I was recently involved in a couple customer conversations where the main topics were focused on monitoring and troubleshooting events in vCenter particularly for Virtual SAN.

I know that particular topic has been covered a few times in the past, not only on the VMware corporate storage blog but also by other community blogs. To be more specific, one of the VSAN Champions William Lam has covered this topic extensively on his personal blog.

The work that we have done on the topic of vCenter Server Alarms and Virtual SAN stems from the findings identified in two articles published by William. For more information on what are the recommended vCenter Server Alarms for Virtual SAN and how to add and configure them take a look at the articles listed below:

• Handy VSAN VOBs for Creating vCenter Alarms – by William Lam, VMware, Inc
• New VOBs for Creating vCenter Server Alarms in vSphere 6.0 – by William Lam, VMware, Inc
• Operationalizing VMware Virtual SAN: Configuring vCenter Alarms – by Joe Cook, VMware, Inc

With vSphere 6.0 and Virtual SAN 6.0 nearing generally available very soon, this script can make things a lot easier for all Virtual SAN customers and provide a simplified way to get all the available vCenter Server alarms for Virtual SAN added and configured within seconds.

I got a chance to work on this little nugget with one of the world’s baddest PowerCLI gurus on the planet and also another VSAN Champion Alan Renouf and William Lam as well whom are members of the VMware virtualization team codename #TheWreckingCrew. Here is a PowerCLI sample code that can be utilized to add and configure all of the vCenter Server Alarms for Virtual SAN. These alarms are applicable to both Virtual SAN versions 5.5 as well as 6.0. Continue reading →

The cat is officially out of the bag, as they say!. Everyone in the world should now be aware of the fact that VMware Virtual SAN 6.0 supports an all-flash architecture. I think it’s time to discuss a couple of items with regards to a new architecture.

The Virtual SAN 6.0 All-Flash architecture uses flash-based devices for both caching and persistent storage. In this architecture, the flash cache is used completely as write buffer. This all-flash architecture introduces a two-tier model of flash devices:

• write-intensive, high endurance caching tier for the writes
• read-intensive, cost-effective flash device tier for data persistence

The new device tiering model not only deliver incredible performance results, but it can also potentially introduce cost savings for the Virtual SAN 6.0 all-flash architecture depending on the design and hardware configuration of the solution.

Virtual SAN Configuration Requirements

In order to configure Virtual SAN 6.0 for the all-flash architecture, the flash devices need to be appropriately identified within the system. In Virtual SAN, flash devices are identified and categorized for the caching tier by default. In order to successfully enabled the all-flash architecture configuration we need manually to flag the flash devices that will be utilized for data persistence or capacity. This configuration is performed via one of the supported command line interface tools such as RVC or ESXCLI.

RVC handles the configuration of the devices at a cluster level. Below you’ll find an image, which illustrates the usable syntax for flagging the flash devices with RVC.

ESXCLI handles it at the per-host level. Below you’ll find an image, which illustrates the usable syntax for flagging the flash devices with esxcli.

Another command line utility that is worth knowing is the VSAN Disk Query (vdq). This utility allows users to identify when the flash devices are configured for used in the capacity tier as well as if they are eligible to be use by Virtual SAN.
Whenever vdq is used to query the flash devices on a host as illustrated below, the output will display a new property called “IsCapacityFlash”. This property specifies whether a flash device will be utilized for the capacity tier instead of the caching tier.

For more in-depth information on the use of vdq, please take a look at a post by one of VMware’s elite engineers and VSAN Champion William Lam.

It’s important to highlight that flagging flash devices to be used for capacity cannot be performed from the option available in the vSphere Web Client UI. It has to be performed via the CLI. (wait for it….wait for it)

Once the flash devices, they will be displayed as magnetic devices (HDD) in the disk management section of the Virtual SAN management tab.

That’s about it, after the flash devices have been properly tagged, the rest of the Virtual SAN configuration procedure is as easy as it was in the previous version.

So in the spirit of making things easy and reduce any contention with getting into the CLI and manually flagging every disk. I’ve been able to design a tool along with my good pal and now a VSAN Champion Brian Graf that should take care of disk tagging process for just about everyone.

Here is a demo of how simple it is to configure a Virtual SAN 6.0 all-flash cluster with a teaser of the Virtual SAN All-Flash Configuration Utility. Oh yeah, I almost forgot to mention….. It’s a 64 node all-flash cluster (The BigDaddy).

– Enjoy

For future updates on Virtual SAN (VSAN), vSphere Virtual Volumes (VVOLs) and other Software-defined Storage technologies as well as vSphere + OpenStack be sure to follow me on Twitter: @PunchingClouds

If you already heard the exciting news about VMware new offerings – vSphere 6, Virtual SAN 6 and vSphere Virtual Volumes – and thought it can’t get any better, we have a small surprise for you. Virtual SAN 6.0 includes a host of new features including high performance snapshots and clones, all flash Virtual SAN with intelligent 2-tier model, failure domains and more. One of the most requested features among Virtual SAN 5.5 customers is enabling greater visibility to what happens “under the hood”. The Virtual SAN team developed a new health dashboard that will help customers tackle underlying hardware issues as part of the v6.0 release, but in addition to that the vRealize operations team developed an advanced set of dashboards aimed at making Virtual SAN users life much easier.

The Virtual SAN team along with the vRealize Operations team are thrilled to offer you a unique opportunity to beta test the new vRealize Operations Management Pack for Storage Devices. The management pack will feature advanced insight into Virtual SAN through advanced analytics to enable rapid troubleshooting and cluster optimization.

We will share more details closer to the start of the beta program which will kick off in Q1 2015. If you would like to get more information and be on the list of people who get an invitation to participate in the beta, please sign up here – www.vmware.com/go/vrops4vsan-beta

Check out the vROps MPSD blog post for more details – http://blogs.vmware.com/management/2015/02/vsan-simplifying-sddc-storage-operations-with-vrealize-operations-management-pack-for-storage-devices.html

Welcome to the next installment in our Operationalizing VMware Virtual SAN series. In our previous article we detailed “How to configure vCenter alarms for Virtual SAN”. In today’s article we will demonstrate how to automate that configuration workflow leveraging PowerCLI.

(Many thanks to VMware genius Alan Renouf (@alanrenouf) for his contributions to this topic) [Joe Cook: @CloudAnimal]

The PowerCLI code required to automate the configuration of vCenter Alarms for Virtual SAN is considerably straightforward.

1. Connect to vCenter

Connect-VIServer -Server 192.168.100.1 -User Administrator@vsphere.local -Password vmware

2. Define the the Virtual SAN cluster where you would like the rules to be created

$Cluster = "Cluster Site A"

3. Next we create a hash table with the desired VMware ESXi Observeration IDs (VOB IDs) for Virtual SAN and include a description for each VOB ID.

If you are not used to programming, the concept of arrays and hash tables may be a bit confusing. Using variables is generally much easier to understand. One way of understanding variables is to think of them simply as a short amount of text used to represent a larger amount of text in your program or script ($x=”larger amount of text”). Instead of typing “larger amount of text” continually, you can simply type $x and the language interpreter (in our case PowerShell), will substitute the string “larger amount of text” wherever it finds $x in your script. Variables can be used to greatly reduce the amount of code you have to type, make your scripts much easier to read, and have many other uses as well.

If we think of variables as ways to store one value to reference, we can think of arrays as a way to store multiple values to reference. In our example today, we would have to create at least 32 variables to perform the same work that we can with one hash table.

A hash table is a type of array that is also known as a dictionary. It is a collection of name-value pairs (e.g. “name”=”value”) that can be used . Here we have an example of a basic hash table:

$HashTableName = @{
VOB_ID_A="VOB Description";
VOB_ID_B="VOB Description";
VOB_ID_C="VOB Description";
}

In the table below we have a breakdown of the components of the code used to create a hash table:

Here is an example of a hash table with a single key-value pair representing a single vCenter Alarm for Virtual SAN:

$VSANAlerts = @{
"esx.audit.vsan.clustering.enabled" = "Virtual SAN clustering service had been enabled";
}

Below is the actual hash table that we will use in our example Virtual SAN Alarm Configuration script. It is fully populated with all of the recommended VOB IDs for Virtual SAN along with the description for each. We have labeled this hash table as “$VSANAlerts”. You will see $VSANAlerts referenced further along in the script as we reference the items within our hash table.

$VSANAlerts = @{
 "esx.audit.vsan.clustering.enabled" = "Virtual SAN clustering service had been enabled";
 "esx.clear.vob.vsan.pdl.online" = "Virtual SAN device has come online.";
 "esx.clear.vsan.clustering.enabled" = "Virtual SAN clustering services have now been enabled.";
 "esx.clear.vsan.vsan.network.available" = "Virtual SAN now has at least one active network configuration.";
 "esx.clear.vsan.vsan.vmknic.ready" = "A previously reported vmknic now has a valid IP.";
 "esx.problem.vob.vsan.lsom.componentthreshold" = "Virtual SAN Node: Near node component count limit.";
 "esx.problem.vob.vsan.lsom.diskerror" = "Virtual SAN device is under permanent error.";
 "esx.problem.vob.vsan.lsom.diskgrouplimit" = "Failed to create a new disk group.";
 "esx.problem.vob.vsan.lsom.disklimit" = "Failed to add disk to disk group.";
 "esx.problem.vob.vsan.pdl.offline" = "Virtual SAN device has gone offline.";
 "esx.problem.vsan.clustering.disabled" = "Virtual SAN clustering services have been disabled.";
 "esx.problem.vsan.lsom.congestionthreshold" = "Virtual SAN device Memory/SSD congestion has changed.";
 "esx.problem.vsan.net.not.ready" = "A vmknic added to Virtual SAN network config doesn't have valid IP.";
 "esx.problem.vsan.net.redundancy.lost" = "Virtual SAN doesn't haven any redundancy in its network configuration.";
 "esx.problem.vsan.net.redundancy.reduced" = "Virtual SAN is operating on reduced network redundancy.";
 "esx.problem.vsan.no.network.connectivity" = "Virtual SAN doesn't have any networking configuration for use."
 }

(For more information on working with PowerShell hash tables, see this handy Microsoft TechNet article)

4. Next we use the Get-View cmdlet to query the vCenter Alarm Manager for each VOB ID listed in step 3.

The Get-View cmdlet returns the vSphere inventory objects (VIObject) that correspond to the specified search criteria.

$alarmMgr = Get-View AlarmManager
 $entity = Get-Cluster $Cluster | Get-View
 $VSANAlerts.Keys | Foreach {
 $Name = $VSANAlerts.Get_Item($_)
 $Value = $_

5. Create the vCenter Alarm specification object

 $alarm = New-Object VMware.Vim.AlarmSpec
 $alarm.Name = $Name
 $alarm.Description = $Name
 $alarm.Enabled = $TRUE
 $expression = New-Object VMware.Vim.EventAlarmExpression
 $expression.EventType = Vim.Event.EventEx
 $expression.eventTypeId = $Value
 $expression.objectType = "HostSystem"
 $expression.status = "red"
 $alarm.expression = New-Object VMware.Vim.OrAlarmExpression
 $alarm.expression.expression += $expression
 $alarm.setting = New-Object VMware.Vim.AlarmSetting
 $alarm.setting.reportingFrequency = 0
 $alarm.setting.toleranceRange = 0

6. Create the vCenter Alarm in vCenter

 Write-Host "Creating Alarm on $Cluster for $Name"
 $CreatedAlarm = $alarmMgr.CreateAlarm($entity.MoRef, $alarm)
 }
 Write-Host "All Alarms Added to $Cluster"

As you can see, the steps to create vCenter Alarms for Virtual SAN are actually pretty straightforward. If you have not yet began monitoring your Virtual SAN environment, these steps can accelerate the process quite rapidly and you really do not have to be an expert in PowerCLI to do so.

VMware Hands on Labs

Here is a great tip brought to you by our friends at the VMware Hands on Labs. If you would like an excellent shortcut to getting “hands on” creating vCenter Alarms for Virtual SAN, using PowerCLI cmdlets, try out the lab below:

HOL-SDC-1427 – VMware Software Defined Storage: Module 5: Advanced Software Defined Storage With SPBM and PowerCLI (30 minutes)

We have many more articles on there way so share, re-tweet, or whatever your favorite social media method is. You will not want to miss these!

(Thanks to @millardjk for his keen eye)

Resources

• HOL-SDC-1427 – VMware Software Defined Storage: Module 5: Advanced Software-Defined Storage With SPBM and PowerCLI (30 minutes)

• Download and Install PowerCLI 5.8 Release 1
• Download and Install PowerCLI for vCD and vCloud Air Tenants 5.8 Release 1

• VMware vSphere PowerCLI 5.8 Release 1 Cmdlet Reference
• VMware PowerCLI Community Pages

One of the biggest advantages of Virtual SAN is that it is so easy to set up and use.  Out of all the evaluation options available to them, many customers have realized that trying it out in their own environment is entirely feasible.

We’ve been keeping track of the many Virtual SAN evaluations to date, and have created a quick guide that should help anyone evaluating Virtual SAN in their environment.  In it, you’ll find a checklist on configurations, verifying compatibility, testing the network, expected behaviors for failure testing, and tips on testing performance.  It’s an essential guide for anyone working with Virtual SAN.

We hope you find this document useful!

Download: Tips for a Successful VMware Virtual SAN Evaluation