255.255.0

Add Vlan to a Port Group:

esxcfg-vswitch “vSwitch name” -p “portgroup name” -v “vlan ID”

List the existing config so you can get your vswitch and portgroup name:

esxcfg-vswitch -l

Iostat Primer

Harddisk
iostat
(input/output statistics) is a computer operating system monitoring tool used to collect and show storage input and output statistics. ( I stole this from Wiki)

It is often used to identify performance issues with local disks or networked file systems such as NFS.

For local disks and SAN disks I usually run it like so.

iostat -zxnM 5

this returns stats in the format below:

                    extended device statistics
    r/s    w/s   Mr/s   Mw/s wait actv wsvc_t asvc_t  %w  %b device
    1.3    2.9    0.0    0.0  0.0  0.0    2.1   10.1   1   2 d0
    0.0    0.0    0.0    0.0  0.0  0.0    0.4    8.8   0   0 d1
    0.4    0.2    0.0    0.0  0.0  0.0    2.6    8.6   0   0 d4
    0.7    2.9    0.0    0.0  0.0  0.0    0.0   10.2   0   2 d10
    0.0    0.0    0.0    0.0  0.0  0.0    0.0    8.1   0   0 d11
    0.2    0.2    0.0    0.0  0.0  0.0    0.0    9.3   0   0 d14
    0.7    2.9    0.0    0.0  0.0  0.0    0.0    7.2   0   2 d20
    0.0    0.0    0.0    0.0  0.0  0.0    0.0    7.7   0   0 d21
    0.2    0.2    0.0    0.0  0.0  0.0    0.0    7.8   0   0 d24
    0.0    0.0    0.0    0.0  0.0  0.0    0.0   62.3   0   0 c0t0d0
    1.0    4.5    0.0    0.0  0.0  0.1    0.0   11.0   0   3 c1t0d0
    1.0    3.1    0.0    0.0  0.0  0.0    0.0    6.9   0   2 c1t1d0
    0.2    0.0    0.0    0.0  0.0  0.0    0.0    0.0   0   0 c1t2d0
    0.2    0.0    0.0    0.0  0.0  0.0    0.0    0.0   0   0 c1t3d0
    2.4    1.0    0.3    0.0  0.0  0.0    0.1    4.2   0   1 c7t600A0B800029A7A000000E4247DAAF20d0
    0.2    0.2    0.0    0.0  0.0  0.0    0.0    3.4   0   0 c7t600A0B800029A7A000000E8447DFA700d0
    0.3    0.3    0.0    0.0  0.0  0.0    0.0    3.7   0   0 c7t600A0B800029A76800000C444820020Dd0
    0.9    0.8    0.1    0.0  0.0  0.0    0.0    2.9   0   0 c7t600A0B800029A76800000C4548200237d0

Use the key below to figure out what each heading means.

 The fields have the following meanings:

disk name of the disk
r/s reads per second
w/s writes per second
Kr/s kilobytes read per second
Kw/s kilobytes written per second
wait average number of transactions waiting for service (Q length)
 actv average number of transactions actively 
 being serviced (removed from the
 	 queue but not yet
completed)
%w percent of time there are transactions waiting
for service (queue non-empty)
%b percent of time the disk is busy (transactions
in progress)

Most of the time I am troubleshooting hot application mount points, which are usually SAN disks controlled by Veritas. So at this point you need to correspond the OS's long ass disk name with Veritas' short and clean name. Use vxdisk list

vxdisk -e list

SUN6140-0_0  auto      disk disgroup online     c7t600A0B800029A7A000000E8447DFA700d0s2
SUN6140-0_2  auto      disk disgroup online     c7t600A0B800029A76800000C4548200237d0s2
SUN6140-0_3  auto      disk disgroup online     c7t600A0B800029A76800000C444820020Dd0s2

At this point know Solaris' name for each disk and can look for hotspots on these disks.