A VMware vSphere cluster is nothing without shared storage. Most of the functions, like VMware HA or VMware vMotion (okay, vMotion is possible without shared storage), can only be used with a shared storage. The servers in my lab have Fibre Channel Host Bus Adapters (HBA), but buying an old and cheap Fibre Channel storage system wasn’t an option in my case. This left two options when choosing the right storage protocol: iSCSI or NFS. I tried to virtualize the local storage in my ProLiants with the HP StoreVirtual VSA and DataCore SANsymphony-V, but both were too complex for my needs and a lab environment. Because of this I decided to move the local storage into a small storage system and use iSCSI or NFS. I searched for a while for a suiteable system until Chris Wahl started blogging about the Synology DS414slim.

I wrote about what’s new in vROps 6 and about the deployment of the virtual appliance. I also described how to migrate the data from the old vCOps vApp. Part 3 covers the decommission of the old vApp.

Enter the IP or FQDN of your UI VM into the browser. Login as admin into the administration UI.

Before the vApp can be removed, the vCOps needs to be unregistered from the vCenter. Click “Unregister”.

Part 1 of this series has covered a short overview over vRealize Operations Manager 6.0 and the initial deployment of the virtual appliance. Now it’s time to bring it to life.

Open a browser and enter the IP of your newly deployed vROps appliance. You will get this nice initial setup screen. “New Installation” is always a good start. Click “New Installation”.

VMware presented the vRealize Operations Manager 6.0 at the VMworld 2014 in Barcelona. In early december, vROps was available for download.

vROps 6.0 is the successor of VMwares IT Operations Management suite vCenter Operations Manager, or vCOps. VMware has aligned the naming scheme with other products, so this release is the first release under the new brand vRealize.

VMware has made some major improvements to this release. One of the biggest advantages is the ability to scale-out. In prior releases you had to deploy multiple vApps to scale. Now you can add additional vROps instances to a cluster. These appliances provide computing resources, as well as redundancy. This allows you to scale beyond the limits of vCOps 5. Redundancy is provided by a concept which is based on master, replica and data nodes. The fist node in a vROps deployment is the master node. By adding a replica node, you can add redundancy for the case that the master node fails. Master and replica node work in a active/ standby relationship. The data nodes are the secret behind the scalability of vROps. A data node has only one task to perform: Collect data based on the assigned adapter.

The days at the year’s end are usually the time to look back and to draw a resume.

I blogged on blazilla.de for nearly 7 years, but in December 2013 I decided that it was time for a new beginning: New blog platform, new content, another language, but the same topics. In January 2014 I started vcloudnine.de.

Some statistics

Until today, I wrote about 100 blog posts. According to Google Analytics, these are my Top 10 most visited blog posts for 2014:

Originally the VCP5-DCV Delta exam (VCP550D) was available until 30. November. I passed it on 22. November, about one week before the planned ending of availability. Yesterday, VMware announced the extended availability of the delta exam. You can find the announcement on the VMware Education and Certification Blog. The exam will be available through 10. March 2015. Previously requested authorizations are still valid.

This delta exam is focused on the differences between VMware vSphere 5.1 an vSphere 5.5, and it is available to existing VCP5-DCVs who took the VCP510 exam and need to recertify on or before 15. March 2015. The exam consists of 65 questions. You have 75 minutes time to answer them. If you’re a non-native english or japanese speaker, you will granted 30 minutes extra time.

After installing the Data Protector patch bundle 8.13, you may ran into this error when trying to restore data from a HP StoreOnce appliance.

[Normal] From: RSM@dpcm.lab.local ""  Time: 04.12.2014 09:13:10
	Restore session 2014/12/04-8 started.

[Normal] From: RMA@fileserver.lab.local "D2D_GW1 [GW 6408:0:7255964966039732580]"  Time: 04.12.2014 09:13:12
	STARTING Media Agent "D2D_GW1 [GW 6408:0:7255964966039732580]"

[Normal] From: RMA@fileserver.lab.local "D2D_GW1 [GW 6408:0:7255964966039732580]"  Time: 04.12.2014 09:13:13
	Loading medium from slot 192.168.200.101Store_1257902bf_54796efc_04f4_005c to device D2D_GW1 [GW 6408:0:7255964966039732580]

[Major] From: RMA@fileserver.lab.local "D2D_GW1 [GW 6408:0:7255964966039732580]"  Time: 04.12.2014 09:13:15
[90:52]  	192.168.200.101Store_1257902bf_54796efc_04f4_005c
	Cannot read from device (JSONizer error: Device read failure)

[Normal] From: RMA@fileserver.lab.local "D2D_GW1 [GW 6408:0:7255964966039732580]"  Time: 04.12.2014 09:13:15
	Unloading medium to slot \\192.168.200.101\Store_1\257902bf_54796efc_04f4_005c from device D2D_GW1 [GW 6408:0:7255964966039732580]

[Normal] From: RMA@fileserver.lab.local "D2D_GW1 [GW 6408:0:7255964966039732580]"  Time: 04.12.2014 09:13:15
	ABORTED Media Agent "D2D_GW1 [GW 6408:0:7255964966039732580]"

[Normal] From: RSM@dpcm.lab.local ""  Time: 04.12.2014 09:13:15

	Restore Statistics:
          
		Session Queuing Time (hours)         0,00        
		------------------------------------------- 
		Completed Disk Agents ........          0          
		Failed Disk Agents ...........          1          
		Aborted Disk Agents ..........          0          
		------------------------------------------- 
		Disk Agents Total  ...........          1          
		===========================================      
		Completed Media Agents .......          0          
		Failed Media Agents ..........          0          
		Aborted Media Agents .........          1          
		------------------------------------------- 
		Media Agents Total  ..........          1          
		===========================================      
		Mbytes Total .................       0 MB        
		Used Media Total .............          1          
		Disk Agent Errors Total ......          0

This problem is known and it is described in QCCR2A56465. A fix is available (new BMA, CMA, MMA and RMA binaries). Simply open a service request and ask for the fix. Make sure that you add a copy of the session messages or a screenshot to the service request.

When you want to go fast, go slow. Otherwise you will get into trouble… Today I tried to quickly deploy a VM from a template and customize this VM with a customization specification. The codeword is “quickly”. The fun started with this error message:

Fortunately I asked the VMware Knowledge Base, which lead me to VMware KB2086930 (Deploying a template with customization fails with the error: Authenticity of the host’s SSL certificate is not verified). This KB article is all you need to know to fix this error.

HP has brushed up the StoreServ 7000 series and updated the StoreServ 7200 and 7400 models. HP also added a new model to the 7000 series: The StoreServ 7440c.

New 3PAR StoreServ models:

Model	3PAR StoreServ 7200c	3PAR StoreServ 7400c	3PAR StoreServ 7440c
Nodes	2	2 or 4	2 or 4
CPUs	2x 6-Core 1,8 GHz	2x or 4x 6-Core 1,8 GHz	2x or 4x 8-Core 2,3 GHz
Gen4 ASICs	2	2 or 4	2 or 4
On-Node Cache	40 GB	48 - 96 GB	96 - 192 GB
Max Drives	8 - 240 (max 120 SSDs)	8 – 576 (max 240 SSDs)	8 - 960 (max 240 SSDs)
Max Enclosures	0 - 9	0 - 22	0 - 38

Old 3PAR StoreServ models

This applies to upgrades from Data Protector 6.x and 7.x to 8.x and 9.x.

It seems that today is my debugging day… Yesterday I performed a Data Protector update from 7.03 to 8.13. During this update, the Data Protector IDB is migrated to another database format. Last night the backups went smoothly, but today I noticed that two old Detail Catalog Binary File (DCBF) directories were still referenced in the HP Data Protector IDB.