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• Runecast - test run

  A few days ago I read a post by Mike Webster and was introduced to a product that peaked my interest.. (http://longwhiteclouds.com/2017/04/08/runecast-your-way-to-a-more-trouble-free-virtualization-environment/ ).

  I have to spend time reviewing logs, dashboards, vCheck reports and other tools to keep virtual environments in a stable and healthy state. I have always wished there was a method to look at issues and match them up with VMware KB articles/data. I always want to be proactive and know of any potential issues or improvements to the configurations that I could do (before a customer would be impacted). I was like wow this is really cool to be ahead of issues as well as understand the issue/s.

   

  I got time to install this and I have to say -- I am very wow'ed!!!!

  

  What is Runecast?

  Proactive tool that continuously checks your environment, vCenter, ESXi servers and VMs to ensure they are running at peak performance with no known configuration issues or security issues. IE --- > Proactively use VMware KBs, best practices and security hardening guidelines to protect your environment.

  

  The really cool thing is you can stay up to date on industry issues that could impact your environment. Runcast is a virtual appliance (OVA) and can be updated from the internet or it can be updated via an ISO image (offline update). It is updated with information that has been mined from the VMware KBs and is used to proactively check log and configuration for issues in the virtual environment. It also has security configuration checks.

  Installation

  Installation was extremely simple, Runecast provides a virtual appliance (OVA) file that can be downloaded from the web and deployed via virtual center.

  After configuring the VC permissions I clicked the “Analyze Now” button and the scan began. You can also schedule scans. I was also able to export findings. All good stuff.

  Within a few minutes data started flowing into the dashboards and it found some known issues in the environment… my environment is rather large – many VCs, 100s+ hosts and over 1000s VMs, I also have a mix of versions – vSphere 6.x-5.x

  I immediately started to check into the Best Practices area (dashboard) – seemed like the good place to start. As I soon found out I do have some critical known issues and configuration issues with in the environment – good work Runecast

  Then I moved to the Issues List which is nice as it color codes issues in different categories (critical, major, Medium and low). I am not 100% sure how these are calculated but they do align with how I generally look at issues within an environment. I also notice some really cool info around PSODs and how it relates to hardware drivers and firmware updates.

  I expanded to find some full details from and the KB article: 

  

  My environment will take some time to fix however with this view of issues/updates and the information in the KB, we could make the virtual environment a lot better in a proactive way. In a production environment this could save a lot of time so that issues are found faster and reported. We could actual enable an operation team to see the dashboards or via emails.

  Security hardening is shown for my entire environment – for future discussion

  Detailed log analysis is viewable – I didn’t get to this feature other than doing some searches so I’ll work on this more in the future.

  Conclusion

  Awesome Tool! I ran the app in my environment to try it out; it found reconfiguration issues, missed settings and missing patches. In an enterprise environment a human error and reconfiguration accounts for a large number of issues.

  I would strongly recommend running an analysis to check your virtual environment to see if things are running at peak performance and how can it improve your proactive state for better stability. 

   

  Check it out: https://www.runecast.biz/

   

  Runecast - few items would like to see updated or how-to docs:

  I would like to understand the categories better

  How to export the report with the findings

  What is the plan to add other products into Runecast (IE other hypervisors/hardware vendors, etc...) 

• The Future of IT

  For some I agree that it is going to be harder to justify VMware costs in the future (but it really does help to drive costs down). I believe there is a major importance of Windows 8 and Linux in the future. However I do believe from the infrastructure arena that the virtualization layer will be a major component to get companies to the Cloud. The future of technology is Clouds (hybrid/private/public) which is compute, networking, and storage as shared services which is the cornerstone of virtualization.
  
  

  VMware’s virtualization is the Key to all of the technology advances of the last 10 years.  VMware is closely tied to all of the cores, Server, IP network and Storage. I currently do think that the vApps and security components need a lot of work. To have full integration of virtual apps (virtual/cloud aware apps) well less just say we are a long ways from that.
   
  VMware is the “cornerstone” of the architecture tying all other needed components together (Server Core, IP Core, Storage Core and IO Engines (IE - Microsoft, Linux, AIX, etc). It is the product that spans all datacenters within a true enterprise.
   
  VMware is the component that makes Microsoft useful and effective for IO engines and end users.  As well as geographically dispersed datacenters with Geo and Intra Datacenter load balancing and spanned IP networks with Active - Active workload between datacenters (IE: OTV or VXLAN (not ready yet)). Virtualization will help get us out of the ‘4 walls” of the datacenter as we need to eliminate the limits\constraints of a single physical network. We need for datacenters to be more agile.
   
  Microsoft\Windows is now only a small component of the datacenter IO engine layer. The need for Microsoft/Windows Clustering is small to none now that Hardware HA (VMware, IBM, HP, and Cisco) is so fast. PLUS: Now that we have Virtual Load Balancers within the industry that maintain 100% uptime within a single datacenter and across geographically dispersed datacenters “clustering” is just an abstracted term used to indicate a SERVICE.
   
  I have always had the skills and mind set of - Future Vision/Technical/Business Oriented = Provide technical knowledge to add value to the business as you lead them to more/bigger business (faster). I will continue to grow my Cloud knowledge and help others with this new technology.
  My belief is the OS (whichever that may be) is the IO engine for business applications. So the OS will be closer to the business as opposed to an infrastructure layer. The business applications live within the OS at this time and the foreseeable future. I also believe the business’ belief in relation to infrastructure components is “it should just run”.

  These are only my opinions and do not reflect anyone or any company's opinion or view - Ronald Barefield

• Hyper3 vs. VMware

  MS's new version seems to include WAN vMotion... wow without OTV (Overlay Transport Virtualization) or at least that what I’m reading. It will be very impressive to have WAN vMotion for many reasons including DR/BC>...  Great article here on CIO:

  http://www.cio.com/article/690019/Microsoft_Cracks_Live_Migration_Problem?taxonomyId=3112

  The MS version of HyperV3 will give us the right things we "need" not wants. VMware gives us something’s for free or at least until you move to Vsphere5 and get hit with the vTax. They did make some changes to licenses but not enough to stop people from looking at other products that get the job done! HyperV-3 vs vSphere 5 - http://www.tomsitpro.com/articles/hyper-v-virtualization-windows-server-8-vsphere,1-16.html

  I truly think that over time we will see the virtual scene change to more of a tiered approach. VMware is the lead today but what the future brings is going to have to wait and see! I think based on cost and seeing some try to put virtualization directly in at the chip level, its going to get fun for us engineers and admins.

  Ivan Pepelnjak has a great article on VXLAN-LISP-OTV ----http://blog.ioshints.info/2011/09/vxlan-otv-and-lisp.html

  Great reading from Thomas Mauer - Hyper-V & UCS combo: http://www.thomasmaurer.ch/2011/05/how-microsoft-hyper-v-and-the-cisco-ucs-changed-our-lives/

• Vblock™ – 3 of the World Technology Leaders

  Vblock™ – 3 of the World Technology Leaders Come together (something rarely seen)

    To start out I am NOT an employee for VCE/EMC/Cisco. This is based off of my own opinions and experiences.  Now let’s get started J

  The future of technology seems to be about effectively using datacenter resources and underutilized hardware. I believe that you need to converge infrastructure components to effectively use a datacenter. To me, a Vblock™ is basically a Technology Appliance that allows organizations to raise the bar for infrastructure utilization. In order to maximize you’re spending (OPEX - operating expense) as well as your infrastructure utilization, you will have to have convergence and Vblock™ does this effectively.  I also believe that Vblock™ will allow you to build and get to a cloud model in a much faster well-organized way.

   

  What I believe and have seen with the Vblock™ is that it allows an organization to move more effectively toward a Private Cloud model as well as maintain a high-level of performance to their customers. The Vblock™ alone will NOT get you to a “cloud model” but it’s a major step in the right direction. Vblock™ allows you to have a converged infrastructure that allows you to pool storage, computing and networking to optimize datacenter infrastructure (lower TCO - total cost of ownership). Seemingly, you get better performance in a black box at a lower cost. Vblock™ has full scalability. It is flexible from storage to networking components to Cisco UCS blades & chassis (opinion - which in this day and age is one of the leaders in the industry for server hardware) and supports many different configurations. In my opinion Vblock™ technology allows you to virtualize and consolidate your systems while continuing to provide a high-level of performance that has been tested prior to running in your datacenter environment (validation of an outcome).

   

  Vblock™ (Standard components and devices based on my experiences):

  ·         Cisco UCS blade chassis 5108s.

  ·         Cisco B230s and B200s UCS Blade Models

  ·         VMax and VNX 7500 Storage Models (EMC storage devices).

  ·         Cisco networking switches (6140s & 55xx) and FCOE inside UCS blade for connectivity (Standard Vblock™)

  ·         EMC RecoverPoint™ SAN replication (Block Base) with native splitters on the storage devices.

   

  Vblock™ allows an organization to standardize on what I call a ‘complete infrastructure framework/platform’ with many different components (Compute/Network/Storage). This can simplify an organization’s support as well as help companies move away from a fragmented infrastructure. This convergence (pooling) allows you to share resources to infrastructure components at the same time. Vblock™ allows for higher density level in a datacenter which can reduce your physical footprint. I have seen where Vblock™ technology allows cost savings by reduction in hardware maintenance cost (smaller carbon footprint) as well as consolidation on the virtual side. UCS manager allows companies to profile their systems for specific settings based on what application may run and where it will run (server profiles) for fast deployments and provisioning. This builds in versatility when you have hardware failures. Finally, Vblock™ model has allowed for ease of management from my experiences.

   

  In addition, Vblock™ does enable disaster recovery plans/exercises and effective off-site recoverability to be more structured (i.e. simpler to perform) from my experience. That’s not only the Vblock™ but a major component of disaster recovery and business continuity. I have also experienced EMC RecoverPoint™ deployed with Vblock™ technology to perform state-full SAN replication on the backend with EMC storage to do block replication. This type of replication allows for a smaller RPO (recover point objective). I have also experienced EMC Data Domain® and Avamar® Grids deployed for effective virtual machine and database backup and restore capability. The replication from Vblock™ to Vblock™ allows us to focus on true “application” DRs vs. infrastructure DR opportunities.

  My Opinion:

  The Vblock™ is designed, to make IT life simpler (infrastructure framework) and more cost effective (an appliance) for an organization.

   

  The views and opinions expressed above are the author's opinions and not do not necessarily reflect his employer’s policies or positions and the author does not intend to so represent his employer.

• IT Execs go small - Is this smarter?

  http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9222234/Big_fish_little_pond_Some_IT_execs_go_small_and_love_it

  I am a end to end person with Cloud Architect skills as well as overarching skills of Cisco UCS/VMware/Storage including VCE.

  End to end is about design, architect, implement, support or handoff the support then decommission (lifecycle cradle to grave).

  This applies to applications, datacenter infrastructure and all processes; these can and do meet ITIL/ITSM standards. I do a lot of application integration with virtual environments. I know virtualization very well as well as DR and BC (via a BIA).

   

  I consolidate and save money with infrastructure via virtual implementation as well as add value back to the business with simple solutions that resolve challenges. Method is to keep it simple. 

• Power VI Configurator

  OK… script away ---

  A friend of my (Jeremy) helped write this with me learning sometime back however I cleaned it up some. It is and was a great tool in another role I use to be in. I removed list items 4-9 as we used it to setup specific performance settings for a technology/vendor product, but you do not need it for this script to help you with setting up the VI side of things. I do know that some of the PowerCLI commands are older but we had older ESX/ESXI versions we needed to cover. Also we haven’t had time to redo it with newer commands.

  We wrote this originally to help implement VI settings as and as overwrite/correct settings. So please test it. You are using this at your own risks.

  There is a step in here at the beginning to kill all VC connections… I used it for testing…
  Here is a few of the settings we targeted at each layer – single host or vCluster or vDC

  Enable Firewall Port Settings
  Disconnect Media Devices from VMs
  Modify Syslog Settings
  Create Persistent Scratch Location
  Modify Domain Name and DNS
  Modify NTP settings
  Modify Storage Settings (add, scan, rename, mount NFS share)
  Enter/Exit Host from Maintenance Mode
  Connect, Disconnect ESXi Host from vCenter
  Change Root Password
  View ESXi Logs
  Enable\Disable SSH
  Modify Networking Global Settings
  Modify Networking for vSwitch 0, 1, 2

  I would like to ask if you modify or update the Script then please share it back with us.
  Please provide feedback/comments so we can make it better and report any issues you find.

  I am not a GURU at scripting.. I just like to get creative sometimes and scripting helps with applying that creativity quickly.

  Download - PowerVIConfigurator_v2.txt

   

  Thanks
  @vTwindude