Tag Archives: virtual

Recreating missing virtual disk (VMDK) Descriptor File Vmware

Recreating missing virtual disk (VMDK) Descriptor File

Problem-

You just noticed that virtual machine’s VMDK files are missing and lost somehow. The reason, not able to start VM and when you try to add existing HDD – existing VMDK and -flat. VMDK files are not available to attach with Virtual Machine too.

Solution

We need to recreate missing VMDK files, to add VMDK files and start Virtual Machine.

  1. Login to ESXI PS with Putty. Make sure, SSH service is enabled and running for the PS.
  2. Switch to the directory where your virtual machine is located.

cd /vmfs/volumes/<<datastore>>/VM-Directory

cd /vmfs/volumes/5d406ca3-62654bd0-75fd-e4434b75ed38/APP-U1-63-25

3. Run below command to identify and record the exact size of the existing flat vmdk file for the VM.

ls -ltr *

-rw——-    1 root     root     16106127360 Jun 21 12:20 APP-U1-63-25-flat.vmdk

-rw——-    1 root     root     214748364800 Jun 21 10:49 APP-U1-63-25_1-flat.vmdk

4. Run the vmkfstools to create new virtual disk, i.e VMDK (Descriptor File)

vmkfstools -c 16106127360 -d thin -a lsilogic APP-U1-63-25-OS.vmdk

vmkfstools -c 214748364800 -d thin -a lsilogic APP-U1-63-25-DATA.vmdk

5. As mentioned, there are 2 new files created: APP-U1-63-25-OS.vmdk and APP-U1-63-25-DATA.vmdk are created as a result.

ls -ltr

rw——-    1 root     root     16106127360 Jun 21 19:21 APP-U1-63-25-OS-flat.vmdk

-rw——-    1 root     root     214748364800 Jun 21 19:21 APP-U1-63-25-DATA-flat.vmdk

-rw——-    1 root     root           546 Jun 21 21:05 APP-U1-63-25-OS.vmdk 

-rw——-    1 root     root           550 Jun 21 21:05 APP-U1-63-25-DATA.vmdk 

-rw——-    1 root     root     214748364800 Jun 22 05:08 APP-U1-63-25_1-flat.vmdk

-rw——-    1 root     root     16106127360 Jun 22 05:08 APP-U1-63-25-flat.vmdk

6. We need to Rename APP-U1-63-25-OS.vmdk  and APP-U1-63-25-DATA.vmdk to the name that is needed to match the orphaned -flat file.

mv APP-U1-63-25-OS.vmdk APP-U1-63-25.vmdk

mv APP-U1-63-25-DATA.vmdk APP-U1-63-25_1.vmdk

7. Now, it is final stage where editing descriptor file (APP-U1-63-25.vmdk and APP-U1-63-25_1.vmdk)

find the line with RW ####### and change the name of the -flat to match the orphaned -flat file you have. So, I changed to APP-U1-63-25-flat.vmdk and APP-U1-63-25_1-flat.vmdk respectively for both disks, as you can see in the image below.

vi APP-U1-63-25.vmdk

vi APP-U1-63-25_1.vmdk

8. You can now delete the below files created earlier. These are not required anymore.

rw——-    1 root     root     16106127360 Jun 21 19:21 APP-U1-63-25-OS-flat.vmdk

-rw——-    1 root     root     214748364800 Jun 21 19:21 APP-U1-63-25-DATA-flat.vmdk

9. Attach the respective VMDK files to the virtual machine as earlier.

10. Now, All set and good to power on the virtual machine.

Prepare a RHEL-Based Virtual Machine for Azure

Today we have got project to prepare RHEL  VHD’s  for Azure. I did not find any doc for RHEL on azure. So i think to write steps i followed for RHEL on azure …

Prerequisites

CentOS Installation Notes

  • The newer VHDX format is not supported in Azure. You can  convert the disk to VHD format using Hyper-V Manager or the convert-vhd cmdlet.
  • When installing the Linux system it is recommended that you use standard partitions rather than LVM (often the default for many installations). This will avoid LVM name conflicts with cloned VMs, particularly if an OS disk ever needs to be attached to another VM for troubleshooting. LVM or RAID may be used on data disks if preferred.
  • NUMA is not supported for larger VM sizes due to a bug in Linux kernel versions below 2.6.37. This issue primarily impacts distributions using the upstream Red Hat 2.6.32 kernel. Manual installation of the Azure Linux agent (waagent) will automatically disable NUMA in the GRUB configuration for the Linux kernel. More information about this can be found in the steps below.
  • Do not configure a swap partition on the OS disk. The Linux agent can be configured to create a swap file on the temporary resource disk. More information about this can be found in the steps below.
  • All of the VHDs must have sizes that are multiples of 1 MB.

RHEL 6.5

  1. In Hyper-V Manager, select the virtual machine.
  2. Click Connect to open a console window for the virtual machine.
  3. Uninstall NetworkManager by running the following command:
    # sudo rpm -e --nodeps NetworkManager

    Note: If the package is not already installed, this command will fail with an error message. This is expected.

  4. Create a file named network in the /etc/sysconfig/ directory that contains the following text:
    NETWORKING=yes
    HOSTNAME=localhost.localdomain
  5. Create a file named ifcfg-eth0 in the /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ directory that contains the following text:
    DEVICE=eth0
    ONBOOT=yes
    BOOTPROTO=dhcp
    TYPE=Ethernet
    USERCTL=no
    PEERDNS=yes
    IPV6INIT=no
  6. Move (or remove) udev rules to avoid generating static rules for the Ethernet interface. These rules cause problems when cloning a virtual machine in Microsoft Azure or Hyper-V:
    # sudo mkdir -m 0700 /var/lib/waagent
    # sudo mv /lib/udev/rules.d/75-persistent-net-generator.rules /var/lib/waagent/
    # sudo mv /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules /var/lib/waagent/
  7. Ensure the network service will start at boot time by running the following command:
    # sudo chkconfig network on
  8. Install the python-pyasn1 package by running the following command:
    # sudo yum install python-pyasn1
  9. If you would like to use the OpenLogic mirrors that are hosted within the Azure datacenters, then replace the /etc/yum.repos.d/CentOS-Base.repo file with the following repositories. This will also add the [openlogic] repository that includes packages for the Azure Linux agent:
    [openlogic]
    name=CentOS-$releasever - openlogic packages for $basearch
    baseurl=http://olcentgbl.trafficmanager.net/openlogic/6/openlogic/$basearch/
    enabled=1
    gpgcheck=0
    
    [base]
    name=CentOS-$releasever - Base
    baseurl=http://olcentgbl.trafficmanager.net/centos/$releasever/os/$basearch/
    gpgcheck=1
    gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-CentOS-6
    

    Note: The rest of this guide will assume you are using at least the [openlogic] repo, which will be used to install the Azure Linux agent below.

  10. Add the following line to /etc/yum.conf:
    http_caching=packages
  11. Run the following command to clear the current yum metadata:
    # yum clean all
  12. Modify the kernel boot line in your grub configuration to include additional kernel parameters for Azure. To do this open “/boot/grub/menu.lst” in a text editor and ensure that the default kernel includes the following parameters:
    console=ttyS0 earlyprintk=ttyS0 rootdelay=300 numa=off

     

    This will also ensure all console messages are sent to the first serial port, which can assist Azure support with debugging issues. This will disable NUMA due to a bug in the kernel version used by RHEL 6.azure_kernel

    In addition to the above, it is recommended to remove the following parameters:

    rhgb quiet crashkernel=auto

    Graphical and quiet boot are not useful in a cloud environment where we want all the logs to be sent to the serial port.

    The crashkernel option may be left configured if desired, but note that this parameter will reduce the amount of available memory in the VM by 128MB or more, which may be problematic on the smaller VM sizes.

  13. Ensure that the SSH server is installed and configured to start at boot time. This is usually the default.
  14. Disable SWAP  :  comment swap in /etc/fstab
        # blkid | grep swap
      /dev/sda3: UUID="53-e0e3efe22612" TYPE="swap"
      # swapoff /dev/sda3
  15. Install the Azure Linux Agent by running the following command:
    # sudo yum install WALinuxAgent

    Note that installing the WALinuxAgent package will remove the NetworkManager and NetworkManager-gnome packages if they were not already removed as described in step 2.

  16. Do not create swap space on the OS diskThe Azure Linux Agent can automatically configure swap space using the local resource disk that is attached to the VM after provisioning on Azure. Note that the local resource disk is a temporary disk, and might be emptied when the VM is deprovisioned. After installing the Azure Linux Agent (see previous step), modify the following parameters in /etc/waagent.conf appropriately:
    ResourceDisk.Format=y
    ResourceDisk.Filesystem=ext4
    ResourceDisk.MountPoint=/mnt/resource
    ResourceDisk.EnableSwap=y
    ResourceDisk.SwapSizeMB=8192    ## NOTE: set this to whatever you need it to be.
  17. Run the following commands to deprovision the virtual machine and prepare it for provisioning on Azure:
    # sudo waagent -force -deprovision
    # export HISTSIZE=0
    # logout
  18. Click Action -> Shut Down in Hyper-V Manager. Your Linux VHD is now ready to be uploaded to Azure.

IBM VIOS CDROM – DVDROM (Virtual Optical Device)

CDROM – DVDROM (Virtual Optical Device):

Any optical device equipped on the Virtual I/O Server partition (either CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, or DVD-RAM) can be virtualized and assigned at any logical partition, one at a time, using the same virtual SCSI adapter provided to virtual disks. Virtual optical devices can be used to install the operating system and, if DVD-RAM, to make backups.

Creating Virtual Optical Device:

1. On VIO Server create SCSI Server Adapter. This adapter is set to Any client partition can connect.
This dedicated adapter for the virtual optical device helps to make things easier from a system management point of view.

2. On client LPAR: create SCSI client adapter, mapping the id with the server adapter (above)

3. cfgdev (on vio) will bring up a new vhostX
cfgmgr (on client) will bring up a new vscsiX

4. On VIO Server create optical device:

-for using physical CDs and DVDs, create an optical device
$ mkvdev -vdev cd0 -vadapter vhost4 -dev vcd
vcd Available

$ lsdev -virtual

vcd             Available  Virtual Target Device – Optical Media

for file backed (iso images) optical device
$ mkvdev -fbo -vadapter vhost1
vtopt0 Available

$lsdev -virtual

vtopt0           Available   Virtual Target Device – File-backed Optical

(copy the iso image to /var/vio/VMLibrary, ‘lsrep’ will show media repository content)
(lssp -> mkrep -sp rootvg -size 4G    <–this will create media repository)
(creating an iso image: mkvopt -name <filename>.iso -dev cd0 -ro)

load the image into the vtopt0 device: loadopt -vtd vtopt0 -disk dvd.1022A4_OBETA_710.iso
(lsmap -all will show it)

or you can check it:
padmin@vios1 : /home/padmin # lsvopt
VTD             Media                                   Size(mb)
vtopt0          AIX_7100-00-01_DVD_1_of_2_102010.iso        3206

if later another disk is needed, you can unload an image with this command: unloadopt -vtd vtopt0
if we don’t need the image anymore at all we can remove it from the repository: rmvopt -name AIX_7100-00-01.iso

5. On client LPAR cfgmgr and create CDROM filesystem
In the AIX client partition run the cfgmgr command to assign the virtual optical drive to it. If the drive is already assigned to another partition you will get an error message and you will have to release the drive from the partition holding it.

create mount point: mkdir /cdrom

create cdrom filesystem: smitty fs -> add cdrom filesystems:
device name: cd0
mount point: /cdrom
mount automatically

mount the filesystem: mount -v cdrfs -r /dev/cd0 /cdrom