VxRAIL – 4.7 Install Notes

Note: this is an example for reference only please use the VxRail installation procedures provided by Dell EMC.

Prerequisites for installation include:

• Create all relevant ESXi, VC and VxRAIL manager DNS entries on AD/DNS server.
• Verify the customer DNS server can resolve the following components, test both forward and reverse lookups using nslookup:
  • ESXi Mgmt
  • VxRail Manager
  • vCenter
  • PSC
  • LogInsight
  • SRS Gateway
• Ping all the above components in order to rule out any duplicate IP address conflicts.
• Verify NTP is working correctly, the following are some useful links: https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/1035833                https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/1003736
  • Ensure date is in sync:
    • ESXi set date and time:
      • #esxcli system time get 
      • esxcli system time set d|–day -H|–hour -m|–min -M|–month -s|–sec -y|–year
      • #esxcli system time set -d 19 -H 12 -m 30 -M 04 -y 2018 
    • vCSA & PSC/VxRail Manager – view & set date and time:
      • # date
      • # date -s “19 APR 2018 12:30:00”
• You can check the installed VxRail code on the ESXi host:
  • esxcli software vib list | grep marvin
• On the first host of the cluster set the VxRail Manager VM IP via IDRAC/DCUI (vxrail-idrac-esxi-shell-access-via-dcui):
  • vxrail-primary --setup --vxrail-address 192.1.20.50 --vxrail-netmask 255.255.255.0 --vxrail-gateway 192.1.20.1 --no-roll-back --verbose
• Check if VxRail Manager VM is running:
  • esxcli vm process list
• Enter the console (ALT+F1) and change the VLAN ID for the “VM Network” as per PEQ. e.g (VLAN 120):
  • esxcli network vswitch standard portgroup list
  • esxcli network vswitch standard portgroup set -p “VM Network” -v 120
• Restart loudmouth on each ESXi host:
  •  /etc/init.d/loudmouth restart
• Restart loudmouth on the VxRail Manager vm:
  • systemctl restart vmware-loudmouth
• Power cycle the VxRail Manager VM:

  • vim-cmd vmsvc/getallvms

  • vim-cmd vmsvc/power.shutdown vmid

  • vim-cmd vmsvc/power.getstate vmid

  • vim-cmd vmsvc/power.on vmid

  • vim-cmd vmsvc/power.getstate vmid

• Check VxRail Manager can discover hosts, login to the VxRail Manager via SSH and run the following commands:
  • psql -U postgres marvin -c "select nodeposition,applianceid,primaryip from vxrailhost"
  • /usr/lib/vmware-loudmouth/bin/loudmouthc query | grep -o "applianceID=..............." | sort

  • /usr/lib/vmware-loudmouth/bin/loudmouthc query | egrep -o "EMC........-..|..............-..-.." | sed 's/ {"//g' | sort

  • ‘G’ Series query by node position as PSNT is appliance based:
    • /usr/lib/vmware-loudmouth/bin/loudmouthc query | grep -o "nodePosition=...." | sort
    • /usr/lib/vmware-loudmouth/bin/loudmouthc query | grep -o "node-..........." | sort

Switch Validation

• Confirm NIC’s are up:
  • esxcli network nic list
• Confirm the mac address of VxRail Manager is showing up on the switch. You can find the VxRail Manager mac address from the ESXi console:
  • vim-cmd vmsvc/get.guest vmid | more
• Ensure your switch ports are configured identically for all VxRail port connections.
• Ensure each port has the required VLANs configured and trunked to all ports. In this example ESXi mgmt 120, vMotion 122, vSAN 123 and default Private Mgmt Network 3939.
• In a dual switch configuration ensure that the VLANs are configured on the ISL/VPC peer link.
•  Sample DELL s4048 VLAN port config:

!
interface Vlan 120
ip address 192.1.20.1/24
tagged TenGigabitEthernet 1/1-1/32
no shutdown
!
interface Vlan 122
ip address 192.1.22.1/24
tagged TenGigabitEthernet 1/1-1/32
no shutdown
!
interface Vlan 123
ip address 192.1.23.1/24
tagged TenGigabitEthernet 1/1-1/32
no shutdown
!
interface Vlan 3939
no ip address
tagged TenGigabitEthernet 1/1-1/32
no shutdown
!

VxRail Manager Automatic Validation Steps

The following are the pre-validation steps that VxRail Manager automatically performs during the Validation process:

• Validating the compatibility of Witness, Management, vSAN, and vSphere vMotion port groups.
• Checking host is a witness node and validating its version.
• Validating the compatibility of Management, vSAN, and vSphere vMotion port groups.
• Checking each host has minimal number of NICs.
• Checking VLAN configuration for Management, vSAN, vSphere vMotion, and VM networks.
• Checking NIC configuration and link speed.
• Verifying host network configurations.
• Checking model numbers to verify proper support.
• Verifying the discovered hosts are as expected.
• Checking NTP server availability.
• Validating time configurations of VxRail Manager, ESXi nodes, and vCenter Server.
• Validating external DNS server host name records.
• Validating DNS server configuration.
• Performing VxRail Manager service account creation dry-run.
• Performing VxRail Manager account creation dry-run.
• Performing host accounts creation dry-run.
• Checking compatibility of ESXi disk group types.
• Searching for presence of requested VMware solutions.
• Verifying disk slot configuration.
• Searching for presence of requested partner solutions.
• Validating ESXi host version compatibility.
• Scanning network for IP usage.

Configure VxRail (Step-By-Step)

Browse to the VxRail Manager IP address which in this example is https://192.1.20.50, VxRail Welcome screen is displayed, click on ‘Get Started’ and accept the EULA:

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Check Logs

Monitor VxRail marvin.log:

cd /var/log/vmware/marvin/tomcat/logs

# cat marvin.log
# tail -f marvin.log
# tail -f marvin.log | grep ERROR
# tail -n 100 marvin.log
# more marvin.log

In terms of viewing Hooray equivalent in the logs the string is “Configuration complete!”:
#/var/log/vmware/marvin/tomcat/logs # cat marvin.log | grep “Configuration complete!”

View the json used for build:
cat /var/lib/vmware-marvin/config-journal.json

Installed json:
cat /var/lib/vmware-marvin/config.json

Runtime properties:
/var/lib/vmware-marvin/runtime.properties

ESXi Logs
cat /var/log/shell.log
tail -f /var/log/vmkernel.log