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/
 

ESX - VisualEsxtop

New tool is available from the VMware fling site for seeing ESX performance stats

http://labs.vmware.com/flings/visualesxtop

(Just remember flings aren't supported!).

Install instructions can be found at:

http://blogs.vmware.com/kb/2013/09/using-visualesxtop-to-troubleshoot-performance-issues-in-vsphere-2.html

VMware - SSL

Having recently upgraded from vSphere 4.1 to vSphere 5.0 Update 2 we are currently suffering from some SSL issues - all appeared to be resolved apart from one (which is the new Web Client service).

Being lucky enough to be in a team large enough where we have some specialists the SSL certificate errors were resolved quickly.

Goggling around a bit there seems to be a number of people suffering from SSL issues and I found some interesting articles written by Michael Webster which are listed below:

http://longwhiteclouds.com/2012/02/24/updating-ca-ssl-certificates-in-vsphere-5/

http://longwhiteclouds.com/2012/02/07/the-trouble-with-ca-ssl-certificates-and-vcenter-5/

http://longwhiteclouds.com/2012/09/15/vcert-manager-changing-vmware-ssl-certs-made-easy/

XenApp - Desktop Virtualisation for VMware vSphere

I was lucky enough (management buy) to listen to a Citrix webcast during work hours which covered XenApp deployment on VMware vSphere.

It covered some tips and tricks to get better performance out of XenApp and one of the speakers was Elias Khnaser who is a CTP and vExpert.

Webcast can be found here - you will have to register to watch it

VMware - RVTools 3.4 (new release)

Just read that the latest release of the excellent RVTools is available and can be found here.

Produces really good reports that can be exported to Excel and CSV - I've been using it in its various forms since 2008.

The Health tab is very useful as it warns you about Zombie VMDK files, VM Tools being out of date, Disks running out of space, inconsistent folder names, etc, etc.

Zombie VMDK files are interesting in the fact that they may, or may not, be still linked to the Guest still. Personally I've found a load of former snapshot files which have become "lost" in the system i.e. snapshot manager doesn't state there are any outstanding for the Guest so I remove them. You can always move them first before deleting on the safe side to see if there are any adverse reactions from the Guest!

Additional information about Zombies can be found on the Communities Forum (feedback to a question)

VMware - SLES

I found out recently that due to the Licenses we have VMware we were/are untitled to SUSE SLES fully supported within the VI.

I'll upload the links once I find them again.....

General information about SUSE (which some VMware licenses allow you to run it within a vSphere environment - for free and supported!)

http://www.softpanorama.info/Commercial_linuxes/Suse/index.shtml