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ACTIVE RESPONSE 5.0 TOPICS BLUEPRINTS TROUBLESHOOTING DOC INDEX


What you should know
How to capture a Linux application image inside a VMDK

know-how:

Alternative to NFS: Capturing Linux Application Images as VMware VMDK Files

Intended for use with Cassatt Active Response V5.02.

Cassatt Active Response relies on NFS for booting Linux-based application images in VMware virtual machines. If your site policies discourage using NFS, you can instead capture and run Linux images as VMware VMDK files.

What you should know

If you choose to capture a Linux application image in a VMDK, some Cassatt Active Response features don't work or require extra consideration:

  • Data in VMDKs is persisted only when you use a SAN to store images; if you store images on local disk, any changes to the image are lost when the guest node is rebooted. For more information, see the storage requirements section of VMware ESX Server 3.0: Capturing an Image and Creating a Tier. Persistence issues make both node harvesting and personalization problematic: If you are not using a SAN:
    • Set node harvesting to off for any VMDK tiers. Node harvesting removes nodes from an active tier. When the nodes are running VMDKs, and you are not using a SAN to store images, any changes in the VMDK are consequently lost.
    • Do not capture in a VMDK if your blueprint requires personalization of the image instances (for example, My SQL and Oracle). Any changes made during personalization are lost upon tier activation.
  • Image update for applications inside VMDKs is not supported. Instead, you must capture a new VMDK file. For more information, see the VM update section of Virtualization Manager Administration.

How to capture a Linux application image in a VMDK

Use this section in conjunction with your Linux application blueprint. Follow all of the VM-related guidance in the blueprint plus the following:

At this blueprint step... Follow these additional instructions...
Prerequisites

Image host requirements: VMware installed with at least one VM configured; see VMWare ESX Server 3.0: Capturing an Image and Creating a Tier
Hardware requirements: If you will be installing a 64-bit version of Linux, the 64-bit Virtualization Technology (VT) hardware is required for both the image host and the tier hardware. Use a custom attribute to mark the VT nodes and use the same custom attribute for the image. Refer to the VMware documentation for supported hardware.
Storage requirements: SAN is recommended as described in What you should know.
Install and configure the operating system

After installing your Red Hat OS version, install VMware tools:

  1. Launch your VI Client and connect to your ESX Server.
  2. Choose Settings > Vmware Tools Install, and click install

    This connects the virtual machine’s CD-ROM drive to an ISO image file on the ESX Server machine.
  3. In the Linux guest, as root, mount the Vmware Tools virtual CD-ROM, copy the installer file from the virtual CD-ROM to /tmp, and unmount the CD-ROM:

    mount -t iso9660 /dev/cdrom /mnt
    cp /mnt/vmware-linux-tools.tar.gz /tmp
    umount /dev/cdrom
  4. Untar the Vmware Tools tar file in /tmp and install it:

    cd /tmp
    tar zxf vmware-linux-tools.tar.gz
    cd vmware-tools-distrib
    ./vmware-install.pl
  5. Choose directories for the files.
  6. Enter the display size for the virtual machine and press Enter.
  7. Start X and your graphical environment and launch the Vmware Tools background application:

    vmware-toolbox &
Capture the image Before image capture:
  • Edit the network configuration in the VM as follows, deleting the line for HWADDR and revising the line for BOOTPROTO to DHCP:

    vi /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 

    DEVICE=eth0  
BOOTPROTO=dhcp

TYPE=Ethernet

ONBOOT=no
  • Shut down Linux and VMware.

If you do not shut down Linux and VMware, the capture will fail.
During image capture, select "windows" as the image type instead of "linux". The type "windows" within the cccapture script is a misnomer, and actually specifies any VMDK, not just a Windows VMDK.
Allocate nodes and activate the tier

During tier activation, do not attach a VMware Console to the VM before it has finished booting.

Attaching a VMware Console to an ESX VM while it is booting under Cassatt Active Response control can interrupt changes Cassatt Active Response makes to key definition items, disrupting the boot process.

To determine when it is safe to attach a remote console to a VM, do one of the following in the Controller:

    1. On the Tier Activation status page, click Show Details.
    2. In the events table, watch for an event called "Power Cycle Node" with status "Complete."

      OR

    3. In the node list for the tier, wait until the node is "online."

      When either of these things happens, it is safe to attach a remote console to the VM.

 

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