Saturday, July 28, 2012

vCSA upgrade tips & recommendations

Upgrading the vCenter Server Appliance looks simple enough. If you run into problems, maybe these tips can help:

  • Create the 20G (yes 20G) disk in the kb article
  • Take a snapshot first (shut down services)
  • Really. TAKE A SNAPSHOT FIRST
  • If the upgrade does not go smoothly the first time, do not try again with a half-broken install. Revert to snap.
  • If your upgrade breaks during the export, check your free inodes (df -i)
  • Increase the number of inodes on the /storage/db/export partition (mkfs -t ext2 -i 8192 /dev/sdc1 )
  • Problems mounting /dev/sdc1 (doesn't like ext2)? tune2fs -O has_journal /dev/sdc1
  • tail -f /opt/vmware/var/log/vami/updatecli.log during the upgrade. This file is created a minute or two after you kick off the upgrade. 
  • There will be a long (potentially hours long) pause in the log while the database export is happening. Top will show db2bp kjourneld and db2sync in use. Do not kill any of these processes. 
  • You didn't take my advice and create a snapshot? You needed to use a restored backup? You might need to remove the /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules mac addresses if the appliance says it can't bring up eth0. 

Monday, July 2, 2012

Real competition now






What was that pooled vRAM licensing? Never mind? Good idea.
Now update the goddamn vCenter Appliance and stop making software that requires MS Windows.