Smarts and VMware ESX

Hi CeSIA,

Have you figured out a way to deal with the ESX server modelling in Smarts ?

I am facing the same problem here, I have also talked to EMC about this, they said, EMC Smarts engineering is in the progress to certify Cisco Nexus 1000v virtual swtich, ( not standard virtual switch or Distributed virtual switch), but they are currently not able to confirm the detailed features.

If you have got any idea, would you like to share with me ?

Thanks,

Hubery

Message was edited by: huberyhe

Hi Lorenzo,

A better suggestion for Vmware implimentation with SMARTS would be ESM( Smarts Enhanced Server Manager).ESM discovers VMware ESX Servers and Virtual Machines, and continuously monitors their availability and performance — automatically.I have also attached the pdf file related to ESM for further clarification.Hope this would help .

Thanks & Regards,

Vipin C.P

Hi vipinParambath,

Thanks for your post .

Yes, we are also using ESM to monitor vmware ESX servers, but the problem comes to be the physical links between ESX host and Neighbor switches.

From the map console in Smarts, you are only able to see the cable created for vswif of ESX host and switch, but you could not see the link between a

virtual switch ( a trunked uplink port links to a switch ) and neighbor switch, as there is no link between the trunk port on the ESX side and trunk port on

Swich side, we will have risk to lose any of the links.

I understand that, except vswif in ESX, all the other nics are actually vmnics and even in neighbor switch, you can't even find the mac address of these

vmnics' mac address. As far as I know, EMC Smarts is doing some work to certify Cisco Nexus 1000v Virtual switch and I hope this will be make the links

visible both inside and outside of the ESX host.

Thanks,

Hubery

Hi Hubery,

Thanks for the information.

Related to the bulding of the physical connection between the ESX host and the neighbouring switches .I would like to share with you some views made by our experts.Hope this would give some idea.

"Typically an ESX server would not have a single physical connection to the outside world.  A bonded set of network adapters is almost universally used.  This means that unless you have SNMP enabled on the box you really don't have a good view of the system.  However, this also causes other problems since the multiple network adapters typically cause problems with the data from the bridge probe on the switch side"

.

The best way to build the connection is to have them turn on CDP for each Vswitch that is connected to an adapter using this “esxcfg-vswitch -B both vSwitch0” by default the vswitch is in listen mode.  Now the esx system will broadcast CDP to the cisco switch an example is shown below

Device ID                                             Local Intrfce        Holdtme        Capability           Platform                Port ID
ems-labesx02.isus.emc.com                 Gig 1/0/2               127                     S            VMware ES           vmnic1

Regarding the official certification of the Nexus switches are in progress as previuosly suggested by you.If you need further clarification I would suggest you to open an SR with the support team.

Regards,

Vipin

Hi Vipin,

I really appreciate your message to let me know this.

I just knew this yesterday from EMC support and I¹ve already loaded into my

testing server.

I wanted to send you email when I got your previous message. But was very

busy with some testing. Sorry about that.

According to your suggestion in the last post, you mentioned that CDP

information would be helpful in creating the connectivity between ESX host

and Switch.

But unfortunately, it didn¹t help after my testing in our lab. I talked to

one of our senior Smarts engineers about this, he said, CDP discovery should

draw the connections.

I have opened a case with EMC support, they are currently under the progress

of investigation. I will definitely let you know once I get the answer from

them.

During the conversation with some other Smarts fellows, some of them

suggested that, we may use the API to grab all the connectivity information

from ESX, consolidate them then output to a user-defined-connections.conf

file.

That is one option, and technically, it is achievable, but I would not do

that if Cisco Nexus can help. I just loaded Cisco Nexus into our vmware env,

I will do some testing.

I am very glad to discuss this with you, thanks a lot for your information

and I will talk to you soon.

Regards,

Hubery

Hi Hubery,

Adding to the previous post regarding Nexus 1000V switch certification, I have the information that this switch is  officially certified in the latest patch ( patch 28) for IP 7.0.3.You can have it downloaded from powerlink.

Regards,

Vipin

Hi Hubery,

Thanks for the feedback.

Happy to hear that you have already tested the certification for the Nexus 1000V switch. I will also let you know in case I have any further helpful information related to this.

Regards,

Vipin

Hi Hubery,

Thank you for the information and valid feedback.

I will surely let you know if I get any further updates related to this.

Thanks & Regards,

Vipin

Hi Vipin,

I just want to check with you, do you know, with Cisco Nexus1000v, are we able to see the links inside the ESX ( between vms and Nexus Switch) in Smarts.

I have done some testing in our lab, but I still could not get the links up. I can see the vm nic’s mac apprears in the mac table in Cisco Nexus 1000v by suing "show mac address-table", but for some reason, in the sm_snmpwalk file, the mac address table keeps changing. The changing I mean here is:  the mac address of the vm’s nic sometimes it is there, sometimes it is not there.
So from my understanding, it could be a mib issue, or there is something with the configurations I've done in Cisco Nexus 1000v.

Thanks,
Hubery

Hi Hubery,

I am clarifying about this and will update you shortly , Also would like to have the snap file of the device to test it in my environment, if possible kindly upload the same.

Regards,

Vipin

Hi Vipin,

Thanks for your reply.

Can you give me your personal email account, I don¹t want to upload the

files to the community.

Regards,

Hubery

Hi Hubery,

That won't be an issue.

I was able to get the snap of the Nexus 1000v device from powerlink associated with a certification case and verified its discovery in my test environment and to confirm about your query I had a discussion related to this with my Engineering team and got the update that this feature is currently under consideration and is planned for future releases of IP .

I will update you in case I have any further informations related to this.

For any support clarifications you can also contact us through powerlink chat.

Vipin C P

Technical Support Engineer II , EMC Global Services.

Hi Vipin,

Thanks a lot for your confirmation. I really appreciate that.

Please let me know once you have any update on this.

Cheers,

Hubery