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Florian Grehl

NSX 6.2.3 with Free Log Insight Entitlement released

VMware has release an update for their network virtualization platform NSX. Together with some minor changes to the product itself, VMware announced that all users with a NSX 6.2.3 (and beyond) license are now entitled to vRealize Log Insight for NSX at no additional charge.

What's new in VMware NSX 6.2.3

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ESXi Installation on NUC6i7KYK fails with "Fatal error: 10 (Out of resources)"

When you try to install VMware ESXi 6.0 on the latest Skull Canyon Intel NUC (NUC6i7KYK), the installation fails with one of the following error messages:

Error loading /tools.t00
Compressed MD5: 39916ab4eb3b835daec309b235fcbc3b
Decompressed MD5: 000000000000000000000000000000
Fatal error: 10 (Out of resources)

Error loading /tools.t00
Compressed MD5: 000000000000000000000000000000
Decompressed MD5: 000000000000000000000000000000
Fatal error: 15 (Not found)

NUC6i7KYK-Skull-Canyon-NUC-back
This problem is caused by the Thunderbolt Controller, which is a new component in the NUC6i7KYK, and therefore only the Skull Canyon NUC is affected. The problem can be solved by temporarily disabling the Thunderbolt controller during installation.

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VMware HCL Check with PowerCLI (Proof of Concept)

Announced in my VMware HCL in JSON Format post a few days ago, here is now a working version of my script. The script does not create a fancy report at the moment, it just writes some output and the result. It's only intended to show that it actually works. Here is an example:

vmware-hcl-check-script

There are still some problems, but especially with HP, Dell or IBM Systems, it produces good results.

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VMware HCL in JSON Format

When you want to upgrade ESXi hosts, or just want do create health reports, you might want to verify that the system is listed in VMwares HCL. The HCL is currently only provided as website which might be a problem for automated reports. To make HCL checks, I've transformed the HCL into the JSON format, which works great in scripts. Here is the result:

vmware-hcl-json

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Determine TBW from SSDs with S.M.A.R.T Values in ESXi (smartctl)

smartctl-in-esxiSolid-State-Drives are getting more and more common in ESXi Hosts. They are used for caching (vFlash Read Cache, PernixData FVP), Virtual SAN or plain Datastores. A problem that comes with SSDs is their limited lifetime per cell. Depending on their technology, each cell can be overwritten from 1.000 times in consumer TLC SSDs up to 100.000 times in enterprise SLC based SSDs.

The value to keep an eye on is the guaranteed TBW (Total Bytes Written or Terabytes Written) which is typically provided by the vendor in their specifications. This value describes how many Terabytes can be written to the entire device, until the warranty expires. The current value can be readout with S.M.A.R.T. in the Total_LBAs_Written field.

Unfortunatelly, VMware makes it hard to readout RAW S.M.A.R.T values on ESXi hosts. For that reason I've ported a version of smartctl, which is part of  smartmontools to ESXi. I've made the package available as VIB. The download link is at the bottom of this post.

Read More »Determine TBW from SSDs with S.M.A.R.T Values in ESXi (smartctl)

Deploy VMware NSX-V in Homelabs with Limited Resources

downsizing-nsxWhen deploying VMware NSX-V in a homelab, its huge resource requirement might be an issue. In the default configuration a small setup with NSX Manager, 3 NSX Controllers and 2 Edge gateways requires 30 GB Memory. Consumer VMs to connect to logical switches requiring additional resources.

This post explains how you can deploy VMware NSX in your homelab with less than 8GB Memory by downsizing each component including:

  • NSX Manager
  • NSX Controllers
  • NSX Edge Gateways
  • Consumer VMs

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Send dvSwitch Port Statistics to Graphite

For network analysis I want to have Distributed Switch port statistics in my Graphite installation. I’ve created a script that pulls dvSwitch port statistics from a vCenter server, or directly from an ESXi host and sends them to a Carbon Relay. Ports connected to NSX Logical Switches, which are actually distributed Port Groups, are also included. This allows to create universal dashboards with Grafana for example.

dvswitch-port-statistics-graphite

This script is intended to run as cronjob every minute. Port Statistics are provided as counters which can be easily converted to per second values with Graphite functions.

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