How to deploy an ova template (vAPP) for vCenter Operations Manager (vCOPS) without a DRS license

To deploy the vCenter operations manager which can be downloaded as a ova file, a DRS license is required. If you attempt to deploy the template without a DRS license, you will receive the following error

"Cannot deploy OVF descriptor on cluster-01 since it contains a vAPP and the cluster is not in DRS mode"

vCenter Operations manager foundation now is available free from the VMware website. So how to deploy it? Well, here  is how

vAPP is essentially just a container for virtual machines that holds settings for the two virtual machines such as IP pools, boot order etc. vAPP can be treated as a single entity and has the options to turn on or off the vAPP. However, vAPP can be split and the individual virtual machines can be taken out from the vAPP by removing the vAPP layer. vCOPs contains two VMs - UI VM and Analytics VM which are part of the vAPP. Please do remember, a vCenter license is required. vCOPs cannot work without vCenter.

To split the vAPP we must first deploy the vAPP. For example I have a cluster of 3 hosts on the vCenter. Follow the steps below to deploy the vAPP

1. Remove one of the hosts from the cluster such that it is no longer part of the cluster but still a part of the datacenter. For achieving this, you can either drag and drop the host out of the cluster or you can remove the host to the cluster and add the host at the datacenter level. You will have to remove all VMs from the host and take it in maintenance mode.
2. Once the host is no longer a part of the cluster but just a part of the datacenter, deploy the vAPP on the host. You will have to configure the vAPP with IP settings, name etc.
3. Once the vAPP has been deployed, turn on the vAPP. Wait for both the VMs to be up and running. Once the VMs are up and running, make sure you can access the UI VM. Check the DNS settings and the make sure you have DNS entries for the VMs on your DNS servers. VMs must be able to resolve each other.
4. If you can access the registration page, we are good to go. You can either to register the vCOPs with the vCenter server now or later. You will need an account with admin privileges on vCenter to complete the registration.
5. Now turn off the vAPP and after the vAPP has completely turned off, move the server back into the cluster by dragging and dropping the server into the cluster. This will remove the vAPP layer and you will see two VMs in the cluster called UI VM and Analytics VM.
6. You might receive an error and you can choose to ignore it.
7. It is very IMPORTANT that you turn on the analytics VMs at least 10 minutes before the UI VM. You will break it if you mess up the boot order. The vAPP is no longer there to manage the boot order, so the boot order will have to be managed manually.

And this is it. vCenter operations manager has been deployed.

How to find if a balloon driver is enabled on Virtual Machines on a VMware host

1. Open ssh connection to the host.

NOTE: you will have to enable the SSH service by connecting to the host in vsphere client. Go to configuration>security profile> services 'properties' > select SSH and click on options> start.

 

2. After logging in, type in the command esxtop, by default vmware displays CPU attributes.

 3.  By press 'm' to switch to memory view.

  4. We are looking for the MCTL attribute which might not be in the list of attributes being displayed, so press 'f' to edit the list of attributes being displayed.

  5. You can toggle the field to show or not by pressing the corresponding letter. Like in this case, press 'j' to display the MSTL attribute 
6. The MCTL attribute will show 'y' if the balloon driver is enabled.

How to modify the replication interval between Domain controllers in different sites to less than 15 minutes?

I recently came across a problem where DCs in our two data centers (Each datacenter is a different AD site) were not replicating fast enough. Because the DCs in question are in different sites, the minimum interval for replication between sites can only be 15 minutes, which is not good enough for us. So the workaround is to set the ADSI attribute “options” for the site link to 1 which means USE_NOTIFY attribute.

USE_NOTIFY forces the replication to occur when a change is made. But this does not work on manually created connections like we have. It only works on connections managed and created by KCC (these connections will have the value “automatically generated” shown under the first column. (details can be found at http://blogs.msdn.com/b/canberrapfe/archive/2012/03/26/active-directory-replication-change-notification-amp-you.aspx)

So what worked in our case to force the servers to override the default values by using integer value 12 for each server’s NTDS settings in ADSI. Details are in http://www.ryanjadams.com/2010/05/turbo-charge-active-directory/#axzz2PaGkqbUu. I have modified the attribute “options” for each server

a.       Open ADSI edit

b.      Connect to and expand the Configuration container

c. Navigate to Sites-> Sitename-> Servers-> servername-> NTDS Settings

d. Right click and select properties for each manual connection object in this folder.

e. Select the “Options” property.  Note that if the value is 1 then it is an intrasite connection object and owned by the KCC.  If the value is 5 then it is an intersite connection object and owned by the KCC.  If it is one of these values and owned by the KCC then do NOT change it.  It should be changed at the site level instead, otherwise if you change the value on a connection object that is owned by the KCC you force it out of KCC control and the KCC will no longer manage it.

f. In the edit attribute box, change the value to 12.