WHAT IS VXRAIL?
VxRail is Dell EMC’s hyper-converged offering. Hyper-converged appliances allow a datacenter in a box approach, rather than buying servers, storage and hypervisor separately hyper-converged appliances bundle the components into one package. The storage, compute and hypervisor components used by VXRail are as follows:
Storage – VMware vSAN 6.6
Compute – 14th Generation DellEMC PowerEdge servers
Hypervisor – vSphere 6.5
Together the above form VXRail 4.5
WHAT ELSE DO YOU GET WITH VXRAIL?
You also get some other software bundled in:
vCentre
vRealize log insight
RecoverPoint for VM’s
vSphere Replication
vSphere data protection
HOW MANY NODES DO YOU NEED?
The minimum number of nodes required is three, although 4 is recommended to allow overhead for failures and maintenance. This is also the minimum number of nodes required to use erasure coding rather than mirroring for data protection.
HOW DO YOU MANAGE VXRAIL?
The system is managed from two places. You will be spending most of your time in the vSphere web console since all vSphere management is still performed from here. Also since the storage is being provided by vSAN this is also managed within vSphere. The second tool you will need to become familiar with is VxRail Manager.
VSPHERE INTEGRATION
There is the option to create a new vCentre which will be housed within the hyper-converged infrastructure it’s self or to use an external vCentre. The choice to use an internal or external vCentre can be set during the initial deployment wizard.
WHAT IS VXRAIL MANAGER?
The VxRail manager allows you to manage the hardware i.e. the servers in a VxRail deployment plus perform a number of other tasks including:
Deployment – Initial deployment and addition of nodes
Update – As this is a hyper-converged system upgrade of all components can be completed from the VxRail manager.
Monitor – Check for events, and monitor resource usage and component status
Maintain – Dial home support
WHAT ARE THE MODELS?
You can see detailed specifications of all the models on the DellEMC site, this section just provides the major differences between the series
S Series – Hybrid only
G Series – Space saving format 2U can contain 4 appliances
E Series – 1U hence supports less capacity than the other 2U nodes
P Series – 2U supports twice the capacity of E series and is therefore suitable to more demanding workloads
V Series – Same spec as P series plus GPU’s. Optimised for VDI environments
Physical node view
Logical node view showing resource useage
ESXi component status
HOW DO YOU ADD A NODE
You add a node using the VxRail Manager as shown in the screenshot below which is a non disruptive process. Hybrid and all flash models cannot be mixed plus the first three nodes in any cluster must be identical after this you can mix and match models . Although there is something to be said for maintaining consistency across the cluster so it is balanced and will probably make managing it easier in the future. The cluster can be scaled to a max of 64 nodes.
HOW DO I TAKE A NODE OUT FOR MAINTENANCE?
Since the data is stored inside each of the nodes there are some additional considerations when putting a node into maintenance versus using a traditional SAN. When you do put a host into maintenance mode the default option is ensure accessibility it makes sure all data is available during maintenance, although redundancy may be reduced.
Collect Logs:
There are two ways to collect the VDP logs:
A) Using the web portal:
Using the web browser enter the following: https://lP_OF_ VDPServer:8543/vdp-configure
Press the Log Collector Tab.
Download all Logs.
B) Using the Command Line Interface:
SSH to the VDP server using Putty.
default username/password are : root/changeme (change to root ( sudo su -))
Change to the /usr/local/avamarclient/bin directory by running this command:
# cd /usr/local/avamarclient/bin
Run this command to generate a ZIP archive file containing the logs:# ./F11eC011ector —o
/space/Name Of Log File. zip
Change directory to /space/home/admin/ and change the owner of the file using below command:
# chown admin Name Of Log File. zip
Copy the log file bundle from the appliance to a system where it can be uploaded using SCP, SFTP, or FTP
Use the WinSCP program on a Windows system, or the scp program on a Linux or Unix system.
Remove the log bundle created by running this command:
rm —f Name Of Log File. zip
—
Check Logs:
Monitor VxRail marvin.log:
1. cd /var/log/vmware/marvin/tomcat/logs
# cat marvin.log
# tail —f marvin. log
# tail —f marvin. log I grep ERROR
# tail —n 100 martin. log
# more marvin. log
2. . In terms of viewing Hooray equivalent in the logs the string is "Configuration complete!".
# cat marvin.log I grep "Configuration complete ! "
3. View the json used for build:
cat / var/ ournal . j son
4. . Installed json:
cat / var/ lib/vmware—marvin/ config . j son
5. . Runtime properties:
/ var / Lib/vmware —marvi n / runt i me . properties
6. PSQL
Dell VxRail SOP — Work Instructions
Rev: 1.0
psq1 —U postgres mysticmanager —c "select + from virtual infrastructure" I cat psq1 —U postgres marv±n —c "select appl lanceld, assettag, clusteraffinity , configurations tate , di scoveredda te ,model, primaryup, hardwareproflle id from vxrailhost; " I cat
7. ESXi Logs cat /var/10g/sheL1. log tail —f /var/log/vmkernel. log
VxRail DRAC - Get Sysinfo via SSH:
One method of pulling useful VxRail node details such as:
• VxRail Model
Hostname
• ESXi version
• Service tag details
• NIC MAC Addresses
—
• VMkernel interfaces
• Firmware details
Is via connecting directly to the iDRAC IP using SSH. After logging into the SSH console with root credentials the firmware RACADM is accessible. From the /adminl-> prompt enter the required racadm command. In order to get all the details outlined above you can is a single command:
/ racadm getsysinfo
Other useful commands:
Get Service Tag
/ adminL> racadm getversion
Firmware Versions
/ admin 1> racadm getversion
VMkernel Adapters
/ adminl—> racadm gethostnetworkinterfaces
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