vSAN

Manage VSAN 5.5 with RVC Part 2 – VSAN Cluster Administration

by Florian Grehl
December 27, 2013April 25, 2017
3 Comments

Part 2 of the "Manage VSAN with RVC" series explains commands related to VSAN cluster administration tasks. This commands are required to gather informations about ESXi hosts and the cluster itself. They also provide important informations when you want to maintain your VSAN cluster:

vsan.host_info
vsan.cluster_info
vsan.check_limits
vsan.whatif_host_failures
vsan.enter_maintenance_mode
vsan.resync_dashboard

Manage VSAN 5.5 with RVC Part 1 - Basic Configuration Tasks

by Florian Grehl
December 23, 2013April 25, 2017
5 Comments

The "Manage VSAN with RVC" series explains how to use Ruby vSphere Console command line to control your VSAN environment. The first part explains basic configuration tasks that are required for the initial setup:

vsan.enable_vsan_on_cluster
vsan.disable_vsan_on_cluster
vsan.apply_license_to_cluster
vsan.host_consume_disks
vsan.cluster_set_default_policy
vsan.host_wipe_vsan_disks

Solve VSAN "Network status: Misconfiguration detected" Problems

by Florian Grehl
December 18, 2013December 18, 2013
2 Comments

One problem that comes up quite often during VMware Virtual SAN Beta testing is that the Network status keeps in the "Misconfiguration detected" state. Sometimes the cluster also shows up with different "Network Partition Groups". This message can be caused by several problems. In this post i am going through the most commonly pitfalls and how to solve them.

SPBM RVC namespace - NoMethodError: undefined method 'RetrieveServiceContent'

by Florian Grehl
December 16, 2013December 29, 2014

The latest VSAN Beta Refresh includes a new Ruby vSphere Console (RVC) namespace to manage VM Storage Policies. The SPBM (Storage Policy Based Management) called namespaces does not work out of the box. It crashes when you want to query the available policies or check for compliance.

/localhost/Hamburg> spbm.check_compliance ~/vms/vma.virten.lab/
NoMethodError: undefined method `RetrieveServiceContent' for PbmServiceInstance("ServiceInstance"):RbVmomi::VIM::PbmServiceInstance

rvc-spbm-error This problem can be solved by updating RVC to the latest version.

Identify and solve ineligible disk problems in Virtual SAN

by Florian Grehl
December 11, 2013August 25, 2020
1 Comment

During VMware Virtual SAN (vSAN) installation on old reused hardware I noticed that there was no eligible data disk available. I can't claim the disks for vSAN or create a disk group. There was no further information on why the data disks are not eligible. Thanks to the vSAN troubleshooting commands provided by RVC (Ruby vSphere Console) I could find and solve the reason quite quick.

HP Microserver with 2.5" SSD

by Florian Grehl
December 5, 2013December 18, 2023
9 Comments

vSphere Flash Read Cache (vFRC / vFlash) and VMware Virtual SAN (vSAN) - These are the two groundbreaking features in vSphere 5.5. To use one of the features your hardware has to to fulfill a mandatory requirement - A Solid State Drive. To use an SSD with your HP Microserver you need an adapter. Most adapters or "Mounting Brackets" do not work because they are only good to fit the SSD into a 3.5" slot. They do not have the SATA Connectors at the required position. You need a special adapter for the SSD to fit into the backplane.

HP Microserver N36L
HP Microserver N40L
HP Microserver N54L
HP Microserver Gen8 G1610T
HP Microserver Gen8 G2020T

Read More »HP Microserver with 2.5" SSD

vSAN Lab with VMware Workstation 10

by Florian Grehl
December 1, 2013December 2, 2013
5 Comments

This week VMware has published a new version of its Virtual SAN Beta. There are a lot of features that does not necessary need a real physical lab. To get into the initial setup, scale out and failover functionality and the various command line options, a virtual lab is definitely a reasonable option. As you might know, a SSD is required for vSAN. Instead of emulating an SSD, I am going to use a real SSD with the new SSD Passthrough feature in VMware Workstation 10.