HPE Alletra 5030 dhci deployment

[jlangmead]

Hi

I'm running the Alletra 5030 dHCI setup wizard and have reached the stage whereby it requests the IP range for the ESXi hosts. I add these and it attempts to resolve the IP addresses to DNS names. This fails to return any values and includes a warning that the hosts will be added to vCenter using IP addresses instead of FQDN and this cannot be changed atfer the deployment.

The ESXi hosts DNS entries are in place and every system on the network can sucessfully resolve these IP addresses without issue. Also, I can Putty into the Nimble array itself and run an nslookup againt the ESXi hostnames and it successfully resolves the IP address. Why is the wizard failing this step and how can I troubleshoot this further??

many thanks

[Sheldon Smith]

The HPE Alletra must be able to issue an nslookup from the DNS server. Reads like you are able to do that.

"I can Putty into the Nimble array itself and run an nslookup against the ESXi hostnames and it successfully resolves the IP address."
Wrong direction. The HPE dHCI setup wizard does an nslookup on the IPs to find out the names. Putty into the array and run an nslookup against the planned permanent static ESXi IP addresses. 

When you added the FQDN entries, did you have it enter the reverse entries as well?

[jlangmead]

Hiya Sheldon

Thanks for the quick reply, the test I was trying to convery was from the Nimble array - which I think is also what you're saying.

I open an SSH session to the Nimble and login. From the Nimble$ prompt I run an nslookup to the FQDN of the dHCI ESXi hosts

Nimble$  nslookup <dhci ESXi FQDN>

and it returns the correct IP address for the planned ESXi host IP.

I think this is what you're saying the Wizard does? However, although the Nimble can resolve the FQDN to the planned IP address from the Nimble command line, the wizard fails to resolve it.  I will however, need to doublecheck on the PTR record was setup - I guess I should be able to do

Nimble$   nslookup <dhci ESXi IP>

and still get the same correct resolution. - the wizard, however, shows failures for both forward and reverse lookups though. Even if the reservse lookup wasn't added into DNS, I would have thought the forward lookup would show as successful in the output of the wizard results??

thanks

[Sheldon Smith · Accepted solution]

You keep looking up the IP address by name. The dHCI wizard doesn't have any names. It only has IP addresses.
The dHCI wizard uses the IP addresses to get the FQDN names. 

So, yes. You need to 

nslookup <dhci ESXi IP>

and make sure it returns the desired name.

[jlangmead]

Ah - got it, that makes sense

So the wizard does the reverse DNS lookup first and, once it has resolved the IP to the FQDN, then proceeds with the forward DNS lookup to check both are working. For me then, it sounds like a problem with the DNS PTR record as the reverse lookup seems to be failing.

I'll ask the server team to double check

Thanks again