vSphere Distributed Switch Design & Configuration - Part IV: Add & Migrate VMkernel ports

VCSA Low Disk Space Problem - Part 2

In the previous post, part 1 of VCSA Low Disk Space Problem, I described a situation when there is no more space left on vCenter Server Appliance volumes and this server will encounter many complex problems like the interruption of vCenter services operation.

Unfortunately in some cases, you need to find some voluminous files that occupied the VMDK spaces of vCenter server and remove them manually (like large log files). In this post, I want to show you how to find and remove them when you require to start the vCenter Server immediately. So let's begin:

1. First of all run a Backup job on the vCenter Server VAMI web interface before doing any action to generate a new full backup of the VCSA.

2. Connect with SSH/Shell to the VCSA and check the remaining space on each of its volumes via running disk free command line (df -h)

3. Check every large size containers/folders and search for any unneccessary large files like old log files via running disk usage command line (du -chx)

4. Remove some of old files and check the space left again, then retry to start the vCenter services or restart its VM.

Now you can work with the vCenter Server Appliance without any problem. But consider this method as a worse-case for vCenter server operation recovery, because you need to remove files from the server, even if you consider them with low priority, and also the chance of wrong deletion of important file will be increased totally. So it's very important to avoid this method as it's possible. In the VCSA deployment phase, you must calculate first and then consider suitable storage size for this critical virtual appliance to prevent this issue.

History of vCenter Server - From v4.0 to v6.7

In this post I want to review about major and critical published features in every version of vCenter Server in every released version of VMware vSphere from version4.0 to latest version of 6.7:

1.Version 4.0: It was the first publish of vCenter Server as the virtual infrastructure management system by release of vSphere 4.0 

2.Version 4.1: The great features of Storage I/O Control (SIOC) & Network I/O Control (NIOC) has been released, also the vStorage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI) & Data Protection (VADP)

3.Version 5.0: Awesome VMFS5! and also supports Ultra 2TB VMFS datastore. Also included some new features like vSphere Auto Deploy, Storage DRS, Software FCoE and swap to host cache.
Also the VMware FDM was introduced, then the HA could use the Datastore Heartbeating mechanism to avoid detecting the host isolation as a host failure.

The first release of VCSA was announced in this version.

4.Version 5.1: First release vCenter Single Sign-On (SSO) to separate authentication service and prevent default access of local or AD domain administrator accounts.
After this version, Core vCenter services run on separate nodes (six nodes including the VCDB & VUM servers)

Also, the support of Single-Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV), Introduce of vSphere Replication (VR) for replicating VMs over LAN/WAN and vSphere Data Protection (VDP) based on EMC Avamar technology for VM Backup & Recovery operations.

5.Version 5.5: The VSAN is introduced in this release, also published a new feature of Big Data Extension (BDE) for Hadoop clusters in the Ent/Ent+ editions. After this version HA is aware of DRS Anti-Affinity rules for restarting the virtual machines.

6.Version 6.0: Introduce Platform Service Controller (PSC) & Enhanced Linked Mode (ELM) and also Content Library & virtual volume (VVOL) features. 

7.Version 6.5: Very useful feature of vCenter HA (VCHA) that is acting as a special clustering for VCSA, and also the Native Backup and Restore Functionality are released in this version. Management interface based on HTM5 technology introduces in this release.

8.Version 6.7:  By starting this version Embedded deployment of PSC supports ELM too. (U1 let you converge the PSC deployment from external to embedded by the VCSA-Converge-CLI

Domain repoint is also another greate feature of this release by (cmsso-uti)

Per-VM EVC and vSphere Health are two other features of this version.

 

In continuous of this post, I will explain about the history of ESXi after release vSphere4.0 and also SSO domain changes in every version of after release vSphere5.1

hostd & vpxa & vpxd

One of my students, asks me about the difference between vpxa & hostd.

hostd (daemon) is responsible for the performing main management task of the ESXi, like virtual machine operations (such as Power-On, Migration & ...)

But what is going on when we join the ESXi to the vCenter server? 

Now it's time fo the vpxa (agent) to come. vpxa is the related agent for communication between ESXi and vCenter Server, so whenever you try to add the host to the vCenter, vpxa will be started automatically.

Despite the hostd is used for managing most of ESXi operations, the vCenter calls the vpxa to send its commands to the hostd agent. Actually, vpxa is like an intermediate between the hostd of the ESXi and vpxd (daemon) on the vCenter to pass the executed commands from the vCenter server to the ESXi (TCP/UDP Port 902). Although if you want to manage the ESXi directly, management communication will handle by the host itself (UDP Port 902).

vpxd (daemon) also acts as a part of the vCenter server and is the responsible for sending commands via vpxa agent to the ESXi hostd service. (Also if the vpxd is stopped, you cannot connect to the vCenter server via the vsphere client.)

vCenter Server --> vpxd --> vpxa ---> hostd --> ESXi

For restarting the ESXi host daemon and vCenter Agent services, you can run the following commands:

/etc/init.d/hostd restart

/etc/init.d/vpxa restart

Great Memorial for the vSphere version 6.0

At last VMware announced the deadline for the General Support of vSphere version 6.0 that is March 12, 2020...
However, I believe this version was the most impressive release of vSphere because of its grateful improvement. There were so many enhancements in many areas on virtualization infrastructure like:

1. Architecture & Platform Service Controller (PSC)
2. Support NVIDIA GRID vGPU
3. Very Very unbelievable scalability (64 hosts and 8000 VMs per cluster and also 480 logical CPU, 12TB RAM, 1024 VM)
4. Certificate Management by VMCA
5. Improvement for vSphere Web Client
6. Storage Enhancement include Virtual Volumes & VDP / VR improvement
7. Network Enhancement include NIOCv3 & Multiple TCP/IP Stacks
8. Availability area (vMotion, HA & FT improvement)
9. Security area like Smart Card authentication to DCUI & two Lockdown mode
10. Multisite Content Library

Goodbye, vSphere 6.0 ... I hope ASAP VMware publishes another stable version of vSphere like this one.