Note: The rant contained in this post is probably only relevant for a short period of time. I’m sure that Dell and VMware will make this better. At least I hope so. And I hope they don’t make it better ONLY for brand new servers. I hope they fix it for servers that are six months old too.

My Task: Get monitoring/management alerts for hardware status such as RAID volumes, physical disks, fans, power supplies, etc, for a Dell PowerEdge 2950 III server, purchased less than 6 months ago.

ESXi 3.5 update 4 has the Dell CIM agents and things built into it, I am told. I am also told that OpenManage 6.0.3 can talk to these agents directly. However, nobody can tell me exactly how this works. Can you install it on a VM and then point it to the ESXi management IP? Do you still need Dell IT Assistant, or does it still rely on configuring SNMP traps (a task I enjoy about as much as whacking myself in the shin with a rubber mallet). Nobody at Dell seems to know. To be fair, u4 was only released yesterday. Nobody at Dell seems to have been trained on this yet. They were even surprised to learn that OM 6.0.3 had been released. Eventually one of them told me that 6.0.3 only works with the brand new Generation11 servers. Lovely.

For “older” servers, it’s even more fun. I did hours of research. I downloaded OpenManage Management Station, which includes IT Assistant. The readme file states clearly that 64-bit Windows 2008 is supported – but when the installer runs the prerequisite check, it tells me that “IT Assistant cannot be installed on a system running a Microsoft(R) Windows(R) x64 operating system. What?! There are a ton of other prerequisites too. SQL Express, Java, some portion of Visual Studio (which will trigger a 450MB Windows Update for the entire VS SP1, which will fail and need to be installed manually). Then you need the ESXi Remote Command Line Utility, which in turn requires ActivePerl. You really wanted to install all of that junk on your SBS server, didn’t you?

I gave this one final shot. I actually installed SQL, Java, some Visual Studio thing, SNMP services, the ESXi RCLI, and even ActivePerl. I jumbled all of that crud onto my beautiful, uncluttered, stable server (snapshot first) and started going through the Dell PDF that tells how to enable SNMP on ESXi (msmpa02.pdf, page 10).

I got as far as executing the Perl script, and got this error:
Changing community list to: public…
Failed : fault.RestrictedVersion.summary

OK, that’s it. I am done. Forget it.

So much for the altruistic statement on Dell’s website that says:
“Virtualization is a key path to simplifying IT. Dell and VMware are committed to making virtualization accessible to the mainstream. It shouldn’t be just for the largest datacenters. It shouldn’t be complicated. It shouldn’t require an army of consultants.”

That’s very nice politics but I don’t see it happening. When VMware and Dell pull this together well enough that I don’t need 538MB of junk from different vendors, a bunch of command line scripting, SNMP configuration, and lots of figuring things out, then I will be interested in working out how to get alerts when hardware events happen.

The VI client has all of the health status indicators right there. It would probably be 50 lines of code to have ESXi send SMTP notifications when any of those dots goes yellow or red. VMware needs to write that into ESXi – but they won’t, because they want people to buy the full Virtual Infrastructure for $3000.

Tags: Dell OpenManage, ESXi, management, Monitoring

Updated 11/22/2008 with new info regarding connectivity after fresh OS load.

Some of this may be old news to some readers, but it was not old news to me, and it cost me a bit of time and frustration to put it all together.

There are, of course, lots of resources available to cover these steps – but what I could not find was a reasonably simple overview in plain English that contained enough detail to send me down the right path. I found some complex details regarding some key point or other in some places, arguments about whether Hyper-V or ESXi was better, and some obvious copy/paste crap content from MS marketing materials.

Nothing I found really put it all together on a basic level, to help me get to a platform from which I could then drill down to my desired level of detail, after first feeling like I was making some progress with the product.

So, I have decided to provide for others that which I was seeking. Here is my “middle ground” overview.

Components:
Hyper-V Server Installation (Standalone)
Hyper-V Remote Management Tools Update for Vista x86
Hyper-V Remote Management Tools Update for Vista x64
Hyper-V Update for Windows 2008 x86
Hyper-V Update for Windows 2008 x64

The first piece of the puzzle I was missing was that there are multiple ways to install Hyper-V:

• As a standalone server
• As a role on Windows 2008 Core
• As a role on a full Windows 2008 Server

This document covers only the standalone Hyper-V server because it is free, and is the closest I can get to a bare-metal hypervisor product from Microsoft.

Once you have downloaded the components you need, the next step is to burn a DVD from the ISO you downloaded for the Hyper-V Server installation. Put that in the drive and install away. If you get any errors about your hardware not being supported, you’ll need to check the system requirements. Also, here is a handy quick tool for checking some basics. It will tell you instantly whether your CPU is 64-bit, and whether hardware DEP and Intel VT are supported and enabled – some basic building blocks that Hyper-V needs.

Once you’ve installed Hyper-V, you’ll log on at the console with Administrator / blank password, and then change the password. You’ll be presented with a very basic text menu. Set your IP addressing, change the computer name, and JOIN A DOMAIN. I was unable to connect to the Hyper-V server with anything (RDP, SMB, Hyper-V Manager, nuthin’!) until I joined it to a domain.

Update: After some testing, and a helpful tip from Brian East, I have new information regarding connectivity:

• Turning on RDP does create an exception in the firewall, and it works. Not sure what I did wrong the first time.

• Sharing a folder does create a firewall exception for file/printer sharing, and it works.

• Connecting to the server via the management console works through the firewall, as long as you are logged on with a username/password that matches the Hyper-V admin account, or it is joined to a domain and you are logged in with a domain account that has permission to do the job.

• The management console will NOT prompt you for a password. Either you’re in or you’re not, based on your user account.

• When connecting to a running VM, (or starting one after connecting to it) you are prompted for a password unless the Hyper-V server is joined to a domain and you are logged in with a domain account with sufficient permission.

You may need to use DISKPART at the command prompt to set up any additional hard disks in your server, if you did not do that part during setup.

Once you’ve completed all of that, you may start to wonder “How in the heck do I configure VMs and VM-related settings on this thing?“, since those things are not in that basic text menu.

The answer is: Connect to your Hyper-V server from a management console you have installed on another computer. Yes, you can manage it from inside a VM that is running on it, but you have to get there first. The links above will give you the latest management tools for Vista and 2008.

For Vista, click the appropriate management tool link above, and install it. A new icon will appear under Administrative Tools called Hyper-V Manager.

For Windows 2008, use Server Manager. In the Features section, under Remote Server Administration Tools, you’ll find Hyper-V Tools.

Once you have your Hyper-V server installed and joined to a domain, and your management tools installed, the rest is pretty straightforward, so I’ll not belabor it here.

• One nice feature about Hyper-V is that you can use Windows Explorer to copy ISO images and virtual floppy images around, as well as VHDs.

So now that you’ve gotten started with Hyper-V, you might want to know: How do I perform a P2V into a Hyper-V environment? That, my inquisitive friends, is another story. The short answer is “Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager” (That’s a mouthful!).

For known issues with running SBS2008 in a Hyper-V environment, and some other miscellaneous ramblings about SBS2008, check this out.

Tags: Hyper-V, management, Virtualization, vm