Category: VMware

Automated ESXi Installation with a USB Network…

Automated ESXi Installation with a USB Network…

I have been working with the Project Keswick team for quite some time now, which is an OCTO project is lead by my good friend Alan Renouf, who is doing some really innovative work with ESXi at the edge and application deployment using a desired state engine. Recently I had met with the team to […]

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2023 NSX Ninja Program For Customers

2023 NSX Ninja Program For Customers

The 5 day VMware NSX Software-Defined Networking (SDN) Ninja program provides in depth coverage of networking use cases. This program is a comprehensive look at NSX architecture and components that support switching, routing, VPN, load balancing, container networking, and multi-site networking [..]

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VMware ESXI and Intel Optane NVMe – intelmas firmware update

How to install intelmas tool

[~] esxcli software component apply -d /vmfs/volumes/SSD/_ISO/intel-mas-tool_2.2.18-1OEM.700.0.0.15843807_20956742.zip
Installation Result
   Components Installed: intel-mas-tool_2.2.18-1OEM.700.0.0.15843807
   Components Removed:
   Components Skipped:
   Message: Operation finished successfully.
   Reboot Required: false

Common information about the disc

[~] /opt/intel/intelmas/intelmas show -intelssd 1

- 1 Intel(R) Optane(TM) SSD 905P Series PHMB839000LW280IGN -

Bootloader : EB3B0416
Capacity : 260.83 GB (280,065,171,456 bytes)
DevicePath : nvmeMgmt-nvmhba5
DeviceStatus : Healthy
Firmware : E201HPS2
FirmwareUpdateAvailable : The selected drive contains current firmware as of this tool release.
Index : 1
MaximumLBA : 547002287
ModelNumber : INTEL SSDPED1D280GAH
NamespaceId : 1
PercentOverProvisioned : 0.00
ProductFamily : Intel(R) Optane(TM) SSD 905P Series
SMARTEnabled : True
SectorDataSize : 512
SerialNumber : PHMB839000LW280IGN

S.M.A.R.T information

[~] /opt/intel/intelmas/intelmas show -nvmelog SmartHealthInfo -intelssd 1

-  PHMB839000LW280IGN -

- NVMeLog SMART and Health Information -

Volatile memory backup device has failed : False
Temperature has exceeded a critical threshold : False
Temperature - Celsius : 30
Media is in a read-only mode : False
Power On Hours : 0x0100
Power Cycles : 0x03
Number of Error Info Log Entries : 0x0
Controller Busy Time : 0x0
Available Spare Space has fallen below the threshold : False
Percentage Used : 0
Critical Warnings : 0
Data Units Read : 0x02
Available Spare Threshold Percentage : 0
Data Units Written : 0x0
Unsafe Shutdowns : 0x0
Host Write Commands : 0x0
Device reliability has degraded : False
Available Spare Normalized percentage of the remaining spare capacity available : 100
Media Errors : 0x0
Host Read Commands : 0x017F

Show all the SMART properties for the Intel® SSD at index 1

[~] /opt/intel/intelmas/intelmas show  -intelssd 1 -smart

- SMART Attributes PHMB839000LW280IGN -

- B8 -

Action : Pass
Description : End-to-End Error Detection Count
ID : B8
Normalized : 100
Raw : 0

- C7 -

Action : Pass
Description : CRC Error Count
ID : C7
Normalized : 100
Raw : 0

- E2 -

Action : Pass
Description : Timed Workload - Media Wear
ID : E2
Normalized : 100
Raw : 0

- E3 -

Action : Pass
Description : Timed Workload - Host Read/Write Ratio
ID : E3
Normalized : 100
Raw : 0

- E4 -

Action : Pass
Description : Timed Workload Timer
ID : E4
Normalized : 100
Raw : 0

- EA -

Action : Pass
Description : Thermal Throttle Status
ID : EA
Normalized : 100
Raw : 0
ThrottleStatus : 0 %
ThrottlingEventCount : 0

- F0 -

Action : Pass
Description : Retry Buffer Overflow Count
ID : F0
Normalized : 100
Raw : 0

- F3 -

Action : Pass
Description : PLI Lock Loss Count
ID : F3
Normalized : 100
Raw : 0

- F5 -

Action : Pass
Description : Host Bytes Written
ID : F5
Normalized : 100
Raw : 0
Raw (Bytes) : 0

- F6 -

Action : Pass
Description : System Area Life Remaining
ID : F6
Normalized : 100
Raw : 0

Disk firmware update

[~] /opt/intel/intelmas/intelmas load -intelssd 1
WARNING! You have selected to update the drives firmware!
Proceed with the update? (Y|N): Y
Checking for firmware update...

- Intel(R) Optane(TM) SSD 905P Series PHMB839000LW280IGN -

Status : The selected drive contains current firmware as of this tool release.

📆 Save the Date | VMware Explore 2023

📆 Save the Date | VMware Explore 2023

We’re excited to announce the next event dates and locations for VMware Explore 2023! August 21 – 24, 2023: The Venetian Convention and Expo Center in Las Vegas, Nevada. November 6 – 9, 2023: Fira Gran Via in Barcelona, Spain. Download the calendar invite and block your schedule off now!

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How to Maxtang’s NX 6412 NUC add to vDS? Fix script /etc/rc.local.d/local.sh

How to fix network after adding to vDS. When you add NX6412 to vDS and reboot ESXi. I don’t have uplink for vDS. You could check it with:

# esxcfg-vswitch -l
DVS Name         Num Ports   Used Ports  Configured Ports  MTU     Uplinks
vDS              2560        6           512               9000    vusb0
--cut
  DVPort ID                               In Use      Client
  468                                     0           
  469                                     0
  470                                     0
  471                                     0

We will have to note DVPort ID 468 – example. vDS is name of your vDS switch.

esxcfg-vswitch -P vusb0 -V 468 vDS

It is necessary add it to /etc/rc.local.d/local.sh before exit 0. You could have similar script from source Persisting USB NIC Bindings 

vusb0_status=$(esxcli network nic get -n vusb0 | grep 'Link Status' | awk '{print $NF}')
count=0
while [[ $count -lt 20 && "${vusb0_status}" != "Up" ]]
do
    sleep 10
    count=$(( $count + 1 ))
    vusb0_status=$(esxcli network nic get -n vusb0 | grep 'Link Status' | awk '{print $NF}')
done

esxcfg-vswitch -R
esxcfg-vswitch -P vusb0 -V 468 vDS

exit 0

What’s the story with Optane?

I am using Intel SSD Optane 900P PCIe in my HomeLAB as ZIL L2ARC drives for TrueNAS, but in July of 2022 Intel announced their intention to wind down the Optane business. I will try summary information about Intel Optane from Simon Todd presentation.

My HomeLAB benchmark Optane 900P -TrueNAS ZIL L2ARC with HDD

Optane help a lot with IOPs for RAID with normal HDD. I reach 2,5GB/s peak write performance.

Writer Report – iozone -Raz -b lab.wks -g 1G – Optane 900P -TrueNAS ZIL L2ARC with HDD x-axis File size in KB; z-axis MB/s
Writer Report – iozone -Raz -b lab.wks -g 1G – Optane 900P -TrueNAS ZIL L2ARC with HDD

We call see great write performance for 40GB file size set about 1,7GB/s.

# perftests-nas ; cat iozone.txt
        Run began: Sun Dec 18 08:02:39 2022

        Record Size 128 kB
        File size set to 41943040 kB
        Command line used: /usr/local/bin/iozone -r 128 -s 41943040k -i 0 -i 1
        Output is in kBytes/sec
        Time Resolution = 0.000001 seconds.
        Processor cache size set to 1024 kBytes.
        Processor cache line size set to 32 bytes.
        File stride size set to 17 * record size.

              kB  reclen    write  rewrite    read    reread
        41943040     128  1734542  1364683  2413381  2371527

iozone test complete.
# dd if=/dev/zero of=foo bs=1G count=1
1+0 records in
1+0 records out
1073741824 bytes transferred in 1.517452 secs (707595169 bytes/sec) 707 MB/s

# dd if=/dev/zero of=foo bs=512 count=1000
1000+0 records in
1000+0 records out
512000 bytes transferred in 0.012079 secs (42386853 bytes/sec) 42 MB/s

Intel® Optane™ Business Update: What Does This Mean for Warranty and Support

As announced in Intel’s Q2 2022 earnings, after careful consideration, Intel plans to cease future development of our Optane products. We will continue development of Crow Pass on Sapphire Rapids as we engage with key customers to determine their plans to deploy this product. While we believe Optane is a superb technology, it has become impractical to deliver products at the necessary scale as a single-source supplier of Optane technology.

We are committed to supporting Optane customers and ecosystem partners through the transition of our existing memory and storage product lines through end-of-life. We continue to sell existing Optane products, and support and the 5-year warranty terms from date of sale remain unchanged.

Get to know intel® optane™ technology
Source Simon Todd – vExpert – Intel Webinar Slides

What makes Optane SSD’s different?

    NAND SSD

    NAND garbage collection requires background writes. NAND SSD block erase process results in slower writes and inconsistent performance.

    Intel® Optane™ technology

    Intel® Optane™ technology does not use garbage collection
    Rapid, in-place writes enable consistently fast response times

    Intel® Optane™ SSDs are different by design
    Source Simon Todd – vExpert – Intel Webinar Slides
    Consistent performance, even under heavy write loads
    Source Simon Todd – vExpert – Intel Webinar Slides
    ModelDies per channelChannelsRaw CapacitySpare Area
    Intel Optane SSD 900p 280GB37336 GB56 GB
    Intel Optane SSD DC P4800X 375GB47448 GB73 GB
    Intel Optane SSD 900p 480GB57560 GB80 GB
    Intel Optane SSD DC P4800X 750GB87896 GB146 GB
    The Optane SSD DC P4800X and the Optane SSD 900p both use the same 7-channel controller, which leads to some unusual drive capacities. The 900p comes with either 3 or 5 memory dies per channel while the P4800X has 4 or 8. All models reserve about 1/6th of the raw capacity for internal use Source

    Intel Optane SSD DC P4800X / 900P Hands-On Review

    Wow, How is Optane fast …

    The Intel Optane SSD DC P4800X is slightly faster than the Optane SSD 900p throughout this test, but either is far faster than the flash-based SSDs. Source

    Maxtang’s NX 6412 NUC – update ESXi 8.0a

    VMware ESXi 8.0a release was announced:

    How to prepare ESXi Custom ISO image 8U0a for NX6412 NUC?

    Download these files:

    Run those script to prepare Custom ISO image you should use PowerCLI version 13.0. Problem with upgrade to PowerCLI you could fix with blog PowerCLI 13 update and installation hurdles on Windows:

    Add-EsxSoftwareDepot .\VMware-ESXi-8.0a-20842819-depot.zip
    Add-EsxSoftwareDepot .\ESXi800-VMKUSB-NIC-FLING-61054763-component-20826251.zip
    New-EsxImageProfile -CloneProfile "ESXi-8.0a-20842819-standard" -name "ESXi-8.0.0-20842819-USBNIC" -Vendor "vdan.cz"
    Add-EsxSoftwarePackage -ImageProfile "ESXi-8.0.0-20842819-USBNIC" -SoftwarePackage "vmkusb-nic-fling"
    Export-ESXImageProfile -ImageProfile "ESXi-8.0.0-20842819-USBNIC" -ExportToBundle -filepath ESXi-8.0.0-20842819-USBNIC.zip

    Upgrade to ESXi 8.0

    TPM_VERSION WARNING: Support for TPM version 1.2 is discontinued. With Apply –no-hardware-warning option to ignore the warnings and proceed with the transaction.

    esxcli software profile update -d  /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/_ISO/ESXi-8.0.1-20842819-USBNIC.zip -p ESXi-8.0.1-20842819-USBNIC --no-hardware-warning
Update Result
   Message: The update completed successfully, but the system needs to be rebooted for the changes to be effective.
   Reboot Required: true