Getting Started with Data Services Manager 2.0 – Part 9: Lifecycle Management

In previous posts, a number of benefits of Data Services Manager (DSM) were highlighted. Features such as automated backups, ease of scaling, as well as comprehensive monitoring and alerting were highlighted. Another feature which is a big differentiator in DSM is lifecycle management. In this post, I am going to show the steps in upgrading the DSM appliance/provider, essentially the DSM control plane, when a new update is available. Of course, there is also a plan for lifecycle management on the databases and data services, but that will be a topic for another post. In this post, I will take…

VCF 4.1.0.1 Update to VCF 4.2 – Step by Step

VMware recently announced the release of VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) version 4.2. I was particular interested in this release as it allows me to try out the new vSAN Data Persistence platform (DPp). My good pal Myles has an excellent introduction to DPp here  and I plan to create a number of posts on it going forward. My VCF 4.1.0.1 environment is what we call a Consolidated Architecture , meaning that both the management domain and workload domain run on the same infrastructure. The primary application that I run in this environment is VCF with Tanzu (vSphere with Tanzu on…

VSAN 6.2 Part 12 – VSAN 6.1 to 6.2 Upgrade Steps

I’ve already written a few articles around this, notably on stretched cluster upgrades and on-disk format issues. In this post, I just wanted to run through the 3 distinct upgrade steps in a little more detail, and show you some useful commands that you can use to monitor the progress. In a nutshell, the steps are: Upgrade vCenter Server to 6.0U2 (VSAN 6.2) Upgrade ESXi hosts to ESXi 6.0U2 (VSAN 6.2) Perform rolling upgrade of on-disk format from V2 to V3 across all hosts

VSAN 6.2 Upgrade – Failed to realign objects

A number of customers have reported experiencing difficulty when attempting to upgrade the on-disk format on VSAN 6.2. The upgrade to vSphere 6.0u2 goes absolutely fine; it is only when they try to upgrade the on-disk format, to use new features such as Software Checksum, and Deduplication and Compression, that they encounter this error. Here is a sample screenshot of the sort of error that is thrown by VSAN: One thing I do wish to call out – administrators must use the VSAN UI to upgrade the on-disk format. Do not simply evacuate a disk group, remove it and recreate…

VSAN 6.2 Part 8 – Upgrading VSAN Stretched Cluster from 6.1 to 6.2

This is an exercise that we ran through in our lab environment, and we thought that the steps would be useful to share here. By way of introduction, our 4 node cluster is split into a 2+2+1 configuration, where there are 2 ESXi hosts on site A (VLAN 4), 2 ESXi hosts on site B (VLAN 3), and a third site, site C (VLAN 80), hosting the witness appliance (nested ESXi host). All sites are connected over L3. In other words, static routes are added to each of the ESXi hosts so that ESXi hosts on site A can reach…

Announcing Virtual SAN Health Check Plugin 6.0 Patch 1

Announcing some important news for VSAN 6.0 users, especially those using the VSAN Health Check Plugin. If you are using the Virtual SAN Health Check Plugin version 6.0 (and if you use Virtual SAN 6.0, you definitely should be using it), there is a new patch now available. Note that this new Health Check plugin version 6.0.1 release only requires the vCenter server to be updated. There are no new ESXi host side VIBs required. The patch comes as a new installable RPM for the vCenter appliance and a new MSI for Windows versions of vCenter server. [Update] For the…

VSAN 6.0 Part 2 – v2 On-disk Format Upgrade Considerations

I was heavily involved in the documentation effort for VSAN 6.0, but I know that not everyone likes to RTFM, so to speak. What I thought I would do in this post is give an overview of the upgrade process, and highlight some considerations. But I really would urge you to read through the VSAN 6.0 Administrators Guide, and perhaps the VSAN Troubleshooting Reference Manual, especially the sections dealing with upgrades, if you do plan to upgrade from VSAN 5.5 to 6.0. There is  a lot of useful information there. There are four steps to the upgrade process: Upgrading vCenter…