Very Very App-V Pilot

Try to achieve more success by preparing virtualized situation of many useful APPs ;)

Connect and Manage VCSA Database (PostgreSQL)

There are so many tools for PostgreSQL management if you want to connect and redesign your VCSA embedded database. (vPostgres), such as one of the best all of them, PgAdmin4.

But how can I connect to my database and where is "The Credential!"?

Now it's time to work around this matter step by step:

1. first of all, try SSH to your VCSA and stablish your session with root credentials or something like that privilege:)

2. Then after enabling shell by this "shell.set --enabled True" and granting shell access, you can find-out vPostgres configuration and credential on these below files (by vi & less):

    /etc/vmware-vpx/embedded_db.cfg

    /etc/vmware-vpx/vcdb.properties

3. Now you can successfully connect to your DB by username: VC and gained password from the mentioned files.

4. Consider some situations:

 Maybe you cannot access your database remotely, so edit file /storage/db/vpostgres/pg_hba.conf on VCSA and add the following line to file. Be careful to do on right place to work correctly, exactly where IPv4 or IPv6 are mentioned.

    host    all             all            IPAddr/SubMsk       md5

Then edit /storage/db/vpostgres/postgresql.conf and add this line to made database for listening on all IP addresses: listen_addresses = '*'

And at the end of all, execute one of these commands to restart vpostgres service on VCSA and commit the changes have been done:

    /etc/init.d/vmware-vpostgres restart   or   service vmware-vpostgres restart

Also, you can verify established connections on PostgreSQL port (TCP 5432) by running piping greps on netstat like this:

    netstat -anp | grep LISTEN | grep tcp | grep 5432

But if your server doesn't listen on port 5432, Try this:

    /usr/lib/applmgmt/networking/bin/firewall-reload

So you can verify your listening services by doing: iptables -L | grep postgres

If you want to know more about to do with your vCenter embedded DB and how to work with it on Windows or Linux based vCenter, check these VMware links:

KB2147285

KB2108848

At last thanks for these useful links, I hope you check them out carefully if you need more details:

http://www.vmwarearena.com/manage-vcsa-6-5-embedded-postgres-database-using-pgadmin-gui/

https://nilic.github.io/2015/03/21/exploring-vcsa-embedded-postgresql-database/

Analyze SNMP Traffic inside the ESXi

It's recommended that as a network admin, you should consider that monitoring of "ESXi hardware usage and network transmit" as one of your virtual infrastructure management phases. Regardless of using monitoring tools or not, SNMP Traffic that is generated from your host, maybe face with an error. After reviewing your "community string" (SNMP v1/v2) or "credential" (SNMP v3) and checking network connection, if still there is a problem, you can execute an useful command for SNMP traffic inspection.

After logging to ESXi Host directly (DCUI) or by SSH connection (e.g Putty) , run this command to resolve the problem:

tcpdump-uw -vvv -i vmk0 -T snmp udp and port 162

 

Therefore you will see each SNMP UDP packets that are transferred on port 162. Also note this repeated "-vvv" syntax, which means you want to see more information of your command's result. Literally you can put only "-v" or "-vv" on your command.

ESXi Hosts Cluster's Resource Assigning Warnings!

When you create a cluster of hosts, some configuration warnings will be shown that they are related to host's dedicated resources. One of them you will face with network uplink redundancy. The best solution for this problem, is assigning more than one physical network adapter to the vSwitch that it provides the management functionalities (such as VMKernel) . But sometimes you have to ignore this warning, because probably you have only one physical adapter. for instance on lab or pilot environments, you can add this row to the Cluster advanced settings:

das.ignoreRedundantNetWarning  (Value: True)

Also for some situations there is a warning that announcing "There is insufficient heartbeat datastore". If the management network is failed, HA will select two datastores for each host to check host's heartbeats for greater performance. It's suggested to select shared datastores. Therefore you need to go to the Cluster settings and into "datastore heartbeating" section, select more datastores. But if you don't have further than one datastore per your hosts, you can add this row to the "Cluster advanced settings":

das.ignoreInsufficientHbDatastore  (Value: True) 

Virtualization is not just an action or doing some changes on some objects !

It's a new creation...

It's another beginning...

It's start something within something else...

It's not just a simple of provisioning or duplication network objects...

Virtualization means rebirth...

Beyond of type, value, priority or importance of IT assets... !

just try to look with imagination and on that moment you will start to walk on endless way of virtualization...