We’ve Moved!!

We’ve moved our ESS blog to a whole team blog located here: http://LewanPS.wordpress.com

From here forward we’ll update our team blog.

Thanks!

Rare HP c7000 Blade Chassis Power Supply Issue

Customer alert for anyone who has a HP c7000 blade enclosure with the 2250W Hot Plug Power Supplies, manufactured prior to March 20th, 2008.

It is recommended to get these replaced under warranty support to avoid any possible issues (even though they are rare).

Here’s the link to the HP Support document:
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Document.jsp?objectID=c01519680&dimid=1012424238&dicid=alr_sep08&jumpid=em_alerts/us/sep08/all/xbu/emailsubid/mrm/mcc/loc/rbu_category_AdvisoryCUSTOMER/alerts

HP PCC c7000 Power Supply Replacement Program:
https://h30090.www3.hp.com/pcc-CPS/

Creating a Bootable ESXi USB Stick on a Mac OS X

This is a great how-to from Scott Lowe’s blog. It walks you through creating a bootable ESXi USB stick on a Mac.

Great for using ESXi on servers with no hard drives in them and great for learning/seeing ESXi in action.

http://blog.scottlowe.org/2009/01/08/creating-a-bootable-esxi-usb-stick-on-mac-os-x/

VMware Fusion versus Parallels

 I found this PDF comparing Fusion with Parallels. Yes, it’s from VMware, but I like that is has a lot of consumer reviews in it, not just VMware saying that they are the best (which if you do some searching, MANY are saying Fusion rocks over Parallels).

fusion-v-parallels-one-sheet

Install, Enable and Use Storage vMotion GUI in vCenter

Storage vMotion (also called svmotion) with vCenter 2.5 and ESX 3.5 is currently a feature only available via a command line. Svmotion allows you to move a Virtual Machines Virtual Disk from one datastore to another while the Virtual Machine is live (powered on). A few programmers from the VMware Community forums have made a SourceForge project to enable a vCenter plugin to use svmotion, without the need to use a command line interface. This lesson will show you how to enable that plugin and perform a Storage vMotion through vCenter.

Initial Install – Obtain svmotion Plugin

Browse to http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=228535 to download the Storage vMotion GUI plugin for vCenter.

Install Storage vMotion Plugin

When you’ve downloaded the file, doubleclick the file to begin the installation. It is a very simple installation where you can accept the defaults for any prompts.

In vCenter, Manage Plugins

Start the VI Client (connecting to vCenter) and browse to the Plugins area by selecting “Plugins” from the toolbar and then select “Manage Plugins”.

Enable svmotion Plugin in VI Client

Typically all you will need to do is select the “Installed” tab and select the checkmark box under the svmotion plugin area to enable the plugin. Then select the “OK” button. If the svmotion plugin is not an option under the “Installed” tab, then I’ve seen where you’ll need to go to the “Available” tab and “install” it from there. Then return to the “Installed” tab and follow these instructions.

Migrating Storage through vCenter VI Client

If the plugin was enabled successfully, then you will have an option to “Migrate Storage” when you right click on a Virtual Machine. Select that option if you are ready to perform a Storage vMotion migration.

Drag and Drop Virtual Disk to New Location

A window will appear that looks like the screenshot. The Virtual Machines’ Virtual Disk will be shown under the current Datastore that it is located on. To move it to a new datastore, drag and drop the virtual disk to a different datastore that is listed. In our example above, we’ll drag and drop the virtual disk from the datastore called “SAN” to the new datastore called “dnvmes-vol2-nonrepl”.

Verify and Submit Operation

If this location is where you want to move the virtual disks to, then select the “Apply” button which will begin the Storage vMotion operation. You can monitor the task under the Task area in the VI Client. Once it is completed, the virtual disk will now be located on the new datastore thanks to Storage vMotion!

ESX Deployment Virtual Appliance

I haven’t had a chance to use this yet, but here’s a Virtual Appliance link to help deploying multiple ESX servers. Here’s a clip from the description: “ESX Deployment Appliance (EDA) is a small and easy to use appliance that makes deploying ESX servers a breeze. It has a very intuitive web-interface that can configure and deploy dozens of ESX servers in minutes.” 

http://www.vmware.com/appliances/directory/1216

DR in a Box

I read about this on Mike Dipetrillo’s blog. I thought it was a great post.

Ever want to setup DR but don’t have a SAN? Well, there’s several ways you can do that. The newest one is to use the EMC Celera Virtual Storage Appliance (VSA). Chad Sakac over at Virtual Geek just published the very thorough (and long) guide on how to set this up. Don’t want to use EMC for some reason? NetApp and LeftHand (now HP) have guides of their own. For NetApp go here. For LeftHand go here.

ESX 3.5 Server Lost Root Password Reset

Just like any other Administrator or Root password, if you forget or lose the Root password of an ESX server, it could be a difficult situation. This section describes how to reset your ESX root password.

 

Reboot ESX Server and Interrupt GRUB Boot

In order to reset your root password for an ESX server, you will need to reboot the ESX server and then interrupt the boot up during the GRUB screen. Once you boot up and reach the GRUB screen, Type in: a
This will temporarily modify the boot up parameters.

Interrupted GRUB Screen

Once you press the “a” button in the previous step, you will see a screen like the one shown in the screenshot.

Entering Single User Mode

Now type in: single and press enter. This will boot up the ESX service console into “Single User” mode which has the full Service Console functionality but does not load the VMKernel.

Root Prompt When In Single User Mode

The service console will boot into single user mode and then will show a root shell prompt.

Entering New Root Password

At the root shell prompt, type in: passwd
This will change the root password to whatever you type in next under “New Unix Password”.

Verify New Root Password

Verify the new password by typing it again. If you get the message “Bad Password: it is based on a dictionary word”, you can either ignore it or select a more complicated root password.

New Root Password Sucessful

You have now changed the root password.

Reboot ESX Server

Now, reboot the ESX server so that it will go through a normal startup and start the VMKernel. You can do this by typing in: shutdown -r now and press enter.

Reboot Will Begin

Once you issue the previous command, ESX will now begin the reboot cycle. Once it is rebooted, you can use your new root password for administration.

Hello world!

Welcome to the Lewan Enterprise Systems & Storage Blog! We’ll use this blog to post any useful information we come across regarding Enterprise Systems or Storage. We’ll also use this blog to share technical tips and documents with each other as well as our customers. Thanks for reading and stay tuned as we add content and authors from our team!