VMware ESX

The following information shows you how to diagnose problems with VMware ESX servers.

IBM Spectrum® Control supports the VMware Virtual Infrastructure that consists of the ESX server and VMware VirtualCenter. The ESX server is a true hypervisor product that can host multiple virtual machines that run independently of each other while they share hardware resources.

IBM Spectrum Control supports the following services:
  • The Virtual Center discovery is the only successful criteria.
  • Alerts are for probe only. No event, traps, or alarms from the Virtual Infrastructure are supported.
  • IBM Spectrum Control supports reporting only. No active management of the Virtual Infrastructure is supported.
  • The information that is obtained from VMware is equivalent to what is obtained through a read-only Storage Resource agent. It does not include scripts or file system (FS) extension.
To get detailed information for space and capacity reports, you must complete the following steps:
  • Probe all the ESX servers.
  • Install Storage Resource agents on all the virtual machines and probe them. Otherwise, you get a partial picture with incomplete capacity data.

Common usability problems

The following list shows some common user errors with VMware:
  • There are new totals in the dashboard and reports.
  • Note the indications for the hypervisor status.
  • Differentiate Storage Resource agent for a virtual machine information from the ESX Server.

Dependencies

Some of the dependencies are as follows:
  • VMware ESX 3.0.1 and Virtual Center 2.0.1 are required.
  • A probe of the hypervisor is required for complete reporting.
  • Hypervisors and Virtual Centers have HTTPS communication that is turned on and HTTP communication that is turned off by default.
  • You require permission to browse through the data stores on the ESX server. For more information about how to check permissions to browse data stores, search the IBM Spectrum Control Knowledge documentation for hypervisor permissions.

Diagnosing the problem

When you troubleshoot a VMware problem, make a note of the following items: When you troubleshoot problems with VMware devices, make a note of the following items:
  • View the job logs for probe create jobs that might indicate that tracing information is available.
  • Look for trace messages in the general trace file: installation_dir/device/log/traceTPCDeviceServer.log
  • Enable tracing for the Device server.
    1. In the menu bar, go to Home > System Management.
    2. Click Component Servers in the Components section.
    3. In the Device section, click On for each of the services of the Device server.
The output data is logged in the traceTPCDeviceServer.log file.

For more information about setting the trace levels of the component servers, see the online help for the System Management page.