Thursday 24 April 2014

Dell MD Storage Array VMware vCenter Manager plug-in fails to load in vCenter

The Dell MD Storage Array VMware vCenter Manager plug-in is a great addition to vCenter for ease of management for MD3 series arrays.

After reading the release notes it states that if you already have VMware Update Manager installed in the same server you must change the Jetty SSL port from 8084 which is being used by VUM. I did as I was told and changed the port to 18084.

After opening vCenter and trying to enable the new plug-in you are faced with this error.


I added some firewall exceptions, but this did not help. I checked to make sure the Dell MD Storage Array VMware vCenter Application Service was started and it was. 

Did some digging around in the jetty folder.C:\Program Files\Dell\MD Storage Array VMware vCenter Plug-In\jetty and found that although I have specified port 8088 during the setup the XML file, wsconfig.xml had the wrong port!!!


The fix was to stop the Dell MD Storage Array VMware vCenter Application Service service, correct the port number in my case 8088 and start the service once more. Sorted!

While you in that folder you might want to edit appserver64.ini and reduce the amount of RAM java will drink. Unless you have a large amount of arrays to monitor reduce this to 128MB's 

#localize these lines  (Items to the right have the =)
service.name=Dell MD Storage Array VMware vCenter Application Service
service.description=Dell MD Storage Array VMware vCenter Application Service

#Do not localize below this point
service.class=com.loem.aa.webserver.WebServerService
service.id=DellMDStorageArrayApplicationServicevCP

classpath.1=lib\*.jar
service.startup=auto
#log=c:\logs.txt
vmarg.1=-Dconfig.file=C:\Program Files\Dell\MD Storage Array VMware vCenter Plug-In\jetty\wsconfig.xml
vmarg.2=-Dorg.apache.jasper.compiler.disablejsr199=true
vmarg.3=-Xmx128M
#vmarg.4=-Xdebug
#vmarg.5=-Xnoagent
#vmarg.6=-Xrunjdwp:transport=dt_socket,address=8787,server=y,suspend=y
vm.location=C:\Program Files\Dell\MD Storage Array VMware vCenter Plug-In\jre\bin\server\jvm.dll

Note if the service won't start you might need to remove and reinstall using another port number. You can use netstat -an | find ":portnumber"  to see if a port is in use.

Tuesday 1 April 2014

Upgrading FTOS from USB

I have had some trouble lately upgrading FTOS via TFTP, the session starts but throws some errors. An easier way to upgrade the firmware or FTOS software is to use a USB stick:

FTOS needs to see a FAT32 formatted USB stick. I have seen plenty of times where the stick inserted with FAT32 isn't recognised with a file system. If this happens just get the switch to format the USB stick with this command:

format USBFLASH:

Once the stick is formatted copy the FTOS .bin file to the stick from a laptop and insert it back into the switch chassis.

Issue the command:

upgrade system usbflash: A:



After the file has copied to flash you issue the command reload to finish the process.

The process can take about 5 minutes. Please note in this example, I'm upgrading from version 8.x.x.x to 9.3.0.0 on a S4820T, in this case on reboot each physical port had to have a firmware upgrade from version 01.50 to 01.66 which took approximatly 10 minutes. Make sure you plan this into your downtime plan!

You can verify the firmware upgrade by issuing the show os-version command