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Installation > Installing and Supporting MegaRAID Storage Manager on VMWare > Differences in MSM for VMware ESXi

Differences in MSM for VMware ESXi

The following are some of the differences in the MSM utility when you manage a VMWare server.

  1. The following limitations apply to the system information exposed through the application:
    1. Only the IP address and the Host name display.
    2. The operating system type and the operating system architecture do not display.
    3. There is no support for the controller health information.
  2. The following are the MSM screens affected:
    1. Initial MSM framework (hosts) discovery screen: No health information or operating system type display.
    2. Server property page: Only the IP address and the Host name display; the operating system type and operating system architecture do not display.
  3. Authentication support:
    1. MSM allows CIMOM server authentication with the user ID and the password for VMware.
    2. Access control is not supported. There is no support for full view or view only access modes. It is always full view access, and multiple clients can have full view access at the same time on the same server.
  4. Event Logging:
  5. Full functionality support is available for the VMware ESXi operating system, but it works differently than the normal MSM framework mode. The event logging feature for MSM Client connected to a VMware ESXi system behaves as follows:
    1. There is no support for retrieving initial logs (the events that occurred before a client logs in). Only those events that occur after a client logs in appear in the event logger dialog.
    2. System log do not display.
    3. The “Save log” feature is not supported; however, the “Save Log as Text” is still supported.
    4. The “View Log” option allows you to view the logs saved in a text file on the event logger dialog.
    5. The event descriptions might not be identical to a normal MSM Client because the descriptions come from the firmware through the provider.
    6. There is no filtering of events, unlike Monitor Service.
    7. Refreshing of the MSM GUI after any updates on the firmware is slower for a client connected to VMWare ESXi hosts, compared to one connected to Windows/Linux/Solaris hosts.
  6. Remote discovery and heartbeat mechanism:
    1. For networks that do not have DNS configured, the “hosts” file in the machine on which MSM is installed must be edited as follows:
      1. Add an entry to map the VMWare host’s IP address with the hostname. This is for the discovery to happen correctly. In the absence of this entry, the VMWare host would be discovered as 0.0.0.0.
      2. Add an entry to map its own IP address (not the loop back address) with the Hostname. This is to ensure that the Asynchronous Event Notifications (AENs) are delivered correctly.
    2. For networks that has DNS configured, the “hosts” file in the machine on which MSM is installed must be edited as follows:
      1. When you do the initial configurations for the VMWare host, provide the correct DNS server IP address.
      2. In the hosts file of the machine on which MSM is installed, add an entry to map its own IP address (not the loop back address) with the Hostname. This is to ensure that the Asynchronous Event Notifications are delivered correctly.
  7. The VMWare hosts are discovered only when the Framework service starts on the host where MSM is installed.
  8. It takes a while to discover the CIMOM servers. If you start the MSM client immediately after you install MSM (or restart Framework service), you will not be able to discover any hosts in the network.
  9. The VMWare ESX3i does not support the heartbeat mechanism to let MSM know whether VMWare ESX3i is still connected. When the connection to the remote VMWare ESX3i is lost, MSM does not indicate this. The only option is to rediscover by restarting the MSM framework.
  10. This is supported only on a full installation of MSM; standalone, client-only, and server-only modes do not support VMWare ESX3i management.
  11. Supported on following guest operating systems:
    1. Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008
    2. Linux RHEL 4 and 5
  12. The following describes the status of components related to VMWare ESX3i:
    1. MSM client GUI is supported.
    2. There is no support for alert notifications; you cannot configure the severity of the Asynchronous Events Notifications (AENs).
    3. There is no pop-up service support.
    4. There is no email and system log support.
    5. Monitor service support is not available.
  13. For Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, you must create the following symbolic links:
    1. cd /usr/lib on RHEL 5
    2. Search for libcrypto, libssl and libsysfs libraries as follows:
    3. ls -lrt libcrypto*, ls -lrt libssl*, ls -lrt libsysfs*
    4. If the files libcrypto.so.4, libssl.so.4, and libsysfs.so.1 are missing, manually create sym links as follows:
    5. ln -s libcrypto.so libcrypto.so.4
      ln -s libssl.so libssl.so.4
      ln -s libsysfs.so libsysfs.so.1

      If the ‘.so’ files are not present in the /usr/lib directory, create a link with the existing version of the library.
      For example, if libcrypto.so.6 is present and libcrypto.so is not, create the link as follows:
      ln -s libcrypto.so.6 libcrypto.so.4

      On a 64-bit operating system, the system libraries will be present in /usr/lib64 directory by default. However, for supporting CIM Plugin, make sure that the libraries are also present in /usr/lib by installing the appropriate RPMs.


DB09-000202-02 37857-00 Rev. C  August 2009
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