In this chapter, we will cover the following recipes:

#
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Categorizing objects in the environment

Basically using tagging feature
tags are label containing meta data
tags are attached to vsphere objects like datastore clusters
this makes it searchable and sortable while scripting

Note: For example, administrators can categorize virtual machines by a guest OS

, or datastores
by their characteristics, such as storage speed, redundancy, and so on.
#get-datastore -tag RAID10
# Scheduling the VM clone
vCenter tasks scheduler doest do cloning
this needs to be done by powercli + windows task scheduler
In the Program/script field type the following path:
C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe
-PSConsoleFile "C:\Program Files(x86)\VMware\Infrastructure\vSphere PowerCLI"\vi
m.psc1 -command "&{<path to Power Shell script>}"
-PSCONSOLE <path to the script>
#Redirecting VMkernel dumps to another server
vSphere 5 has introduced VMware vSphere Network Dump Collector.
- Use cases : Esxi with no local storage or esxi with local storage failure caus
e loss of dump on local drive
-Dump Collector is available as a Windows service and has to be installed separa
tely.
-It can be installed on the same server as vCenter Server.
-It comes with the vCenter Server Virtual Appliance.
Requirements
- ESXi host administrative access is required to enable the feature.
- Core dumps will be sent using the Netdump protocol, which supports only IPv4.
- Network traffic is not encrypted; it uses UDP/6500 by default.
- Netdump does not support any authentication or authorization mechanisms,
so there is no way to verify the integrity or validity of the data collected.
- Network Dump Collector is incompatible with VMkernel ports configured for Ethe
rChannel/LACP.
- Netdump Collector is not supported on vSphere Distributed Switch.
- By default, only 2 GB of diagnostic information is stored and older dumps are
deleted.
- The default timeout to receive files is 60 seconds. Any partial files are dele
ted once it
expires. Unfortunately, this value is not configurable.
# How to enable it
- MAke chanegs to vmconfig-netdump.xml located at C:\ProgramData\VMware\VMware E
SXi Dump Collector\
An administrator can change:
- defaultDataPath: This is the value that defines a folder where dumps will be s
tored

- port: This is the UDP port the service is listening on

- maxSize: This is the amount of disk space allocated to core dumps in GB
- After changes restart
net stop vmware-network-coredump
net start vmware-network-coredump
- Finally enable it on esxi host via host profile
## Gathering network traffic
Traffic which can be collected includes the following:
VM-to-VM traffic within one host
VM-to-VM traffic between hosts
VM to physical network traffic
- this is done via Netflow collectors in VDS environment
- this can be enabled at port level or portgroup level.
- Timeouts define how often gathered data is sent to the NetFlow collector
Active flow export timeout
Idle flow export timeout
Idle flow export timeout is used to ensure that finished flows are being sent to
the collector
periodically.
- Note : The sampling rate defines the amount of information collected for a flo
w, for example, a rate
of 1 means that data from every second packet will be collected.
- A rate of x means that x number of packets will be dropped after each collecte
d packet.
- Internal flows are the network activity between virtual machines running on th
e same host.
When this setting is chosen, only such traffic will be collected.
# VDS configuration backup and restore
Import Export is possible via webclient only
# Management network configuration recovery
# Choosing a MAC address prefix
By default vCenter keeps mac address prefix for all the VM it manages
- this can an issue with P2V converted VM
- Software license is tied with MAC address
- in this case Mac change is required in the GUEST as well
# Getting familiar with the new CLI
# Configuring the firewall from CLI
# Bypassing "hostd" when it's unresponsive with CLI
Improving visibility with e-mail alerts
Controlling the space used by snapshots
Controlling datastore space utilization
- use SDRS
- Setup storage alarms
- Create folder and add datastore in it
- then set up alarm definition

ff Automating VM placement with storage profiles

ff Automating VM placement with VM affinity
Two types of affinity rules can be created:
- VM-to-Host, which controls whether particular groups of VMs can be placed on
certain hosts.
- VM-to-VM, which define whether VMs can be kept together on the same host.
One of the more common use cases for affinity rules is
-- performance considerations when certain resource-intensive VMs should be run
only on hosts with enough resources.
-- scenario is related to license restrictions. For example, MS SQL virtual mach
ines licensed for
two processors should be placed on hosts with no more than two CPUs.
ff Automating VM placement with storage affinity
ff Automating tasks with a scheduler
ff Keeping hosts up to date