Practical Technology

I am sure there are other posts like this out there, but last time I checked, there wasn't much info on this, so here goes. I want to use kickstart to deploy virtual machines.  Rather, wanted.  Forgot that kickstart requires ethernet right off the bat, and the vmxnet3 NIC doesn't work until vmware tools is active.  I could use the E1000, but then I'm still having to delete/reconfigure after the fact.  This method means VM rollouts that are probably just as fast as kickstart, and possibly a little easier.  I could probably write a script to do the hostname/network cleanup as well. Anyways, here's my attempt at vCenter templates for CentOS.  This is pulled from my wiki, posted here for searchability. CentOS vCenter template creation Created a new VM and gave it 1cpu/1GB RAM/40GB thin drive. Installed CentOS 6 x86_64. I configured LVM - do so according to your wishes. (I specifically added LVs for /var/log, /var, /tmp, and /home) Set passwords, timezone, et

I've re-thought the storage layout, and now we include: Free space!  What a concept... More SCST config fun Actual iSCSI configuration steps Multiple smaller LUNs that will be used as RDMs Smaller VMFS LUNs Clearer layout and naming Bonded iSCSI! For the revised layout, now with pretty pictures: http://wiki.practicaltech.ca/index.php/Openfiler_-_Revised_architecture For the new config walkthrough: http://wiki.practicaltech.ca/index.php/Openfiler_-_iSCSI/FC_config_v2

All done!  Very excited, and I will continue to update with screenshots as they come up. http://wiki.practicaltech.ca/index.php/Openfiler_-_iSCSI/FC_config This doc will help you: Set up Openfiler FC for the first time Tear down and re-create new FC devices Use LVS commands to create your back-end storage Set up Openfiler iSCSI (though, admittedly, that is not the primary purpose) Next up...back to the cluster project!

http://labs.vmware.com/flings/io-analyzer " I/O Analyzer is a virtual appliance solution by VMware that provides a simple and standardized way of measuring storage performance in a VMware vSphere virtualized environments. I/O Analyzer automates the traditional storage performance analysis cycle and reduces the performance diagnosis time from days to hours. " Going to test this out in the lab, looks really interesting - might be able to help with benchmarking how the Openfiler box does (or at least VMs running on the OF).

Update:  Wiki article here:  http://wiki.practicaltech.ca/index.php/Openfiler_-_iSCSI/FC_config I had set up the FC array with only half the disks, thinking I would just add a 2nd disk later.  Once I discovered that Openfiler uses LVM, I wanted to just extend the current LV. First, I wanted to move the VMs off this LV just in case, and of course that was no simple matter.  I had no vCenter server set up, so had to do that (from scratch), then discovered that when I migrated the VMs from Workstation 8 into ESXi 4.1, all VMware Tools bits broke.  Disks went offline, network stuff had to be removed/re-added, OS type reset to 'unknown', etc. With the vCenter install, discovered a few key points: To use a remote SQL server, you need to install the SQL native client 10.0 (gives you a 64-bit DSN). If you set the vCenter to auth by a set account, like a service account, you lose AD logon for other users. Firewall!  Don't forget about me!  I just turned it off for now, bu

I moved the Openfiler box and first ESXi host back down to the rack (off my desk), and so had to do a subnet change.  So I changed things over (I thought) and tried to access the wiki.  No go.  Go and re-check all the CentOS box networking for wiki-01 and mysql-01 - seems ok.  Checked more things out - now the pages load, but super slow Well, after an hour of troubleshooting (this was a silly mistake), I discovered that it was DNS-related, and the ifcfg-eth1 file on mysql-01 had a DNS line!!  Probably from the initial deployment, but shouldn't have been in there - I keep all the DNS stuff in /etc/resolv.conf. Anyways, fixed it up and everything is back to normal.  It is amazing how quiet things are without that! Oh yeah, also had one of the IBM 73GB SAS drives fail on me (state in RAID BIOS reported as 'foreign'). I also discovered I know nothing about FC switching, or rather that FC switching is not automatic like Ethernet!  So for now, the FC will be direct from