Issue The host goes into an un-responsive state due to: “Bootbank cannot be found at path ‘/bootbank” and boot device is in an APD state.
This issue is seen due to the boot device failing to respond & enter APD state (All paths down). Some cases, Host goes to non-responsive state & shows disconnected from vCenter.
As of 7.0 Update 1, the format of the ESX-OSData boot data partition has been changed. Instead of using FAT it is using a new format called VMFS-L. This new format allows much more and faster I/O to the partition. The level of read and write traffic is overwhelming and corrupting many less capable SD cards.
The action plan for future resolution would be to replace the SD card/s with a capable device/disk. Per the best practices mentioned on Installation guide.
The version 7.0 Update 2 VMware ESXi Installation and Setup Guide, page 19, specifically says “As even read-only workloads can cause problems on low-end flash devices, you should install ESXi only on high-endurance flash media“.
I must also move al lot of VM’s from different datacenters to other datacenters. I use the script from Michael Wilmsen to move the VM’s. But along the way I counter some problems with this script. So I begon tweaking and tweaking and tweaking this script to create for me the ultimate Cross vCenter PowerCLI Script.
Coolfeatures: – Info through Whattsapp (Default not enabled) – Dryrun (Test Run) – Logging – Selection through GUI – Multiple Nic support maximum of 4. – Datastore en Host selection based on Free space en Free Memory – Check of Destination Host or Datastore in Maintance – Destination Store exist in Destination Cluster
MoveVM.ps1: #Filename: MoveVM.ps1
#Author: M. Wilmsen / W. Vissers
#Source: http://virtual-hike.com/nlvmug-2018/
#Version: 2.0
#Date: 21-10-2018
#ChangeLog:
# V0.9 – M. Wilmsen First Version
# V1.0 – Fixed Multiple Nics to maximium of 4 nics
# – Logfile name VM name
# V1.1 – Destination Cluster not the first Host
# V1.2 – Selected Destination host based on memory used
# V1.3 – Fixed folder location and VirtualPortGroup
# V1.4 – Fixed Datastore in Maintance
# V1.5 – Using Get-VICredentialStoreItem + Logpath Fixt
# V1.6 – Fixed Log in Hours in 24 uurs
# V1.7 – Fixed Using DatastoreCluster name based on Cluster name!
# V1.8 – Check if Destination has the same datastore
# – Ask know for input
# – VM selection with VMhost
# – Fixed Ping Check
# v1.9 – Added Destination Store exist in Destination Cluster
# v2.0 – Fixed Destination Store exist in Destination Cluster
<#
.SYNOPSIS
Script to migrate a virtual machine
.DESCRIPTION
Script to migrate compute and storage from cluster to cluster. Log will be in current dir [VM]-[-timestamp].log
.EXAMPLE
MoveVM.ps1
#>
################################## INIT #################################################
#Set WebOperation timeout
# set-PowerCLIConfiguration -WebOperationTimeoutSeconds 3600
#Define Global variables
$location = “D:\xmovewhattsapp”
$LogPath = “.\”
$DataStoreClusterPrefix = “SAN-“
$SourceVC = Read-Host “Give Source vCenter”
$DestinationVC = Read-Host “Give Destination vCenter”
$DRSRecommendation = $true
$Dryrun = $false
$SendWhatsApp = $false
$WhatsAppNumbers = “0123456789”
$WhatsAppGroup = “Namehireyourwhattsgroup”
$instanceId = “23” #chang this line
$clientId = “demo@demo.nl” #change this line
$clientSecret = “Puthiersecretid” #change this line
################################## PASSWORD STORE ##############################################
#Username
# Check if credentials exist in credential store if not ask for credentials and put them in credential store
if ($DatastoreExistinOthervCenter ) { LogWrite “Datastore exsist $DestinationCluster in destination vCenter $DestinationVC “ $destinationDatastore = $DatastoreExistinOthervCenter } Else { LogWrite “Datastore does not exsist in $DestinationCluster destination vCenter $DestinationVC” # Select DataStore with the most free space and not in maintance $DatastoreCluster = “$DataStoreClusterPrefix”+”$DestinationCluster” $destinationDatastore = Get-DatastoreCluster $DatastoreCluster | Get-Datastore | Where {$_.State -ne “Maintenance”} | Sort-Object -Property FreeSpaceGB -Descending | Select-Object -First 1 }
LogWrite “Start move: $vm” Logwrite “VM IP: $vmip” Logwrite “VM Disk Used (GB): $VMHDDSize” Logwrite “VM Folder: $vmfolder” Logwrite “Source vCenter: $SourceVC” Logwrite “VM Source Cluster: $SourceCluster” Logwrite “Destination vCenter: $DestinationVC” Logwrite “VM Destination Cluster: $DestinationCluster” Logwrite “Destination host: $DestinationHost” LogWrite “VM Source PortGroup: $SourceVMPortGroup” LogWrite “VM Destination Portgroup: $DestinationVMPortgroup” Logwrite “VM Destination Datastore: $destinationDatastore” LogWrite “Destination Datastore FreeSpace GB: $destinationDatastoreFreeSpace “ if ( $Dryrun ) { $FreespaceAfterMigration = $destinationDatastoreFreeSpace – $VMHDDSize if ( $FreespaceAfterMigration -lt 0 ) { Logwrite “ERROR: Datastore $destinationDatastore does not have sufficient freespace! Virtual Machine needs $VMHDDSize. Only $destinationDatastoreFreeSpace available.” } else { Logwrite “Virtual Machine will fit on datastore $destinationDatastore. Freespace after migration is: $FreespaceAfterMigration GB” } } #Test if VM responsed to ping if ($vmip -eq $null) { LogWrite “Virtual Machine ip address not known” Logwrite “No ping check will be performed after moving the Virtual Machine” } else { Test-Connection -comp $vmip -quiet LogWrite “Virtual Machine $vm response to ping before being moved. Virtual machine will be checked after being moved” $PingVM = $true }
#if ( $VMHDDSize -eq if ( -NOT $Dryrun) { #Migrate VM to cluster LogWrite “Move $vm to vCenter $DestinationVC and datastore $DestinationDatastore” Try { $Result = Move-VM -VM $vm ` -Destination $DestinationHost ` -Datastore $DestinationDatastore ` -NetworkAdapter $NetworkAdapter ` -PortGroup $DestinationVMPortgroup ` -ErrorAction Stop } Catch { $ErrorMessage = $_.Exception.Message LogWrite “ERROR: Move of $vm to cluster $DestinationHost failed!!!” Logwrite “ERROR: Move Status Code: $ErrorMessage” SendWhatsApp “ERROR: Move of $vm failed!!! $ErrorMessage” $MigError = $true } #Migrate VM to folder LogWrite “Move $vm to vCenter $vmfolder” Try { $VMtemp = get-vm $vm $Result = Move-VM -VM $vmtemp -InventoryLocation $vmfolder -ErrorAction Stop } Catch { $ErrorMessage = $_.Exception.Message LogWrite “ERROR: Move of $vm to folder $vmfolder failed!!!” Logwrite “ERROR: Move Status Code: $ErrorMessage” SendWhatsApp “ERROR: Move of $vm failed!!! $ErrorMessage” $MigError = $true } }
$MigError = $false #Test if VM is running on destination cluster if ( -NOT $MigError -AND -NOT $Dryrun ) { LogWrite “Check $vm is registered in $DestinationVC” try { $CheckVM = get-vm -name $vm -server $DestinationVC -ErrorAction Stop
if ( $CheckVM ) { Logwrite “$vm registered in $DestinationVC” } else { Logwrite “ERROR: $vm not found in $DestinationVC” } } catch { $ErrorMessage = $_.Exception.Message Logwrite “ERROR: $vm not found in $DestinationVC” Logwrite “ERROR: $ErrorMessage” SendWhatsApp “ERROR move: $vm not found in $DestinationVC” } } #Test is VM response to ping, if $PingVM = $True if ($PingVM) { if (Test-Connection -comp $vmip -quiet) { LogWrite “Virtual Machine $vm response to ping after move” SendWhatsApp “Virtual Machine $vm response to ping after move” } } sleep 1 SendWhatsApp “Finished move action: $vm from $SourceVC to $DestinationVC” Logwrite “Finished move action: $vm from $SourceVC to $DestinationVC”
New features available on VMware vSphere PowerCLI 11.0 is to support the new all updates and release of VMware products , find the below following has been features,
New Security module
vSphere 6.7 Update 1
NSX-T 2.3
Horizon View 7.6
vCloud Director 9.5
Host Profiles – new cmdlets for interacting with
New Storage Module updates
NSX-T in VMware Cloud on AWS
Cloud module multiplatform support
Get-ErrorReport cmdlet has been updated
PCloud module has been removed
HA module has been removed
Now we will go through above mentioned new features to find what functionality it bring to PowerCLI 11.0
What is PowerCLI 11.0 New Security Module
The new security module brings more powerful automation features to PowerCLI 11.0 available new cmdlets include the following
Get-SecurityInfo
Get-VTpm
Get-VTpmCertificate
Get-VTpmCSR
New-VTpm
Remove-VTpm
Set-VTpm
Unlock-VM
Also New-VM cmdlet has enhanced functionality with the security module functionality and it includes parameters like KmsCluster, StoragePolicy, SkipHardDisks etc which can be used while creating new virtual machines with PowerCLI .In addition to that Set-VM, Set-VMHost, Set-HardDisk, and New-HardDisk cmdlets are added.
Host Profile Additions
There are few additions to the VMware.VimAutomation.Core module that will make managing host profiles from PowerCLI
Get-VMHostProfileUserConfiguration
Set-VMHostProfileUserConfiguration
Get-VMHostProfileStorageDeviceConfiguration
Set-VMHostProfileStorageDeviceConfiguration
Get-VMHostProfileImageCacheConfiguration
Set-VMHostProfileImageCacheConfiguration
Get-VMHostProfileVmPortGroupConfiguration
Set-VMHostProfileVmPortGroupConfiguration
Storage Module Updates
These new Storage Module updates specifically for VMware vSAN , the updates has predefined time ranges when using Get-VsanStat. In addition Get-VsanDisk has additional new properites that are returned including capacity, used percentage, and reserved percentage. Following are the cmdlets have been added to automate vSAN
Get-VsanObject
Get-VsanComponent
Get-VsanEvacuationPlan – provides information regarding bringing a host into maintenance mode and the impact of the operation on the data, movement, etc
I love powershell. I created a little script to deploy multi VM based on a Windows Template throug CSV file.
It’s create a computer account at the specfified ou. He greates also a Domain Local Group for management. (It used in the customization not specified here)
These products are not compatible with vSphere 6.7 at this time:
VMware NSX
VMware Integrated OpenStack (VIO)
VMware vSphere Integrated Containers (VIC)
VMware Horizon
Environments with these products should not be upgraded to vSphere 6.7 at this time. This article and the VMware Product Interoperability Matrixes will be updated when a compatible release is available.
Upgrade Considerations
Before upgrading your environment to vSphere 6.7, review these critical articles to ensure a successful upgrade For vSphere
It is not possible to upgrade directly from vSphere 5.5 to vSphere 6.7.
Upgrades to vSphere 6.7 are only possible from vSphere 6.0 or vSphere 6.5. If you are currently running vSphere 5.5, you must first upgrade to either vSphere 6.0 or vSphere 6.5 before upgrading to vSphere 6.7.
VMware is announcing vSphere 6.7, the latest release of the industry-leading virtualization and cloud platform. vSphere 6.7 is the efficient and secure platform for hybrid clouds, fueling digital transformation by delivering simple and efficient management at scale, comprehensive built-in security, a universal application platform, and seamless hybrid cloud experience.
vSphere 6.7 delivers key capabilities to enable IT organizations address the following notable trends that are putting new demands on their IT infrastructure:
Explosive growth in quantity and variety of applications, from business critical apps to new intelligent workloads.
Rapid growth of hybrid cloud environments and use cases.
On-premises data centers growing and expanding globally, including at the Edge.
Security of infrastructure and applications attaining paramount importance.
Let’s take a look at some of the key capabilities in vSphere 6.7:
Simple and Efficient Management, at Scale
vSphere 6.7 builds on the technological innovation delivered by vSphere 6.5, and elevates the customer experience to an entirely new level. It provides exceptional management simplicity, operational efficiency, and faster time to market, all at scale.
vSphere 6.7 delivers an exceptional experience for the user with an enhancedvCenter Server Appliance (vCSA). It introduces several new APIs that improve the efficiency and experience to deploy vCenter, to deploy multiple vCenters based on a template, to make management of vCenter Server Appliance significantly easier, as well as for backup and restore. It also significantly simplifies the vCenter Server topology through vCenter with embedded platform services controller in enhanced linked mode, enabling customers to link multiple vCenters and have seamless visibility across the environment without the need for an external platform services controller or load balancers.
Moreover, with vSphere 6.7 vCSA delivers phenomenal performance improvements (all metrics compared at cluster scale limits, versus vSphere 6.5):
2X faster performance in vCenter operations per second
These performance improvements ensure a blazing fast experience for vSphere users, and deliver significant value, as well as time and cost savings in a variety of use cases, such as VDI, Scale-out apps, Big Data, HPC, DevOps, distributed cloud native apps, etc.
vSphere 6.7 improves efficiency at scale when updating ESXi hosts, significantly reducing maintenance time by eliminating one of two reboots normally required for major version upgrades (Single Reboot). In addition to that, vSphere Quick Boot is a new innovation that restarts the ESXi hypervisor without rebooting the physical host, skipping time-consuming hardware initialization.
Another key component that allows vSphere 6.7 to deliver a simplified and efficient experience is the graphical user interface itself. The HTML5-based vSphere Client provides a modern user interface experience that is both responsive and easy to use. With vSphere 6.7, it includes added functionality to support not only the typical workflows customers need but also other key functionality like managing NSX, vSAN, VUM as well as third-party components.
Comprehensive Built-In Security
vSphere 6.7 builds on the security capabilities in vSphere 6.5 and leverages its unique position as the hypervisor to offer comprehensive security that starts at the core, via an operationally simple policy-driven model.
vSphere 6.7 adds support for Trusted Platform Module (TPM) 2.0 hardware devices and also introduces Virtual TPM 2.0, significantly enhancing protection and assuring integrity for both the hypervisor and the guest operating system. This capability helps prevent VMs and hosts from being tampered with, prevents the loading of unauthorized components and enables guest operating system security features security teams are asking for.
Data encryption was introduced with vSphere 6.5 and very well received. With vSphere 6.7, VM Encryption is further enhanced and more operationally simple to manage. vSphere 6.7 simplifies workflows for VM Encryption, designed to protect data at rest and in motion, making it as easy as a right-click while also increasing the security posture of encrypting the VM and giving the user a greater degree of control to protect against unauthorized data access.
vSphere 6.7 also enhances protection for data in motion by enabling encrypted vMotion across different vCenterinstances as well as versions, making it easy to securely conduct data center migrations, move data across a hybrid cloud environment (between on-premises and public cloud), or across geographically distributed data centers.
vSphere 6.7 introduces support for the entire range of Microsoft’s Virtualization Based Security technologies. This is a result of close collaboration between VMware and Microsoft to ensure Windows VMs on vSphere support in-guest security features while continuing to run performant and secure on the vSphere platform.
vSphere 6.7 delivers comprehensive built-in security and is the heart of a secure SDDC. It has deep integration and works seamlessly with other VMware products such as vSAN, NSX and vRealize Suite to provide a complete security model for the data center.
Universal Application Platform
vSphere 6.7 is a universal application platform that supports new workloads (including 3D Graphics, Big Data, HPC, Machine Learning, In-Memory, and Cloud-Native) as well as existing mission critical applications. It also supports and leverages some of the latest hardware innovations in the industry, delivering exceptional performance for a variety of workloads.
vSphere 6.7 further enhances the support and capabilities introduced for GPUs through VMware’s collaboration with Nvidia, by virtualizing Nvidia GPUs even for non-VDI and non-general-purpose-computing use cases such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, big data and more. With enhancements to Nvidia GRID™ vGPU technology in vSphere 6.7, instead of having to power off workloads running on GPUs, customers can simply suspend and resume those VMs, allowing for better lifecycle management of the underlying host and significantly reducing disruption for end-users. VMware continues to invest in this area, with the goal of bringing the full vSphere experience to GPUs in future releases.
vSphere 6.7 continues to showcase VMware’s technological leadership and fruitful collaboration with our key partners by adding support for a key industry innovation poised to have a dramatic impact on the landscape, which is persistent memory. With vSphere Persistent Memory, customers using supported hardware modules, such as those available from Dell-EMC and HPE, can leverage them either as super-fast storage with high IOPS, or expose them to the guest operating system as non-volatile memory. This will significantly enhance performance of the OS as well as applications across a variety of use cases, making existing applications faster and more performant and enabling customers to create new high-performance applications that can leverage vSphere Persistent Memory.
Seamless Hybrid Cloud Experience
With the fast adoption of vSphere-based public clouds through VMware Cloud Provider Program partners, VMware Cloud on AWS, as well as other public cloud providers, VMware is committed to delivering a seamless hybrid cloud experience for customers.
vSphere 6.7 introduces vCenter Server Hybrid Linked Mode, which makes it easy and simple for customers to have unified visibility and manageability across an on-premises vSphere environment running on one version and a vSphere-based public cloud environment, such as VMware Cloud on AWS, running on a different version of vSphere. This ensures that the fast pace of innovation and introduction of new capabilities in vSphere-based public clouds does not force the customer to constantly update and upgrade their on-premises vSphere environment.
vSphere 6.7 also introduces Cross-Cloud Cold and Hot Migration, further enhancing the ease of management across and enabling a seamless and non-disruptive hybrid cloud experience for customers.
As virtual machines migrate between different data centers or from an on-premises data center to the cloud and back, they likely move across different CPU types. vSphere 6.7 delivers a new capability that is key for the hybrid cloud, called Per-VM EVC. Per-VM EVC enables the EVC (Enhanced vMotion Compatibility) mode to become an attribute of the VM rather than the specific processor generation it happens to be booted on in the cluster. This allows for seamless migration across different CPUs by persisting the EVC mode per-VM during migrations across clusters and during power cycles.
Previously, vSphere 6.0 introduced provisioning between vCenter instances. This is often called “cross-vCenter provisioning.” The use of two vCenter instances introduces the possibility that the instances are on different release versions. vSphere 6.7 enables customers to use different vCenter versions while allowing cross-vCenter, mixed-version provisioning operations (vMotion, Full Clone and cold migrate) to continue seamlessly. This is especially useful for customers leveraging VMware Cloud on AWS as part of their hybrid cloud.
Learn More
As the ideal, efficient, secure universal platform for hybrid cloud, supporting new and existing applications, serving the needs of IT and the business, vSphere 6.7 reinforces your investment in VMware. vSphere 6.7 is one of the core components of VMware’s SDDC and a fundamental building block of your cloud strategy. With vSphere 6.7, you can now run, manage, connect, and secure your applications in a common operating environment, across your hybrid cloud.
This article only touched upon the key highlights of this release, but there are many more new features. To learn more about vSphere 6.7, please see the following resources.
The release of VMware PowerCLI 10.0.0 was another big one for us. As a result, PowerCLI is now available on Linux, MacOS, and Windows! As part of every major release, there’s a large number of asks for the PowerCLI poster and today we’re releasing it!
The poster features a bit of a layout refresh which conforms to a more standardized poster sizing guideline, but still features all of our cmdlets, some basic examples, and links to helpful resources.
[Tool] Issue fix – Switching to another tab loses all unsaved changes
[Tool] Enhancement – Simplify user interaction in Template Editor. Now editing template no longer requires repeated Update button click. Mac style editing is applied (Automatically save changes along with edit)
For those of you not aware of this tool it is used to optimise Windows 7/8/2008/2012/10 for Horizon View deployments and it performs the following actions:
Version 3.10 (February, 2018)
– Upgraded RVTools solution to Visual Studio 2017
– Upgraded RVTools to .Net Framework version 4.6.1
– Upgraded Log4net to version 2.0.8, Waffle.AD to version 1.8.3
and NPOI to version 2.3.0
– Connection error when TLSv1.0 and TLSv1.1 are disabled and only TLSv1.2 is
enabled is solved by using .Net Framework 4.6.1
– vInfo tab page new columns: The latency-sensitivity setting of the virtual
machine, Change Block Tracking (CBT) and disk.EnableUUID values
– vDisk tab page new columns: SCSI label, unit number and sharedBus
– vHost tab page new columns: Assigned License(s), ATS heartbeat, ATS locking
values. 0 = disabled 1 = enabled, Host Power Policy shortname, CPU Power
Management current policy and CPU power hardware support
– When Export to xlsx is executed a metadata worksheet with version number of
RVTools and date time stamp is added to the output xlsx file
– All columns in the RVTools export xlsx file(s) now have a filter
– When export to csv newline characters are replaced by spaces
– When started from cli and login fails an error message and login box was
displayed. Now RVTools will exit with exit code -1, without showing the error
message and login form.
– Added an example PowerShell script with which you can merge RVTools export
xlsx files
– Added a example PowerShell script to start Export all to xlsx for multiple vCenters
– vDatastore tab page: For NFS datastores the address column is now filled with
remote host and path info
– vDatastore tab page new columns: Datastore Cluster Name, Cluster capacity and
Cluster free space
– The upper limit on the Health check for number of VMs on a datastore is now
9999
– vHealth tab page: new column “message type” which can be used as a filter in
Excel
– vHealth tab page: hbrdisk.RDID files are no longer reported as possible zombie
files
– vHealth tab page: low disk space messages no also show the free space in MB.
– All tab pages: Refresh or auto-refresh will respect your sort order
– CLI export2xls parameters changed to export2xlsx (old parameter will still work)
– Bug Fix: invalid “Horizontal Alignment” value in xlsx style sheet.
– Bug Fix: Calculation of total snapshot size was not always correct
– Bug Fix: Child snapshot hierarchy was not always correct
– Default installation directory is changed to C:\Program Files
(x86)\RobWare\RVTools without the version number