April 2012 – BAFM

vm-online-backup – Another day, another PowerCLI script

April 30, 2012June 21, 2013 Christian Leave a comment

Well, on Friday I had a short chat with someone from one of our application departments, stating he wanted a backup copy of a VM (ain’t to hard), but a) they don’t want any downtime and b) it has to be identical to the original.

So I sat down today, googled for a bit and actually found something that pretty much does what I want, though I had to fix it up a bit … So find attached a script, which creates a hot-clone from a snapshot and then only if the latest clone was successful deletes the old one.

param( [string] $vCenter )

# Add the VI-Snapin if it isn't loaded already
if ( (Get-PSSnapin -Name "VMware.VimAutomation.Core" -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue) -eq $null )
{
	Add-PSSnapin -Name "VMware.VimAutomation.Core"
}

if ( !($vCenter) ) {
	Write-Host ""
	Write-Host "vm-create-snapshot-clone: <vcenter> <VM-Name> <Target Datastore>"
	Write-Host "    <vcenter>          - Hostname of the vCenter Server instance for this script"
	Write-Host "                         to work on."
	Write-Host ""
	exit 1
}
# Based on http://www.simonlong.co.uk/blog/2010/05/05/powercli-a-simple-vm-backup-script/

# Import Backup CSV
$backupinfo =  Import-Csv C:ScriptsTEMPbackupvms.csv

#Set Date format for clone names
$date = Get-Date -Format "yyyyMMdd"

#Set Date format for emails
$time = (Get-Date -f "HH:MM")

#Connect to vCenter
Connect-VIServer $vCenter

foreach ($customer in $backupinfo)
{
    $vm = Get-VM $customer.MasterVM
	$SCRIPTS = "C:ScriptsTEMP$( $customer.MasterVM ).txt"

    # Create new snapshot for clone
    $vm | New-Snapshot -Name "Clone Snapshot" -Description (get-date -format "'Created: 'yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm")

    # Get managed object view
    $vmView = $vm | Get-View

    # Get folder managed object reference
    $cloneFolder = $vmView.parent

    # Build clone specification
    $cloneSpec = new-object Vmware.Vim.VirtualMachineCloneSpec
    $cloneSpec.Snapshot = $vmView.Snapshot.CurrentSnapshot

    # Make linked disk specification
    $cloneSpec.Location = new-object Vmware.Vim.VirtualMachineRelocateSpec
    $cloneSpec.Location.Datastore = (Get-Datastore -Name $customer.BackupDS | Get-View).MoRef
    $cloneSpec.Location.Transform =  [Vmware.Vim.VirtualMachineRelocateTransformation]::sparse

    $cloneName = "$vm-$date"

    # Create clone
    $vmView.CloneVM( $cloneFolder, $cloneName, $cloneSpec )

	if (( Test-Path -Path $SCRIPTS) -ne $true ) {
		$cloneName | Out-File $SCRIPTS
	} else {
		$old_vm = Get-Content $SCRIPTS
		$cloneName | Out-File $SCRIPTS

		Get-VM $old_vm | Remove-VM -DeletePermanently -Confirm:$false
	}

    # Remove Snapshot created for clone
    Get-Snapshot -VM $vm -Name "Clone Snapshot" | Remove-Snapshot -confirm:$False
}
#Disconnect from vCenter
Disconnect-VIServer -Server $vCenter -Confirm:$false

param( [string] $vCenter )

# Add the VI-Snapin if it isn't loaded already

if ( (Get-PSSnapin -Name "VMware.VimAutomation.Core" -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue) -eq $null )

{

Add-PSSnapin -Name "VMware.VimAutomation.Core"

}

if ( !($vCenter) ) {

Write-Host ""

Write-Host "vm-create-snapshot-clone: <vcenter> <VM-Name> <Target Datastore>"

Write-Host " <vcenter> - Hostname of the vCenter Server instance for this script"

Write-Host " to work on."

Write-Host ""

exit 1

}

# Based on http://www.simonlong.co.uk/blog/2010/05/05/powercli-a-simple-vm-backup-script/

# Import Backup CSV

$backupinfo = Import-Csv C:ScriptsTEMPbackupvms.csv

#Set Date format for clone names

$date = Get-Date -Format "yyyyMMdd"

#Set Date format for emails

$time = (Get-Date -f "HH:MM")

#Connect to vCenter

Connect-VIServer $vCenter

foreach ($customer in $backupinfo)

{

$vm = Get-VM $customer.MasterVM

$SCRIPTS = "C:ScriptsTEMP$( $customer.MasterVM ).txt"

# Create new snapshot for clone

$vm | New-Snapshot -Name "Clone Snapshot" -Description (get-date -format "'Created: 'yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm")

# Get managed object view

$vmView = $vm | Get-View

# Get folder managed object reference

$cloneFolder = $vmView.parent

# Build clone specification

$cloneSpec = new-object Vmware.Vim.VirtualMachineCloneSpec

$cloneSpec.Snapshot = $vmView.Snapshot.CurrentSnapshot

# Make linked disk specification

$cloneSpec.Location = new-object Vmware.Vim.VirtualMachineRelocateSpec

$cloneSpec.Location.Datastore = (Get-Datastore -Name $customer.BackupDS | Get-View).MoRef

$cloneSpec.Location.Transform = [Vmware.Vim.VirtualMachineRelocateTransformation]::sparse

$cloneName = "$vm-$date"

# Create clone

$vmView.CloneVM( $cloneFolder, $cloneName, $cloneSpec )

if (( Test-Path -Path $SCRIPTS) -ne $true ) {

$cloneName | Out-File $SCRIPTS

} else {

$old_vm = Get-Content $SCRIPTS

$cloneName | Out-File $SCRIPTS

Get-VM $old_vm | Remove-VM -DeletePermanently -Confirm:$false

}

# Remove Snapshot created for clone

Get-Snapshot -VM $vm -Name "Clone Snapshot" | Remove-Snapshot -confirm:$False

}

#Disconnect from vCenter

Disconnect-VIServer -Server $vCenter -Confirm:$false

The backupvms.csv looks pretty simple:

; html-script: false ]MasterVM,BackupDS
sles11-sp1,datastore2-nfs
sles10-sp4,datastore1-nfs

; html-script: false ]MasterVM,BackupDS

sles11-sp1,datastore2-nfs

sles10-sp4,datastore1-nfs

TSM and NetApp – Quick Hint

April 25, 2012June 21, 2013 Christian Leave a comment

Well, to save everyone else the trouble (since it isn’t documented anywhere – and I just spent about an hour finding the cause for this), if you need to configure NDMP on your NetApp Filer, make sure you also configure an interface other than e0M.

Apparently the necessary controlport for NDMP (10000) is being blocked on e0M, thus ndmp may be configured and running, however TSM is gonna complain that it is unable to connect to the specified data mover.

ANR4728E Server connection to file server 172.31.76.100 failed. Please check
the attributes of the file server specified during definition of the datamover.
ANR2146E DEFINE DATAMOVER: Node NAS_DM is not registered.
ANS8001I Return code 11.

ANR4728E Server connection to file server 172.31.76.100 failed. Please check

the attributes of the file server specified during definition of the datamover.

ANR2146E DEFINE DATAMOVER: Node NAS_DM is not registered.

ANS8001I Return code 11.

SLES11.1 and updated multipath-tools

April 7, 2012June 21, 2013 Christian Leave a comment

Well, after I scripted the installation the other day, I tried installing SLES11.1-Updates to the freshly installed systems. Guess what ? The thing broke. Initially (it was late Friday afternoon – like 6 PM – before my one week vacation) I didn’t have much time to debug the issue, so I sat down last week and looked at the issue.

During the installation, when first starting multipath via command line, the scsi-mpatha device appears, and each and every occurance of this is subsequentially being used (and other stuff replaced by this actually) during the whole installation phase.

But what is this multipath-tools update doing ? No clue what exactly, however after installing the update the system is bricked. The system is basically looking for /dev/scsi/by-id/scsi-disk-mpatha and waiting for this device to appear. But since the update robbed the device, the system is no longer starting.

So I went ahead and digged around in the /dev/disk/by-id directory. Turns out /dev/disk/by-id/scsi- is actually pointing to the right device, and thus I ended up using it. So I rewrote all my scripts (profile and chroot/post-chroot adjustments) as you can see below, and for now at least, I have a working installation that lets you install updates! (careful it gots electrolytes)

#!/bin/bash

cat << EOF > /etc/multipath.conf
defaults {
	user_friendly_names		no
	bindings_file			/etc/multipath_bindings
}

devices {
	device {
		vendor			"NETAPP"
		product			"LUN"
		getuid_callout		"/lib/udev/scsi_id -g -u --device=/dev/%n"
		features		"1 queue_if_no_path"
		hardware_handler	"1 alua"
		path_checker		tur
		path_selector		"round-robin 0"
		path_grouping_policy	group_by_prio
		failback		immediate
		rr_weight		uniform
		rr_min_io		128
		prio			alua
		max_fds			max
        }
}
EOF

sleep 1

# Disable the resume kernel
sed -e "s,resume=/dev/mapper/.*_part[0-9],noresume,g" -i 
	/etc/sysconfig/bootloader /boot/grub/menu.lst 

# Figure out the multipath ID
MD_ID="$( /sbin/multipath -l | head -n1 | cut -d  -f1 )"

# Fix wrong root-path in /etc/fstab
sed -i "s/mapper/.*_part/disk/by-id/scsi-${MD_ID}-part/" /etc/fstab

# Fix grub root-path and wrong root-partition
sed -i -e "s/mapper/.*_part/disk/by-id/scsi-${MD_ID}-part/" 
	-e "s,scsi-${MD_ID}-part2,scsi-${MD_ID}-part3," /boot/grub/menu.lst

# Fix the device.map
echo -e "(hd0)t/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-${MD_ID}" > /boot/grub/device.map

sleep 1
mkinitrd -f multipath

#!/bin/bash

cat << EOF > /etc/multipath.conf

defaults {

user_friendly_names no

bindings_file /etc/multipath_bindings

}

devices {

device {

vendor "NETAPP"

product "LUN"

getuid_callout "/lib/udev/scsi_id -g -u --device=/dev/%n"

features "1 queue_if_no_path"

hardware_handler "1 alua"

path_checker tur

path_selector "round-robin 0"

path_grouping_policy group_by_prio

failback immediate

rr_weight uniform

rr_min_io 128

prio alua

max_fds max

}

EOF

sleep 1

# Disable the resume kernel

sed -e "s,resume=/dev/mapper/.*_part[0-9],noresume,g" -i

/etc/sysconfig/bootloader /boot/grub/menu.lst

# Figure out the multipath ID

MD_ID="$( /sbin/multipath -l | head -n1 | cut -d -f1 )"

# Fix wrong root-path in /etc/fstab

sed -i "s/mapper/.*_part/disk/by-id/scsi-${MD_ID}-part/" /etc/fstab

# Fix grub root-path and wrong root-partition

sed -i -e "s/mapper/.*_part/disk/by-id/scsi-${MD_ID}-part/"

-e "s,scsi-${MD_ID}-part2,scsi-${MD_ID}-part3," /boot/grub/menu.lst

# Fix the device.map

echo -e "(hd0)t/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-${MD_ID}" > /boot/grub/device.map

sleep 1

mkinitrd -f multipath

Now what’s left to do for tomorrow is “fixing” the already (previous to those changes) installed systems, so we can install security updates on those too!