conramic's Posts

I have re-attached the source code for this project and removed the debug package.  It seems that I can only attach up to three files to the post. Please feel free to hack away at it all you w... See more...
I have re-attached the source code for this project and removed the debug package.  It seems that I can only attach up to three files to the post. Please feel free to hack away at it all you want (note that this was originally written in C# - a PowerShell version would be a nice evolution). I would have developed compatibility for 5.1 myself, but I am no longer working in the virtualization space and have no need for it. Good luck!
Hard to tell just from that info.  Could you please extract the two files in ESXAR_debug into the same directory (overwrite) and let me know what error message the console generates on the next r... See more...
Hard to tell just from that info.  Could you please extract the two files in ESXAR_debug into the same directory (overwrite) and let me know what error message the console generates on the next run?
Hi Duane, I haven't touched the code for this in quite some time.  However, I believe I did add support for 5.0 late last year.  I will attach the latest binary to this document - please let me k... See more...
Hi Duane, I haven't touched the code for this in quite some time.  However, I believe I did add support for 5.0 late last year.  I will attach the latest binary to this document - please let me know if it works. EDIT:  The attached ESXAR_5.ZIP archive contains the lastet version. Thanks, Mike
Hi Mike, I fixed a few bugs in the program awhile back but never went back to publish the latest version.  If you get a chance, please try downloading the newest archive (I replaced the .zip f... See more...
Hi Mike, I fixed a few bugs in the program awhile back but never went back to publish the latest version.  If you get a chance, please try downloading the newest archive (I replaced the .zip files in the original post) and giving it another shot.  If it doesn't seem to fix your problem let me know and we can take another look. Thanks Mike, Mike
Hi Dougie, Did you ever happen to figure out the answer to your question?  We're in the process of implementing Heartbeat and can't find any explicit instructions that tell us to physically cl... See more...
Hi Dougie, Did you ever happen to figure out the answer to your question?  We're in the process of implementing Heartbeat and can't find any explicit instructions that tell us to physically clone our remote MSSQL server.  We have other DBs running on it and don't really want to go down the road of cloning everything on that box. If so, will we need a second SQL license as well for the cloned server? Thanks for any help you can offer! Mike
Could we please get some clarification as to what remote SQL installation methods are supported?  We just migrated from Oracle to SQL Server for Heartbeat, but we're having a rough time piecing t... See more...
Could we please get some clarification as to what remote SQL installation methods are supported?  We just migrated from Oracle to SQL Server for Heartbeat, but we're having a rough time piecing together documentation on how the SQL portion works.  We have one shared MSSQL Server at our primary site that contains many databases - including our vCenter DB - and one database server at our DR site that was intended for Heartbeat but also contains our SRM vCenter database.  Are we expected to physically clone our DB server or is a non-identical setup supported?  If so, do we need a separate license for the cloned server?  In the event that our primary SQL Server goes down does Heartbeat simply update DNS to point to the cloned SQL Server? Thanks for your help.
Thanks Luc, I threw together a document for the utility and removed the outdated files from the discussion. http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-14433
Attached is a small application that is designed to output a basic monthly availability report for all hosts over multiple vCenter instances.  In order to run the following tool you must have .NE... See more...
Attached is a small application that is designed to output a basic monthly availability report for all hosts over multiple vCenter instances.  In order to run the following tool you must have .NET 2.0 and PowerCLI 4.1/5.0 installed. The tool generates a detailed report and sends a summary/copy of the report in an email to a given address.  The tool requires that the 'Host connection and power state' alarm was enabled during the given month (which is the default setting).  Here are the guidelines that it follows: If the connection to a host was lost and the host wasn't in maintenance mode, it counts against the availability percentage If the connection to a host was lost and the host was in maintenance mode, it doesn't count again it In other words, it only counts unplanned hardware downtime against the percentage (for example, when a production host crashes with a PSOD). Here is a sample of the information contained in the detailed log file: ------------------- xenserv3.domain.com - Uptime: 90 Days 10:37:51 ------------------- -----------------------   -----   Lost Connection Time: 0 seconds   Availability: 100%   ----- ------------------- xenserv4.domain.com - Uptime: 1 Days 20:33:17 -------------------   Host Connection Lost     Time: 12/21/2010 1:39:41 PM     Alarm 'Host connection and power state' on xenserv4.domain.com changed from Green to Red   Host Connection Re-established     Time: 12/21/2010 2:53:12 PM     Alarm 'Host connection and power state' on xenserv4.domain.com changed from Red to Green   Enter Maintenance Mode     Time: 12/21/2010 3:13:05 PM     Host xenserv4.domain.com in LAB has entered maintenance mode   Host Connection Lost     Time: 12/21/2010 3:16:39 PM     Alarm 'Host connection and power state' on xenserv4.domain.com changed from Green to Red   Host Connection Re-established     Time: 12/21/2010 3:28:17 PM     Alarm 'Host connection and power state' on xenserv4.domain.com changed from Red to Green   Exit Maintenance Mode     Time: 12/21/2010 3:28:46 PM     Host xenserv4.domain.com in LAB has exited maintenance mode   MM: (12/21/2010 3:13:05 PM - 12/21/2010 3:28:46 PM) -----------------------   CON: (12/21/2010 1:39:41 PM - 12/21/2010 2:53:12 PM)   CON: (12/21/2010 3:16:39 PM - 12/21/2010 3:28:17 PM) - in MM   -----   Lost Connection Time: 4411.61 seconds   Availability: 99.8298%   ----- Here is how the resulting email will appear: (Attachment:  esxi-12-2010.txt) ESXi Availability Report - December, 2010 --------------------------   xenserv3.domain.com           Avail. (Month): 100%           Current Uptime: 90 Days 10h 37m 51s        Lost Con. (Month): 0 Days 0h 0m 0s --------------------------   xenserv4.domain.com           Avail. (Month): 99.8298%           Current Uptime: 1 Days 20h 33m 17s        Lost Con. (Month): 0 Days 1h 13m 31s -------------------------- We have this scheduled to run on the first of every month at 12:15am with no parameters, which will provide us (via a distribution address defined in the .config file) with a report for the previous month.  Here are the parameters that need to be entered into the .config file:     <!-- VCs - separate the FQDNs of all vCenter servers with commas -->          <add key="VCs" value="vc1.domain.com,vc2.domain.com" />    <!-- Usernames - separate the usernames of each vCenter with a comma -->          <add key="Usernames" value="vc1username,vc2username" />     <!-- Passwords - separate the passwords of each vCenter with a comma -->          <add key="Passwords" value="vc1userpassword,vc2userpassword" />     <!-- OutDir - supply the output directory of the report -->          <add key="OutDir" value="C:\ESXAR\" />    <!-- OutFilePrefix - supply the prefix that will be appended to the log file (*prefix*[timestamp].txt) -->          <add key="OutFilePrefix" value="esxi-" />    <!-- ToEmail - supply the email address that the report will be sent to -->          <add key="ToEmail" value="emailrecipient@company.com" />     <!-- FromEmail - supply the email address that the report will appear to come from -->          <add key="FromEmail" value="emailsender@company.com" />    <!-- SubjectEmail - supply the subject of the email -->          <add key="SubjectEmail" value="ESXi Availability Report - " />    <!-- SMTPServer - supply a valid SMTP server -->          <add key="SMTPServer" value="smtp.company.com" />    <!-- Verbose - (t/f) enter 't' to record *all* events to the log file -->          <add key="Verbose" value="f" /> The source code has been provided in case anyone would like to expand it or see how it works for their own projects.  The above information can also be found in the included readme file. Thanks, and please share any suggestions or modifications with the community!
After finally having some time to work on this I was able to write a small utility to provide us with basic monthly availability statistics for our environment.  In order to use the following too... See more...
After finally having some time to work on this I was able to write a small utility to provide us with basic monthly availability statistics for our environment.  In order to use the following tool you must run it on a system with .NET 2.0 and PowerCLI 4.1 installed. The tool generates a detailed report for multiple vCenter instances and sends a summary/copy of the report in an email to a given address.  The tool requires that the 'Host connection and power state' alarm was enabled during the given month and looks for the following information: If the connection to a host was lost and the host wasn't in maintenance mode, it counts against the availability percentage If the connection to a host was lost and the host was in maintenance mode, it doesn't count again it This is all that the utility looks for.  The source code has been provided in case anyone would like to expand it or see how it works for their own projects.  The readme included in the .zip explains how to configure it and describes how the syntax works as well. Good luck! Mike Edit:  The tool can be downloaded here:  http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-14433
Thanks for your help Luc! Once we get something functional/useful, I'll post it up here in case anyone else is interested.
We've been searching for a way to generate a monthly availabillity report for our soon-to-be ESXi 4.1 hosts. The commonplace third-party utililties don't appear to have this functionality built-... See more...
We've been searching for a way to generate a monthly availabillity report for our soon-to-be ESXi 4.1 hosts. The commonplace third-party utililties don't appear to have this functionality built-in, so we're looking into using PowerCLI to gather this information. Has anyone seen/heard of a script to accomplish such a task? Basically, we would like to be able to generate a report that gives a percentage (eg: 98.x%) of time that each host was available for use by the environment. Any downtime would include system downtime, maintenance mode timeframes, periods of host network isolation, etc. Any insight, ideas, or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for any help you can offer!