How to time startup of an ESXI VM that is hosted by a Napp It appliance

[epicurean]

I have an ESXI machine that uses a small SSD that only host a Napp it VM. The VM contains a RAID 1 datastore that hosts most of the other VMs.

I cannot figure out how to start the VMs on that Napp-It based datastore automatically. The Napp It VM starts easily enough, but how to configure the rest of the VMs that can only start when the Napp It datastore is ready?

much thanks for your insights.

 

[gea]

If napp-it and the VMs are up, you can set the VMs in Vsphere to auto-start with the order that napp-it must boot first.
Enable "continue immediately on start of VMware tools" for a faster bootup than the default 120s between VM bootup.

On next bootup, napp-it starts automatically.
As the NFS share from napp-it is autoconnected after a few seconds from ESXi you have only a small additional delay until all VMs are up.

 

[epicurean]

Hi Gea,
Unfortunately, it takes a while for Napp-it VM to be up. And ONLY if the Napp it VM is up and the NFS share datastores ready, can my other VMs be up - and this seems to take an unpredictable amount of time.
I have tried setting the non Napp It VMs to start 700 secs later, but it still does not work.
Can you suggest any tweaks to make this automated and seamless?

 

[T_Minus]

Hi Gea,
Unfortunately, it takes a while for Napp-it VM to be up. And ONLY if the Napp it VM is up and the NFS share datastores ready, can my other VMs be up - and this seems to take an unpredictable amount of time.
I have tried setting the non Napp It VMs to start 700 secs later, but it still does not work.
Can you suggest any tweaks to make this automated and seamless?

I'd find out why it's unpredictable.

My Napp-IT VM is not unpredictable, and it's set to auto-start, and the other VMs are delayed.

 

[pricklypunter]

Whenever I see unpredictable startup, I usually find the cause to be either network related (lazy DNS services usually) or sleepy hard disks coming back up I should say though, this isn't just Napp-IT related, more of a general thing.

 

[epicurean]

Is there a common consensus on what the expected wait time for the Napp it VM to start and present the NFS datastore to ESXI?
Say using the latest 2016 ova ?

 

[gea]

I use ESXi 6U2 on a boot SSD together with the OmniOS VM (Xeon System with 32 GB RAM)

Autostart boot order:
- boot napp-it and the next when tools are loaded
- other VM1
- other VM2
..

When I reboot ESXi i need to wait about 2-3 minutes after ESXi is up until napp-it and the first VM1 is up

 

[T_Minus]

@epicurean Mines ~2 minutes like @gea mentioned. Sometimes it's a bit less... whenever I'm working/testing I just keep hitting refresh for web GUI to come up, and it's usually very fast! I was really surprised how quick it comes back online.

 

[epicurean]

I would really like this automated as much as possible.
How do you shorten the time it takes for the Napp It VM to start up so that it boots as soon as esxi is done with the boot sequence?
I have tried permutations of 300, 400 seconds after Napp It VM starts, before starting the other VMs. No love still.

 

[T_Minus]

How do you shorten the time it takes for the Napp It VM to start up so that it boots as soon as esxi is done with the boot sequence?

vSphere
- Click Host/IP
- Click "Configuration" Tab
- Click "Virtual Machine Startup/Shutdown"
- Click Properties (top right)
- Configure the Napp-IT Vm to automatic


That's how you make it boot after ESXI boots.

Your other VMs should be configured based on how long your Napp-IT VM takes to come online.
For me that's set to 3 minutes just to be safe even though it's often much faster.

If you've tried 5 minutes and that's still not working then I would suggest investigating the why it's taking so long, and trying to remedy that.

 

[epicurean]

Thanks T-Minus. I know how to automate it. I just can't time the NFS datastore coming online accurately.

 

[T_Minus]

I would try to figure out what's taking it so long to 'come online'. I've rebooted dozens of times and it's almost always the same time for me... I have 6x 5TB, 2x 2TB, 4x 240GB SSD, 2x 100GB SSD, 2x 200GB SAS SSD numerous pools, file systems, and permissions and it's predictable so far for me. (2x PCIE HBA, 1x onboard HBA)

 

[socra]

Also look here for a workaround: How to work around ESXi not autostarting VM’s from a NAS or NFS share – Virtualistic