ESX on the IBM System i
8 Posts
So I finally have this prefected - I had to do a lot of CL Programming, and had to do a lot of tweaking to get this working. I will try and put everything in here that I went through to get it working. What I can do is post everything I have in place today. I hope you're a good CL programmer, or know one 
First, make sure all the VM's have the VMware Tools with the "Volume Shadow Copy Services Support " selected. This doesn't get installed by default.
Second, on the Integrated Server that will be your VCB Proxy do the following.
Install the VMware Consolidated Backup Framework
Created a secondary drive (I call mine the V:\ drive) We'll talk about the size of this drive later - so read this whole thing before you do anything
create a folder in the V:\ drive called mnt and share it
Make sure you have share name in your QUSRSYS/QAZLCSAVL file - see here http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/systems/scope/i5os/index.jsp?topic=/rzahq/rzahqflbackupsetup.htm for help
Create a Batch program to do the mounting, and another to do the unmounting - this is for file level backups
I put these in a directory called c:\vcb
mount.bat - your vCenter Server probably isn't called vcenter.acme.com and the uid and pwd probably need to be changed too
"C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware Consolidated Backup Framework\vcbmounter" -h vcenter.acme.com -u Adminaccount -p adminspassword -a name:%1 -r v:\mnt\%1 -t file -m nbd
unmount.bat - same rules apply here
"C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware Consolidated Backup Framework\vcbmounter" -h vcenter.acme.com -u Adminaccount -p adminspassword -U v:\mnt\%1
I also created a bacth program to do image level backups - use the same unmount program
imount.bat
"C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware Consolidated Backup Framework\vcbmounter" -h vcenter.acme.com -u Adminaccount -p adminspassword -a name:%1 -r v:\mnt\%1 -t fullvm -m nbd
now we're ready to go to the green screen
Create a CL on the green screen, if I've lost you already, please PM me and we can talk, or go to your application group.
I called mine vmbackup
The VMNAME is the name of the virtual machine on the esx host and it is case sensitive. The NWSD, is the name of the integrated server.
/*MOUNT VMNAME TO THE VCB PROXY SERVER******************************/
SBMNWSCMD CMD('"C:\VCB\MOUNT VMNAME"') SERVER(NWSD)
on the vcb proxy server, go to v:\mnt and you will see a folder with the same name as your Virtual Machine. Open it, you will see the folder letters, keep going, and you see the drive letters. Now just figure out what you want to save, and put that into the path you see below.
/*SAVE THE FILES YOU WANT TO SAVE**********************************/
SAV DEV('/qsys.lib/TAP02.DEVD') +
OBJ(('/qntc/nlcvcb/mnt/VMNAME/letters/path')) ENDOPT(*LEAVE)
/*UNMOUNT VMNAME FROM THE PROXY SERVER****************************/
SBMNWSCMD CMD('"C:\VCB\UNMOUNT VMNAME"') SERVER(NWSD)
Now just repeat for all the VM's you want to backup. I like to do an *UNLOAD on my last save, that way I know everything worked ok.
This is very basic code, you may want to put a lot more logic in your code. And please test this. I like tesing mine to a save file.
Now, if you want to do an image level backup of a VM, it's all the same, but you call the IMOUNT
And for sizing, let me first explain that doing a file level backup doesn't copy files over the vcb proxy. Doing an image backup does. The files do get compressed a little, but I always say this, you should make your v:\ drive as big as your largest VM that you are going to backup.
Please let me know if you have any questions.
We installed our new Power 520 last night. First one in the State of ME! And I had things to fix in ESX.
When my ESX Hosts came up, I received an error on the console, I forget what it said, but I can tell you what you need to do 
The reason there was a problem, the HBA in the System i was moved. ESX thought I had attaches a SAN snapshot to the host, and it didn't see the original LUNS.
I had to resignatue the Storage. Go to Configuration, Advanced Settings, LVM, and change the Resignature to 1. Rescan, then change it back to 0. Now I don't know if I could have one this easier, but I didn't have many VM's, so I just removed all the unknow VM's from Inventory and added them back. It only took a few minutes.
I knew I was going to run into this, because I moved the HBA one time, a few months ago, and I had the same problem.
All in all, everything went great, now I need to find out if you can do System i Integration with a VIOS Partition.
I want to let anyone who is interested know that I started a group on LinkedIn for System i Integration with BladeCenter and System x. I'm hoping to get some people from the IBM Development team, some RedBook authors, Advanced Tech Support, etc people to join.
I received a reponse from IBM on the problem I am having with the VCB using the SAN method.
"we do NOT support anything involving VMWare VCB backup. It is
entirely a VMWare configuration and although it is documented in the
redbook, we do not provide support for VMWare consolidated backup. This is
a VMWare to Windows backup, not System i. There is a problem with the
documentation in regards to saving multiple servers which requires some
extra configuration (which is a different topic altogether), but it is
still not really our issue."
So I'll just have to figure this out on my own And that's exactly what I plan to do! Our new Power 520 just arrived, and we're probably putting it in this weekend. So what I'm going to do is brush up on my skills. I'm going to rebuild my ESX Hosts from scratch! I have an old x346 Stand alone server (it was the old ESX host) and I'm going to build that up again, move all the VM's over, and after we get the new CEC in, I will rebuild. I'm going to have 2 HBA's in the System i now, so I'm going to do multi-pathing on everything right from the beginning. And once I get it all up and running like that, I will move the VM's back over.
It will be good practice, and hopefully I won't have any problems with the VCB part this time. And as I'm writing this, I'm already having doubts that I will be able to do it, after all, it is my production environment at work that I'm dealing with here
Wish me luck!
So I have the VCB working, but not the way I had hoped. Right now I am using the LAN version, not the SAN version. I have opened up a case with IBM Tech Support, but this is a bad week if you need tech support! All the good people are on vacation
So I wrote a batch file on my VCB Server, well 2 of them actually, mount.bat & unmount.bat
Created my c:\mnt directory, shared it, added the member to that file in QUSRSYS that I can never remember the name of....QAZ........ something like that.....
Then I wrote a CL on the System i, used sbmnwscmd to call the mount, saved the files I wanted through /QNTC and then called the unmount. Lather, rinse, repeat.....until all my vm's are backed up.
Worked great! Now when I get the SAN part working, I'll post again.
Oh, on a personal note: I am making the switch to Ubuntu, I have the Notes 8.5 Beta 2 running, in my VM, and as soon as I get all the kinks worked out I'm using Ubuntu as my main OS, and will run Windows as the VM, for only when I need it. I might start another Blog on Ubuntu. Vmware really needs to get the vi client for linux working!!!!!
Some may think it's sad that this is how I am spending my New Years Eve, but with a 3 year old, 20 month, and 7 week old at home, and a bruised knee that has me gimping around, I think I'm doing pretty good 
HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!
Well, I couldn't wait to go to ESX 3.5, so I just finished upgrading my Second BladeServer to ESX 3.5
Now I didn't follow these instructions, at least not completely. I unlinked my Storage spaces, ran the dltlnxsvr command, and then inslnxsvr command. Then I installed 3.5 and just relinked the storage spaces up to each ESX host, and viola! I was done!
Now this might not be good for you, I don't mind reconfiguring all my Virtual Switches, I think it's good practice
I did run into one snag, when running the inslnxsvr command, I received an XML parsing error, apparently, somewhere in the command it tries to do a CHGTCPA command, and the XML file that stores that info is in the IFS. Well it was empty, and I had to delete it, then run the CHGTCPA command from the i5, and prompt it. That put in all the defaults. You press enter and it creates the file, then the inslnxsvr command works. Thanks to Wayne at IBM for helping me with that.
Well, more to come soon, VDI and thinapp here I come!
