Amazon AWS & Microsoft Azure Part 1. - Virtual Machines

I was very keen to learn about these two CLOUD giants namely Amazon's AWS & Microsoft's Azure.  So I started to explore about them that how are they similar and different from their offering perspective.

Both of them are Public Cloud offerings as most of the people are aware of it. So let's just start.
Azure has near to 68 offerings that one can choose from their big list whereas AWS has near to 100 offerings. Further, you can check their offerings on other blog posts. Like TOM's IT ProT has a very good comparison of it.

Starting with their Virtual Machine Related Services:-

AWS - EC2 ( Elastic Compute) & Azure Virtual Machines (Compute)

Here you can choose from a wide variety of Virtual machine instances that you can deploy and start using. So will start how to create a VM in EC2 and end with AWS Virtual machine.


Step1. Need to setup an account for AWS & Azure .

AWS has various type of Instances available, in layman's terms size of virtual machines. I"ll be using a Free Tier instance which will be T2.Micro

Similar way how to create a EC2 instance, you can check on  Amazon tutorials as well.

Azure has different size of Virtual Machine available.

Installing PowerShell & PowerCLI in MAC OS

Mac Install 

Install These are the detailed instructions. 

Step 1 - Download PowerShell for MAC and need to check whether it allows you to install if gives you an error related to the unidentified application. To resolve this, click the Apple symbol in the menu bar and open System Preferences > Security & Privacy and then click Open Anyway.
Installed will be there and install.

Step 2 - Make sure you did not miss this step from the PowerShell installation instruction:

brew install openssl brew install curl --with-openssl 

Step 3 - Create the following directory if it does not exists by running the following command: 

mkdir -p ~/.local/share/powershell/Modules 

Step 4 - Extract the PowerCLI modules into the directory you created above by running the following command: 

unzip PowerCLI.ViCore.zip -d ~/.local/share/powershell/Modules 

unzip PowerCLI.Cis.zip -d ~/.local/share/powershell/Modules 

unzip PowerCLI.Vds.zip -d ~/.local/share/powershell/Modules

Renew the IP of VMkernel port if assigned from DHCP.

While working with one of vSAN HomeLab, i have assigned VMkernel port to get IP from DHCP and I should have assigned it on different subnet but did on the same subnet as of vMotion.
So, without removing and re-creating the vmkernel port i have came across this esxcli command:



esxcli network ip interface set -e false -i vmkN ; esxcli network ip interface set -e true -i vmkN

esxcli network ip interface ipv4 get

no element found line 1 column 0 in vSphere Replication

While working with SRM, I came across the problem with vSphere Replication that

no element found line 1 column 0 

in its VAMI console i.e https:\\vSphereReplicationIP:5480.

Its there because one vSphere Replication Appliance can only be registered with one vCenter Server and once it is done , if somehow there is error in the communication between vCenter & vSphere Replication Server you"ll end up getting this error.

How I resolved this.

1. Removed the solution user present in users and group for the designated vSphere Replication Appliance.
Solution User will be like : com.vmware.vr-UUID of vcenter Server.

2. Try and reinstall the certificates of vSphere Replication from VAMI console.

3. Now it should work.

Alarm Override at Virtual Machine Workaround

Just recently in a delivery of vSphere, a participant asked for this question:-

Could we override an alarm created at datacenter object on an individual virtual machine?

Directly it will not allow as you could check in the below given screenshot:

A workaround for this is to create two different folders: FOLDER 1 for which you want to EXCLUDE virtual machines and FOLDER 2 in which you want to include virtual machines.

Instead of creating an alarm at data center Object level. Create an alarm at the folder level.

When you set an alarm on a parent object, such as a vCenter Server, a data center, or a cluster, all applicable child objects inherit the alarm. You can also set an alarm on a folder to propagate the same alarm to all objects contained in that folder. You cannot change or override an alarm that is set on a child object from its parent object. You must change the alarm on the child object itself.

VM from template will have the same SID

I was delivering a training and got a question:- Whether SID will remain same when we deploy a VM from template.

I knew the answer but just wanted to verify it.

YES!!  SID will remain same when we deploy a VM from template without sysprep or running customspec manager.

W7-01 is a windows 7 virtual machine.

W7-02 is deployed from template of W7-01 virtual machine.

Error Installing ESXi on Dell R720

• I was working in a datacenter with an administrator and got this error while trying to upgrade ESXi host.

• Later on did everything and came up with the solution to delete the RAID on which ESXi was installed and re-create the RAID. 
• Even after re-creating the RAID for ESXi installation it did not work.
• Later on, I realized to verify that the RAID that we have created was not initialized.
• Post reinitialization it worked and ESXi was installed.
• Here are some screenshots of RAID initialization:-

RAID Initialization - Dell PERC

What will happen if I upgrade my ESXi to 6.5 and add upgraded ESXi to new vCenter Server?

Virtual SAN 6.5

I will be able to see my existing vSAN Datastore, but I will not be able to use it.

As of now, i have created a cluster for virtual SAN. My hosts are just a part of my US Datacenter.

When i tried cloning my slax virtual mahine to this vSAN datastore, it gives me error

A general system error occurred: PBM error occurred during PreCloneCheckCallback: pbm.fault.PBMFault;

No VASA Provider for schema namespace (VSAN) found.

Virtual Flash Resource in Virtual Machine

VMware has already given some explanation for vFRC:-

1.  VMware vSphere® Flash Read Cache® 1.0
2. Performance of vSphere Flash Read Cache in VMware vSphere 5.5

Here I will show how you can configure:

1. Add a Flash/SSD Resource on your ESXi host which should not be claimed or used for any other purpose.
   
   
   
   
   
2. Once added you have to share this resource with individual virtual machine disk or whichever is I/O intensive.
   
   
   
   
3. The amount of vFRC reservation you want to have along with the desired block size.

Updating ESXi host & vCenter Server

Different methods are available for upgrading ESXi host as listed here.
I have used the very common methods to update i.e

1. Directly connecting the iso on the server and upgrading

2. Online upgrade from VMware software repository




Updating ESXi by mounting ISO

• Before upgrading ESXi 6.0.0 Build 2494585
  
  

• Inserted the CD/DVD.

           

   

• Initialised the server to install ESXi then choosen the option Upgrade ESXi, preserve VMFS Datastore.

         

• Once upgrade is done, just have to reboot the ESXi and here you go, ESXi has been successfully upgraded to the appropriate version.

           

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Online update of ESXi by connecting to the repository

• You can click here for latest patch release of ESXi 

• Before running this command you just have to make sure your ESXi has http client is enabled 

The same could be done using ESXi by configuring the firewall using ESXCLI:-
To Enable the rule:-
esxcli network firewall ruleset set -e true -r httpClient

To disable the rule:-
esxcli network firewall ruleset set -e false -r httpClient

Finally you have the ESXCLI with which it could be upgraded. 
It will take significant amout of time depending on your bandwidth.

esxcli software profile update -p ESXi-6.0.0-20160804001-standard \ 
-d https://hostupdate.vmware.com/software/VUM/PRODUCTION/main/vmw-depot-index.xml

Once everything is done, just reboot and enjoy.!!






For vCenter Server Appliance Upgrade:- Click Here,  

VMWare has already given an efficient step by step upgrade.

Reset System Configuration using powercli

From quite a few months I am using Ravello Systems cloud infrastructure for my lab testing purpose and it was very painful for me whenever I wanted to test a feature or solution I have to deploy a new ESXi every time.

To ease that task I have come with the idea of writing a script, after dedicating few here is my cup of tea you could use along with the snippet.

$vmhost="esxi01vsan62-srm-xbdx487y.srv.ravcloud.com"

set-vmhost $vmhost -state maintenance

Connect-VIServer $vmhost -username root -password VMw@re1

$esxhost = Get-VMHost $vmhost

$hostview = $esxhost | Get-View

$ns = Get-View -Id $hostview.ConfigManager.firmwareSystem

$ns.ResetFirmwareToFactoryDefaults()

Fault Tolerance(FT) VM in vSAN 6.2

Using my nested infrastructure I turned ON Fault Tolerance (FT) virtual machine on vSAN 6.2.

 

Initially got some warnings related to vitual nic issue. 

As shared storage is a must requirement for FT VM to work. So VMware has successfully came up with the support FT.

 Here i just selected the datastore for creation of the necessary files which are to be present on shared datastore(Virtual SAN).

vSphere Replication 6.1

Replication in English means copying.  vSphere Replication 6.1 is the latest release by VMware in which they came up with some new features. I frequently used to get a lot of questions about vSphere Replication, so here are some of the FAQ's.

Q1. Do you need vSphere Replication Appliance at both the sites in order to replicate?

A1. Yes, if you are doing a replication from one site to another site.

Q2. Does vSphere Replication Appliance support snapshots?

A2. Directly i cannot say it supports snapshots, but as per my observation and experience vSphere Replication does not replicate virtual machine snapshot hierarchy at the target site.

Q3. Is it possible to get more than one Management Server on one site.

A3. No,

Click here for more FAQ's . If you still have any question write it in comments.

Mirage Management Server Installation 5.7

For the installation of MMS(Mirage Management Server) what I usually call it as. Now just a few days back the new version is released i.e 5.8 with a lot of enhancements. There is a prerequisite for the installation of MMS i.e the machine should be joined to a domain.

1. Double click on Mirage Management Server setup. 

2. Provide with the correct SQL Server name & instance as discussed in previous SQL server installation for mirage.

 3. In 5.7 and 5.8, Now we support mongoDB that needs minimum 250 GB of disk space.

4. Provide in with the user whether you are using a domain or specific user from AD and provide the qualified name for administrator group from AD.