Configuring VMware Components and Creating Virtual Machines

After you are finished performing the Post-Installation Tasks, you can configure the VMware ESXi host and create your virtual machines. Be sure to read Restrictions on VMware Components and Features first.

If you initialized and mirrored any internal data disks during the installation process, you can create VMFS datastores on them now, as summarized in Adding and Mirroring Data Disks.

If you need to configure additional network connections, you can configure port groups and vSwitches as summarized in Configuring Network Interfaces.

If you are planning to use VLANs, be sure to read Considerations When Using VLANs first.

Restrictions on VMware Components and Features

ztC Endurance systems running VMware ESXi and Automated Uptime Layer with Smart Exchange​ do not support the use of the following VMware components, features, or activities. Their use may compromise continuous system uptime.

Running oversubscribed ztC Endurance systems with CPU- or memory-intensive workloads can result in extended CPU bringup times, disk access delays, and VMware ESXi services that restart. Furthermore, overcommitting memory to powered-on virtual machines by more than 1.5 times the physical system memory can cause voter errors during CPU bringup and memory check, which could lead to additional system interruptions. To avoid these issues, do not oversubscribe vCPUs or memory beyond the physical capacity of ztC Endurance system resources.

vSphere Fault Tolerance is a software solution that provides failover for applications running in a vSphere environment in the event of a server failure. Using vSphere Fault Tolerance with a ztC Endurance system may interfere with the existing fault-tolerant features of AUL-Smart Exchange and defeat the purpose of running your applications on a ztC Endurance system. Your system already ensures continuous availability.

VMware DPM is a feature of VMware vCenter that allows you to migrate or consolidate virtual machines during periods of low host utilization and remotely power down ESX or ESXi hosts that support the Wake On LAN feature.

ztC Endurance systems running VMware ESXi do not support DPM, because vCenter cannot power down a host until all virtual machines are migrated or powered down, and it is not possible to power down or migrate the Management VM. However, ztC Endurance systems continue to support the Wake On LAN feature itself, as described in Enabling and Disabling Wake on LAN.

You can modify the configuration of DVSwitches in vCenter Server, marking some uplinks as "unused." However, the host system cannot detect this information and therefore cannot factor it into its safe-to-pull calculations.

RDM allows you to store virtual-machine data directly on a disk or storage system instead of storing it in a file on a virtual disk. ztC Endurance systems support RDM only for external storage systems, and not for internal disks.

VMDirectPath allows you to assign a PCIe device in your physical system to a specific virtual machine. This feature is not hardened for fault tolerance.

SR-IOV is a standard that enables one PCIe adapter to be presented as multiple separate logical devices to virtual machines. This feature is not hardened for fault tolerance.

Lockdown mode forces all operations on your ESXi host to be performed through vCenter Server. When you enable lockdown mode, you cannot administer the system by running scripts, by running commands through vSphere CLI, or by running commands from the Management VM.

Because the Management VM requires the ability to run scripts and run commands remotely on the ESXi host, enabling lockdown mode would prevent fault-tolerant utilities from functioning properly and compromise the continuous uptime of your system.

If you attempt to put a ztC Endurance system into any variant of lockdown mode, an alert is displayed on the ESXi console status screen, which you can access by pressing ALT-F11 at the ESXi home screen. An event is also logged in the /var/log/syslog.log file on the ESXi host. To resolve the issue, you (or your vCenter administrator) must manually disable lockdown mode from vSphere Web Client.

Running the VMware vm-support script on an ESXi host, or using the ESXi Host Client Generate support bundle or vCenter Export System Logs actions, can cause voter errors on the ztC Endurance system when it collects the data from the ESXi host. To avoid these errors, use the /opt/strSystemMgmt/bin/ztcvmSupport.sh script to collect the same data.