VSA Repair Mode

[zxr35]

Is there a way to put a VSA (10.5) in repair mode eventhough there is nothing wrong with it?

Back in the old days I use to be able to remove the data disk from the VSA virtual machine power it back on and put it in repair mode using the CMC.

Thanks

[oikjn]

what are you trying to do?  What do you need to repair?

[zxr35]

I would like to do a clean install on my ESX hosts.

Right now my VSA is running on ESX 4.1, I would like to upgrade it to ESXi 5.1.

At one time I was able to do that by putting the VSA in repair mode, then rebuild the host and then replace the VSA in repair mode with the new vsa from the rebuilt host.  Which then only needs one restripe for this process.

[oikjn]

are you talking about a cluster with multiple VSAs w/ redundancy where you want to effectively delete a host and then re-add a new clean one?

If so, I've done it in a way that probably isn't "supported", but works.  I've simply deleted a VSA and then re-installed a new one and cloned the MAC address.  When this happens the management group sees it as offline when its off and then when it comes back on, it shows a conflict saying the node doesn't agree w/ the management group about being a member.  At that time you get the option to repair the node which gives you what I think you are looking for.

I've only done this w/ hyper-v where I can keep the same mac address on the VSA... not sure if you can do that w/ esx.  this worked for both 10.5 and earlier versions. 

[zxr35]

yeah exactly I have a two node cluster, and I keep the same MAC address as you for licensing purposes etc.

I'm going to give it a try.  So it then lets you exchange the new one with the one you were able to put in repair mode?

And only one restripe is performed?

I'm trying get around from removing the vsa from the management group first which is a restripe.  Then adding the new one back whcih is another restripe....hope that makes sense

Thanks 

[oikjn]

yes it will allow you to do only one restripe.  If you use the same IP and MAC address it will make things a little confusing for removing the node and adding the new node, but it can be done.  I've done exactly what you are looking to do on hyper-v.

good luck.

its always a good idea to take a backup first and if you have some spare computer available, setup a temporary VSA and do a remote snapshot as a quicker backup just in case!

[5y53ng]

If you shutdown the VSA, disconnect one of its virtual disks, (remove from VM, but don't delete from disk) and then power it up you can place it in repair mode.

I use this approach often for reconfigurations in my lab. The good part is that if you needed to go back, you can simply reconnect the virtual disk and power the VSA back up and everything is back to normal after resync. (assuming you didn't wipe your physical array yet)

I mostly use the above method for reinstalling ESXi using the "preserve VMFS datastores" option as a safety net incase something goes wrong.

On a side note, regarding licenses, if you specify a user-defined MAC address in VMware for your VSA NICs, and then exchange your existing licenses through HP, you'll be able to reconfigure at will and never have to worry about relicensing or mucking around in the command line editing VMX files.

VMware gives you a specific range of MAC addresses to assign manually, I think its 00:50:56:00:00:00 to 00:50:56:3F:FF:FF. MAC addresses in this range are not auto-assigned by the host to avoid conflicts.

Hope that helps.

[zxr35]

Update:  I didnt even need to put the VSA in repair mode.  On this  particular deployment I have two datastores, one for the OS and one for virtual machines.

 I powered down the VSA and did a clean install of ESXi 5.1 on the OS datastore.  The virtual machine datastore was preserved and all I needed to do was configure the networking, add the VSA back to inventory, powered it back on and waited a few minutes for the resync to take place.    

Only thing I have the OS datastore at VMFS5 and the virtual machine datastore still on VMFS3.  I dont think it should be a problem.  

I do have a few deployments that I do not have the two datastore configuration, just one datastore.  When I do a install of ESXi5.1 it will remove the VSA.   I have tried to remove the data disk from the VSA and power it back on, but the CMC would not let me put the VSA in repiar mode. 

[5y53ng]

Interesting that did not allow you to put them in repair mode.

You can upgrade the VMFS3 datastore to VMFS5, though there are some caveats to that. If you look at config > storage and select a vmfs3 datastore, there will be a link to upgrade it to vmfs5.

[oikjn]

you can't "repair" until a new blank disk is on the node or there is another system available to replace it with otherwise it seems to assume the missing disks are temporary and you will return them to the node. If you put a blank disk into the VSA I think it would have enabled you to do the repair mode, but the way you did it was definitely quicker.