A new mile stone:Automated ESX deployment using virtual appliance EDA/UDA

I had been struggling to find out way to automate my ESX build and found two appliance using which you can automate ESX deployment. Well this not only the way you can deploy but there are folks who have many way to deploy scripted ESX . Like ADS to deploy ESX but that’s not the goal of this document. I want to share my challenge while setting up this appliance. I know the folks who are Champions of these appliance like Carl Thijssen/Mike Laverick/ Brugh have explained many steps on their blogs and forum.

Environment preparation before setting up PXE appliance for ESX deployment:

1. Dedicated VLAN just for ESX deployment so that you won’t disturb any of your production environments.

2. When you create DHCP scope for this VLAN make sure that you have reserve IP address as you are going to use few IP for PXE /ESX/Appliance.

3. This VLAN will be Native VLAN.

4. One ESX host create a separate vSwitch and dedicate NIC for this appliance alone. Assuming that your appliance going to run out of ESX host. Set this NIC to 100MB half. The same setting you need to do on switch side of that port

              switchport trunk native vlan xxx

              switchport mode trunk

          speed 100 duplex half

          spanning-tree portfast trunk

After appliance has setup on ESX HOST:

5. After you install appliance follow the instruction on their respective site for configuring appliance. If you are not using DHCP from appliance then make sure that you have stopped it. If you have not stopped then also you land of on different issue. It is better to use windows DHCP. If you have setup your appliance on same VLAN as ESX host to be build then you don’t have to do any changes on DHCP server as someone has already explained. On ESX build VLAN just add IP Helper address for appliance. Yes this has worked for me.

6. Also do clearly specify DNS /Gateway IP while configuring appliance. If you miss any of these setting then also you may land up in problem while deploying appliance. I thought since it is testing so these are not required but I was wrong as I landed up in trouble latter.

7. There is also challenge to decide on Kick start (KS) nic. Normally your kickstart device should be your onboard NIC. Try some permutation and combination to decide on NIC. In my example if I had 10 NIC amongst which we have two onboard NIC then my onboard NIC device becomes eth8/eth9. Yeah it is quite surprising and will update when I found. But for now what I do is try permutation combination to decide on Board NIC.

8. Very Very important YOUR ESX host IP in KS script should be in the same IP range of appliance .

Some of the error message you will come across like

1. It will keep asking for keyboard type and various other question . This means you have not specify correct kick start device in your script. Please do specify correct KS device as I explained above.

My VMTM thread about it http://communities.vmware.com/message/1230094#1230094

2. PXE does not support 802.1q.

3. Also you can debug this appliance using ALT+F3 and ALT+F4. These you need to perform on ESX host which you are building. What I have learned that these are anaconda logs which help you to troubleshoot the appliance. You need to press ALT+F3 and ALT+F4 as soon as GUI method of install start.

4. Some of the error like

ALT+F3 :

Trying to mount device HDA

No network drivers for doing kickstart

Assert: No network device in chooseNetworkInterface

ALT+F4

cdrom:open failed

Such error message suggest that you have not selected correct KS device for your PXE.

5. If you are using EDA then make sure that you associates the ISO using CD ROM ISO. Which means you copy the ISO to some NFS or shares to connect to VM appliance. I tried connecting ISO using ISO connect ICON and it was keep failing. If you are using UDA then it is advisable to create separate disk of 20 to 40GB of drives and copy ISO over there.

6. If your ESX build stuck at the screen shown below and ALT+F3 shows “ *transferring http://10.0.0.104//esx/esx301//VMware/base/netstg2.img to a fd” .

“unable to retrive http://<ip of UDA>//esx/esx301/vmware/base/netstg2.img”

This means your UDA/EDA appliance are not in the same range of IP as of your ESX host getting build. You need to modify the KS script and ensure that your IP subnet is same as your ESX host getting build. That is the reason I suggested above to have IP reservation of your DHCP server

Some more ALT+F3 and ALT +F4 screen

For any further troubleshooting check the VMTM forum/Appliance website and their forum

For UDA http://communities.vmware.com/thread/43958?tstart=0 http://www.ultimatedeployment.org/forum http://www.ultimatedeployment.org/index.html

Person to contact _the_dude_ or Mike Laverick for any help on VMTM thread

For EDA http://communities.vmware.com/thread/139465?tstart=0 http://virtualappliances.eu/

Person to contact burgh on VMTM thread.

First Cut feature of ESX host 4.0

As I mention in my last note that I am installing vSphare ESX4.0 . Since I am not installing any vSphare CenterI decided to download the agent and use it for the time being to find out what all has been changed.

1, First change I noticed after installing vSphare agent that it allow you to login with current credential.

2. As soon as you login you get nice inventory panel to explore

3. Then I found very interesting thing. You can view logs (click on System Logs as shown above) under /var/log/vmware

4. You can do almost everything using this interface whereas earlier if you bypass virtual center server you have limited feature. One this I found that you have plugin available by Hyper9 and Andrew. Its same Andrew who has created storage vmotion plugin. Hyper9 give you nice little reflection and it is freely available on Hyper9 website. This plugin also work with VC2.5. One thing I also notice about spelling of Plugin, vmware spelled it as plug-in J

This is how your vm’s will look like if you have Hyper9 client installed. If it is windows host it will show MS symbol and if it is Linux it will show Linux symbol

5. They have improved the summary page

6. Console memory has increased from 272MB to 500MB as default.

7. Networking helps you to enable IPV6

8. Storage adapter also list your local ESX CD ROM . Not sure the reason but looks very interesting

9. New interesting feature called Advance setting. Not sure reason for this but looks very interesting

10. Licensing feature also looks very interesting

ESX4.0 install first CUT- Step by Step comparision with previous version

Publish at Scribd or explore others:

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Not able to open VM using console- connection attempt failed because the connected party did not properly respond

I renamed host which has been migrated from different location but after rename user were not able to connect to virtual machine using VC.
1. Disconnected and removed the host from Virtual Center. Restarted hostd and vpxd service.
2. I also connected the host directly using VC thinking that it might be VC issue but still it did not helped. I was getting error
“error connecting: can not connect to host x.x.x.x: a connection attempt failed because the connected party did not properly respond after a period of time, or established connection failed because connected host has failed to respond.”

I even rebooted host but still did not helped. Some were it was suggested to modify config file for host which worked for me

L ogin to ssh by i.e. putty, and edit the following line : /etc/vmware/config (type #nano /etc/vmware/config)

Add this following line : vmauthd.server.alwaysProxy = “TRUE” at the end of the file.
This resolved the issue