vSAN HCL DB Out of Date – Offline Update

VCF, vSAN, , ,

During the upgrade pre-check test of the Workload domain I got the following error: vSAN HCL DB Out of Date.

Because my SDDC manager has no direct internet connection I needed to get the file on my jump host. This can be done by browsing to https://partnerweb.vmware.com/service/vsan/all.json and copy the entire content and create a new file with extension”.json”

This can also be done via the bundle-transfer util, and you also should be able to transfer the file to the SDDC manager with this util. How to get the tool and install it can be found on https://www.aaronrombaut.com/real-world-use-of-vmware-bundle-transfer-utility/

If you have the bundle-transfer util installed we can get the vSAN HCL file with the following command:

lcm-bundle-transfer-util.bat --vsanHclDownload --outputDirectory F:\

After I got the all.json file on my jump-host, I need to update it to the SDDC manager:

lcm-bundle-transfer-util.bat --vsanHclUpload --inputDirectory "F:\vsan\hcl\all.json" --sddcMgrFqdn sddc-l-01a.corp.local --sddcMgrUser vcf

But as you can see below this command gave me an error:

Fails due to not generating token, let’s see is we can upload the file by API, let’s use Postman for this.


Get Bearer token for the authentication with the SDDC manager:

  1. Select POST as action
  2. Fill in the api url: https://sddc-l-01a.corp.local/v1/tokens
  3. Under the Authorization tab select No Auth
  1. Under Headers create a new Key Content-Type with Value application/json
  1. Under Body select raw and JSON, in the field, put the sso admin and password for the SDDC Manager

{
"username" : "administrator@vsphere.local",
"password" : "XXXXXXX"
}

  1. Now hit the send button and wait for the output:

The bearer token is needed in the command to update the HCL DB on the SDDC manager:

Upload all.json to SDDC Manager via Postman:

  1. Select PUT as Action
  2. Use the following API URL: https://<sddc-fqdn>/v1/vsan-hcl/content
  3. Under Authorization select Bearer Token and Paste the Token from the previous step in the field.
  1. Under Headers add a new Key Content-Type with Value text/plain
  1. Under Body choose raw and JSON
  2. In the field copy the content of the all.json file
  3. Hit Send.

There is no output only a Status 200 OK

Let’s check if this particular pre-check error now is solved.

VICTORY!!

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Quick Fix – Found zero ssd devices for SSD cache tier

VCF, vSAN, , , , ,

When i added a host to an existing vSAN cluster via the SDDC manager the task failed with the following error: “Found zero ssd devices for SSD cache tier”

To quickly fix this we need to set the cache disk on the ESXi host to SSD, you can check the current value with the vdq -q command. As you can see in the picture below the disk I want to use for the cache is marked with a value of “0”, so it is not recognized as SSD drive.

In the past you had to set the the disk to SSD with SATP claim rules, but from version 7.x and 8.x there is a new and simpler command to do this. Run the following ESXCLI command and use the storage device ID and the -M option with value of true (or false to revert the change) to mark the device as an SSD.

esxcli storage hpp device set -d naa.6000c299027de72c68de829e23455e88 -M true

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VCF 5.0 – Remove vSAN datastore after VCF deployment failed

VCF, , , , ,

After a failed deployment of VCF 5.0, i was left with a vSAN Datastore on the first host in the cluster, and this was blocking a retry of the deployment.

In this state the vsanDatastore is unable to be deleted. If I try to delete it, the option is greyed out.

To delete the datastore and the partitions of the disks, we first need to SSH into the host and get the cluster.

We need the Sub-Cluster Master UUID, copy it to the clipboard. To leave the cluster the command is:

esxcli vsan cluster leave -u <Sub-Cluster Master UUID>

The ESXi UI now shows that the datastore is gone.

Let’s check the cli, if there still is a vSAN cluster or storage:

esxcli vsan cluster list
esxcli vsan storage list

No vSAN clusters or storage is configured on the host, after this the retry was successfully and the VCF management cluster was deployed.

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vSAN 7.0 Resync Throttling

vSAN, , ,

When we upgraded to vSAN 7, immediately we faced an annoying error message in Skyline health which complained about the Resync Throttling.

This setting is deprecated since 6.7 and can only be set via Powercli, below a few lines of code to set the value to 0 to all Hosts in the cluster. When the VSAN Host is patched or sometimes we even see the warning again after a reboot. Just run the script again and the warning is gone. 

$vc="yourVC"
Connect-VIServer $vc<br>$hosts = Get-VMHost
foreach($esx in $hosts){
Write-Host "Displaying and Updating VSAN ResyncThrottle value on $esx" 
Get-AdvancedSetting -Entity $esx -Name VSAN.DomCompResyncThrottle | Set-AdvancedSetting -Value 0 -confirm:$falseGet-AdvancedSetting -Entity $esx -Name VSAN.DomCompResyncThrottle
}

Please run scripts at your own risk! If you are not comfortable please contact VMware Support.

You can also check this KB article for another solution regarding the resync Throttling

https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/83742

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