How to recover an active vsm

[christopher.jowett]

Hi Guys,

This might sound like a stupid question but if you have your Nexus 1000v environment up and running, everything is going well but someone accidental deletes the ACTIVE vsm, how do you recover from that making sure that the new VSM you build will be able to see all the VEM modules within the environment.

I know that you can run a secondary VSM, which would solve this issue but what would happen if you didnt and you lost the active VSM, is there anyway back?

I tried to simulate this by building another VSM with all the same settings and using the same Cisco_Nexus_1000v extension key, although it worked, did not display the VEM moduels on the VSM when issuing a "show mod" on the VSM

Thanks

[abbharga]

Hi Christopher,

You can look at the following DVS recovery documents:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/switches/datacenter/nexus1000/sw/4_0_4_s_v_1_3_a/troubleshooting/configuration/guide/n1000v_trouble_17system.html#wp1203250

Did you have the config from the previous VSM which you applied back after the new VSM install?

./Abhinav

[christopher.jowett]

cheers for the document.

About the configuration though, i guess the logical answer would be yes i did have the config but in this case i didnt have any config at all, i tried to mirror image the configration, basically using same domain ID, port profile names etc but i changed the extension key, to match the old VSM, here is where i have the trouble and even when it did work, if i ran a show mod, it didnt return the correct VEM modules, in fact it didnt return any. I could create port-profiles and it would send it to VCENTER, i could do vmotion, it looked like the whole environment was working but i was put off because it wouldnt show the correct information on the VSM.

[abbharga]

Can you confirm or try the following:

1. The old extension key is removed from the VC and the new is registered again after the extension key change on the new one,

2. The control and the packet vlans were marked as system vlans as part of the previous configuration

3. While recovering / building the new VSM, have the control and the packet interface of th VSM disconnected (this can be done at the VM properties level) until you copy or re-configure the VSM to have all the required port-profiles (specailly the uplink ones) once you have the config on the VSM you can re-connect the interfaces,

A quick summary of the process you can follow:

1)      Copy vmware vc extension key and running config from existing VSM
2)      Create new VSM and choose to configure it manually.
3)      Before powering it ON and configuring the new VSM ensure that the VSM Control and Packet interfaces are disconnect at the VM level.
4)      Bring up new VSM and make the basic configuration (Name, IP address, Domain id, enable telnet, and SVS parameters – same from old VSM)
5)      Connect to the new VSM via telnet and copy old configurations except
    a.       Port-channels
    b.      the default settings
    c.       ones configured in step 4
    d.      and ensure that the svs connection is not connected.
Note: Since the Control interface is not connected the ethernet interfaces won't show up and hence we won't be able to copy the config for the ethernet interfaces. The config for the ehternet interfaces can be copied once we connect the control interface of the VSM and see the modules back in the VSM.
6)      Change the extension key of the new VSM to match the old VSM
7)      Go to the VC and unregister the existing extension key and log out of VC (the logout is just to clean up the old extension key entry)
8)      Download thenew  VSM extension plugin
9)  Register the new plugin in the VC.
10)  Go to the VSM and under svs configuration issue the connect command
11)  Go and enable the VSM control and packet interfaces from VM settings.

Hope this helps!!

./Abhinav