Thursday, 2 February 2017

ESXi Troubleshooting-I


Hello Professionals,

Requirement for lab setup:
 1. esxi host
 2.VCenter
 3. VI Tool Kit, download from here
 4. Vsphere Cli, download from here
 5. putty and updated version of powershell.

Today am going to share some interesting facts and point for esxtop command. which is used in esxi to see the performance in regard of vm, cpu, storage, memory and many more.
This command help to analyze the issue for cpu, memory, network or any issue with vm, the output can be analysed by VisualESXtop, perform and other tools available with vmware.
To see whats going on host level, will login to one of esxi host with putty. Remember to enable login with putty you have to enable ssh connections from security profile other wise it will not allow and give you error network refused on putty session.
After login and giving command for esxtop it will show you like this. where it will shows the current usage of esxi host.

it fetch the performance metrics from raw counters from VMkernel system info nodes.
and the description result stands for
ID – resource pool or VM ID of the running worlds resource pool or VM or world ID of running world.
GID – Resource pool ID of the running worlds resource pool or VM.
NAME –  name.
NWLD – Number of members in a running worlds resource pool or VM.
%USED – CPU core cycles used.
%RUN – CPU scheduled time.
%SYS – Time spent in the ESX(i) VMkernel on behalf of the resource pool, VM or world to processor interrupts.
%WAIT – Time spent in the blocked or busy wait state.
%RDY – Time CPU is ready to run, waiting for something else
High %RDY and high %USED can imply CPU over-commitment

By default esxtop will refresh result every 5 sec, and you can modify by command s 2 (that will refresh in 2 sec). Esxtop run with "interactive" mode by default and collect and assemble a report for cpu, memory, disk and network statistics. Here are some commands which help to collect the specific task.
c – CPU resource utilization.
m – memory resource utilization.
d – storage (disk) adapter resource utilization.
u – storage device resource utilization.
v – storage VM resource utilization.
f – displays a panel for adding or removing statistics columns to or from the current panel.
n – network resource utilization.
h – help.
o – displays a panel for changing the order of statistics.
i – interrupt resource utilization.
p – power resource utilization.
q – quit.
s – delay of updates in seconds. w – write current setup to the config file.
and the base command is esxtop [h] [v] [s] [a] [c file] [d delay]

By pressing O or o you can re-arrange the esxtop output like this.

 You can get access of esxi host by typing DCUI command on this putty session and perform the respective task.

 From this putty session you can do more configuration for esxi host also like change host name, IP configuration, DNS settings and more. To do this you need to type vi /etc/host and screen will appear like this.
 To modify here need to follow these lines
Without entering insert mode move to the character you want to change, press R, then press the key for the character you want to change to.   To save and quit press Esc, :, w, q. 
To delete any lines here, Press d twice to delete the whole line. You can also press x to delete only one character at a time when you are not in insert mode.
To see available commands here type cd /usr/sbin  then ls and the output will be like and many more are there.
 

To update and see the nic status

vmware –l shows version of vmware
esxcli system-- shows more details about vmware
esxcli storage--about storage
esxcli storage nfs list--if any nfs storage is there

There is a fantastic tool kit VI Toolkit which works with windows powershell. After installing VI Toolkit you will see a icon on your desktop just double click and it will show you like this.
 

To use this first you can have connect the vcenter by typing connect-VIServer and it will pop up and credential screen to login like
 
After successful login  this will be screen, you can see its show that you are connected with 443 port to vcenter with authorized user


Just type the get-VIcommand to see the available, there are lots of command to perform from vcenter level. Like show all vm, show only power on vm, show storage and many more.

Listing out some Known issues with VI Toolkit


The VI Toolkit (for Windows) 1.5 has the following known issues:(with Ref of Vmware Blogs)

Get-Datastore : (Get-Datastore).FreeSpaceMB might not return the actual datastore free space after a virtual machine is powered on. A refresh should be made first.

Get-Log : The output of Get-LogType cmdlet can not be pipelined to the Get-Log cmdlet.

Get-ScsiLunPath :When running Get-ScsiLunPath, the Scsi device can not be specified by name.

Get-VIEvent :When Get-VIEvent is run for entities other than virtual machines, an incorrect result is returned.
    When Get-VIEvent is run against an ESX host and a non-existing user is specified, a hundred entity records are returned.
    When Get-VIEvent is run against an ESX host whose time zone setting differs from the time zone setting of the local machine, no result is returned.
    Workaround: Run Get-VIEvent directly on the ESX host.

Get-View : Get-View might behave inconsistently depending on how the managed object is specified.
Get-VM :During the process of creating a template from a virtual machine, Get-VM returns both the virtual machine and template objects.

Get-VMHostFirmware:Get-VMHostFirmware can not be executed by users with read-only rights on the ESX or the VirtualCenter host.

Get-VMGuest: When Get-VMGuest is run against a virtual machine that is just starting, the properties of the returned VMGuest object are not filled at one time.

Invoke-VMScript: On 64-bit operating systems, Invoke-VMScript works only in 32-bit mode.
    Invoke-VMScript does not work if the guest operating system is installed on a hard drive different than C: or D:.
    Invoke-VMScript might hang when executed against a virtual machine running on ESX 3.0.

Move-Inventory:Move-Inventory does not work with virtual machine templates.

New-HardDisk: When New-HardDisk is run, the Split parameter can not be applied to the hard disk.
    New-HardDisk can not create an undoable disk on a powered on virtual machine.

New-VM: New-VM can not create virtual machines whose names contain special chars on VirtualCenter 2.0/ ESX3.0.

New-VMHostNetworkAdapter: New-VMHostNetworkAdapter cannot set the value of the MAC address on VirtualCenter 2.5 and ESX 3.5.
    New-VMHostNetworkAdapter does not accept object names as arguments for the VirtualSwitch parameter.
    Workaround: Pass to the VirtualSwitch parameter VirtualSwitch objects instead of their names.

New-OSCustomizationSpec :The operating system customization specifications with passwords created by New-OSCustomizationSpec, if edited with VIClient, throw errors when applied.

New-Snapshot: When invoked with the Quiesced switch parameter on, New-Snapshot creates a snapshot with Quiesced parameter value $false.

Remove-Template: When invoked with the DeleteFromDisk switch parameter on, Remove-Template is not executed synchronously.

Remove-VMHostNtpServer: The pipeline Get-VMHost | Get-VMHostNtpServer | Remove-VMHostNtpServer does not work.

Set-HardDisk: Set-HardDisk can not set the hard disk persistence to IndependentNonPersistent.

Set-ScsiLunPath: Set-ScsiLunPath does not work properly when the Active parameter is set to $false.

Set-VMHost: Set-VMHost throws an error when applied on a disconnected virtual machine host.

Set-VMHostDiagnosticPartition: Enabling a diagnostic partition with the Set-VMHostDiagnosticPartition cmdlet does not work on VirtualCenter 2.0/ ESX 3.0 platforms.

Set-VMHostNetworkAdapter:On VMware ESX 3.x/ VirtualCenter 2.x, the Set-VMHostNetworkAdapter cmdlet might take longer time to update the values of the FullDuplex and BitRatePerSec network adapter properties due to the hardware configuration being performed, and the object returned by Set-VMHostNetworkAdapter might still contain the current configuration instead of the updated one.

Set-VMHostSNMP: Set-VMHostSNMP fails to enable VMHostSNMP and to set the ReadOnlyCommunityString when called for the first time.
    Workaround: Run the command again.
    The default value of the Set-VMHostSNMP TargetPort parameter is a random number instead of the
     port  number.

    Set-VMHostSNMP does not take in account the value of the TargetPort parameter.

Update-Tools: Update-Tools might hang if the mouse, VGA, and network drivers are not signed. A standard Windows dialog appears and a manual interaction is needed.
Inventory Provider: The output of the dir command, run while the Inventory Provider is running, might be difficult to read.

Datastore Provider: Files can not be copied in or out the Datastore Provider.
VI .NET Toolkit: The ScreenDimensions property of the VMGuestInfo object is not populated.

Working on 64-bit Platforms:  Operations with ESX or VirtualCenter take long to complete when working on 64-bit platforms.
    Workaround: This is a .NET 2.0 issue and it is fixed in Service Pack 1. Install Service Pack 1 for .NET 2.0.

 I will be updating admin task which can be done with vi-toolkit with powershell very soon.
Pls do comment and reply on page if any query or explanation needed, will be happy to listen and solve your technical issues.

Always try to learn the thing which enhance your current role.


                                               
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