virtuallyGhetto

William Lam

Custom notification and automation based on host failure in VMware Cloud on AWS

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Physical hardware failure is inevitable, this is true whether it is running in your on-premises datacenter or in the Cloud like VMware Cloud on AWS. Although vSphere HA will automatically restart all affected VMs after detecting a host failure, there is usually additional activities that must be performed by a customer such as notifying all impacted application owners and even creating an incident ticket for hardware replacement.

With VMware Cloud on AWS, the hardware replacement is done automatically for you but the downstream activity of notifying application owners to verify the application is functional is still managed by the customer. There are many ways in how customers can manage such incidents and one solution that I am a huge advocate of is taking advantage of the powerful vCenter Server Events, which has over 1700+ events, not to mention any of the 2nd/3rd party events.

When an ESXi host fails, the com.vmware.vc.HA.DasHostFailedEvent event will be generated which contains all the relavent information related to the host failure including the specific hostname/IP, when the incident occurred and details about the vSphere Cluster and Datacenter is also provided. This information is visible using the vSphere UI but it can also be programmatically retrieved using the vSphere API, which is how the vSphere UI renders this information.

Note: Everything described in this blog post including the VEBA example is applicable to any environment that contains vCenter Server and is not limited to just VMware Cloud on AWS.

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Configuring dnsmasq as PXE Server for ESXi 

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One really cool thing that I came to learn while setting up the infrastructure to network boot the latest Raspberry Pi 4 was the use of dnsmasq, which I have used in the past but I did not realize it could do so much more. In addition to providing DNS services, it can also be configured to run TFTP and provide DHCP capabilities which can then be used to support PXE installations.

Another neat feature of dnsmasq is ability to proxy to an existing DHCP server which is extremely useful for anyone with an existing DHCP infrastructure. Given the simplicity of dnsmasq and having already set this up for the rPI, I figure it would also be useful to take folks through in setting up dnsmasq to also support ESXi installations over PXE, since this still comes up from new folks just getting started with ESXi kickstart automation.

For more details about PXE installation of ESXi, I highly recommend this whitepaper and although it states 6.0, the concepts and configurations are still applicable to the latest ESXi 7.0 release.

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Two methods to network boot Raspberry Pi 4

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My Raspberry Pi 4 (8GB) model just came last week and after completing my RADIO (VMware's R&D Innovation Offsite) session recording, I wanted to setup my new rPI so I can start playing with it when I had some spare time. I also have the 4GB model but it was running quite hot as I was using the default case (do not recommend) and decided to put that aside for now. I ended up purchasing the 8GB model from Canakit which includes additional heatsinks and nice built-in fan with their custom case.

After spending some time setting up the rPI OS and applying the various updates, I was not too keen on using the SD Card, especially as some folks on forums mentioned that it can easily be worn out depending on the type of workload. While researching online and some references pointed out by colleagues, I came to learn that in addition to booting from USB which is now possible with rPI, you can also network boot the rPI without an SD Card or any storage for that matter! This immediately resonated with me, especially as I am a huge fan of scripted installations such as Kickstart/Jumpstart.

Here are all the resources that I had used that provided all the heavy lifting. I have optimized some of the commands to make it easy for anyone to simply copy and past who is new to setting up an rPI. The authors below did a fantastic job in outlining all the details, so I highly recommend a read if you would like to get more information. I also will be going over an alternative method at the end for booting the rPI over the network which is not really talked about.

One really cool thing that I came to learn while setting up the infrastructure to network boot an rPI was the use of dnsmasq, which I have used in the past but I did not realize it could do so much more. I may have spent more time playing with dnsmasq than with the rPI itself and I will probably cover this in another blog post on how you can easily setup a PXE/gPXE/iPXE system to enable automated OS installation (e.g. Kickstart) that can be used with ESXi or any other OS for that support network installations via BIOS/UEFI.

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Five of my favorite enhancements in vSphere 7

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It is very easy to focus on the speeds and feeds of a new major vSphere release such as vSphere 7 which also includes a TON of new and exciting capabilities. However, often times it is the tiny improvements that has the most significant impact to our end users, especially when it comes to usability and operations. In fact, this was further reinforced by Frank Denneman's post on the Reddit with similiar observations.

I have been using vSphere 7 since it was released back in April and I have been discovering a number of new vSphere UI enhancements that has really delighted my overall user experience. I had been sharing these enhancements on Twitter, but figured it was worth a blog post given most of these features were not well known.

Do you have a favorite new feature in vSphere 7 that might not be well known? If so, share by leaving a comment below.

1. Enhanced VM Summary

2. Update and Patch Notifications

3. ESXi Firmware and Driver View

4. ESXi Installation Date + Software Package Details

5. Terminate "stuck" VM

Here are two additional non-UI features that I came to learn about in vSphere 7 that you might also be interested in: Support for HTTPS using wget on ESXi and Guest Customization support for Instant Clones.

How to patch Intel NUC 10 with latest ESXi 7.0 update?

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vSphere 7.0b was just released last week and one of the important fixes was to resolve an issue where Nested ESXi VMs were crashing upon powering on an inner-guest VM. This looks to have also affect newer generations of CPUs including Intel's 10th Gen Comet Lake which is also found in the latest 10th Gen Intel NUCs (Frost Canyon).

A number of folks quickly found that if you simply applied the ESXi 7.0b patch, an unexpected behavior occurred on the 10th Gen Intel NUCs and the onboard networking was lost upon a reboot. This occurs as the original ne1000 driver which had been replaced with a newer version found within ESXi 7.0b no longer recognizes the onboard Intel NIC. The solution is quite simple, create a new Image Profile that contains the Intel NUC NIC Driver.

Several of you have asked for instructions and although this is a pretty common vSphere workflow, I have documented the two supported options using the vSphere Image Builder utility but there are definitely other methods which will have the same results. If you have access to a vCenter Server 6.7 or newer, I recommend using the Image Builder UI. If vCenter Server access is not available, then you can use Image Builder with PowerCLI, however you will need to have access to a Windows machine as the Image Builder cmdlet is not supported with PowerCLI Core.

Note: To prevent this from happening in the future, I am also working with Songtao, the developer of the Intel NUC driver to see if we can rename the VIB which should prevent this from happening with future updates. 

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Passthrough of Integrated GPU (iGPU) for Apple Mac Mini 2018

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After successfully enabling and persisting the passthrough of the iGPU for the latest Intel NUC 10 (Frost Canyon), I thought it was worth experimenting with the Apple Mac Mini 2018 to see if the same could be accomplished with its iGPU, which is an Intel UHD 630. The biggest benefit in addition to unlocking the iGPU for general use is support for Apple's Metal API which gives developers access to the underlying GPU when building and testing MacOS and iOS applications. This is also quite timely as the Apple Mac Mini 2018 was just added to the VMware HCL!

My initial attempt failed when using the latest ESXi 6.7 Update 3 release. After enabling passthrough of the iGPU and rebooting the ESXi host for the change to take affect, the system would get stuck during boot up when loading the dma_iommu_mapper module. After speaking with Engineering, the issue is probably not related to dma_iommu_mapper module but some other module shortly after but without serial console output or ability to see terminal screen, it would be very difficult to debug the issue.

About to give up, my last attempt was try ESXi 7.0 and to my surprise the ESXi host fully booted up after enabling passthrough of the iGPU. It is still not clear on what might be causing the problem for 6.7 but at least 7.0 works!

Note: To be able to successfully power on a MacOS VM running on ESXi 7.0, ensure you have applied the recent ESXi 7.0b patch. You will need to go to the VMware Patch Portal siteto download and apply the update.

Step 1- Enable passthrough of the iGPU using the vSphere UI and then reboot for changes to take affect.

Step 2 - Navigate to Configure->Hardware->Graphics->Host Graphics and change the default graphics type to "Shared Direct"

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