So, my intention for this video is to walk you through a proven process for
studying
everything down gracefully and then getting snapshots.
So if we want to, we can return right back to the point that we left off.
And again, the benefit of that is that if we want to try something new or new
configuration,
we can just configure till the cows come home.
And then when we're done, we can revert to the snapshot and start over at the
same initial
place again.
And sometimes we're attempting a new configuration or something different than
our normal operations.
Sometimes we may want to practice a new configuration or additional options WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
Sometimes we may want to practice a new configuration or additional options
many times.
And so having a graceful shutdown and snapshot process allows that to happen.
So here is the order of operations for what we're going to do.
We are going to take the NSX manager, which is currently running on our
physical host.
And we are going to shut down the NSX manager.
So that's the first step.
Let's do that first.
Let's go to our physical hosted environment, find the NSX manager, which we're
running
on our physical environment and do a shutdown.
And although there's more than one way to gracefully shut that down, the way I
prefer
to do it is to do it via the command line, the SSH over to the NSX manager and WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
to do it is to do it via the command line, the SSH over to the NSX manager and
actually
just do a shutdown command after logging in.
So here in the NSX manager, if we go to appliances, they'll show us the details
regarding the
IP address or addresses involved.
So my single NSX manager, as part of my cluster is .11 and the VAP address is .
10.
So I could use either of those addresses to connect to the NSX manager via SSH
and shut
it down.
So here are my secure CRT terminal with SSH running.
I'm connected over to .11. WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
I'm connected over to .11.
There's our NSX manager and logged in.
We'll just type in shutdown press enter.
We'll type in yes, confirm and boom.
This guy is off to graceful shutdown land.
So our next step is to shut down the edge nodes.
Now those two edge nodes are both running on the nested ESXi host called ESXi
dash
management.
So to use the vSphere client, we can go to that host to find those two VMs.
And then because they're both running VMware tools, we can perform a graceful
shutdown
from the vSphere client for those two VMs that are running on the ESXi WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
from the vSphere client for those two VMs that are running on the ESXi
management host.
So let's do that next.
So here in the vSphere client in our lab environment, so the single sign on
domain is right there,
ogit.lab.
Let's go over to the ESXi management host.
We'll click on VMs.
There's our two VMs.
We'll go ahead and select both of them, then right click and say power and then
we'll do
the graceful shutdown, which is shutdown guest OS and we'll click on yes.
And those two are now being gracefully shut down.
So none of those two edge nodes are on their way down gracefully. WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
So none of those two edge nodes are on their way down gracefully.
The next step is to go ahead and do a graceful shutdown of our nested vCenter.
So our vCenter is currently running on that same management host.
And what I like to do for a nice clean shutdown is go to the management console
for the vCenter
that's on port 5480 and then do the shutdown from there.
And actually before I shut down vCenter, I also want to take a job.
Just a moment just to make sure that any other VMs, like I think the mint VM
that I launched,
I want to make sure any other VMs that are currently running are also grace
fully shut
down.
So we'll go to the vSphere client first, make sure we gracefully shut down any WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
So we'll go to the vSphere client first, make sure we gracefully shut down any
remaining
VMs there.
And then we'll go ahead and turn off vCenter itself.
So here in the ogit.lab, our vSphere nested environment, I'll go ahead and go
to the
very top level here, click on VMs.
I'm going to sort based on state and I've got mint be right there.
So I'm going to go ahead and just take that one right click and go to power and
then we'll
gracefully power that off as well.
They shut down guest OS and click on yes.
All right.
And then for the vCenter itself, which is right here, I'm going to go ahead and WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
And then for the vCenter itself, which is right here, I'm going to go ahead and
do that
from the management console for vCenter.
So we can log out right here of the vSphere client and let's head over to the
management
console for the vCenter itself.
And that's right here.
So we'll log on as administrator, click login.
And then from here, we'll click on actions and we'll click on shutdown.
And we'll confirm the shutdown and that's going to gracefully shut down vCenter
.
So now with the vCenter shutting down, our next step is to go ahead and grace
fully power
off these three ESXi hosts, the VM that's running as ESXi a and the other VM as WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
off these three ESXi hosts, the VM that's running as ESXi a and the other VM as
ESXi
b and the other one as the ESXi management.
Now the way you want to do this is up to you.
We could have actually in the vCenter, you know, shut down a couple of them
except for
the one that was running vCenter itself, or we can use the host client on each
of those
and do a shutdown there, or the other option is go to our physical environment
here at
the physical servers in the parent vSphere environment and shut down the
individual VMs
from here.
And because they're running the VMware tools, it'll perform a graceful shutdown
.
So what are the benefits of logging into these individually with the host WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
So what are the benefits of logging into these individually with the host
client and then
doing a shutdown from there?
As you can also verify that there's no VMs that are still running.
So even though there are multiple ways of doing this, if we're sure that those
VMs are powered
off the edge nodes and also the vCenter, we could just go to the parent
environment.
That's our physical servers in the vSphere environment there and gracefully
power off
those three VMs.
So let's do that next.
So to do that, we'll go back to our vSphere parent environment.
This is the OGAT.prod domain.
The other nested environment was .lab.
So from here, here's our nested VMs. WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
So from here, here's our nested VMs.
So if we just choose that folder and click on those three and then right click
and select
power.
And then we can do a graceful shutdown right here.
And if we're concerned that again, there might be some VMs still running or v
Center hasn't
completely shut down, you could individually go into those ESXi host with the
host client
and just verify it from there and do the shutdown from there if you wanted to.
So I'm pretty confident that everything is shut down.
So I'm going to go ahead and shut these three VMs down here.
I'll click on yes to confirm and those three are on their way to graceful
shutdowns. WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
shutdowns.
And we'll give that a moment to complete.
And also while they're shutting down, we can also see right here that based on
DRS, it
did a pretty good distribution of the works.
So the NSX local manager here, it ran on ESXi2, ESXi8, it ran on ESXi1 and ESXi
B and the
management ESXi host, it ran on my physical host three.
And that was all courtesy of distributed resource scheduler making decisions on
its own as far
as where it wanted to put VMs.
All right.
So ESXi8 is powered off and survey says ESXiB should be close behind and it is WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
So ESXi8 is powered off and survey says ESXiB should be close behind and it is
off.
So now with all those VMs turned off and previously all the VMs within those V
Ms turned off, let's
go ahead and remove all the snapshots.
So we'll go to ESXi8, click on the snapshots tab and click on delete all and
delete all.
And we'll repeat that for each of our ESXi hosts.
So for ESXiB, delete all snapshots, confirm that, go to the ESXi management,
click delete
all, delete all.
The NSX global, we didn't actually turn that one on, but I had NSX federations WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
The NSX global, we didn't actually turn that one on, but I had NSX federations
configured
at one point, so I used that as well.
But because I'm not touching that at the moment, I'm going to leave that alone.
And then the NSX manager we did use was this one right here, NSX manager 01
local, and
we'll delete all of its snapshots as well, click on delete all.
And then the background, those respective ESXi hosts that are supporting those
VMs are
in the process of deleting those snapshots.
So if we will put up our recent tasks right here and I'm going to say, please
just show
me the running recent tasks, it is now in the process of deleting all snapshots WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
me the running recent tasks, it is now in the process of deleting all snapshots
.
So it already removed the snapshots from ESXiA and B, and now it's working on
ESXi management,
and the NSX manager will probably take the longest.
And as far as how long it'll take, it depends a lot on how much we did and how
much was
changed on the disks for those virtual machines.
So the NSX manager again may take somewhere between five minutes and 30 minutes
, and some
of that is also dependent on the back end regarding network storage and how
fast that
is and what the latency is and all that good stuff. WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
is and what the latency is and all that good stuff.
So I'm going to go ahead and simply wait until it's completely done removing
all the snapshots,
and then I'm going to go back and I'm going to recreate snapshots for each of
those VMs,
ESXiA, B, management, and also the local NSX manager.
And then once we have those new snapshots created, we can then go ahead and run
the
lab again, make changes, and if we want to revert back to the snapshots that we
're about
to make, we could go ahead and revert back to the snapshots and start over.
For practicing a configuration, we want to do it multiple times. WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
For practicing a configuration, we want to do it multiple times.
Once again, we could restore to the snapshots once we create them.
Oh, and based on the timestamps over here, it's giving it away.
Happy New Year, everybody.
I hope this year is a fantastic one for everybody.
All right, so the snapshots are all removed and then I'd go back to each of
those VMs
and recreate new ones.
So here's ESXiA, we'll send it to go ahead and with these snapshots tab
selected, click
on take snapshot, we'll confirm that.
If you want to put descriptions and various titles and so forth for each of the
snapshots,
no problem at all. WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
no problem at all.
However, what I've discovered is that if I'm doing all the snapshots at the
same time
for all of these VMs as part of a group, because it's in a lab environment, I
rarely
need to come back and identify, okay, what was it doing at that time?
Because I'm normally coming back to it fairly quickly.
So I'll repeat that process for ESXiAP, we'll select it, click on take snapshot
, click
on create, and repeat that process for ESXiA management and also for the NSX
manager.
So once we take all the snapshots and then we restart the lab environment, we
can then
continue to configure whatever it is we want to practice configuring in our WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
continue to configure whatever it is we want to practice configuring in our
home lab environment.
And the cool part is we can practice and if something doesn't go right or we
want to
revert back, we can come back to these snapshots just by saying revert.
And when we do the revert, you don't have to actually gracefully power them off
.
You can say, you know what, I want to revert back to that previous snapshot and
boom, it'll
power off the VM, restore that snapshot, which is very, very quick because
there's
no disk merging or anything else.
It's just a quick reversion to that previous state.
So I'm going to finish off with these snapshots, making sure I have them for WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
So I'm going to finish off with these snapshots, making sure I have them for
each of these
VMs and I'll see you my friend in the very next video.