Posted by Brian on Apr 9, 2010 in Troubleshooting, VMware | 4 comments
This is something that I have to do on Windows boxes all the time, but less on our ESX boxes. In the past we used to just run the vm-support to collect the support logs and turn those over to the storage team. They no longer are happy with those and since EMC now has a grab that supports both vSphere and VI3.5 it’s hard to deny them now. In case you do not know what a grab is, it’s a log collection utility that will provide the storage admin with all of the details about WWN’s, paths and which LUN’s a host can see. They can use this for planning upgrades and troubleshooting issues.
First thing you will need to do is to download the proper EMC grab version to support your hosts. At the time of writing this its a version 1.2.1 and is supports both ESX 3 and 4. Proceed on over to http://powerlink.emc.com and download it from the support programs area.
Once you have the file you will need to upload it to your host with something like WinSCP. I always upload it into the /tmp folder and unzip it there. It will create a folder called “emcgrab”. You can use the following command to do the unzip in case your not familiar with what to do.
tar -xvf emcgrab_ESX_vSphere_v.1.2.1.tar
Next thing is to move into the emcgrab directory that was created. From within there you will need to execute the following command. If you read the help file included in the directory it will explain some options to supress some annoying confirmation screens about the licensing and such.
./emcgrab.sh -nomsg
Once the program starts to run depending on the options you used it will prompt you to confirm and read the licensing. After you pass that part it will ask you a string of questions about your contact details and some questions about your environment. These are not necessary to complete it you are using these grabs in house. If you plan on sending these to EMC then I would advise to fill them out.
Once the script completes it will ask you if you want to run vm-support to collect the VMware support logs along with the EMCgrabs. This is up to you, if you have a need for them go ahead. Once the script finished it will place the zipped up file in the Output folder and you can pull off the file with WinSCP.
In closing it’s not necessary to be running Powerpath on your hosts to collect these grabs.
Brian is a Technical Architect for a VMware partner and owner of this website. He is active in the VMware community and is helps lead the Chicago VMUG group. This blog Virtualize Tips was started to document and remember things that I come across while working with tech.
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Posted by Brian on Mar 19, 2010 in Troubleshooting, VMware | 0 comments
I hope that most of you have been using or at least tried this script at some point. The script was created by William Lam and is now more user customizable. There is a big list of updates and improvments to this version a few are listed below. To see an example of what the report looks like head over here. The report gives you a ton of information on the status of your Hosts and Virtual Machine status. Be sure to thank William for such a great product and working hard to update it, you can follow William on twitter at @lamw. To download the script head over to VMware communities here.
- New Report is now completely modular in which categories to display via a configuration file
- New Ability to specify specific ESX/ESXi host to query
- New Ability to specify specific Virtual Mchines to query
- New vCenter HA Advanced Runtime information
- New vCenter HA Configuration (primary/secondary and node states)
- New vCenter HA Advanced Configurations
- New vCenter DRS Advanced Runtime information
- New ESX/ESXi IP/HOSTNAME of vCenter Management IP
- New ESX/ESXi Newly improved Hardware and System Health Stuats information
- New ESX/ESXi Advanced Configurations
- New ESX/ESXi NUMA information
- New VM UUID,Bootime,Resource Statistics, Fault Tolerance, Thin provisioned and NPIV information
Brian is a Technical Architect for a VMware partner and owner of this website. He is active in the VMware community and is helps lead the Chicago VMUG group. This blog Virtualize Tips was started to document and remember things that I come across while working with tech.
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Posted by Brian on Mar 4, 2010 in Featured, Performance, Tools, Troubleshooting, VMware | 1 comment
By now everyone should know that esxtop is a great tool that you can use to find out what might be causing performance issues on your ESX host. I don’t plan on writing a post on how to use esxtop. You can refer to Duncan’s ESXtop post for details on thresholds or to VMwares esxtop bible for good base information.
This post is more of a starting point on what ESXplot is and how to install and use. By now most of you should know that ESXplot was born out of the mind of Geoff White of VMware. Geoff is a coworker of Scott Drummonds the well known ESX performance expert. Esxplot is a GUI application that lets you explore the data collected by esxtop in batch mode. The program takes a single command line argument which is the esxtop batch mode output file.
Why would you want to use esxplot? Well in the past your options to examine these files were to use Excel or Perfmon. Both options were very slow, sometimes taking hours to import the file before viewing. With esxplot your dump file will open within seconds usually. For more details you can read Scott’s post on version 1.0.
If you are using Windows to view your files you have 2 options. You can use the Windows binary file or run the python script. If you wish to run the python script you will need the following applications installed.
Python 2.6 or higher but not Python 3.x – Download
wxPython – Download
NumPy is also needed – Download
Once installed the application is very easy to use. First thing to do in capture some data from esxtop in batch mode using the command below. Then copy the file over to your workstation that you will run esxplot on. Open the app and the File ->Import->Dataset option from the menu to view your file. Then from the lower left section that will list your Hosts name open the tree to view all the captured values.
esxtop -b -d 2 -n 100> esxtopcapturefile.csv
You can download esxplot from here.
Brian is a Technical Architect for a VMware partner and owner of this website. He is active in the VMware community and is helps lead the Chicago VMUG group. This blog Virtualize Tips was started to document and remember things that I come across while working with tech.
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Posted by admin on Oct 15, 2009 in Troubleshooting | 0 comments
The knowledge base team over at VMware have created a short video to show you how to restart the mgmt agenst on ESX and ESXi hosts. These commands are good for ESX 3, 3.5 and 4. So if you are someone that likes to see things in a video rather than reading this is a good thing for you. Swing by VMwares site and see the video here.
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Posted by admin on Sep 22, 2009 in Troubleshooting, VMware | 0 comments
If you have ever lost a host to a PSOD (Purple screen of Death) you know that they may as well be written in Greek. Sure you used to think that reading a Windows BSOD was a pain, but the VMware PSOD takes this to a new level.
In the past trying to break down what caused your host to crash on your own was a big task. Most folks would require a call to VMware support if the host did not come back up afterwards. But now VMware has since written a nice document on breaking down the many sections of the PSOD screen. This will give you some insight on what might be going on with your ESX host.
You can have a look at the VMware document here.
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