Mar 062023
 
VMware vSphere 7 Logo

You might ask if/what the procedure is for updating Enhanced Linked Mode vCenter Server Instances, or is there even any considerations that apply?

vCenter Enhanced Link Mode is a feature that allows you to link a total of 15 vCenter Instances in to a single, Single Sign On (SSO) vSphere domain. This allows you to have a single set of credentials to manage all 15 instances, as well as the ability to manage all of them from a single pane of glass.

When it comes to environments with multiple vCenter instance and/or vCSA appliances, this really helps manageability, and visibility.

Enhanced Linked Mode Upgrade Considerations

To answer the question above: Yes, when you’re running Enhanced Linked Mode (ELM) to link multiple vCenter Server, special considerations and requirements exist when it comes to updating or upgrading your vCenter Server instances and vCSA appliances.

Multiple VMware vCenter Server Instances (vCSA) Running in Enhanced Link Mode (ELM)
Multiple VMware vCenter Server Instances (vCSA) Running in Enhanced Link Mode (ELM)

Not only have these procedures been documented in older VMware documentation, but I recently reviewed and confirmed the best practices with VMware GSS while on a support case.

Procedure for updating vCenter with ELM

  1. Configure/Confirm that the vCenter File-Based Backup in VAMI is configured, functioning, and that you are creating valid file based backups.
  2. Create a manual file-based backup with VAMI
  3. Power down all vCenter Instances and vCSA Appliances in your environment
  4. Perform a cold snapshot of all vCenter Instances and vCSA appliances
    • *This is critical* – You need a valid offline snapshot taken of all appliances powered off at the same point in time
  5. Power on the vCenter/vCSA Virtual Machines (VMs)
  6. Perform the update or upgrade

Recovering from a failed Update

IMPORTANT: In the event that an update or upgrade fails, you must revert all vCenter Instances and/or vCSA appliances back to the previous snapshot!

You cannot selectively choose single or individual instances, as this may cause mismatches in data and configuration between the instances as they have databases that are not in sync, and are from different points in time.

Additionally, if you are in a situation where you’re considering or planning to restore previous snapshots to recover from a failed update, you should do so sooner than later. As time progresses, service accounts and identifiers update in the VMware vSphere infrastructure. Delaying the restore too long could cause this information to get out of sync with the ESXi hosts after performing a snapshot restore/revert.

Mar 052023
 
NVIDIA vGPU

In this NVIDIA vGPU Troubleshooting Guide, I’ll help show you how to troubleshoot vGPU issues on VMware platforms, including VMware Horizon and VMware Tanzu. This guide applies to the full vGPU platform, so it’s relevant for VDI, AI, ML, and Kubernetes workloads.

This guide will provide common troubleshooting methods, along with common issues and problems associated with NVIDIA vGPU as well as their fixes.

Please note, there are numerous other additional methods available to troubleshoot your NVIDIA vGPU deployment, including 3rd party tools. This is a general document provided as a means to get started learning how to troubleshoot vGPU.

NVIDIA vGPU

NVIDIA vGPU is a technology platform that includes a product line of GPUs that provide virtualized GPUs (vGPU) for Virtualization environments. Using a vGPU, you can essentially “slice” up a physical GPU and distribute Virtual GPUs to a number of Virtual Machines and/or Kubernetes containers.

Picture of NVIDIA A2 vGPU installed in VMware ESXi Server
NVIDIA vGPU Installed in VMware ESXi Host

These virtual machines and containers can then use these vGPU’s to provide accelerated workloads including VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure), AI (Artificial Intelligence), and ML (Machine Learning).

While the solution works beautifully, when deployed incorrectly or if the solution isn’t maintained, issues can occur requiring troubleshooting and remediation.

At the end of this blog post, you’ll find some additional (external) links and resources, which will assist further in troubleshooting.

Troubleshooting Index

Below, you’ll find a list of my most commonly used troubleshooting methods.

Please click on an item below which will take you directly to the section in this post.

Common Problems Index

Below is a list of problems and issues I commonly see customers experience or struggle with in their vGPU enabled VMware environments.

Please click on an item below which will take you directly to the section in this post.

Troubleshooting

Using “nvidia-smi”

The NVIDIA vGPU driver comes with a utility called the “NVIDIA System Management Interface”. This CLI program allows you to monitor, manage, and query your NVIDIA vGPU (including non-vGPU GPUs).

Screenshot of "nvidia-smi" command running on VMware ESXi host with NVIDIA GPU
NVIDIA vGPU “nvidia-smi” command

Simply running the command with no switches or flags, allow you to query and pull basic information on your vGPU, or multiple vGPUs.

For a list of available switches, you can run: “nvidia-smi -h”.

Running “nvidia-smi” on the ESXi Host

To use “nvidia-smi” on your VMware ESXi host, you’ll need to SSH in and/or enable console access.

When you launch “nvidia-smi” on the ESXi host, you’ll see information on the physical GPU, as well as the VM instances that are consuming a virtual GPU (vGPU). This usage will also provide information like fan speeds, temperatures, power usage and GPU utilization.

[[email protected]:~] nvidia-smi
Sat Mar  4 21:26:05 2023
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| NVIDIA-SMI 525.85.07    Driver Version: 525.85.07    CUDA Version: N/A      |
|-------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+
| GPU  Name        Persistence-M| Bus-Id        Disp.A | Volatile Uncorr. ECC |
| Fan  Temp  Perf  Pwr:Usage/Cap|         Memory-Usage | GPU-Util  Compute M. |
|                               |                      |               MIG M. |
|===============================+======================+======================|
|   0  NVIDIA A2           On   | 00000000:04:00.0 Off |                  Off |
|  0%   36C    P8     8W /  60W |   7808MiB / 16380MiB |      0%      Default |
|                               |                      |                  N/A |
+-------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Processes:                                                                  |
|  GPU   GI   CI        PID   Type   Process name                  GPU Memory |
|        ID   ID                                                   Usage      |
|=============================================================================|
|    0   N/A  N/A   2108966    C+G   VM-WS02                          3904MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A   2108989    C+G   VM-WS01                          3904MiB |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+

This will aid with troubleshooting potential issues specific to the host or the VM. The following pieces of information are helpful:

  • Driver Version
  • GPU Fan and Temperature Information
  • Power Usage
  • GPU Utilization (GPU-Util)
  • ECC Information and Error Count
  • Virtual Machine VMs assigned a vGPU
  • vGPU Type (C+G means Compute and Graphics)

Additionally, instead of running once, you can issue “nvidia-smi -l x” replacing “x” with the number of seconds you’d like it to auto-loop and refresh.

Example:

nvidia-smi -l 3

The above would refresh and loop “nvidia-smi” every 3 seconds.

For vGPU specific information from the ESXi host, you can run:

nvidia-smi vgpu
[email protected]:~] nvidia-smi vgpu
Mon Mar  6 11:47:44 2023
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| NVIDIA-SMI 525.85.07              Driver Version: 525.85.07                 |
|---------------------------------+------------------------------+------------+
| GPU  Name                       | Bus-Id                       | GPU-Util   |
|      vGPU ID     Name           | VM ID     VM Name            | vGPU-Util  |
|=================================+==============================+============|
|   0  NVIDIA A2                  | 00000000:04:00.0             |   0%       |
|      3251713382  NVIDIA A2-4Q   | 2321577  VMWS01              |      0%    |
+---------------------------------+------------------------------+------------+

This command shows information on the vGPU instances currently provisioned.

There are also a number of switches you can throw at this to get even more information on vGPU including scheduling, vGPU types, accounting, and more. Run the following command to view the switches:

nvidia-smi vgpu -h

Another common switch I use on the ESXi host with vGPU for troubleshooting is: “nvidia-smi -q”, which provides lots of information on the physical GPU in the host:

[[email protected]:~] nvidia-smi -q

==============NVSMI LOG==============

Timestamp                                 : Sat Mar  4 21:26:18 2023
Driver Version                            : 525.85.07
CUDA Version                              : Not Found
vGPU Driver Capability
        Heterogenous Multi-vGPU           : Supported

Attached GPUs                             : 1
GPU 00000000:04:00.0
    Product Name                          : NVIDIA A2
    Product Brand                         : NVIDIA
    Product Architecture                  : Ampere
    Display Mode                          : Enabled
    Display Active                        : Disabled
    Persistence Mode                      : Enabled
    vGPU Device Capability
        Fractional Multi-vGPU             : Not Supported
        Heterogeneous Time-Slice Profiles : Supported
        Heterogeneous Time-Slice Sizes    : Not Supported
    MIG Mode
        Current                           : N/A
        Pending                           : N/A
    Accounting Mode                       : Enabled
    Accounting Mode Buffer Size           : 4000
    Driver Model
        Current                           : N/A
        Pending                           : N/A
    Serial Number                         : XXXN0TY0SERIALZXXX
    GPU UUID                              : GPU-de23234-3450-6456-e12d-bfekgje82743a
    Minor Number                          : 0
    VBIOS Version                         : 94.07.5B.00.92
    MultiGPU Board                        : No
    Board ID                              : 0x400
    Board Part Number                     : XXX-XXXXX-XXXX-XXX
    GPU Part Number                       : XXXX-XXX-XX
    Module ID                             : 1
    Inforom Version
        Image Version                     : G179.0220.00.01
        OEM Object                        : 2.0
        ECC Object                        : 6.16
        Power Management Object           : N/A
    GPU Operation Mode
        Current                           : N/A
        Pending                           : N/A
    GSP Firmware Version                  : N/A
    GPU Virtualization Mode
        Virtualization Mode               : Host VGPU
        Host VGPU Mode                    : SR-IOV
    IBMNPU
        Relaxed Ordering Mode             : N/A
    PCI
        Bus                               : 0x04
        Device                            : 0x00
        Domain                            : 0x0000
        Device Id                         : 0x25B610DE
        Bus Id                            : 00000000:04:00.0
        Sub System Id                     : 0x157E10DE
        GPU Link Info
            PCIe Generation
                Max                       : 3
                Current                   : 1
                Device Current            : 1
                Device Max                : 4
                Host Max                  : N/A
            Link Width
                Max                       : 16x
                Current                   : 8x
        Bridge Chip
            Type                          : N/A
            Firmware                      : N/A
        Replays Since Reset               : 0
        Replay Number Rollovers           : 0
        Tx Throughput                     : 0 KB/s
        Rx Throughput                     : 0 KB/s
        Atomic Caps Inbound               : N/A
        Atomic Caps Outbound              : N/A
    Fan Speed                             : 0 %
    Performance State                     : P8
    Clocks Throttle Reasons
        Idle                              : Active
        Applications Clocks Setting       : Not Active
        SW Power Cap                      : Not Active
        HW Slowdown                       : Not Active
            HW Thermal Slowdown           : Not Active
            HW Power Brake Slowdown       : Not Active
        Sync Boost                        : Not Active
        SW Thermal Slowdown               : Not Active
        Display Clock Setting             : Not Active
    FB Memory Usage
        Total                             : 16380 MiB
        Reserved                          : 264 MiB
        Used                              : 7808 MiB
        Free                              : 8306 MiB
    BAR1 Memory Usage
        Total                             : 16384 MiB
        Used                              : 1 MiB
        Free                              : 16383 MiB
    Compute Mode                          : Default
    Utilization
        Gpu                               : 0 %
        Memory                            : 0 %
        Encoder                           : 0 %
        Decoder                           : 0 %
    Encoder Stats
        Active Sessions                   : 0
        Average FPS                       : 0
        Average Latency                   : 0
    FBC Stats
        Active Sessions                   : 0
        Average FPS                       : 0
        Average Latency                   : 0
    Ecc Mode
        Current                           : Disabled
        Pending                           : Disabled
    ECC Errors
        Volatile
            SRAM Correctable              : N/A
            SRAM Uncorrectable            : N/A
            DRAM Correctable              : N/A
            DRAM Uncorrectable            : N/A
        Aggregate
            SRAM Correctable              : N/A
            SRAM Uncorrectable            : N/A
            DRAM Correctable              : N/A
            DRAM Uncorrectable            : N/A
    Retired Pages
        Single Bit ECC                    : N/A
        Double Bit ECC                    : N/A
        Pending Page Blacklist            : N/A
    Remapped Rows
        Correctable Error                 : 0
        Uncorrectable Error               : 0
        Pending                           : No
        Remapping Failure Occurred        : No
        Bank Remap Availability Histogram
            Max                           : 64 bank(s)
            High                          : 0 bank(s)
            Partial                       : 0 bank(s)
            Low                           : 0 bank(s)
            None                          : 0 bank(s)
    Temperature
        GPU Current Temp                  : 37 C
        GPU T.Limit Temp                  : N/A
        GPU Shutdown Temp                 : 96 C
        GPU Slowdown Temp                 : 93 C
        GPU Max Operating Temp            : 86 C
        GPU Target Temperature            : N/A
        Memory Current Temp               : N/A
        Memory Max Operating Temp         : N/A
    Power Readings
        Power Management                  : Supported
        Power Draw                        : 8.82 W
        Power Limit                       : 60.00 W
        Default Power Limit               : 60.00 W
        Enforced Power Limit              : 60.00 W
        Min Power Limit                   : 35.00 W
        Max Power Limit                   : 60.00 W
    Clocks
        Graphics                          : 210 MHz
        SM                                : 210 MHz
        Memory                            : 405 MHz
        Video                             : 795 MHz
    Applications Clocks
        Graphics                          : 1770 MHz
        Memory                            : 6251 MHz
    Default Applications Clocks
        Graphics                          : 1770 MHz
        Memory                            : 6251 MHz
    Deferred Clocks
        Memory                            : N/A
    Max Clocks
        Graphics                          : 1770 MHz
        SM                                : 1770 MHz
        Memory                            : 6251 MHz
        Video                             : 1650 MHz
    Max Customer Boost Clocks
        Graphics                          : 1770 MHz
    Clock Policy
        Auto Boost                        : N/A
        Auto Boost Default                : N/A
    Voltage
        Graphics                          : 650.000 mV
    Fabric
        State                             : N/A
        Status                            : N/A
    Processes
        GPU instance ID                   : N/A
        Compute instance ID               : N/A
        Process ID                        : 2108966
            Type                          : C+G
            Name                          : VM-WS02
            Used GPU Memory               : 3904 MiB
        GPU instance ID                   : N/A
        Compute instance ID               : N/A
        Process ID                        : 2108989
            Type                          : C+G
            Name                          : VM-WS01
            Used GPU Memory               : 3904 MiB

As you can see, you can pull quite a bit of information in detail from the vGPU, as well as the VM processes.

Running “nvidia-smi” on the VM Guest

You can also run “nvidia-smi” inside of the guest VM, which will provide you information on the vGPU instance that is being provided to that specific VM, along with information on the guest VM’s processes that are utilizing the GPU.

Screenshot of "nvidia-smi" running on guest virtual machine VM
“nvidia-smi” Running on Guest VM

This is helpful for providing information on the guest VM’s usage of the vGPU instance, as well as processes that require GPU usage.

Virtual Machine log files

Each Virtual Machine has a “vmware.log” file inside of the VM’s folder on the datastore.

To identify logging events pertaining to NVIDIA vGPU, you can search for the “vmiop” string inside of the vmware.log file.

Example:

cat /vmfs/volumes/DATASTORE/VirtualMachineName/vmware.log | grep -i vmiop

The above will read out any lines inside of the log that have the “vmiop” string inside of them. The “-i” flag instructs grep to ignore case sensitivity.

This logs provide initialization information, licensing information, as well as XID error codes and faults.

ESXi Host log files

Additionally, since the ESXi host is running the vGPU Host Driver (vGPU Manager), it also has logs that pertain and assist with vGPU troubleshooting.

Some commands you can run are:

cat /var/log/vmkernel.log | grep -i vmiop
cat /var/log/vmkernel.log | grep -i nvrm
cat /var/log/vmkernel.log | grep -i nvidia

The above commands will pull NVIDIA vGPU related log items from the ESXi log files.

Using “dxdiag” in the guest VM

Microsoft has a tool called “dxdiag” which provides diagnostic infromation for testing and troubleshooting video (and sound) with DirectX.

I find this tool very handy for quickly verifying

Microsoft DirectX "dxdiag" showing information on vGPU
NVIDIA vGPU with Microsoft DirectX “dxdiag” tool

As you can see:

  • DirectDraw Acceleration: Enabled
  • Direct3D Acceleration: Enabled
  • AGP Texture Acceleration: Enabled
  • DirectX 12 Ultimate: Enabled

The above show that hardware acceleration is fully functioning with DirectX. This is a indicator that things are generally working as expected. If you have a vGPU and one of the first three is showing as disabled, then you have a problem that requires troubleshooting. Additionally, if you do not see your vGPU card, then you have a problem that requires troubleshooting.

Please Note: You may not see “DirectX 12 Ultimate” as this is related to licensing.

Using the “VMware Horizon Performance Monitor”

The VMware Horizon Performance Monitor, is a great tool that can be installed by the VMware Horizon Agent, that allows you to pull information (stats, connection information, etc) for the session. Please note that this is not installed by default, and must be selected when running the Horizon Agent installer.

When it comes to troubleshooting vGPU, it’s handy to use this too to confirm you’re getting H.264 or H.265/HEVC offload from the vGPU instance, and also get information on how many FPS (Frames Per Second) you’re getting from the session.

VMware Horizon Performance Monitor showing vGPU NVIDIA NvEnc HEVC as encoder type
VMware Horizon Performance Tracker with NVIDIA vGPU

Once opening, you’ll change the view above using the specified selector, and you can see what the “Encoder Name” is being used to encode the session.

Examples of GPU Offload “Encoder Name” types:

  • NVIDIA NvEnc HEVC 4:2:0 – This is using the vGPU offload using HEVC
  • NVIDIA NvEnc HEVC 4:4:4 – This is using the vGPU offload using HEVC high color accuracy
  • NVIDIA NvEnc H264 4:2:0 – This is using the vGPU offload using H.264
  • NVIDIA NvEnc H264 4:4:4 – This is using the vGPU offload using H.264 high color accuracy

Examples of Software (CPU) Session “Encoder Name” types:

  • BlastCodec – New VMware Horizon “Blast Codec”
  • h264 4:2:0 – Software CPU encoded h.264

If you’re seeing “NVIDIA NvEnc” in the encoder name, then the encoding is being offloaded to the GPU resulting in optimum performance. If you don’t see it, it’s most likely using the CPU for encoding, which is not optimal if you have a vGPU, and requires further troubleshooting.

NVIDIA vGPU Known Issues

Depending on the version of vGPU that you are running, there can be “known issues”.

When viewing the NVIDIA vGPU Documentation, you can view known issues, and fixes that NVIDIA may provide. Please make sure to reference the documentation specific to the version you’re running and/or the version that fixes the issues you’re experiencing.

Common Problems

There are a number of common problems that I come across when I’m contacted to assist with vGPU deployments.

Please see below for some of the most common issues I experience, along with their applicable fix/workaround.

XID Error Codes

When viewing your Virtual Machine VM or ESXi log file, and experiencing an XID error or XID fault, you can usually look up the error codes.

Typically, vGPU errors will provide an “XiD Error” code, which can be looked up on NVIDIA’s Xid Messages page here: XID Errors :: GPU Deployment and Management Documentation (nvidia.com).

The table on this page allows you to lookup the XID code, find the cause, and also provides information if the issue is realted to “HW Error” (Hardware Error), “Driver Error”, “User App Error”, “System Memory Corruption”, “Bus Error”, “Thermal Issue”, or “FB Corruption”.

An example:

2023-02-26T23:33:24.396Z Er(02) vthread-2108265 - vmiop_log: (0x0): XID 45 detected on physical_chid:0x60f, guest_chid:0xf
2023-02-26T23:33:36.023Z Er(02) vthread-2108266 - vmiop_log: (0x0): Timeout occurred, reset initiated.
2023-02-26T23:33:36.023Z Er(02) vthread-2108266 - vmiop_log: (0x0): TDR_DUMP:0x52445456 0x00e207e8 0x000001cc 0x00000001
2023-02-26T23:33:36.023Z Er(02) vthread-2108266 - vmiop_log: (0x0): TDR_DUMP:0x00989680 0x00000000 0x000001bb 0x0000000f
2023-02-26T23:33:36.023Z Er(02) vthread-2108266 - vmiop_log: (0x0): TDR_DUMP:0x00000100 0x00000000 0x0000115e 0x00000000
2023-02-26T23:33:36.023Z Er(02) vthread-2108266 - vmiop_log: (0x0): TDR_DUMP:0x00000000 0x00000000 0x00001600 0x00000000
2023-02-26T23:33:36.023Z Er(02) vthread-2108266 - vmiop_log: (0x0): TDR_DUMP:0x00002214 0x00000000 0x00000000 0x00000000

2023-02-26T23:33:36.024Z Er(02) vthread-2108266 - vmiop_log: (0x0): TDR_DUMP:0x64726148 0x00736964 0x00000000 0x00000000
2023-02-26T23:33:36.068Z Er(02) vthread-2108265 - vmiop_log: (0x0): XID 43 detected on physical_chid:0x600, guest_chid:0x0

One can see XID code 45, as well as XID code 43, which after looking up on NVIDIA’s document, states:

  • XID 43 – GPU stopped processing
    • Possible Cause: Driver Error
    • Possible Cause: User App Error
  • XID 45 – Preemptive cleanup, due to previous errors — Most likely to see when running multiple cuda applications and hitting a DBE
    • Possible Cause: Driver Error

In the situation above, one can deduce that the issue is either Driver Error, Application Error, or a combination of both. In this specific case, you could try changing drivers to troubleshoot.

vGPU Licensing

You may experience issues in your vGPU deployment due to licensing issues. Depending on how you have you environment configured, you may be running in an unlicensed mode and not be aware.

In the event that the vGPU driver cannot obtain a valid license, it will run for 20 minutes with full capabilities. After that the performance and functionality will start to degrade. After 24 hours it will degrade even further.

Some symptoms of issues experienced when unlicensed:

  • Users experiencing laggy VDI sessions
  • Performance issues
  • Frames per Second (FPS) limited to 15 fps or 3 fps
  • Applications using OpenCL, CUDA, or other accelerated APIs fail

Additionally, some error messages and event logs may occur:

  • Event ID 2, “NVIDIA OpenGL Driver” – “The NVIDIA OpenGL driver has not been able to initialize a connection with the GPU.”
  • AutoCAD/Revit – “Hardware Acceleration is disabled. Software emulation mode is in use.”
  • “Guest is unlicensed”

Please see below for screenshots of said errors:

Additonally, when looking at the Virtual Machine VM vmware.log (inside of the VM’s folder on the ESXi datastore), you may see:

Guest is unlicensed. Cannot allocate more than 0x55 channels!
VGPU message 6 failed, result code: 0x1a

If this occurs, you’ll need to troubleshoot your vGPU licensing and resolve any issues occurring.

vGPU Type (vGPU Profile) mismatch

When using the default (“time-sliced”) vGPU deployment method, only a single vGPU type can be used on virtual machines or containers per physical GPU. Essentially all VMs or containers utilizing the physical GPU must use the same vGPU type.

If the physical GPU card has multiple GPUs (GPU chips), then a different type can be used on each physical GPU chip on the same card. 2 x GPUs on a single card = 2 different vGPU types.

Additionally, if you have multiple cards inside of a single host, the number of vGPU types you can deployed is based off the total number of GPUs across the total number of cards in your host.

If you configure multiple vGPU types and cannot support it, you will have issues starting VMs, as shown below:

Cannot power on VM with vGPU due to insufficient resources
Cannot power on VM with vGPU: Power on Failure, Insuffiecient resources

The error reads as follows:

Power On Failures

vCenter Server was unable to find a suitable host to power on the following virtual machines for the reasons listed below.

Insufficient resources. One or more devices (pciPassthru0) required by VM VDIWS01 are not available on host ESXi-Host.

Additionally, if provisioning via VMware Horizon, you may see: “NVIDIA GRID vGPU Support has detected a mismatch with the supported vGPUs”

Note: If you are using MIG (Multi Instance GPU), this does not apply as different MIG types can be applied to VMs from the same card/GPU.

vGPU or Passthrough with 16GB+ of Video RAM Memory

When attaching a vGPU to a VM, or passing through a GPU to a VM, with 16GB or more of Video RAM (Framebuffer memory), you may run in to a situation where the VM will not boot.

This is because the VM cannot map that large of memory space to be accesible for use.

Please see my blog post GPU or vGPU Passthrough with 16GB+ of video memory, for more information as well as the fix.

vGPU VM Freezes during VMware vMotion

Your users may report issues where their VDI guest VM freezes for a period of time during use. This could be caused due to VMware vMotion moving the virtual machine from one VMware ESXi host to another.

Please see my blog post NVIDIA vGPU VM Freezes during VMware vMotion: vGPU STUN Time for more information.

“ERR!” State

When experiencing issues, you may notice that “nvidia-smi” throws “ERR!” in the view. See the example below:

nvidia-smi showing ERR! error state on VMware ESXi host with vGPU
NVIDIA vGPU “nvidia-smi” reporting “ERR!”

This is an indicator that you’re in a fault or error state, and would recommend checking the ESXi Host log files, and the Virtual Machine log files for XID codes to identify the problem.

vGPU Driver Mismatch

When vGPU is deployed, drivers are installed on the VMware ESXi host (vGPU Manager Driver), as well as the guest VM virtual machine (guest VM driver).

Guest VM vGPU driver mismatch with VMware ESXi host
NVIDIA vGPU Driver Mismatch

These two drivers must be compatible with each other. As per NVIDIA’s Documentation, see below for compatibility:

  • NVIDIA vGPU Manager with guest VM drivers from the same release
  • NVIDIA vGPU Manager with guest VM drivers from different releases within the same major release branch
  • NVIDIA vGPU Manager from a later major release branch with guest VM drivers from the previous branch

Additionally, if you’re using the LTS (Long Term Support Branch), the additional compatibility note applies.

  • NVIDIA vGPU Manager from a later long-term support branch with guest VM drivers from the previous long-term support branch

If you have a vGPU driver mismatch, you’ll likely see Event ID 160 from “nvlddmkm” reporting:

NVIDIA driver version mismatch error: Guest driver is incompatible with host drive.

To resolve this, you’ll need to change drivers on the ESXi host and/or Guest VM to a supported combination.

Upgrading NVIDIA vGPU

When upgrading NVIDIA vGPU drivers on the host, you may experience issues or errors stating that the NVIDIA vGPU modules or services are loaded and in use, stopping your ability to upgrade.

Normally an upgrade would be preformed by placing the host in maintenance mode and running:

esxcli software vib update -d /vmfs/volumes/DATASTORE/Files/vGPU-15/NVD-VGPU-702_525.85.07-1OEM.702.0.0.17630552_21166599.zip

However, this fails due to modules that are loaded and in use by the NVIDIA vGPU Manager Services.

Before attempting to upgrade (or uninstall and re-install), place the host in maintenance mode and run the following command:

/etc/init.d/nvdGpuMgmtDaemon stop

This should allow you to proceed with the upgrade and/or re-install.

VMware Horizon Black Screen

If you experiencing a blank or black screen when connecting to a VDI session with an NVIDIA vGPU on VMware Horizon, it may not even be related to the vGPU deployment.

To troubleshoot the VMware Horizon Black Screen, please review my guide on how to troubleshoot a VMware Horizon Blank Screen.

VM High CPU RDY (High CPU Ready)

CPU RDY (CPU Ready) is a state when a VM is ready and waiting to be scheduled on a physical host’s CPU. In more detail, the VM’s vCPUs are ready to be scheduled on the ESXi host’s pCPUs.

In rare cases, I have observed situations where VMs with a vGPU and high CPU RDY times, experience instability. I believe this is due to timing conflicts with the vGPU’s time slicing, and the VM’s CPU waiting to be scheduled.

To check VM CPU RDY, you can use one of the following methods:

  1. Run “esxtop” from the CLI using the console or SSH
  2. View the hosts performance stats on vCenter
    • Select host, “Monitor”, “Advanced”, “Chart Options”, de-select all, select “Readiness Average %”

When viewing the CPU RDY time in a VDI environment, generally we’d like to see CPU RDY at 3 or lower. Anything higher than 3 may cause latency or user experience issues, or even vGPU issues at higher values.

For your server virtualization environment (non-VDI and no vGPU), CPU Ready times are not as big of a consideration.

vGPU Profiles Missing from VMware Horizon

When using newer GPUs with older versions of VMware Horizon, you may encounter an issue with non-persistent instant clones resulting in a provisioning error.

This is caused by missing vGPU Types or vGPU Profiles, and requires either downloading the latest definitions, or possibly creating your own.

For more information on this issue, please see my post NVIDIA A2 vGPU Profiles Missing from VMware Horizon causing provision failure.

Please see these these additional external links and resources which may assist.

Oct 302022
 
vGPU nvidia-smi GPU Link Info

If you’re like me, you want to make sure that your environment is as optimized as possible. I recently noticed that my NVIDIA A2 vGPU was reporting the vGPU PCIe Link Speed and Generation that the card was using was below what it was supposed to be running at on my VMware vSphere ESXi host.

I needed to find out if this was being reported incorrectly, if there was an issue, or something else effecting this. In my case, the specific GPU I was using is supposed to support PCIe Gen4, and has a physical connector supporting 4x, my host has PCIe Gen3 slots, so I should at least be getting Gen3 speeds.

NVIDIA A2 vGPU

The Problem

When running the command “nvidia-smi -q”, the GPU was reporting that it was only running at PCIe Gen 1 speeds, as shown below:

        GPU Link Info
            PCIe Generation
                Max                       : 3
                Current                   : 1
                Device Current            : 1
                Device Max                : 4
                Host Max                  : N/A
            Link Width
                Max                       : 16x
                Current                   : 8x

Something else worth noting, is that the card states that it supports a 16x interface, when it actually only physical has a 8x connector. I believe they use this chip on another board that has multiple GPUs on a single board that actually supports 16x.

You could say I was quite puzzled. Why would the card only be running at PCIe Generation 1 speeds? I thought it could be any of the scenarios below:

  • Dynamic mode that alternates when required (possibly for power savings)
  • Hardware issue
  • Hardware Limitation (I’m using this in an older server)
  • Software issues
  • Configuration issue

Unfortunately, when searching the internet, I couldn’t find many references to this metric, however I did find references from other user’s copy/pastes of “nvidia-smi -q” which had the same values (running PCIe Gen1), even with beefier and more high-end cards.

The Solution

After some more searching, I finally came across an NVIDIA technical document titled “Useful nvidia-smi Queries” that states that the current PCIe Generation Link speed “may be reduced when the GPU is not in use”. This confirms that it’s dynamic and adjusts when needed.

Finally, I decided to give some games a shot in a couple of the VMs, and to my surprise when running a game, the “Device Current” and “Current” PCIe Generation changed to PCIe Gen3 (note that my server isn’t capable of PCIe Gen4, which is the cards maximum), as shown below:

        GPU Link Info
            PCIe Generation
                Max                       : 3
                Current                   : 3
                Device Current            : 3
                Device Max                : 4
                Host Max                  : N/A
            Link Width
                Max                       : 16x
                Current                   : 8x

In conclusion, if you notice this in your environment, do not be alarmed as this is completely normal and expected behavior.

Jul 172022
 
VMware vSphere ESXi with vTPM from NKP

It’s been coming for a while: The requirement to deploy VMs with a TPM module… Today I’ll be showing you the easiest and quickest way to create and deploy Virtual Machines with vTPM on VMware vSphere ESXi!

As most of you know, Windows 11 has a requirement for Secureboot as well as a TPM module. It’s with no doubt that we’ll also possibly see this requirement with future Microsoft Windows Server operating systems.

While users struggle to deploy TPM modules on their own workstations to be eligible for the Windows 11 upgrade, ESXi administrators are also struggling with deploying Virtual TPM modules, or vTPM modules on their virtualized infrastructure.

What is a TPM Module?

TPM stands for Trusted Platform Module. A Trusted Platform Module, is a piece of hardware (or chip) inside or outside of your computer that provides secured computing features to the computer, system, or server that it’s attached to.

This TPM modules provides things like a random number generator, storage of encryption keys and cryptographic information, as well as aiding in secure authentication of the host system.

In a virtualization environment, we need to emulate this physical device with a Virtual TPM module, or vTPM.

What is a Virtual TPM (vTPM) Module?

A vTPM module is a virtualized software instance of a traditional physical TPM module. A vTPM can be attached to Virtual Machines and provide the same features and functionality that a physical TPM module would provide to a physical system.

vTPM modules can be can be deployed with VMware vSphere ESXi, and can be used to deploy Windows 11 on ESXi.

Deployment of vTPM modules, require a Key Provider on the vCenter Server.

For more information on vTPM modules, see VMware’s “Virtual Trust Platform Module Overview” documentation.

Deploying vTPM (Virtual TPM Modules) on VMware vSphere ESXi

In order to deploy vTPM modules (and VM encryption, vSAN Encryption) on VMware vSphere ESXi, you need to configure a Key Provider on your vCenter Server.

Traditionally, this would be accomplished with a Standard Key Provider utilizing a Key Management Server (KMS), however this required a 3rd party KMS server and is what I would consider a complex deployment.

VMware has made this easy as of vSphere 7 Update 2 (7U2), with the Native Key Provider (NKP) on the vCenter Server.

The Native Key Provider, allows you to easily deploy technologies such as vTPM modules, VM encryption, vSAN encryption, and the best part is, it’s all built in to vCenter Server.

Enabling VMware Native Key Provider (NKP)

To enable NKP across your vSphere infrastructure:

  1. Log on to your vCenter Server
  2. Select your vCenter Server from the Inventory List
  3. Select “Key Providers”
  4. Click on “Add”, and select “Add Native Key Provider”
  5. Give the new NKP a friendly name
  6. De-select “Use key provider only with TPM protected ESXi hosts” to allow your ESXi hosts without a TPM to be able to use the native key provider.

In order to activate your new native key provider, you need to click on “Backup” to make sure you have it backed up. Keep this backup in a safe place. After the backup is complete, you NKP will be active and usable by your ESXi hosts.

Screenshot of VMware vCenter Server with Native Key Provider (NKP) Configured
VMware vCenter with Native Key Provider (NKP) Configured

There’s a few additional things to note:

  • Your ESXi hosts do NOT require a physical TPM module in order to use the Native Key Provider
    • Just make sure you disable the checkbox “Use key provider only with TPM protected ESXi hosts”
  • NKP can be used to enable vTPM modules on all editions of vSphere
  • If your ESXi hosts have a TPM module, using the Native Key Provider with your hosts TPM modules can provide enhanced security
    • Onboard TPM module allows keys to be stored and used if the vCenter server goes offline
  • If you delete the Native Key Provider, you are also deleting all the keys stored with it.
    • Make sure you have it backed up
    • Make sure you don’t have any hosts/VMs using the NKP before deleting

You can now deploy vTPM modules to virtual machines in your VMware environment.

Jun 192022
 
VMware vSphere 7 Logo

We all know that vMotion is awesome, but what is even more awesome? Optimizing VMware vMotion to make it redundant and faster!

vMotion allows us to migrate live Virtual Machines from one ESXi host to another without any downtime. This allows us to perform physical maintenance on the ESXi hosts, update and restart the hosts, and also load balance VMs across the hosts. We can even take this a step further use DRS (Distributed Resource Scheduler) automation to intelligently load the hosts on VM boot and to dynamically load balance the VMs as they run.

Picture of VMware vMotion diagram
VMware vMotion

In this post, I’m hoping to provide information on how to fully optimize and use vMotion to it’s full potential.

VMware vMotion

Most of you are probably running vMotion in your environment, whether it’s a homelab, dev environment, or production environment.

I typically see vMotion deployed on the existing data network in smaller environments, I see it deployed on it’s own network in larger environments, and in very highly configured environments I see it being used with the vMotion TCP stack.

While you can preform a vMotion with 1Gb networking, you certainly almost always want at least 10Gb networking for the vMotion network, to avoid any long running VMs. Typically most IT admins are happy with live migration vMotion’s in the seconds, and not the minutes.

VMware vMotion Optimization

So you might ask, if vMotion is working and you’re satisfied, what is there to optimize? There’s actually a few things, but first let’s talk about what we can improve on.

We’re aiming for improvements with:

  • Throughput/Speed
    • Faster vMotion
      • Faster Speed
      • Less Time
    • Migrate more VMs
      • Evacuate hosts faster
      • Enable more aggressive DRS
      • Migrate many VMs at once very quickly
  • Redundancy
    • Redundant vMotion Interfaces (NICs and Uplinks)
  • More Complex vMotion Configurations
    • vMotion over different subnets and VLANs
      • vMotion routed over Layer 3 networks

To achieve the above, we can focus on the following optimizations:

  1. Enable Jumbo Frames
  2. Saturation of NIC/Uplink for vMotion
  3. Multi-NIC/Uplink vMotion
  4. Use of the vMotion TCP Stack

Let’s get to it!

Enable Jumbo Frames

I can’t stress enough how important it is to use Jumbo Frames for specialized network traffic on high speed network links. I highly recommend you enable Jumbo Frames on your vMotion network.

Note, that you’ll need to have a physical switch and NICs that supports Jumbo frames.

In my own high throughput testing on a 10Gb link, without using Jumbo frames I was only able to achieve transfer speeds of ~6.7Gbps, whereas enabling Jumbo Frames allowed me to achieve speeds of ~9.8Gbps.

When enabling this inside of vSphere and/or ESXi, you’ll need to make sure you change and update the applicable vmk adapter, vSwitch/vDS switches, and port groups. Additionally as mentioned above you’ll need to enable it on your physical switches.

You may assume that once you configure a vMotion enabled NIC, that when performing migrations you will be able to fully saturate it. This is not necessarily the case!

When performing a vMotion, the vmk adapter is bound to a single thread (or CPU core). Depending on the power of your processor and the speed of the NIC, you may not actually be able to fully saturate a single 10Gb uplink.

In my own testing in my homelab, I needed to have a total of 2 VMK adapters to saturate a single 10Gb link.

If you’re running 40Gb or even 100Gb, you definitely want to look at adding multiple VMK adapters to your vMotion network to be able to fully saturate a single NIC or Uplink.

You can do this by simply configuring multiple VMK adapters per host with different IP addresses on the same subnet.

One important thing to mention is that if you have multiple physical NICs and Uplinks connected to your vMotion switch, this change will not help you utilize multiple physical interfaces (NICs/Uplinks). See “Multi-NIC/Uplink vMotion”.

Please note: As of VMware vSphere 7 Update 2, the above is not required as vMotion has been optimized to use multiple streams to fully saturate the interface. See VMware’s blog post “Faster vMotion Makes Balancing Workloads Invisible” for more information.

Multi-NIC/Uplink vMotion

Another situation is where we may want to utilize multiple NICs and Uplinks for vMotion. When implemented correctly, this can provide load balancing (additional throughput) as well as redundancy on the vMotion network.

If you were to simply add additional NIC interfaces as Uplinks to your vMotion network, this would add redundancy in the event of a failover but it wouldn’t actually result in increased speed or throughput as special configuration is required.

To take advantage of the additional bandwidth made available by additional Uplinks, we need to specially configure multiple portgroups on the switch (vSwitch or vDS Distributed Switch), and configure each portgroup to only use one of the Uplinks as the “Active Uplink” with the rest of the uplinks under “Standby Uplink”.

Example Configuration

  • vSwitch or vDS Switch
    • Portgroup 1
      • Active Uplink: Uplink 1
      • Standby Uplinks: Uplink 2, Uplink 3, Uplink 4
    • Portgroup 2
      • Active Uplink: Uplink 2
      • Standby Uplinks: Uplink 1, Uplink 3, Uplink 4
    • Portgroup 3
      • Active Uplink: Uplink 3
      • Standby Uplinks: Uplink 1, Uplink 2, Uplink 4
    • Portgroup 4
      • Active Uplink: Uplink 4
      • Standby Uplinks: Uplink 1, Uplink 2, Uplink 3

You would then place a single or multiple vmk adapters on each of the portgroups per host, which would result in essentially mapping the vmk(s) to the specific uplink. This will allow you to utilize multiple NICs for vMotion.

And remember, you may not be able to fully saturate a NIC interface (as stated above) with a single vmk adapter, so I highly recommend creating multiple vmk adapters on each of the Port groups above to make sure that you’re not only using multiple NICs, but that you can also fully saturate each of the NICs.

For more information, see VMware’s KB “Multiple-NIC vMotion in vSphere (2007467)“.

Use of the vMotion TCP Stack

VMware released the vMotion TCP Stack to provided added security to vMotion capabilities, as well as introduce vMotion over multiple subnets (routed vMotion over layer 3).

Using the vMotion TCP Stack, you can isolate and have the vMotion network using it’s own gateway separate from the other vmk adapters using the traditional TCP stack on the ESXi host.

This stack is optimized for vMotion.

Please note, that troubleshooting processes may be different when Troubleshooting vMotion using the vMotion TCP/IP Stack (click the link for my blog post on troubleshooting).

For more information, see VMware’s Documentation on “vMotion TCP/IP Stack“.

Additional resources:

VMware – How to Tune vMotion for Lower Migration Times?

May 012021
 
Picture of NVMe Storage Server Project

For over a year and a half I have been working on building a custom NVMe Storage Server for my homelab. I wanted to build a high speed storage system similar to a NAS or SAN, backed with NVMe drives that provides iSCSI, NFS, and SMB Windows File Shares to my network.

The computers accessing the NVMe Storage Server would include VMware ESXi hosts, Raspberry Pi SBCs, and of course Windows Computers and Workstations.

The focus of this project is on high throughput (in the GB/sec) and IOPS.

The current plan for the storage environment is for video editing, as well as VDI VM storage. This can and will change as the project progresses.

The History

More and more businesses are using all-flash NVMe and SSD based storage systems, so I figured there’s no reason why I can’t have build and have my own budget custom all NVMe flash NAS.

This is the story of how I built my own NVMe based Storage Server.

The first version of the NVMe Storage Server consisted of the IO-PEX40152 card with 4 x 2TB Sabrent Rocket 4 NVMe drives inside of an HPE Proliant DL360p Gen8 Server. The server was running ESXi with TrueNAS virtualized, and the PCIe card passed through to the TrueNAS VM.

The results were great, the performance was amazing, and both servers had access to the NFS export via 2 x 10Gb SFP+ networking.

There were three main problems with this setup:

  1. Virtualized – Once a month I had an ESXi PSOD. This was either due to overheating of the IO-PEX40152 card because of modifications I made, or bugs with the DL360p servers and PCIe passthrough.
  2. NFS instead of iSCSI – Because TrueNAS was virtualized inside of the host that was using it for storage, I had to use NFS since the host virtualizing TrueNAS would also be accessing the data on the TrueNAS VM. When shutting down the host, you need to shut down TrueNAS first. NFS disconnects are handled way healthier than iSCSI disconnects (which can cause corruption even if no files are being used).
  3. CPU Cores maxed on data transfer – When doing initial testing, I was maxing out the CPU cores assigned to the TrueNAS VM because the data transfers were so high. I needed a CPU and setup that was better fit.

Version 1 went great, but you can see some things needed to be changed. I decided to go with a dedicated server, not virtualize TrueNAS, and go for a newer CPU with a higher Ghz speed.

And so, version 2 was born (built). Keep reading and scrolling for pictures!

The Hardware

On version 2 of the project, the hardware includes:

Notes on the Hardware:

  • While the ML310e Gen8 v2 server is a cheap low entry server, it’s been a fantastic team member of my homelab.
  • HPE Dual 10G Port 560SFP+ adapters can be found brand new in unsealed boxes on eBay at very attractive prices. Using HPE Parts inside of HPE Servers, avoids the fans from spinning up fast.
  • The ML310e Gen8 v2 has some issues with passing through PCIe cards to ESXi. Works perfect when not passing through.

The new NVMe Storage Server

I decided to repurpose an HPE Proliant ML310e Gen8 v2 Server. This server was originally acting as my Nvidia Grid K1 VDI server, because it supported large PCIe cards. With the addition of my new AMD S7150 x2 hacked in/on to one of my DL360p Gen8’s, I no longer needed the GRID card in this server and decided to repurpose it.

Picture of an HPe ML310e Gen8 v2 with NVMe Storage
HPe ML310e Gen8 v2 with NVMe Storage

I installed the IOCREST IO-PEX40152 card in to the PCIe 16x slot, with 4 x 2TB Sabrent Rocket 4 NVME drives.

Picture of IOCREST IO-PEX40152 with GLOTRENDS M.2 NVMe SSD Heatsink on Sabrent Rocket 4 NVME
IOCREST IO-PEX40152 with GLOTRENDS M.2 NVMe SSD Heatsink on Sabrent Rocket 4 NVME

While the server has a PCIe 16x wide slot, it only has an 8x bus going to the slot. This means we will have half the capable speed vs the true 16x slot. This however does not pose a problem because we’ll be maxing out the 10Gb NICs long before we max out the 8x bus speed.

I also installed an HPE Dual Port 560SFP+ NIC in to the second slot. This will allow a total of 2 x 10Gb network connections from the server to the Ubiquiti UniFi US-16-XG 10Gb network switch, the backbone of my network.

The Server also have 4 x Hot Swappable HD bays on the front. When configured in HBA mode (via the BIOS), these are accessible by TrueNAS and can be used. I plan on populating these with 4 x 4TB HPE MDL SATA Hot Swappable drives to act as a replication destination for the NVMe pool and/or slower magnetic long-term storage.

Front view of HPE ML310e Gen8 v2 with Hotswap Drive bays
HPE ML310e Gen8 v2 with Hotswap Drive bays

I may also try to give WD RED Pro drives a try, but I’m not sure if they will cause the fans to speed up on the server.

TrueNAS Installation and Configuration

For the initial Proof-Of-Concept for version 2, I decided to be quick and dirty and install it to a USB stick. I also waited until I installed TrueNAS on to the USB stick and completed basic configuration before installing the Quad NVMe PCIe card and 10Gb NIC. I’m using a USB 3.0 port on the back of the server for speed, as I can’t verify if the port on the motherboard is USB 2 or USB 3.

Picture of a TrueNAS USB Stick on HPE ML310e Gen8 v2
TrueNAS USB Stick on HPE ML310e Gen8 v2

TrueNAS installation worked without any problems whatsoever on the ML310e. I configured the basic IP, time, accounts, and other generic settings. I then proceeded to install the PCIe cards (storage and networking).

Screenshot of TrueNAS Dashboard Installed on NVMe Storage Server
TrueNAS Installed on NVMe Storage Server

All NVMe drives were recognized, along with the 2 HDDs I had in the front Hot-swap bays (sitting on an HP B120i Controller configured in HBA mode).

Screenshot of available TrueNAS NVMe Disks
TrueNAS NVMe Disks

The 560SFP+ NIC also was detected without any issues and available to configure.

Dashboard Screenshot of TrueNAS 560SFP+ 10Gb NIC
TrueNAS 560SFP+ 10Gb NIC

Storage Configuration

I’ve already done some testing and created a guide on FreeNAS and TrueNAS ZFS Optimizations and Considerations for SSD and NVMe, so I made sure to use what I learned in this version of the project.

I created a striped pool (no redundancy) of all 4 x 2TB NVMe drives. This gave us around 8TB of usable high speed NVMe storage. I also created some datasets and a zVOL for iSCSI.

Screenshot of NVMe TrueNAS Storage Pool with Datasets and zVol
NVMe TrueNAS Storage Pool with Datasets and zVol

I chose to go with the defaults for compression to start with. I will be testing throughput and achievable speeds in the future. You should always test this in every and all custom environments as the results will always vary.

Network Configuration

Initial configuration was done via the 1Gb NIC connection to my main LAN network. I had to change this as the 10Gb NIC will be directly connected to the network backbone and needs to access the LAN and Storage VLANs.

I went ahead and configured a VLAN Interface on VLAN 220 for the Storage network. Connections for iSCSI and NFS will be made on this network as all my ESXi servers have vmknics configured on this VLAN for storage. I also made sure to configure an MTU of 9000 for jumbo frames (packets) to increase performance. Remember that all hosts must have the same MTU to communicate.

Screenshot of 10Gb NIC on Storage VLAN
10Gb NIC on Storage VLAN

Next up, I had to create another VLAN interface for the LAN network. This would be used for management, as well as to provide Windows File Share (SMB/Samba) access to the workstations on the network. We leave the MTU on this adapter as 1500 since that’s what my LAN network is using.

Screenshot of 10Gb NIC on LAN VLAN
10Gb NIC on LAN VLAN

As a note, I had to delete the configuration for the existing management settings (don’t worry, it doesn’t take effect until you hit test) and configure the VLAN interface for my LANs VLAN and IP. I tested the settings, confirmed it was good, and it was all setup.

At this point, only the 10Gb NIC is now being used so I went ahead and disconnected the 1Gb network cable.

Sharing Setup and Configuration

It’s now time to configure the sharing protocols that will be used. As mentioned before, I plan on deploying iSCSI, NFS, and Windows File Shares (SMB/Samba).

iSCSI and NFS Configuration

Normally, for a VMware ESXi virtualization environment, I would always usually prefer iSCSI based storage, however I also wanted to configure NFS to test throughput of both with NVMe flash storage.

Earlier, I created the datasets for all my my NFS exports and a zVOL volume for iSCSI.

Note, that in order to take advantage of the VMware VAAI storage directives (enhancements), you must use a zVOL to present an iSCSI target to an ESXi host.

For NFS, you can simply create a dataset and then export it.

For iSCSI, you need to create a zVol and then configure the iSCSI Target settings and make it available.

SMB (Windows File Shares)

I needed to create a Windows File Share for file based storage from Windows computers. I plan on using the Windows File Share for high-speed storage of files for video editing.

Using the dataset I created earlier, I configured a Windows Share, user accounts, and tested accessing it. Works perfect!

Connecting the host

Connecting the ESXi hosts to the iSCSI targets and the NFS exports is done in the exact same way that you would with any other storage system, so I won’t be including details on that in this post.

We can clearly see the iSCSI target and NFS exports on the ESXi host.

Screenshot of TrueNAS NVMe iSCSI Target on VMware ESXi Host
TrueNAS NVMe iSCSI Target on VMware ESXi Host
Screenshot of NVMe iSCSI and NFS ESXi Datastores
NVMe iSCSI and NFS ESXi Datastores

To access Windows File Shares, we log on and map the network share like you would normally with any file server.

Testing

For testing, I moved (using Storage vMotion) my main VDI desktop to the new NVMe based iSCSI Target LUN on the NVMe Storage Server. After testing iSCSI, I then used Storage vMotion again to move it to the NFS datastore. Please see below for the NVMe storage server speed test results.

Speed Tests

Just to start off, I want to post a screenshot of a few previous benchmarks I compiled when testing and reviewing the Sabrent Rocket 4 NVMe SSD disks installed in my HPE DL360p Gen8 Server and passed through to a VM (Add NVMe capability to an HPE Proliant DL360p Gen8 Server).

Screenshot of CrystalDiskMark testing an IOCREST IO-PEX40152 and Sabrent Rocket 4 NVME SSD for speed
CrystalDiskMark testing an IOCREST IO-PEX40152 and Sabrent Rocket 4 NVME SSD
Screenshot of CrystalDiskMark testing IOPS on an IOCREST IO-PEX40152 and Sabrent Rocket 4 NVME SSD
CrystalDiskMark testing IOPS on an IOCREST IO-PEX40152 and Sabrent Rocket 4 NVME SSD

Note, that when I performed these tests, my CPU was maxed out and limiting the actual throughput. Even then, these are some fairly impressive speeds. Also, these tests were directly testing each NVMe drive individually.

Moving on to the NVMe Storage Server, I decided to test iSCSI NVMe throughput and NFS NVMe throughput.

I opened up CrystalDiskMark and started a generic test, running a 16GB test file a total of 6 times on my VDI VM sitting on the iSCSI NVMe LUN.

Screenshot of NVMe Storage Server iSCSI Benchmark with CrystalDiskMark
NVMe Storage Server iSCSI Benchmark with CrystalDiskMark

You can see some impressive speeds maxing out the 10Gb NIC with crazy performance of the NVME storage:

  • 1196MB/sec READ
  • 1145.28MB/sec WRITE (Maxing out the 10GB NIC)
  • 62,725.10 IOPS READ
  • 42,203.13 IOPS WRITE

Additionally, here’s a screenshot of the ix0 NIC on the TrueNAS system during the speed test benchmark: 1.12 GiB/s.

Screenshot of TrueNAS NVME Maxing out 10Gig NIC
TrueNAS NVME Maxing out 10Gig NIC

And remember this is with compression. I’m really excited to see how I can further tweak and optimize this, and also what increases will come with configuring iSCSI MPIO. I’m also going to try to increase the IOPS to get them closer to what each individual NVMe drive can do.

Now on to NFS, the results were horrible when moving the VM to the NFS Export.

Screenshot of NVMe Storage Server NFS Benchmark with CrystalDiskMark
NVMe Storage Server NFS Benchmark with CrystalDiskMark

You can see that the read speed was impressive, but the write speed was not. This is partly due to how writes are handled with NFS exports.

Clearly iSCSI is the best performing method for ESXi host connectivity to a TrueNAS based NVMe Storage Server. This works perfect because we’ll get the VAAI features (like being able to reclaim space).

iSCSI MPIO Speed Test

This is more of an update… I was finally able to connect, configure, and utilize the 2nd 10Gbe port on the 560SFP+ NIC. In my setup, both hosts and the TrueNAS storage server all have 2 connections to the switch, with 2 VLANs and 2 subnets dedicated to storage. Check out the before/after speed tests with enabling iSCSI MPIO.

As you can see I was able to essentially double my read speeds (again maxing out the networking layer), however you’ll notice that the write speeds maxed out at 1598MB/sec. I believe we’ve reached a limitation of the CPU, PCIe bus, or something else inside of the server. Note, that this is not a limitation of the Sabrent Rocket 4 NVME drives, or the IOCREST NVME PCIe card.

Moving Forward

I’ve had this configuration running for around a week now with absolutely no issues, no crashes, and it’s been very stable.

Using a VDI VM on NVMe backed storage is lightning fast and I love the experience.

I plan on running like this for a little while to continue to test the stability of the environment before making more changes and expanding the configuration and usage.

Future Plans (and Configuration)

  • Drive Bays
    • I plan to populate the 4 hot-swappable drive bays with HPE 4TB MDL drives. Configured with RaidZ1, this should give me around 12TB usable storage. I can use this for file storage, backups, replication, and more.
  • NVMe Replication
    • This design was focused on creating non-redundant extremely fast storage. Because I’m limited to a total of 4 NVMe disks in this design, I chose not to use RaidZ and striped the data. If one NVMe drive is lost, all data is lost.
    • I don’t plan on storing anything important, and at this point the storage is only being used for VDI VMs (which are backed up), and Video editing.
    • If I can populate the front drive bays, I can replicate the NVMe storage to the traditional HDD storage on a frequent basis to protect against failure to some level or degree.
  • Version 3 of the NVMe Storage Server
    • More NVMe and Bigger NVMe – I want more storage! I want to test different levels of RaidZ, and connect to the backbone at even faster speeds.
    • NVME Drives with PLP (Power Loss Prevention) for data security and protection.
    • Dual Power Supply

Let me know your thoughts and ideas on this setup!

Oct 232020
 
vCSA Update Installation

When updating VMware vCenter vCSA 7.0 U1 (Build 16858589) to vCSA 7.0 U1 (Build 17004997/17005016, Version 7.0.1.00100), you may notice that the update fails and reports issues with pre-update checks.

Pre-update checks done prior to the update will pass and allow you to proceed, however it’s the installation that will fail and crash reporting this error.

After the installation fails, you will no longer be able to log in to the vCSA VAMI reporting the error “Unable to Login” using the root account.

You are able to login via SSH. Resetting the root password via SSH will not resolve this issue.

The Problem

In the past, issues with the root password expiring have caused similar behavior on the vCSA VAMI. Changing the root password does not resolve this specific issue.

Further troubleshooting, it appears that special characters in the root password such as “!”, “.”, and “@” caused this issue to occur in my environment.

I was not able to fix the broken vCSA after the failed update. Access to the vCSA was not possible, however vCenter functions were still operating.

The Solution

To resolve this situation in my environment, I restored a snapshot of the vCSA taken prior to updating.

After restoring the snapshot, I changed the root password for VAMI and restarted the vCSA.

Another snapshot was taken prior to attempting the upgrade, which was now succesfull after removing special characters out of the root password.

Oct 152020
 
VMware vCLS VM in VM List

Did a new VM appear on your VMware vSphere cluster called “vCLS”? Maybe multiple appeared named “vCLS (1)”, “vCLS (2)”, “vCLS (3)” appeared.

VMware vCLS VM in vSphere Cluster Objects
VMware vCLS VM in vSphere Cluster Objects

This could be frightening but fear not, this is part of VMware vSphere 7.0 Update 1.

What is the vCLS VM?

The vCLS virtural machine is essentially an “appliance” or “service” VM that allows a vSphere cluster to remain functioning in the event that the vCenter Server becomes unavailable. It will maintain the health and services of that cluster.

Where did the vCLS VM come from?

The vCLS VM will appear after upgrading to vSphere 7.0 Update 1. I’m assuming it was deployed during the upgrade process.

It does not appear in the standard Cluster, Hosts, and VMs view, but does appear when looking at the vSphere objects VM lists, Storage VM lists, etc…

Is it normal to have more than one vCLS VM?

The vCLS VMs are created when hosts are added to a vSphere Cluster. Up to 3 vCLS VMs are required to run in each vSphere Cluster.

The vCLS VMs will also appear on clusters which contain only one or two hosts. These configurations will result in either 1 or 2 vCLS VMs named “vCLS (1)” and “vCLS (2)”.

A note on licensing in regards to the vCLS VM

For VMware environments that use VM based licensing like vSphere for ROBO (Remote Office Branch Office), vCLS VMs are shown in the licensing interface as counting towards licensed VMs. Please Note that these VMs do not official count towards your purchased licenses as these are VMware System VMs. Please read VMware KB 80472 for more information on this.

More Information on vCLS VMs

For more information and technical specifics, you can visit the link below:

https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vSphere/7.0/com.vmware.vsphere.vcenterhost.doc/GUID-96BD6016-4BE7-4B1C-8269-568D1555B08C.html

Hope this posts helps, and puts some minds at ease. Your VMware environment has NOT been compromised.

May 252020
 
vSphere Logo Image

When troubleshooting connectivity issues with your vMotion network (or vMotion VLAN), you may notice that you’re unable to ping using the ping or vmkping command on your ESXi and VMware hosts.

This occurs when you’re suing the vMotion TCP/IP stack on your vmkernel (vmk) adapters that are configured for vMotion.

This also applies if you’re using long distance vMotion (LDVM).

Why

The vMotion TCP/IP stack requires special syntax for ping and ICMP tests on the vmk adapters.

A screenshot of vmk adapters, one of which is using the vMotion TCP/IP Stack
VMK using vMotion TCP/IP Stack

Above is an example where a vmk adapter (vmk3) is configured to use the vMotion TCP/IP stack.

How

To “ping” and test your vMotion network that uses the vMotion TCP/IP stack, you’ll need to use the special command below:

esxcli network diag ping -I vmk1 --netstack=vmotion -H ip.add.re.ss

In the command above, change “vmk1” to the vmkernel adapter you want to send the pings from. Additionally, change “ip.add.re.ss” to the IP address of the host you want to ping.

Using this method, you can fully verify network connectivity between the vMotion vmks using the vMotion stack.

Additional information and examples can be found at https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/59590.