Posted on Friday, February 10, 2017

Creating Azure Stack Tenant Offer via PowerShell

When you start working with Microsoft Azure Stack you can automate a lot of the configuration via PowerShell. This quick video and script will help you create Tenant Offers via PowerShell.

Posted on Friday, July 22, 2016

Remove Docker persistent storage volumes from VMware datastore

After you have finished using your Docker persistent storage volumes you can remove them from the environment so you can clean them up and don’t consume more storage that what is really needed. Here is what you have to do do clean those up.

List your volumes

docker volume ls

You will see your docker volumes stored in your /vsanDatastore/dockvols folder

Remove the volumes not needed

docker volume rm volumename

ex: docker volume rm MyVolume

This will remove the volume from the docker host and will also remove it from the VMware vSphere datastore.

Posted on Thursday, July 21, 2016

Deploying containers with persistent storage in VMware environments

In my last blog post I described how to install the VMware Plugin for Docker. Now we will deploy an environment and show how we can use a persistent storage volume across containers.

Build a new volume for a container

docker volume create –driver-vmdk –name BusyBox1 -o size=2gb

You can check the volume with docker volume ls or docker volume inspect commands.

Create a container with persistent storage

docker run –rm -it -v Volumename:/mnt/mymount containerimage.

docker run –rm -it -v BusyBox1:/mnt/myvol busybox

Create a file in the persistent storage

In your container go to the directory you specified in the previous command. In our case it is /mnt/myvol

Create a quick file ex: touch file1 and then add some information to it.

We have created a file in the persistent storage not in the container file system.

Now you can exit your container. ex: exit

Create a different container and attach the persistent volume

I will download a new image for an Ubuntu:latest container and mount the persistent storage volume.

docker run –rm -it -v BusyBox1:/mnt/myvol ubuntu

Change to the same directory /mnt/myvol and see that you can browse the file was created before.

Why is this important?

This allows the developers or administrators to provide a persistent storage that can be used across container reboots to save data outside the container. This can be a great use case for database or shared data that can be used for different containers.

Drop me a comment if you like this type of post.

Posted on Thursday, July 21, 2016

Leveraging the VMware Docker Plugin in your environment

You may have heard that VMware released a docker plugin. This plugin allows the developers use persistent storage and store it in the VMware datastore while allowing IT Administrators the capability to manage their environment their way.

In this post I will go thru the steps to add the all the components to the ESXi server and to the VM’s

Download Binaries

To download the binaries I used a Ubuntu machine.

1. create a folder to download the files. ex: mkdir vmware

2. change to the directory. cd vmware

3. download the files:

ubuntu package: https://github.com/vmware/docker-volume-vsphere/releases/download/1.0.beta/docker-volume-vsphere_1.0.beta_amd64.deb

ESXi vib package: https://github.com/vmware/docker-volume-vsphere/releases/download/1.0.beta/vmware-esx-vmdkops-1.0.beta.vib

Optional: I created a script that you can use to download all the files directly to your Linux Machine Download the Script from GitLab

Example: curl https://gitlab.com/carlosvargas/devops/raw/master/ubuntu/downvmdockplugin | sh

Copy the VIB to your ESXi server

To copy the VIB file you can follow these steps

scp vmware-esx-vmdkops-1.0.beta.vib root@1.2.3.4:/vmfs/volume/datastorename/foldername/vmware-esx-vmdkops-1.0.beta.vib

Enable Community Support for VIB

Connect to your ESXi host: ssh root@1.2.3.4

Enable community support for VIB files: esxcli software acceptance set –level communitysupported

Install the VMware Plugin VIB: esxcli software vip install –no-sig-check -v /vmfs/…./vmware-esx-vmdkops-1.0.beta.vip

Copy VMware Docker Plugin to your Docker VM

scp docker-volume-vsphere_1.0.beta_amd64.deb user@1.2.3.4:/home/user/docker-volume-vsphere_1.0.beta_amd64.deb

Install the VMware Plugin in your Ubuntu VM

Reboot your node: sudo reboot

Create Docker Volume with the VMware Plugin

To create the volume you need to use the –driver=vmdk parameter. here is an example: docker volume create –driver=vmdk –name=MyVolume -o size 10gb

To check your volumes execute: docker volume ls

Where are this volumes stored?

Go to to your vsanDatastore, you will see a new folder called docksvols. There you will find your new volume created.

Posted on Friday, May 20, 2016

5 steps to setup SSH PROXY VIA WITH PUTTY

Depending on your setup and where you are deploying your solution, you may have to jump via multiple servers before you can get access to your internal server. This quick guide will help you understand how you can leverage PUTTY to Proxy via multiple SSH hosts.

Here is the example: let say that you are on your house or outside your cloud provider and you need to access the private SSH server in the image. That server has an IP address that is private so it can’t be access from the internet. And there is only one server available from the internet. You can use that server as a SSH Proxy server so you can access the internal one via your SSH proxy server.

Here is what you need:

Install Putty suite completely not only the putty.exe
Have a Public Key configure on your Servers and have the Keys available.

5 Steps to configure SSH Proxy with Putty

Open Putty and create a new connection. Type the IP address or DNS Name of your Private SSH Server. On our Lab that will be any IP address or Private DNS. Type a name to save the session later. Do not save it yet.
Click the Connection  Data. Type the name in the Auto-login username field.
Click Connection Proxy. Type the IP Address or DNS server that is available externally or in the internet. Click Local for the Proxy Type and change the port to 22. Type your username that will be use to connect to the remote server. In the Telnet command or local proxy command type: plink %user@%proxyhost -nc %host:%port
Click Connection à SSH àAuth. Click Allow agent forwarding and then put your public key.
Go back up to the Session screen and click Save. Then Open.