wikiManage and monitor MegaRAID controllers under ESXi with the Light Weight Agent
The "Light Weight Agent" (LWA), which is also called "LSI Storage Authority Lightweight Monitor" (LWM), is a new tool to monitor MegaRAID controllers under vSphere 7.0 and 8.0. In comparison to elder monitoring methods, the LWA does not need a "Common Information Model" (CIM) or "Storage Management Initiative – Specification" (SMIS) provider. In the following article, the required steps for the commission of LWA are explained.
Technical background
The user interface provided by the LWA is identical to that of the LSI Storage Authority (LSA), but the LWA works fundamentally differently in the background. Until now, various management programs, such as the LSA, MegaRAID Storage Manager, MaxView Storage Manager, accessed the logs/sensors of the controller add-on cards via the Common Information Model (CIM) system. To do this, it was necessary to install the corresponding CIM providers, which collected the data from the hardware and passed it on to the CIM object manager, also known as the CIM broker. The CIM broker made the data from all CIM providers available centrally via standardized API interfaces for monitoring applications such as the LSA. The LWA is a “stand-alone” alternative that is more resource-efficient. This is due to the fact that no separate VM is required for the management application in addition to the omitted CIM system.
Installation vSphere 8.0
| Hint: The mail server settings under vSphere 8.0 are not safed. Email notifications are not possible at the moment. |
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The VSphere Installation Bundle (VIB) of LWA can be downloaded from the website of Broadcom. After this, activate the SSH on your host and upload the Vib file with an sFTP client, such as an WinSCP, in the /tmp directory. Now establish a connection to the ESXi host with an SSH client of your choice and install the program with the following command:
[root@localhost:~] esxcli software vib install -v /tmp/BCM_bootbank_lwmd_version.vib Installation Result Message: The update completed successfully, but the system needs to be rebooted for the changes to be effective. Reboot Required: true VIBs Installed: BCM_bootbank_lwmd_008.004.010.000-01 VIBs Removed: VIBs Skipped:
After this, the new host must be restarted and the LWA daemon must be started:
[root@localhost:~] esxcli daemon control start -s lwmd
Finally, the firewall ports, which are required by LWA, must be released. For this, the firewall ruleset lwmd must be activated:
[root@localhost:~] esxcli network firewall ruleset set -e 1 -r lwmd
You can verify with the following command if the ruleset is applied correctly. If the rule is applied correctly, “true” is returned:
[root@localhost:~] esxcli network firewall ruleset list | grep lwmd lwmd true
The LWA can now be accessed via IP address of the host and port 35557 in the web browser. The login is done with the login data of the ESXi root user.
IP-ESXi:35557
Installation vSphere 7.0
| hint: Under vSphere 7.0, the port shares and mail server settings are only saved temporarily and are lost on a restart. Email notifications are therefore currently not possible. |
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The installation of the VSphere Installation Bundle (VIB) under ESXi 7.0 is similar to that under ESXi 8.0. After you have downloaded the necessary VIB from Broadcom, the SSH service must first be started on the host, then the VIB file can be uploaded to the /tmp directory using an sFTP client, such as WinSCP. Finally, connect to the ESXi host via an SSH client and install the tool with the following command:
[root@localhost:~] esxcli software vib install -v /tmp/BCM_bootbank_BCM-vmware-lsa_version.vib Installation Result Message: The update completed successfully, but the system needs to be rebooted for the changes to be effective. Reboot Required: true VIBs Installed: BCM_bootbank_BCM-vmware-lsa_008.004.010.000-01 VIBs Removed: VIBs Skipped:
After this, the host must be rebooted. After the host has been started, the LWA service should already be active. This can be verified with the following command:
[root@localhost:~] /etc/init.d/lsad status LSA is running
The webinterface, that is hosted by the LWA service, is blocked by the firewall of the ESXi server at the moment. As the version for ESXi 7.0 does not have a ruleset currently, the firewall must be deactivated:
[root@localhost:~] esxcli network firewall unload
Alternatively, an individual port release can be created as described in the paragraph "Workaround" of the article KB 2008226. After this, the LWA is available via IP address of the host and the port 2463.
The login is made via login data of the ESXi root users.
IP-ESXi:2463
Additional information
In the following paragraph, you will find further information on LWA that are not required for the installation and commissioning, but are still worth knowing.
ESXi 8.0
The following information is of interest for the use of the LWA under ESXi 8.0
Deinstallation of LWA
esxcli software vib list | grep -i BCM esxcli software vib remove -n <LSA vib Name>
LWA service start/stop/restart
hint: There is no esxcli daemon command for the verification of the state. The below mentioned commands do not return a console issue.
| function | command |
|---|---|
| start | esxcli daemon control start -s lwmd |
| stop | esxcli daemon control stop -s lwmd |
| restart | esxcli daemon control restart -s lwmd |
Ports
incoming:
35557 - WebServer Port
35558 - LSA Port
outgoing:
25 - SMTP Port
465 - SMTPS Port
ESXi 7.0
The following information is of interest for the use of the LWA under ESXi 7.0.
LWA service state/start/stop/restart:
| function | command |
|---|---|
| start | /etc/init.d/lsad start |
| stop | /etc/init.d/lsad stop |
| restart | /etc/init.d/lsad restart |
| state | /etc/init.d/lsad state |
Deinstallation of LWA
esxcli software vib list | grep -i LSA esxcli software vib remove -n <LSA vib Name>
Ports
incoming:
2463 - WebServer Port
9000 - LSA Port
Sources
Author: Florian Sebald
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Translator: Alina Ranzinger Alina has been working at Thomas-Krenn.AG since 2024. After her training as multilingual business assistant, she got her job as assistant of the Product Management and is responsible for the translation of texts and for the organisation of the department.
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