Solaris - ZFS quota

Setting up a ZFS quota:

1. Create mount point


# zfs create -o mountpoint=/mp rpool/mp

2. Set a 5Gb quota


# zfs set quota=5G rpool/mp

The mount is now created with a quota.


What happens if you now want to increase the quota?
Increasing the quota to 20Gb


# zfs set quota=20G rpool/mp


At some point you may want to get rid of the mount point and its quota

# zfs destroy rpool/mp
 

VMware - Checking on snapshots

The backups failed one night and left a number of snapshots marooned.

(The backup process snapshots the NetApp volume, backups up the VMs, then deletes the snapshots).

To check which machines were affected I created and ran a Powershell script.

First of all I downloaded the VMware PowerCLI from here, you will need an VMware account to download.

Then opened up the PowerCLI to run the following commands:

Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned

Connect-VIServer vCenterServerName

get-vm | get-snapshot | format-list

This produces quite an in depth list of information, but a little too much as all I'm after is the name of machines with snapshots so I can check them for the backup snapshot. The date and description (as the backup names them as "SMVI Snapshot generated for.......")

Format list will give you the following objects:
Description
Created
Quiesced
PowerState
VM
VMId
Parent
ParentSnapshotId
ParentSnapshot
Children
SizeMB
IsCurrent
IsReplaySupported
ExtensionData
Id
Name
Uid

So my actual query was this which ends with an output option to a text file:

get-vm | get-snapshot | format-list vm,date,description | out-file c:\snapshot.txt

If you want to narrow your search down to a specific container as listed in "VMs and Templates", for example "Citrix" where all your Citrix servers are collected then amend the "get-vm" part of the query:

get-vm -location ”Citrix” | get-snapshot | format-list vm,date,description | out-file c:\snapshot.txt

 

VMware - vSphere DB queries

Looking for who kicked off a snapshot sometime in the past?

VMware KB2009075 gives you an idea on how to find out.

Will post more once I have played around with it a bit longer!

UPDATE - 14th November 2013

My amended query from the VMware default (as I'm looking for actual 'user' accounts and not system) is.

select task_id, parent_task_id, start_time, username, complete_time, entity_name, descriptionid, complete_state
from VPX_TASK
where USERNAME != ''
and USERNAME NOT IN ('DOMAIN\backup','DOMAIN\anotherservice')

I'm looking at narrowing the search down to a date which will require further investigation. 
Sites that might help with that are:
http://www.w3schools.com/
 

Solaris - Patching using PCA

Since we haven't got Ops Center running in OEM as yet, but are planning to, I ignored the automated checking only because I was told the OpsCenter deployment was imminent...... Saying that I recently stumbled across the PCA product, that some kind chaps have developed a number of years back and have maintained it ever since, of which the best part is that it works even now that Solaris is an Oracle product.

I downloaded the PCA file text (which requires Perl to run) from the site and amended the file so it was executable as per the instructions on the site.

# chmod +x pca


The severs I work on don't have internet access so I have to use the patchdiag.ref file text which is also available from the site (and changes on a regular basis, so go back and check periodically for updates).
Save the file to:

# /var/tmp

Then run the PCA script

# ./pca





Which produces something like this - usage guide is also on the website.

Very useful stuff!