{"id":2765,"date":"2015-04-24T11:00:38","date_gmt":"2015-04-24T01:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.penguinpunk.net\/blog\/?p=2765"},"modified":"2015-06-01T14:45:19","modified_gmt":"2015-06-01T04:45:19","slug":"vmware-vsphere-5-5-u2-workarounds-and-random-things-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.penguinpunk.net\/blog\/vmware-vsphere-5-5-u2-workarounds-and-random-things-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"VMware – vSphere 5.5 U2 Workarounds and Random Things – Part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a previous post<\/a>, I mentioned I was doing a vSphere deployment sitting on some HP blades with SD cards installed<\/a>. Because of this, I had to configure a few different parts of ESXi to point to network services rather than using local, persistent storage. This isn’t a bad thing in any case, as you really want your logs and core dumps to be off-host when you’re trying to troubleshoot host issues.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Network Dump Collector<\/em><\/p>\n

It’s a good idea to have your core dumps going to a central location. you can do this with Network Dump Collector<\/a> or via shared diagnostic storage<\/a>. In this instance, I’ve provided an example on how to configure the host to use the Network Dump Collector, which can be installed from the vCenter installation media.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

login as: root<\/strong>\r\n Using keyboard-interactive authentication.<\/strong>\r\n Password:<\/strong>\r\n The time and date of this login have been sent to the system logs.\r\n\r\n<\/strong>VMware offers supported, powerful system administration tools.\u00a0 Please<\/strong>\r\n see www.vmware.com\/go\/sysadmintools for details.\r\n\r\n<\/strong>The ESXi Shell can be disabled by an administrative user. See the<\/strong>\r\n vSphere Security documentation for more information.<\/strong>\r\n ~ # esxcli system coredump network get<\/strong>\r\n Enabled: false<\/strong>\r\n Host VNic:<\/strong>\r\n Network Server IP:<\/strong>\r\n Network Server Port: 0<\/strong>\r\n ~ # esxcli system coredump network set --interface-name vmk0 --server-ipv4\u00a0192.168.0.100 --server-port 6500<\/strong>\r\n ~ # esxcli system coredump network set --enable true<\/strong>\r\n ~ # esxcli system coredump network get<\/strong>\r\n Enabled: true<\/strong>\r\n Host VNic: vmk0<\/strong>\r\n Network Server IP:\u00a0192.168.0.100<\/strong>\r\n Network Server Port: 6500<\/strong>\r\n ~ # esxcli system coredump network check<\/strong>\r\n Verified the configured netdump server is running<\/strong>\r\n ~ # \/sbin\/auto-backup.sh<\/strong>\r\n Files \/etc\/vmware\/dvsdata.db and \/tmp\/auto-backup.1942245\/\/etc\/vmware\/dvsdata.db differ<\/strong>\r\n Saving current state in \/bootbank<\/strong>\r\n Clock updated.<\/strong>\r\n Time: 05:04:38\u00a0\u00a0 Date: 04\/21\/2015\u00a0\u00a0 UTC<\/strong>\r\n ~ #<\/strong><\/pre>\n
 <\/p>\n
It’s important to check that the Network Dump Collector service is running<\/a>, too.<\/p>\n
 <\/p>\n
vSphere Syslog Server<\/em><\/p>\n
You’ll also want to point your syslogs to a remote location. If you don’t have access to syslog in your environment, you can set it up from the vCenter installation media. Here’s an article on how to do that<\/a>. Here’re the rough steps you need to take.<\/p>\n
Check your current configuration first.<\/p>\n
~ # esxcli system syslog config get<\/strong>\r\n Default Network Retry Timeout: 180<\/strong>\r\n Local Log Output: \/scratch\/log<\/strong>\r\n Local Log Output Is Configured: false<\/strong>\r\n Local Log Output Is Persistent: false<\/strong>\r\n Local Logging Default Rotation Size: 1024<\/strong>\r\n Local Logging Default Rotations: 8<\/strong>\r\n Log To Unique Subdirectory: false<\/strong>\r\n Remote Host: <none><\/strong><\/pre>\n
Now you can set the configuration.<\/p>\n
~ # esxcli system syslog config set --loghost='tcp:\/\/192.168.0.100:514'<\/strong><\/pre>\n
Load the configuration.<\/p>\n
~ # esxcli system syslog reload<\/strong><\/pre>\n
Check that the configuration worked.<\/p>\n
~ # esxcli system syslog config get<\/strong><\/pre>\n
Backup the configuration.<\/p>\n
~ # \/sbin\/auto-backup.sh<\/strong><\/pre>\n
 <\/p>\n
Persistent Scratch<\/em><\/p>\n
I recommend setting a persistent scratch location as well. You can read about that here<\/a>. In my case I used shared storage with directories for each host. I then set that as an option to configure\u00a0via Host Profiles.<\/p>\n
 <\/p>\n
Okay, so hopefully that was useful for someone. More to follow …<\/p>\n
 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In a previous post, I mentioned I was doing a vSphere deployment sitting on some HP blades with SD cards installed. Because of this, I had to configure a few different parts of ESXi to point to network services rather than using local, persistent storage. This isn’t a bad thing in any case, as you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54,127,4],"tags":[793,110,589,798,19,786,226,99,151,749],"class_list":["post-2765","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-esxi","category-vcenter","category-vmware","tag-esxi","tag-howto","tag-kb","tag-vcenter","tag-virtualisation","tag-vmware","tag-vmware-kb","tag-vmware-tools","tag-vsphere","tag-workarounds"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.penguinpunk.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2765","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.penguinpunk.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.penguinpunk.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.penguinpunk.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.penguinpunk.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2765"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/www.penguinpunk.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2765\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2912,"href":"https:\/\/www.penguinpunk.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2765\/revisions\/2912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.penguinpunk.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.penguinpunk.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.penguinpunk.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}