Reclaim disk space on VMware thin disk

Tags

reclaim space, sdelete, thin disk, vmkfstools -K, vmware, vmware thindisk reclaim

In a vSphere based virtualization environment we can mainly use two disk types(Thick & Thin).I hope you all know the difference between these two.

To optimize our shared/Direct attached storage we can use thin disk. But the problem is even we delete the data from os level . It will not reclaim automatically from the storage.

To overcome this issue we have two options.

1. Use third party tool(if it’s a Windows we can use sdelete) to zero-out the disk blocks and using vmkfstools we can shrink the disk
2. Storage vMotion the virtual machine or VMDK to a datastore formatted with a different block size

In this article we are going to showcase how to use sdelete & vmkfstools to this operation

1.This vm we have two thin disks. We will use second disk for the our test case. Capacity of the disk is 3GB



1. From the datastore we can see 80.47 GB free space

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How to use hash table with Powercli

Tags

Hash Table, powercli;powercli report

Hash table is a data structure where we can store our data.Comparing to the data arrays in powercli/powershell , the main difference is with hash table we can easily handle multiple type of data such as Integer,String,etc..

Some times we need to generate reports using some of the PowerShell commands(export-csv,out-file,add-content).With below example my requirement is to generate vm report which include VMname,Datastore name,Network port group and vmawre tools status.But to gather all the information we have to use multiple get commands and then its difficult to consolidate this data.Hash table was helped me on this.I can gather values from multiple commands and assign to hash table.I have highlghted hash table related commands in my script.

import-module vmware.vimautomation.ha

connect-viserver vcsa.corp.local
$vms=get-vm

$result=@()

foreach ($vm in $vms)

    {
     $vmname=$vm.name
     $dstore=get-vm $vm.name|get-datastore
     $nicport=(get-vm $vm.name).extensiondata.network.value
     $vmtools=(get-vm $vm.name).extensiondata.guest.toolsstatus
     $properties=@{
     name=$vmname
     datastore=$dstore
     network-$nicport
     vmwaretools=$vmtools
     }

$result+=new-object psobject -property $properties
$result|select name,datastore,network,vmwaretools|export-csv d:\mycsv.csv -append -notypeinformation

how to manage vCetner appliance

Tags

Manage vCenter appliance, vCenter 6.5, vCenter appliance, vmare

.We can use the vCenter url using port 5480

Login to the vcenter using root credential

From this page we can check the overall health

We can enable/disable ssh using Access tab

 

From the network tab we can see the utlizaiton and we can change the network configuration

From the update tab we can check for vCenter appliance updates. If we have updated version DVD,ISO we can mount and check the updates

From Administration tab we can change administrator password. If we want to set password expire period we can use same tab

System Configuration tab we can use to configure syslog server. Using syslog server we can forward all the syslogs to one location

CPU and Memory tab shows us the utilization of memory & cpu

Using database tab we can see all the DB related events, alerts and tasks.

VCAP-6-Deployment

Im preparing for VCAP 6 Deployment exam & I have creating MS one note book for that.This include some of the practicals with steps and may be useful for others.

Please find the link of the onenote.

VCAP-6 Deployment one note package

 

 

 

 

VCAP-Objective 4.2-Storage Cluster,DRS,advanced settings

Tags

Datastore Cluster, EXAM, SDRS, VCAP

VCAP-Objective 4.2-Storage cluster,DRS, advanced settings

Backup & Restore Vcenter Appliance

Tags

backup restore, vcenter appliacne, vCenter appliance backup, vcenter backup restore, vcenter v6

 

Requirements

Need to download

• 2091961_linux_backup_restore.zip

From <https://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=2091961>

Extract the file and copy to the linux appliance using winscp

If youre getting below error when copying files using winscp. Pls refer bellow url

https://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/search.do?cmd=displayKC&docType=kc&docTypeID=DT_KB_1_1&externalId=2107727



We have to copy the files to the /tmp in the vcenter appliance

vsphere 6 vcenter component deployment

Tags

vcenter;vcenter appliance;vsphere

 

 

---

Steps for vCenter 6.0 Appliance Deployment

Mount the vCenter appliance 6.0 DVD and run the vcsa-setup.html file

Click on Install

 

Accept license agreement and click on “Next”

Enter the root credential of our esx host

Accept the certificate of esx host

Give a name for virtual appliance

In this lab scenario, we are going to install psc & vc in two different virtual appliances

Assign sso password, ssodomain name and Sso site name

Click on Next

Select datastore to install virtual appliance.

Assign an IP address, fqdn and other network related details.

Click on Next

Click on finish

Now we can start vcenter server appliance deployment. Process is same as as psc deployment

Enter our platofrm service controllers fqdn and sso administrator credential

Select the appliance size

Select the datastore for deployment

We are going to use embedded database(postgresql)

Click on finish

Once finish the installation, we can use vcenter fqdn or ip address to manage our vcenter

esx iscsi error Call ïscsimanager.query candidatenics"

Tags

Call ïscsimanager.query candidatenics"

In my lab environment I used iscsi as my shared storage. Today I have removed network adapters from software iscsi adapter to do some other networking stuff. After a while when im trying to reconfigure iscsi im getting below error

Call ïscsimanager.query candidatenics”

To resolve this problem I had to reset iscsi from esx shell by following below steps

Logged to the esx host & find iscsi related config files

VMware Vsphere raw device mapping

Tags

esx raw device, mappings, raw device, rdm, vsphere

Raw Device Mappings

What is raw device mapping?

Raw device mapping is a feature where the virtual machine can directly access the storage devices such as SAN or DAS.

With a VMware we will use vmdk pointer to provide the proxy facility to raw device.

In a virtual environment some cases we may need to have a raw device mappings.

Why we need raw device mapping?

• To configure Microsoft failover cluster, we can configure raw device as shared storage.
• When we are configuring Microsoft failover cluster with one node is running on as a VM & other node/s running as a physical.
• To run some of the san management software(ex hitachi horcm)
• To run some backup software on virtual machine, and needs to get storage level backup

How to Configure?

1. Here I have one vm which is prepared to mount raw device



1. Using new datastore adding procedure, we can see new lun which is provided from our shared storage(in my case im using windows iscsi server)

VMware V6-ESX Password Policy

With earlier version to manage password policies we have to edit /etc/pam.d/passwd file,

But with the vsphere 6 , once we open the file we can see below output.

Its saying we have to use esx host advanced configuration for that.