Understanding CPU Over Commitment

Manish Jha

over commitment in its simplest term means allocating more resources to virtual workloads then what is available at physical level. Most common resources that are over committed are memory and cpu.

A simple example of over commitment can be running 3 VM each with 4 GB RAM on an Esxi host which has only 8 GB RAM. In this case we have allocated 12 GB RAM to all VM’s collectively but at physical level (Esxi host) we have only 8 GB RAM available.

It is a general belief by most novice VMware admins that allocating more resources to virtual machines means better performance. When I started working with VMware I also used to think in the same way.

It was the vSphere Optimize and Scale training, where I learned this is not true and how over commitment can badly affect VM performance.

In this post I am trying to demonstrate the negative affects of CPU over commitment.… Read the rest

vCenter Orchestrator (vCO) 5.5-Part-2-Executing Workflow using vCO

Manish Jha

In part-1 of this series we have configured the vCO settings and added vCenter Server where we will be executing the workflows from vCO.

In this part we will see how to use vCO to execute the workflows. A lot of pre-defined workflows are already integrated in vCO and you can import or create your custom workflows as well.

If you have missed earlier posts of this series click on below link to get started:

Part-1-Installing & Configuring vCO

Login to vSphere Web-Client to get started

1: Open your web-browser and type https://vCenterFQDN:9443/vsphere-client/

vco-15

2: We will find our vCO server under the vCenter Orchestrator plug-in.

vco-16

3. Lets start with a very basic workflow of creating a new VM.

Click Workflows and expand the Library to see all the pre-configured workflows.
Expand vCenter –> Virtual Machine Management –> Basic
Right click “Create simple virtual machine”

vco-17

4. A new window will pop-up where you have to provide the inputs.… Read the rest

vCenter Orchestrator (vCO) 5.5-Part-1- Installing & Configuring vCO

Manish Jha

vCenter Orchestrator (vCO) is a cool product from VMware which allows you to create tasks and automated workflows which and be run directly within vSphere Web Client or the vCenter Orchestrator Client.

vCO brings automation to the next level and helps admins, engineers to orchestrate and integrate your cloud with the rest of management systems.

There are a number of pre-made workflows integrated in vCO to get you started. Almost any task that can be performed in vCenter can be automated through vCO. With the use of AD integration, API’s and other 3rd party plugin’s vCO becomes more powerful and can save a lot of time for the VMware admins.

Workflows can be anything from simple workflows that contain a single task to say create a virtual machine, to complicated workflows containing many tasks that might build an entire solution and integrate with 3rd party plugins.

vCO is included with vCenter Server and it’s free!  … Read the rest

Troubleshooting vDS out of sync issue

Manish Jha

Today when I booted my lab I saw some issues with one of the host and the summary page of host was showing the below error

“The vNetwork Distributed Switch configuration on some hosts differed from that of the vCenter Server.”

vds-0

The cause of this issue can be explained as follows:

When we install distributed switch and add hosts to the vDS a hidden switch is created on all hosts and a copy of  vDS database is copied to each host with information on the switch. This database is synched every 5 minutes.

vDS are created and managed from vCenter as it holds the management plane and the the part of vDS which get installed on per host level is called IO plane. So if ever vCenter Server is down it will not affect the VM traffic on the host and you will only loose management capabilities.

Selecting the vDS and navigating to host tab will show you a warning (under VDS status) that your host is out of sync.… Read the rest

vRealize Automation- Deploying Virtual Machines from self-Service Portal

Manish Jha

Finally we came to last post of this series where an end user will request a virtual machine for himself from the services he is entitled to.

In our last post Creating Entitlements we have created an entitlement for windows server 2003 and granted access to users [email protected] and [email protected]. Lets see if these 2 users can request for a new virtual machine for themselves from the self-service portal and whether or not this request is completed.

If you have missed earlier posts of this series then you can access the same by clicking on below links:

1: Introduction to vCAC(vRA)

2: Installing and Configuring vRA Identity Appliance

3: Installing and Configuring vRA Appliance

4: Installing and configuring IaaS Components

5: Creating Tenants

6: Adding vSphere Endpoints

7: Creating and Configuring Fabric Groups

8: Creating Business Groups and Reservation

9: Creating and Publishing Blueprints

10: Creating Service

11: Creating Entitlements

Now we will see how an end user will request for a new virtual machine for him.… Read the rest

An error occured while consolidating disks:msgs.fileio.locked

Manish Jha

Today while working in our production environment where our monitoring system has generated an alert for one of the vCenter server appliance. The alert was ” disk consolidation needed for server xyz”

On checking the vCenter VM status from management vCenter console I found that there as an yellow warning on the same and selecting the summary tab also confirmed the same error message about disk consolidation.

We are using EMC Avamar backup solution and my guess is Avamar failed to cleanup the snapshot which it took on the vcsa vm after backup.

I tried to consolidate the disk by going to snapshot manager for the vcsa VM and hitting consolidate button but it was failing with error “An error occured while consolidating disks:msgs.fileio.locked”

disk cond

I was not sure why this error is coming while doing consolidation and while searching for solution I came across this blog where the issue have been addressed.… Read the rest

vRealize Automation- Creating Entitlements

Manish Jha

Entitlements  allows you to grant users and groups access to Services and/or Blueprints as well as determine what actions they can perform with them. Entitlements offer a significant amount of flexibility in how you provide access to services through the catalog, who can access those services, what actions they can perform, and what is any approvals are required.

Entitlements are made up of three components. Services, Catalog Items, and Actions. You can choose to entitle complete Services which encompass all Items within the service or just select catalog Items. You can also determine what actions the users that belong to the entitle can perform against all the catalog items that are a part of the entitlement.

Within entitlements you also have the ability to assign approvals to Services, Catalog Items, and actions.

If you have missed earlier posts of this series then you can access the same by clicking on below links:

1: Introduction to vCAC(vRA)

2: Installing and Configuring vRA Identity Appliance

3: Installing and Configuring vRA Appliance

4: Installing and configuring IaaS Components

5: Creating Tenants

6: Adding vSphere Endpoints

7: Creating and Configuring Fabric Groups

8: Creating Business Groups and Reservation

9: Creating and Publishing Blueprints

10: Creating Service

Now we will see how to create entitlements.… Read the rest

vRealize Automation- Creating a Service

Manish Jha

Self-Service catalog is a new way of managing Catalog Items. Service categories organizes catalog items into related offerings to enable end users to browse catalog items they needed in an easier and convenient way.

In vRA Blueprints are published which enables them to be assigned to users and groups through the catalog management components of the vRA Service Catalog. In earlier version of vCAC Blueprints were assigned to groups within the Blueprint itself.

To enable blueprints to be available in the catalog we first need a service that we can publish them to. Services are the containers that hold the actual catalog items that can be requested.

We must have at least one service in the environment to enable our catalog items against.

If you have missed earlier posts of this series then you can access the same by clicking on below links:

1: Introduction to vCAC(vRA)

2: Installing and Configuring vRA Identity Appliance

3: Installing and Configuring vRA Appliance

4: Installing and configuring IaaS Components

5: Creating Tenants

6: Adding vSphere Endpoints

7: Creating and Configuring Fabric Groups

8: Creating Business Groups and Reservation

9: Creating and Publishing Blueprints

In this post we will create a new service for the catalogs.… Read the rest

vRealize Automation-Create and Publish Blueprints

Manish Jha

What is A Blueprint?

Blueprints define the resources and attributes associated with the provisioning of a virtual, physical, or cloud machine. vRA supports several type of platforms as endpoint such as vSphere, vCloud, Hyper-V, XEN, Physical, Amazon etc so a unique Blueprint is needed per platform.

Blueprints are visible as Item to end users in Service Catalog from where they can request to provision a new virtual machine or applications etc.

In this post we will learn how to Create and Publish a vSphere Blueprint. To do this there are certain pre-requisites that need to be met.

Within the blueprint configuration there is a template picker that will allow you to pick form the available templates in your environment. In order for templates to show up in the template picker there are some items that need to be configured in the vCAC environment. You will need to have the following already configured:

  • vSphere Credential
  • vSphere EndPoint
  • Fabric Group (with the vSphere resources assigned)
  • Reservation

If you have missed earlier posts of this series then I would recommend reading them first before going ahead.… Read the rest

vRealize Automation-Create Business Group and Reservation

Manish Jha

What is a Business Group?

A Business group associates a set of services and resources to a set of users, such as a line of business, department, or other organizational unit. A business group is created within a tenant by the tenant administrator.

A business group can have access to catalog items specific to that group and to catalog items that are shared between business groups in the same tenant. Each business group has one or more reservations that determine on which compute resources, virtual machines that this group has requested can be provisioned. To request catalog items, a user must belong to at least one business group. A user can be a member of more than one business group, and can have different roles in different groups.

A business group must have at least one business group manager, who monitors the resource use for the group and often is an approver for catalog requests.… Read the rest