Dell MD Storage Array VMware vCenter Manager plug-in fails to load in vCenter

The Dell MD Storage Array VMware vCenter Manager plug-in is a great addition to vCenter for ease of management for MD3 series arrays.

After reading the release notes it states that if you already have VMware Update Manager installed in the same server you must change the Jetty SSL port from 8084 which is being used by VUM. I did as I was told and changed the port to 18084.

After opening vCenter and trying to enable the new plug-in you are faced with this error.

I added some firewall exceptions, but this did not help. I checked to make sure the Dell MD Storage Array VMware vCenter Application Service was started and it was. 

Did some digging around in the jetty folder.C:\Program Files\Dell\MD Storage Array VMware vCenter Plug-In\jetty and found that although I have specified port 8088 during the setup the XML file, wsconfig.xml had the wrong port!!!

The fix was to stop the Dell MD Storage Array VMware vCenter Application Service service, correct the port number in my case 8088 and start the service once more. Sorted!

While you in that folder you might want to edit appserver64.ini and reduce the amount of RAM java will drink. Unless you have a large amount of arrays to monitor reduce this to 128MB's 

#localize these lines  (Items to the right have the =)

service.name=Dell MD Storage Array VMware vCenter Application Service

service.description=Dell MD Storage Array VMware vCenter Application Service

#Do not localize below this point

service.class=com.loem.aa.webserver.WebServerService

service.id=DellMDStorageArrayApplicationServicevCP

classpath.1=lib\*.jar

service.startup=auto

#log=c:\logs.txt

vmarg.1=-Dconfig.file=C:\Program Files\Dell\MD Storage Array VMware vCenter Plug-In\jetty\wsconfig.xml

vmarg.2=-Dorg.apache.jasper.compiler.disablejsr199=true

vmarg.3=-Xmx128M

#vmarg.4=-Xdebug

#vmarg.5=-Xnoagent

#vmarg.6=-Xrunjdwp:transport=dt_socket,address=8787,server=y,suspend=y

vm.location=C:\Program Files\Dell\MD Storage Array VMware vCenter Plug-In\jre\bin\server\jvm.dll

Note if the service won't start you might need to remove and reinstall using another port number. You can use netstat -an | find ":portnumber"  to see if a port is in use.

Upgrading FTOS from USB

I have had some trouble lately upgrading FTOS via TFTP, the session starts but throws some errors. An easier way to upgrade the firmware or FTOS software is to use a USB stick:

FTOS needs to see a FAT32 formatted USB stick. I have seen plenty of times where the stick inserted with FAT32 isn't recognised with a file system. If this happens just get the switch to format the USB stick with this command:

format USBFLASH:

Once the stick is formatted copy the FTOS .bin file to the stick from a laptop and insert it back into the switch chassis.

Issue the command:

upgrade system usbflash: A:

After the file has copied to flash you issue the command reload to finish the process.

The process can take about 5 minutes. Please note in this example, I'm upgrading from version 8.x.x.x to 9.3.0.0 on a S4820T, in this case on reboot each physical port had to have a firmware upgrade from version 01.50 to 01.66 which took approximatly 10 minutes. Make sure you plan this into your downtime plan!

You can verify the firmware upgrade by issuing the show os-version command

EqualLogic, gathering diags

You speed up the EqualLogic diag by skipping the SNMP walk in section 14 by using these switches.

diag "-x 14"

VSS event ID 8194 after installing HIT 4.6

I have seen this with a few separate customers now. Event ID Error 8194 appears on Hyper-V 2012 hosts with the HIT installed as seen below.


Volume Shadow Copy Service error: Unexpected error querying for the IVssWriterCallback interface. hr = 0x80070005, Access is denied.

. This is often caused by incorrect security settings in either the writer or requestor process.

Operation:

Gathering Writer Data

Context:

Writer Class Id: {e8132975-6f93-4464-a53e-1050253ae220}

Writer Name: System Writer

Writer Instance ID: {c4cafe6b-9e92-49e6-b95e-35b7cd4c0cac}


The forum below intimates this has been seen before and points to the HIT.


http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/c66d3ab4-44d7-4a24-bb4b-9b20b3ed56d1/backup-of-hyperv-2012-csv-intermittent-fails-with-error-0x80042301?forum=dpmhypervbackup

It would appear a working solution is to configure removing access to the network service account, what it actually does is to stop the call to VSS, hence no access denied error is reported. The double \\ is the output from the registry export and is required.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\VSS\VssAccessControl]
"NT Authority\\NetworkService"=dword:00000000

Didier Van Hoye, has some useful information on this...
workinghardinit.wordpress.com/.../dell-compellent-hardware-vss-provider-commvault-on-windows-server-2012-hyper-v-nodes-volume-shadow-copy-service-error-unexpected-error-querying-for-the-ivsswritercallback-interface-hr-0x80

Configuring an external NTP source on Windows 2003 domain controllers

Before I perform any Active Directory upgrade, I always run the Microsoft IT environment health scanner. This tool was written by Microsoft to aid customer moving to Essential Business Server, no long dead. It's still a great tool for assessing the health of the existing Active Directory.
One of the most common issues found the time configuration on 2003 domain controllers.

To address this issue you must set these two registry entries on the PDC emulator.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\W32Time\Config]
"MaxNegPhaseCorrection"=dword:0002a300
"MaxPosPhaseCorrection"=dword:0002a300

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\W32Time\TimeProviders\NtpClient]
"SpecialPollInterval"=dword:00000384

And issue these two commands at CMD prompt.

w32tm /config /manualpeerlist:"0.pool.ntp.org 1.pool.ntp.org" /syncfromflags:manual /reliable:yes /update
net stop w32time && net start w32time
w32tm /resync

Patching Windows 2012 Hyper-V 3.0

For a reason unknown to me Microsoft has a number of hotfixes that fix some nasty bugs in Hyper-V 3.0 but aren't' downloaded via Windows update.

Christian Edwards wrote a Technet blog was written to scan for the missing patches a while back, but it was a ball-ache obtaining the individual patches.

http://blogs.technet.com/b/cedward/archive/2013/05/24/validating-hyper-v-2012-and-failover-clustering-2012-hotfixes-and-updates-with-powershell.aspx

Some clever dude has written a PowerShell script to scan the cluster for missing patches, and download them using BITS for your convenience.

https://github.com/it-praktyk/Get-WindowsHotfixes

VMware and ESXi with 4k Disks

EqualLogic firmware 7.0.0 now gives us the option to create volumes with 4k sectors rather than the legacy 512e sector size. I thought it would be interesting to create two EqualLogic volumes, one 4k, one 512e. Then create to VMs and IO meter to see if there are any performance gains.

The two volumes could be seen by the ESXi 5.5 host but 

I am surprised that considering 4096 byte sectors have been around since 2010 that VMware has no compatibility for this disk format.

To conclude:

ESXi + 4K disks = :(