VSphere

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vSphere/vCenter

vSphere is VMWare's virtualization platform and a central planning/management area to work on VMWare products. In vSphere, we use vCenter to connect all of our ESXi hosts together and manage them all from a single place. vCenter is located on a virtual machine on 10.21.25.2 called Yggdrasil. It can be accessed at https://10.21.25.5 with the login [email protected] and the highest level pintech password or using your personal account with @mhs.24pin.tech. vSphere also adds other services such as vSphere Replication to the environment which allows us to take daily replications of our VMs.

Installing

  • Before starting, you will need to have atleast one ESXi host to be able to install vCenter.
  • Download the latest version of VMware vCenter Server Appliance 7 for Essentials Plus from VMWare's customer connect site using chamberlain's account.
  • Run the installer and choose the install option. From here, simply follow the steps in the installer to finish the installation.

Updating

  • To start the update process you want to go and head over to the vCenter management web interface at https://yggdrasil.mhs.24pin.tech:5480/#/login.
  • Go to the update section of the page and wait for the available updates to load.
  • Select backup now and check the box that says use the scheduled update settings. From there you will just need to put in the highest level password and continue.
  • When starting the update, it may take anywhere from 30 minutes to several hours. Downtime is not required for the ESXi hosts that vCenter is managing, or for virtual machines that are running on the hosts. Only vCenter will be down and should start back up on it's own after the update.

Virtual Machines

Creating a VM

Right click on one of the hosts and press new virtual machine to begin creating a new virtual machine:

  • Select how you want to create a virtual machine. Typically we will use the first option of creating a new virtual machine.
  • Give the VM a name and then select the host that you want to put the VM on.
  • Select the default storage that shows up (either ValhallaLocal or AsgardLocal)
  • Select the operating system that you wish to use and then pick the version.
  • Choose the amount of cpus, memory, and and storage that you will need to use for the virtual machine.
  • To install the operating system you also need to pick Datastore ISO File in CD/DVD Drive and check connect at power on.

Migrating a VM (vMotion)

vMotion is a core feature to the VMware environment and allows machine to migrate over between ESXi boxes with zero down time. In order to configure vMotion you need to have two available IP addresses in your reservation range.

  • Find the machine you want to move over with zero downtime
  • Right click the machine and press on the Migrate option
  • Choose to change both computer resource and storage
  • Choose the machine you are migrating the machine to by dropping down the cluster. When doing this you may get an error or two, usually this is due to the fact some sort of device is attached to the VM and you just need to go and configure the VM to make sure no external devices are attached.
  • Choose the datastore. Here you can verify that you chose the right machine since you should only have one option, either ValhallaLocal or AsgardLocal.
  • Choose the networking group the machine we part of, which should usually be the default port group depending on the machine.

Snapshots

Snapshots are short term restore options that can be created before you apply major updates or changes to a virtual machine. It allows you to create multiple restore points of your virtual machine as you go through the update process. Snapshots must be deleted to update the storage of any VM. Snapshots should be created at least once a month or before any major updates/changes to a machine.

Creation

  • Select the VM you want to create a snapshot of and navigate to the snapshot tab.
  • Press take snapshot to create a snapshot (write why the snapshot is being taken in the description)
  • Uncheck VM memory when taking snapshots of Yggdrasil or vSphereReplication

Reverting

  • Select the VM you want to create a snapshot of and navigate to the snapshot tab.
  • Click on the snapshot you want to revert to and then press finish to restore the VM to the snapshot.
  • Once you have fixed the issue, make sure to delete that snapshot and then create a new snapshot for the latest version.

vSphere Replication

vSphere Replication is a appliance offered by VMWare for their vCenter servers. We have it setup so that our vSphere replication appliance and vCenter are both on Asgard. You can choose which VMs you want to replicate and how often they sync/replicate so you can restore to a previous version if something ever goes wrong. Replications can be accessed at 10.21.25.26 using [email protected] and the highest level password. Once you are in, you can view the replications by clicking view details and then the pressing the replication tab.

Installation

  • To deploy a vSphere Replication machine you want to make sure you are in the hosts section of vCenter and you want to right click the machine you are deploying the appliance on and choose "Deploy OVF Template."
  • It will ask you to choose local files for setup. For the setup, select the following files vSphere_Replication_OVF10.ovf, vSphere_Replication-support.vmdk, and vSphere_Replication-system.vmdk from \\midgard\Cisco Curriculum\vSphere Downloads\VMWare-vSphere_Replication-8.3.1-17210339
  • Name the VM vSphereReplication and for the folder press the drop down and choose Discovered Virtual Machines.
  • Agree to the license agreements and choose to deploy with 2 vCPUs.
  • Next, choose the local machine datastore for both of the appliances we have in our network.
  • For the networking machine choose the management network for the machine you are deploying on and keep it as static-manual IPv4.
  • Choose the configuration for the machine and then deploy the OVF.
  • Once the machine boots up and says you can configure it from the web interface go ahead and do so (login should be root and the password you set)
  • When finished, go to the VR>Configuration tab and press the Save and Restart Service.
  • If you have rebuilt the replications VM make sure to delete any old replications from the datastore so it doesn't waste tons of space.

Replicating

  • For the target site choose manually select and then select vSphereReplication
  • Choose the machine you want to replicate
  • For the target datastore choose the opposite of what the machine is currently on
  • Change the replication time to every 24 hours
  • Press finish to start the initial sync of the machine (you can check the progress of the replication by using the drop down)

Restoring

  • Right click the machine you want to restore and then press the recover button
  • When choosing recovery options you want to use the latest available data if it is a restoration of a broken machine and make sure the machine doesn’t turn on at start.
  • For the machine you want to choose the opposite of what the current machine is on (for example: the web server is on Valhalla so we would choose Asgard) and then press finish.
  • Mark the checkbox next to the VM Network option in the VM settings if it is not connecting to the network.
  • Be sure to always change the name of the broken server and the working one to easily differentiate them.
  • Once you restore a machine you have to make sure you delete the replication and then create it again for the new working machine.

Troubleshooting

Potential Issues/Fixes

  • Cant change root password:
  1. To change the password of the root user, access Asgard and open Yggdrasil in the console.
  2. From here, enter the root user and password to login.
  3. Once you have logged in, type shell and then type passwd to create a new password.
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