Typical ESXi host-facing switchport configs
Posted: November 8, 2012 Filed under: Cisco Nexus, Networking, VMware | Tags: bpdu, bpduguard, config, esxi, esxi switch config, switch configuration, switch port, switchport, switchport nonegotiate, switchport trunk allowed vlan 6 CommentsI was troubleshooting a production issue a couple days ago that led me to request the switchport configs from our Networking team of our ESXi 5.0 hosts that pass virtual machine traffic. Here’s a snippet of what they came back with for two particular ports:
interface GigabitEthernet1/5
description -=R910 ESX# 1 – Front Side=-
switchport mode trunk
end
interface GigabitEthernet1/6
description -=R910 ESX# 1 – Front Side=-
end
Well. Not only do I see our problem (no config *at all* on one port!), but I see something else that troubles me. Our ESXi host-facing ports are only configured as trunk ports. Absolutely* nothing* else. Well, this just won’t do.
How to Configure LUN Masking with Openfiler 2.99 and ESXi 4.1
Posted: December 22, 2011 Filed under: Storage, VMware | Tags: configure lun masking, configure openfiler, esx, esxi, esxi 4.1, lun masking, openfiler, openfiler 2.99 8 CommentsThis is a duplicate post on this blog but for good reason. I’m back home for vacation and my on-ramp to the interwebs is finally high speed DSL and more reliable than when I first posted several months ago. Therefore, I’m able to include my original screenshots with this post. I had to remove the screenshots in the first post because they wouldn’t upload. I hope this post will give you that visual aid that’s so helpful in walkthroughs.
vSphere Compliance Checker on ESXi 5
Posted: October 25, 2011 Filed under: VMware | Tags: 4.1, checker, compliance, compliance checker, esx, esxi, vmware, vsphere Leave a commentAt a customer’s site towards the end of a deployment, we decided to see what this new fan-dangled vSphere Compliance Checker could do. We ran it against an ESXi 4.1U1 host and it spit out some nice colors and information. The quick and dirty of it is that it was easy to install, easy to use, and provided useful information. So I decided to run it against my ESXi 5 hosts in a test lab and write up a quickie post.
How to Configure Jumbo Frames for an iSCSI Port Group – ESXi 4.1
Posted: September 29, 2011 Filed under: Networking, VMware | Tags: 4.1, esxcfg, esxcfg-vmknic, esxcfg-vswitch, esxi, frames, iscsi, jumbo, jumbo frames, portgroup, vmkernel, vmknic Leave a commentIf you want to enable jumbo frames on an iSCSI port group in ESXi 4.1, you’ll need to make configuration changes at the vSwitch and VMkernel NIC level. Through trial and error, I found that I had to create the iSCSI port group from the command line instead of just enabling jumbo frames on an already existing port group. At first, I already had an iSCSI port group created. I did this via the vSphere Client. But then enabling jumbo frames from the CLI didn’t work. I had to delete the iSCSI port group first, then recreate from the CLI. Note that these commands are case sensitive, including the names of vSwitches, port groups, and VMkernel NICs. These command were completed via an SSH session directly to an ESXi 4.1 host.
How to Configure LUN Masking with Openfiler 2.99 and ESXi 4.1
Posted: September 11, 2011 Filed under: Storage, VMware | Tags: esxi, lun masking, openfiler, vmware 13 CommentsNote: If you’d like to see screenshots for this article, check out this other post.
I’ve been building a test environment to play with vSphere 4.1 before we begin our implementation. In order to experiment with the enterprise features of vSphere I needed shared storage between my ESXi hosts. As always, I turned to Openfiler. Now, I’ve deployed Openfiler before, but it was just one ESXi host and a single LUN. It was easy. There were plenty of good walkthroughs on how to set this up in such a way. But using the Google-izer, I couldn’t find a single page that explained how to configure Openfiler for shared storage between multiple hosts. When I finally got it working, I felt accomplished and decided to document the process for future reference. Maybe someone out there will find it useful, too.