parthmaniar Tracker

Re: Disk consodilation does not finish

parthmaniar — Tue, 16 Aug 2022 12:38:48 GMT

Its two different sizes: ~893 GB as per the OS and ~993 GB as per ESXi

I've attached screen shots from within the OS as well as from the ESXi.

Re: Disk consodilation does not finish

parthmaniar — Tue, 16 Aug 2022 08:02:04 GMT

Hello, and thank you very much for the extended handholding. I sincerely appreciate it.

I know your answer is the same, and I am afraid of the "cloning" part since I've never done it and my specialisation in hypervisors is academic. I have, however, come up with a new idea (I feel like Arturo Román from the Money Heist, who kept coming up with new destructive ideas.) My reason is that I know the primary node holds one good copy of all the data, so I don't want to touch the disks.

Here is my final proposal before trying precisely what you proposed:

1. Shutdown the cluster (all 3 VMs)

2. Reconfigure the primary host and add a "new" disk on a different volume (thus keeping the original file [vmdk] and volume [on ssd-1] as is.

3. Check if the sync works from the secondary host to the primary host.

4. If it works, I will have a new disk of ~700 GB that I can copy & paste to SSD-1 (after deleting other files on it)

5. Done!

IF IT FAILS

5. I can reconfigure the primary host to point to the files on SSD-1 (is such a reconfiguration possible?)

Given my last year in college and a few months to my dissertation, I am contemplating buying a 4 TB disk to ensure I don't lose 4 years' worth of data. I do have data backup on the NAS, but it is not tested, and an untested backup is as good as no backup - hence I am not venturing there.

Additional question

>>> Could I use this thread to inquire about upgrading my ESXi, which keeps failing? I have a Dell Precision workstation that I'm using ESXi 7.0.2 ((Updated) DEL-ESXi-702_17630552-A00 (Dell Inc.)). Since I am reading for a master's in software and systems, I may be asked to clarify why I did not use the most recent version of the hypervisor. Instead of documenting known CVEs, I hoped to upgrade the hypervisor. I use one custom VIB since I have a consumer-grade second NIC.

My NAS has 2 x 1 GB ports running in bond mode; hence total throughput is 2 Gbps (however, it uses HDDs instead of SSDs, hence the total throughput will be much less than the NIC capacity).

Re: Disk consodilation does not finish

parthmaniar — Mon, 15 Aug 2022 07:12:42 GMT

Ah apologies for the poor communication from my end.

>>> My question was basically whether it is possible to synchronize the primary cluster node's data from the secondary node?

This is theoratically possible but since primary node "may" hold additional security (authenticaiton/RBAC) data, I am not sure. The application I am using is the Elastic Stack. I have a parallel thread open on their forum to understand if secondary to primary can be done without error or can I have pre-checks to help me mitiage impending issues.

>>> Deleting of the disk was a bad idea. I did know it would be changed blocks but I am not sure if it is desperation or exhaution. Thank you for highlighting it again.

>>> New idea (only because what you've listed is something I'm still trying to grasp).

1. I delete the VM disk (from configuraion) for node-2. Hence SSD-2 has 1.8 TB free.

2. Delete the datastore on SSD-2.

3. Expand datastore for VM-1 (primary node) on SSD-1 with SSD-2.

4. Hopefully - Total space is ~3.6 TB with ~1.7 TB free space.

5. Consolidate the disk.

6. New disk should be around ~700/800 GB with I can transfer to another datastore (One on the NAS as 927.55 TB free space)

7. Delete the newly created (expanded) datastore in step 3.

8. Create two independent datastores of 1.8 TB (each SSD).

9. Transfer the file back to SSD-1

10. Sync the hosts?

Is this sounding logical or do I need more sleep

Re: Disk consodilation does not finish

parthmaniar — Sun, 14 Aug 2022 14:29:56 GMT

Hello Andre, unfortunately, I don't understand the question. The snapshot was for the primary disk (OS disk); the data disk (causing the low space issue) is not required. Hence if I may ask (and pardon my naivety) - Can i delete the older disk? I will never need to revert to it (in fact, I've deleted the snapshot already). So pardon me for not getting your question. -- I'm not a ESXi or VMWare expert

There is a minor caveat in this being a cluster - the host in concern is the "primary" host, and while I have restored the secondary host's data disk, I've never done it for the primary host.

I will tell you what my stupid idea was:

1. Delete the data on SSD-2

2. Delete the volume on SSD-2

3. Expand disk space for SSD-1

4. Consolidate the disks

5. I don't know this part hence didn't try: remove the disk-2 from the new volume capacity (revert to 2 TB volume) for disk-1

6. Recreate volume on SSD-2

7. Sync the cluster

Re: Disk consodilation does not finish

parthmaniar — Sun, 14 Aug 2022 11:22:52 GMT

Thank you very much for hand holding. Please find the file attached.

Second I have a data analytics cluster that captures live data for my MSc research.

Further, I've got redundant architecture (attached) wherein three VMs share a single SSD holding the OS (which is backed up). Data that is being ingested is stored on two seperate SSDs.

I can delete it to carry out the activity you've asked and resync the nodes which will write the data. However, my worry is that I am deleting second copy of the data to repair the first one hence I need to make copy of the vmdks. Is there an easy way to copy the vmdks? Can I attach a USB to copy the data from the esxi host?

Lastly ALL VMs except those starting with SSS are disposable.

Thank you very much once again.

Re: Disk consodilation does not finish

parthmaniar — Sun, 14 Aug 2022 09:17:33 GMT

Hello and thank you once again.

Given the situtaion wherein I will start losing 4 years of research if I can't store the incoming data, I can delete the files on 2-TB-SSD-SATA-2. It infact holds copy of the data from 2-TB-SSD on a parallel VM.

However, I feel I need handholding. What should the steps be?

1. Delete all files on disk 2 in order to have full 1.5 TB.

What is the next step? I m not sure how to keep the "in-use" disk on SSD-1 and copy on SSD-2. Here is a snapshot of total storage on the ESXi box.

Thank you very much once again.

Re: Disk consodilation does not finish

parthmaniar — Sun, 14 Aug 2022 05:57:39 GMT

Hello and thank you very much for your reply.

1. Disk space free on the volume is ~275 GB.

2. Size of the snapshot + current disk = ~1.4 TB (758 [disk in use] + 850 [snapshot] GB each).

Given that the volume will overflow in sometime, what is the best course of action? I am a self-funded student and I do not have additional disks to space or upgrade to. Is there a way to consolidate disks if the VM is shutdown (I will try it now, although I feel I have tried it earlier). Update: Consolidation failed

Kindly help and thank you.

Disk consodilation does not finish

parthmaniar — Sun, 07 Aug 2022 03:19:47 GMT

I am running ESXi version 7.0 Update 2. I have a VM that has its own dedicated physical SSD mounted as a partition on the VMM (Ubuntu 20.04.4).The VM had only one snapshot which I have deleted. However, I am unable to consoidate the disks. There is no error at the end of the process but both of the vmdk's are present on storage SSD.

I only have 200 GB left on the SSD. How do I consolidate and reclaim the diskpace?

Re: Disk space reclamation

parthmaniar — Sat, 22 May 2021 15:28:48 GMT

I've solved the problem using fstrim inside the OS (Ubuntu 20.04.2 LTS).

Here is Reddit thread and the user who (westyx) suggested how to reclaim the disk space.

https://www.reddit.com/r/vmware/comments/nh0f6l/disk_space_reclamation/

Here is a good thread to read:

https://community.hitachivantara.com/s/article/Dealing-with-VMware-Datastore-space-management-on-VSP-Storage-part-2

Re: VLANs to segregate traffic.

parthmaniar — Thu, 20 May 2021 13:18:27 GMT

Thank you very much. Let me test this and get back to you.

Disk space reclamation

parthmaniar — Fri, 21 May 2021 08:54:21 GMT

Hello, I hope you and your loved ones are safe and healthy.

I' am a self-funded student having a home lab as part of my final year project.

ESXi : 7.0 Update 2 (Dell Customised ISO - DEL-ESXi-702_17630552-A00 (Dell Inc.))
vCenter: 7.0.2

I have 4 SSDs for storage:

ESXi runs on an NVMe drive while
3 SATA SSDs host OS + Data.
I load OS from a single drive, and data is partitioned between the remaining SSDs (2).

There are two identical VMs (not clones, and they have the same configurations, including storage) but running the same application (Elastic Stack), and it is mirror mode.

Both VMs have almost identical disk usage when checked from inside the VM.

However, when I checked in VMWare, I can see VM-1 using 200 GB more on the attached storage and project has 20 GB of logs per day. For a self-funded student this means a lot (SSDs are expensive in India).

What is the best way to recover this space? I have checked space reclamation settings, and it is at the default of 100 Mbps. There are no snapshots for the VMs.

EDIT 1:

I have followed https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vSphere/7.0/com.vmware.vsphere.storage.doc/GUID-5E1396BE-6EA8-4A6B-A458-FC9718E2C55B.html and https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vSphere/7.0/com.vmware.vsphere.storage.doc/GUID-5E1396BE-6EA8-4A6B-A458-FC9718E2C55B.html to reclaim space.

I tailed the hostd.log and can see blocks being freed up as part of the request (total request took 3 minutes to finish). In the end no change in the free disk space

Documentation here states "To verify whether the unmap process has finished, search for unmap in the vmkernel.log file". When I searched on my instances, I cannot find this. However hostd.log clearly shows blocks being deleted.

https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vSphere/7.0/com.vmware.vsphere.storage.doc/GUID-62587830-C92F-409E-9B35-B63CC4D4A2DC.html

Re: VLANs to segregate traffic.

parthmaniar — Thu, 13 May 2021 19:47:15 GMT

Hello, please find the updated diagram with more information and requirements. Getting architecture right is extremely crucial. I'm struggling between draw.io and Visio that work laptop has

That being said as you can see I am trying to design a network but the reason it is in VMWare forums is because my workstation hosting servers is crucial to my final year projects, having segregated VMs (without only explicitly allowed routing) are essential to my final paper.

Re: VLANs to segregate traffic.

parthmaniar — Thu, 13 May 2021 17:37:28 GMT

Thank you very much for your reply. I hope you and your loved ones are safe and healthy.

I realise that I have been sloppy with the diagram. Please let me come back with more meaningful one. Thank you for the links you've given. I've used them to further enhance information that I am asking for.

VLANs to segregate traffic.

parthmaniar — Thu, 13 May 2021 11:12:22 GMT

Hello,

I hope you and your loved ones are safe and healthy.

I am want to integrate a Cisco Integrated Service Router "RV-345" into my network & use VLAN to segregate traffic.

Current setup:

Netgear Wi-Fi router is the only component carrying out network access and routing. Here is a simple representation of the network:

WAN port is connected via CAT-6 cable to ISPs box.
NAS with 2 network port working in bond mode (combined speed instead of fault tolerance) connected to port 1 & 2 of the Netgear.
Workstation with 2 Intel NICs connected to ports 3 & 4 of the Netgear router. This workstation has ESXi installed and 12 VMs running on it.

Proposed setup:

Cisco ISR 345 will carry out wired access and routing while setting Netgear to access point mode. Further requirements for VLANs:

VMs running on ESXi require separation using VLANs. I will have multiple VLANs which while segregated from each other need access for few central services like the DHCP, DNS (reachable via Wi-Fi access point port) and one VLAN on the ESXi which will be for logging.
Currently, a Raspberry Pi running DHCP and DNS servers provides these network services. This is connected via Wi-Fi for now. This is important to note as I would need Wi-Fi to extend all VLANs to reach these central services.
Raspberry Pis will eventually be connected via ethernet, but right now, they are connected via Wi-Fi.

Questions:

As per my understanding, ESXi is where I have to create the VLANs and extend them via Cisco ISR. Is this correct?
How do I ensure that the Wi-Fi port forwards all VLANs? In other words, how do I ensure that backbone network services (DHCP, DNS) are available irrespective of the VLANs
From the NAS, I have a volume mounted on the workstation using iSCSI. Are there any implications using VLANs on this?

I apologise if the post is missing information and more is required. Kindly let me know if something needs to be added.

ESXi upgrade fails

parthmaniar — Fri, 02 Apr 2021 19:00:40 GMT

Hello,

I hope you and your loved ones are safe and healthy.

I'm a student running ESXi in my homelab. It is a Dell OEM customised version of ESXi. Current version of ESXi is - " (Updated) ESXi-7.0U1b-17168206-standard (Dell Inc.) ".

I am facing issues while updating it:

[username@hostname:~] esxcli software vib install -d /vmfs/volumes/volumename/VMware-ESXi-7.0U1d-17551050-depot.zip [DependencyError] VIB QLC_bootbank_qedf_2.2.8.0-1OEM.700.1.0.15843807 requires qedentv_ver = X.40.17.0, but the requirement cannot be satisfied within the ImageProfile. VIB QLC_bootbank_qedi_2.19.9.0-1OEM.700.1.0.15843807 requires qedentv_ver = X.40.17.0, but the requirement cannot be satisfied within the ImageProfile. Please refer to the log file for more details.

How do I overcome this and update the ESXi?

Thank you.

DRS and Datastore cluster

parthmaniar — Sat, 20 Mar 2021 12:04:19 GMT

Hello,

I hope members at the community and their loved ones are safe and healthy.

I am a self-funded student with a homelab having a single compute device (Dell Precision workstation) with 4 physical storage devices and volumes (each physical device is a volume running VMFS 6:

2TB, 2.5' SSD (non-enterprise grade)
1TB, 2.5' SSD (non-enterprise grade)
1TB, M.2 SSD (non-enterprise grade)
1.5TB, iSCSI attached NAS storage (Syonlogy NAS running 7200 disks in RAID-1)

I have mixed workloads with some requiring high IOPS (Elastic stack) and other requiring medium to low IOPS. I usually create a VM with two parts:

OS on a separate physical disk
Data store mounted from a different physical disk to ensure IOPS are guaranteed.

Here are my questions:

Can I combine all of my volumes (mixed storage types)?
Is there any advantage in doing so (besides learning ).
I manually allocate disks (such as creating VMs on the NAS storage to offset wearing for the SSDs) - Will combining storage wear out my non-enterprise SSDs quicker?
Any downsides from doing this?

I have a single compute device and hence no DRS for compute.

Thank you very much and stay safe and healthy

Re: Expanding disk on virtual Ubuntu server running on ESXi 7

parthmaniar — Sun, 04 Oct 2020 18:45:58 GMT

Hi I am running Ubuntu Server and won't have access to the GUI. Is there a guide for CLI or do I need gparted bootable ISO to do this?

Expanding disk on virtual Ubuntu server running on ESXi 7

parthmaniar — Sun, 04 Oct 2020 18:10:22 GMT

Hello,

I hope you and your loved ones are safe and healthy.

I have a VM running Ubuntu 20.04.1 LTS on VMWare ESXi. There are two volumes one running as boot (backed by HDD) and one is mounted (which is from SSD).

Mounted volume was initially 360 GB in size, I have increased it 406 GB in ESXi. Post reboot of the VM I do see the disk space increasing in fdisk but not in df -i.

What do I do to expand the disk?

Datastore size increased post deletion of a VM.

parthmaniar — Wed, 16 Sep 2020 15:24:26 GMT

Hello, I hope you and all your loved ones are healthy and safe.

I have two data stores in my home lab setup:

1. HDD (1 TB)

2. SSD (1 TB)

I usually install OS on the HDD and mount the SSD for VMs needing high IO. VMFS version is 6.2

I recently deleted a VM that was installed on the HDD and had no part of the SSD mounted on it. The VM was 100 GB in size (provisioned was 400 GB.) At the time of deletion host had ~23% used space (out of 1.69 TB). Free space on both the drives has gone down on the host (both drives combined) as opposed to going up!

Delete operation has affected the SSD severly taking utilisation from ~20% to 97%. How do I regain the space? I am certain that there is no influx of data that could have caused this.

This datastore is 930 GB and has two disks which are thin provisioned to 700 GB. Their current usage on the VMs is 300 GB. However datastore is showing 905 GB utilisation.

I had faced this issue last time too. However I saw that the VM post deletion was moved to the SSD (I don't know why.) Since I found the VM folder on the SSD datastore, I deleted it. This time I do not see any such folder on both the drives but the data store has gone from ~23% utilised to 62% utilised.

I am using the VMs as part of my research in final year of university and any urgent help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you very much.

Update 1: I have tried using reclaim VMFS space command " esxcli storage vmfs unmap " . This however has not helped.

Re: VMware vSphere Hypervisor 7.0 - Unable to add secondary uplink/use onboard NIC.

parthmaniar — Tue, 04 Aug 2020 15:33:25 GMT

Download driver using this link: https://download3.vmware.com/software/vmw-tools/Intel-NUC-ne1000_0.8.4-3vmw.670.0.0.8169922-offline_bundle-16654787.zip

It supports:

8086:0d4e - Ethernet Connection (10) I219-LM
8086:0d4f - Ethernet Connection (10) I219-V
8086:0d4c - Ethernet Connection (11) I219-LM
8086:0d4d - Ethernet Connection (11) I219-V
8086:0d53 - Ethernet Connection (12) I219-LM
8086:0d55 - Ethernet Connection (12) I219-V
8086:15fb - Ethernet Connection (13) I219-LM
8086:15fc - Ethernet Connection (13) I219-V
8086:15f9 - Ethernet Connection (14) I219-LM
8086:15fa - Ethernet Connection (14) I219-V
8086:15f4 - Ethernet Connection (15) I219-LM
8086:15f5 - Ethernet Connection (15) I219-V
8086:1a1e - Ethernet Connection (16) I219-LM
8086:1a1f - Ethernet Connection (16) I219-V
8086:1a1c - Ethernet Connection (17) I219-LM
8086:1a1d - Ethernet Connection (17) I219-V

Update using ESXi CLI:

esxcli software vib install -d "path of the zip uploaded to your datastore"

THANK YOU EVERYONE!