John Wray's Blog - vSphere

VMware Change Power Policy to High Performance - powerCLI

john@johnwray.com — Fri, 10 Mar 2017 02:50:00 -0500

I wanted to change the power setting of all my hosts to high performance and not do it one at a time manually.

This is an easy to accomplish this with powerCLI.

====================================================================

Add-PSSnapin VMWare.VimAutomation.Core

connect-VIServer -server <vcenter.your.domain> -User <DOMAIN\User> -Password <password>

$vmHosts = Get-VMHost
foreach ($vmHost in $vmHosts)
{
$view = (Get-VMHost $vmHost | Get-View)
(Get-View $view.ConfigManager.PowerSystem).ConfigurePowerPolicy(1)
}

====================================================================

This sets the Power Policy to High Performance (1)

1=HighPerformance

2=Balanced

3=LowPower

Changing the drive size of a VM on a host managed by vCenter when vCenter is offline

john@johnwray.com — Fri, 17 Oct 2014 03:17:00 -0500

The scenario was the VM that had the SQL backend for vCenter ran out of drive space, SQL services stopped, and then eventually vCenter services stopped on the vCenter server. If the host the VM you want to expand the drive on is managed by vCenter you will not be allowed to change the drive size from the host. You have to modify the vpxa.cfg file and remove the reference to the vcenter and the restart services.

Open a vSphere client direct to the host the VM you need to modify is running on.
You can go into the security settings, start SSH, open an SSH session.
Once you are logged in cd to /etc/vmware/vpxa
do an ls –l and you will a file called vpxa.cfg
Back it up as a just in case, do a cp vpxa.cfg vpxa.cfg.bak or whatever you like to use for your backups.
vi vpxa.cfg and towards the bottom you will see a section for server ip address.
Something like this: <serverIp>123.123.123.123</serverIp>
Just remove that ip address and save the file :x
next you will need to restart services. This take longer than you would think. :)
services.sh restart
Once that finishes you will need to log back into that host. You will be able to change the drive sizes now.
Next I went back and copied my .bak over to the original and did a services.sh restart again.
I expanded the drives inside the VM OS, rebooted, rebooted the vcenter server.
I was good to go and the host was back in the cluster.

vSphere client autolaunch

john@johnwray.com — Fri, 17 Oct 2014 02:43:00 -0500

I had a client that wanted the vSphere client to connect to a specific vCenter, use the logged in credentials and ignore cert warnings. This is how to modify the shortcut.

In the properties for the shortcut go to the end of the target and add –passthroughAuth –i –s <vCenter name or ip>

-i ignores any cert warnings, -s is the server. You could also not use passthroughAuth and use –u <username> -p <password> that would be less secure though.

This will launch the client and connect to the vcenter with no interaction from the user.

Picking an EVC mode for a cluster

john@johnwray.com — Mon, 13 Oct 2014 23:04:00 -0500

How to check what EVC mode you can use.

I started on this page-> http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/search.php?scat=cpu&productid=68&deviceCategory=server&details=1&partner=41&releases=202&cpuSeries=68&page=1&display_interval=10&sortColumn=Partner&sortOrder=Asc

I had existing hosts with an older CPU Xeon X5660

http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/detail.php?scat=cpu&productid=24&deviceCategory=server&details=1&partner=41&releases=202&cpuSeries=24&page=1&display_interval=10&sortColumn=Partner&sortOrder=Asc

They wanted to add hosts that had newer CPU Xeon E5-2670v2

http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/detail.php?scat=cpu&productid=68&deviceCategory=server&details=1&partner=41&releases=202&cpuSeries=68&page=1&display_interval=10&sortColumn=Partner&sortOrder=Asc

So in this situation to be able to have hosts with both CPU types in the same cluster you would have to use an EVC mode of Westmere.

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1003212 – This describes the EVC modes if you have someone who wants to know.

VAAI Manual Install

john@johnwray.com — Fri, 19 Sep 2014 06:53:00 -0500

If you check the storage you will see that Hardware Acceleration is not supported. This doc assumes you have uploaded the NetAppNasPlugin.zip file to a mounted datastore. I usually use the nonreplicated datastore and create a Patches folder. The zip can be downloaded directly from NetApp. Turn on SSH and login to your host. cd to the patches directory. cd /vmfs/volumes/nonreplicated/Patches

do an ls –l and you should see the zip file you uploaded.

Enter the below command, changing the path after the –d to your path. Each server will be different.

esxcli software vib install -n NetAppNasPlugin -d /vmfs/volumes/e8638f00-81facdd9/Patches/NetAppNasPlugin.v20.zip

Once the command finishes you should see the message below telling you the update completed successfully. Put the server into maintenance mode and reboot.

When the server comes back up you should see that Hardware Acceleration is now supported.