AJ G-B Virtually

Another one for the VDI Bandwagon

AJ GB — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 00:11:44 GMT

News: Double-Take^® Software Acquires emBoot Inc.

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VMware ESX Networkimg KBs

AJ GB — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 00:03:13 GMT

I found some interesting VMware KB’s around networking. Networking being the thing that trips up people the most with VMware.

iSCSI Networking http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?cmd=displayKC&docType=kc&externalId=1001251&sliceId=2&docTypeID=DT_KB_1_1&dialogID=8608094&stateId=1%200%208606237

VLAN Configuration : http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1003806

Ether Channel Configuration http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1004048

VMware ESX 3.5 / 3i

AJ GB — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 23:39:47 GMT

Just to let you know there will be an update to ESX at the end of this year.

It will be available in the traditional format of ESX 3.5 on a CD, but VMware will also be shipping it via Hardware Manufacturers with servers as a flash card. Known as 3i.

For more info please contact your account manager...

New Features :

Guided Consolidation

Enhancement to VirtualCenter intended for use in smaller environments
Guides new virtualization users through the consolidation process in a wizard-based, tutorial-like fashion
Allows first time virtualization users to get started and achieve the benefits of server consolidation faster than ever before
Leverages capacity planning capabilities to discover physical servers, analyze their performance and trigger the conversion of these physical systems into virtual machines and intelligently places them on the most appropriate VMware ESX Server or VMware Server hosts

VMware Update Manager

Automates patch and update management for ESX Server hosts and select Microsoft and Linux virtual machines
Addresses one of the most significant pain points for every IT department - tracking patch levels and manually applying the latest security/bug fixes
Integrates with DRS to ensure zero-downtime ESX Server host patching capabilities
Enforces higher levels of compliance to patch standards than physical environments by securely patching offline virtual machines

VMware Distributed Power Management (Experimental)

Reduces power consumption in the datacenter through intelligent workload balancing
Automatically powers off servers not currently needed in order to meet service levels, and automatically powers on servers as demand for compute resources increases

VMware Storage VMotion

Enables live migration of virtual machine disks from one datastore to another with no disruption or downtime
Allows IT administrators to minimize service disruption due to planned storage downtime previously incurred for rebalancing or retiring storage arrays
Simplifies array migration and or/upgrade tasks, and reduces I/O bottlenecks by moving virtual machines to the best available storage resource in your environment

VMware Site Recovery Manager – (released 2008)

Provides industry-leading capabilities for fully automating the entire disaster recovery process
Integrates with VMware VirtualCenter and guides users through the process of creating, automating, and testing disaster recovery plans for their virtual infrastructure
Transforms disaster recovery into a dramatically simpler, faster, and more reliable process that adapts to today’s dynamic datacenters

Enhancements :

ESX Server Scalability Enhancements

Easy scaling of workloads with

Support for 64GB of RAM in virtual machines
Support for physical machines with upto 128GB of RAM.

Expanded Storage and Networking Choices

Expanded storage and networking choices:

Support for local SATA storage
Support for 10 GigE
Support for Infiniband

Great new VMTS ESX patching tool

AJ GB — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 22:55:58 GMT

VMTS have released a GUI patching tool that downloads all the latest ESX patches from the tinternet for you. I then checks your ESX server for missing patches and applies the ones you need.

At time of writing it was still a little rough around the edges but it gets better with every release. Its worth a look while you wait for vmware to include patch management in their next release.

http://www.vmts.net/VMTSPatchManager.htm

Also have a look at the new Veeam reporter tool which rocks

http://www.veeam.com/veeam_reporter.asp

while the veeam config tool is pretty lame it does have one good feature it sets the NTP time servers for you.

http://www.veeam.com/veeam_configurator.asp

How to transfer .vmdk files over the network

AJ GB — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 19:45:35 GMT

Its quite a common question and there are a few ways you can do it.

You could use WINSCP or Veeam FastSCP to copy the appropriate .vmdk files and vmx file to a windows box and then from the windows box upto the new server.

Then register the VM by browsing the datastore in the virtual center client, right clicking on the .vmx file and select add to inventory.

Copy files with scp
Log into esxhost1, then:
# cd /vmfs/vmfs_label (get to the desired .vmdk source directory)
# ls -lh (to confirm you see the desired disk on your source host)
# scp /vmfs/vmfs_label/source.vmdk root@esxhost2:/vmfs/vmfs_label/target.vmdk

(note: the method above uses some example variables such as esxhost1, esxhost2, vmfs_label (which is the vmfs friendly name), source.vmdk, and target.vmdk. Substitute for your environment as appropriate.)

VMware ESX VI3 New Features

AJ GB — Mon, 21 May 2007 16:31:40 GMT

At TSX VMware were pretty tight lipped about what new features they were planning for esx. But in one of the sessions Mike Laverick managed to tie down the product manager and then squeeze him really hard. The results were.

1) Live Data Migration (vmotion with storage)

2) Third Prty Virtual Switches

3) Better management of virtual switches across servers

4) H.A. Non Stop

5) New Service Console

6) Expanded HCL List

7) Storage Mirroring inside ESX

8) 8 VCpu's coming

Query orphaned VM's

AJ GB — Fri, 18 May 2007 17:42:59 GMT

find -iname "*-flat.vmdk" -mtime +7 -ls

you could identify vmdk files older then 7 days that have not been modified and are either off or orphaned.

or

find -iname "*-delta.vmdk" -mtime +7 -ls

to find old snapshots

VMware ESX Tools - Autopatcher and VIDocIT

AJ GB — Mon, 14 May 2007 21:09:20 GMT

The following tool should make life a lot easier if you have to patch multiple ESX servers. (Though I havn't tried it myself yet)

http://www.mightycare.de/index.php?option=com_docman&task=cat_view&gid=16&Itemid=69

Also there is ViDocIT if you want to produce a basic report on your VI3 server install - you will need Virtual Center though and the demo only supports a one server report.

Website:

http://www.vidocit.com/

viDocIT is a simple to use Windows application that in a matter of minutes will create an installation documentation report for each of your ESX (v3.0 or later) hosts connected to VMware VirtualCenter v2.0 or later.

Each ESX host is represented by it´s own html file and have the following information:

* Host Summary
* Processor configuration
* Physical RAM
* Storage - SAN, Fc, iSCSI, NFs and multipathing
* Datastore information
* Network - Virtual switches, physical adapters.
* Licensing configuration
* Console Operating System information

See a sample doc:

http://www.vidocit.com/html/sample/esxdoc-sample-01.html

Command To Query currently Installed VI3 patches

AJ GB — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 20:29:30 GMT

esxupdate -l query (That is a - l lower case with no space in between the - and the l)

VMware TSX EMEA Day 1 Part 1

AJ GB — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 17:51:00 GMT

Notes From Day One - Session One

We had the normal introduction session this morning where VMware really seem to be pushing their virtual appliances. These are essentially virtual machines which are prebuilt with their O.S. and apps already installed and ready to go, So you don't have to go through the rigmarole of reading the instruction manual and putting 3 Cd's in. They will also be releasing the manager for their new Ace Product as a V.A.

They hope that software suppliers will catch in and start distributing software preconfigured as a V.A.and in fact one of the partners at the event was already doing this. If they make it to easy we could all be out of a job!

VMware have a techie network where you can read blogs WIKI's and support forums. The home page is RSS enabled now as well. See www.vmtn.net

Their are supposed to be only 1700 VMware Certified Professionals in VI3 since October 2006 across emea. With the UK being the biggest area.

They have a new 4 day advanced training course coming along which is supposed to follow on from the basic 4 day "Install and Configure" The new one will be "Deploy Secure and Analysis".

Also an new 2 day Operator course will be available aimed at the likes of operators - good for the South African community perhaps... and by that I mean the NOC and Gordon Cass.

There is also going to be a bootcamp or fastrack which will basically be the two four day courses amalgamated into one.

To really keep the money coming in they are also going to have an Advanced Certification coming out in Q3.

First session of the day was Vmware Consolidated Backup or Vmware's LAN free Backup for those atheists.

Its an improvement on their initial scripting known as VMSNAP and basically tells the vmtools running on a virtual machine to quieses the disk and run any third party scripts to quiese applications such as SQL and Exchange. Then it copies the contents of a VM off of the SAN on to a local windows disk belonging to a windows server known as a "backup proxy". at this point the normal backup software takes over and backups up the files to disk or tape.

The VCB proxy can't run on the same machine as Virtual Center and it won't work inside a VM with out a hell of a lot of work.

The backup software must use timestamps as its not allowed to write directly to the VM during backup.

Restore of an entire VM is a two step process where you do your normal restore with your backup software then copy the files to a VMFS partition and run a vcbrestore script. There is a trick here where you can restore to a windows share which is actually a mount point on an NFS share on the ESX server to make the process simpler.

There is a bug at the moment where a VM's disks must all exist on the same LUN for VCB to work.

VMware TSX Day 2

AJ GB — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 17:55:00 GMT

Day 2 Started with another Networking session, this one I felt was a little better than the last and I will post a link to the Slides when they appear but some of the highlights are :

VM’s that need to talk to each other should be on the same Vswitch so the external network is never touched.
A typical esx server with 4 network cards should have the service Console and vmkernel on the first vswitch connected to two physical Nics ie one onboard NIC and one PCI NIC. Vmtraffic should be on the second vswitch which also has two physical NICS attached.
Use separate portgroups for different VLAN’s
If you have 5 to 10 network cards use network trunking
Virtual port ID teaming is faster than MAC based teaming and is the preferred option. It load balances all VM’s across the switch not load balanced per vm.
IP Hash load balancing does per vm teaming but apparently you have to channel the ports so its not recommended unless you have a VM with a really high load.
There is a Link state tracking KB article coming soon.
NIC members in a team must be in the same layer 2 domain.
If you use channelling then use IP Hash teaming but make sure you disable channel negotiations as this is not supported.
Avoid using Native VLAN’s.
TSO/LSO (TCP segment off load) is not supported
VMware` are working on pass through where the guest can access the physical NIC directly for near native performance
Infiniband is supported
10 GB Ethernet copper is coming soon.

Next was a session called Top support issues another good download when the slides arrive but highlights were.

All the support guys are Irish (based out of Ireland, I’m still not to sure how good the VMware support is).

They did an example of how to recover if you loose access to the console which is exactly what happened to me in the past so it is obviously a common problem also chapter 7 in the following document is good.

Google : serviceconsole-guide.pdf

Issues with STP (spamming Tree Protocol) can cause HA to fail over.
Don’t expand a VMDK disk which has snapshots on it as it will buggered
Then he went on to explain how snapshots can fill the entire disk and corrupt the VM so you have to restore from backup. Which is exactly what happened to me when working for NSK last week. Hence you should all have read the email I sent out. (when snapshots go bad).
You can crop snapshot delta files but you loose the data.
You can have a maximum of 32 snapshots.
Don’t use extents but if you have to add one to an ESX server make sure you then manually rescan the LUNS all the other ESX servers so they know about it.
2TB is the limit of VMFS
There was a section on how to recover after deleting a VMFS partition.

Another Support session was next with another invaluable slide set.

VI3 won’t let you present the same LUN to two ESX servers with a different LUN ID as it will presume it is a snapshot LUN and automatically hide it. This happened to one of our customers.

You can see the LUN being hidden in /var/log/vmkernal

There are two ways to deal with it :

· Resignature – used when presenting same lun to the original ESX server you have to reregister the VM’s

· Disallow snaphot LUNS can be changed to 0 so LUNs are visable.

There is a driver that allows writes to VMFS2 volume when doing an upgrade.

VCB issues

o Disable automount

o The same LUN id’s must be used on the proxy as our being used on the ESX server

o Multipathing is not supported on the proxy

Did the VI3 VCP exam and passed .

Next I went to the ACE session which is the VMware product that no one has ever heard about as it is niche and VMware still can’t get their act straight when positioning it in the market. (Also there probably isn’t a Sales person alive that could understand/sell it – Ok well not one at Ultima anyway – the gauntlet has been laid down...).

Basically its VM running on workstation 6 that is wrapped in a security layer.

You can set

o When it will expire

o How many times it will run

o Who can use it A.D. integrated

o Password protect it

o Restrict its networking

o Block keyloggers

o Manage it with ACE Server

o And loads more

So it might be great for outside consultants coming in to your company where you give them this VM on a USB key (oh yes its portable) and its a totally locked down VM.

Marketing give you all this rubbish about other scenarios like training and demo’s so I pointed out to the presenter that none of the LABS or other DEMO’s were using it at TSX.

I was really looking forward to this session as Gareth told me that ACE 2 was going to have some great new features like VDI integration. Well it doesn’t its just a polished ACE v1 with USB stick compatibility. So thanks for wasting an hour of my life Gareth! In your defence though, they did say at VMworld that they might do some of that stuff but never did. I think this product is basically like a Virtual Appliance and will probably merge with the VA’s.

Highlights from the trade show : --

Got two highlighters, three pens, a knife, a polo shirt a nice rucksack and a USB hub. – RESULT!!!

SCRIPT LOGIC have a stall and are pushing all their normal stuff which I won’t go into as the Microsoft guys will already know about that.

Double Take where there – they have all their normal “in-vm” replication but more excitingly and ESX level replication engine to compete with vizioncore and ESXreplicator – its agent less and called Double Take for VMware Infrastructure. – DEMO from website.

Aexia – Never really heard of them before but they also have a replication engine at the esx level Virtual Solution Box (VSB) which is a Virtual Appliance and has similar functionality to esxRanger. – FREE Demo from website.

All in all a very good day can’t wait to get back and try out some of these new products.

VMware TSX EMEA Day 1 Part 2

AJ GB — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 17:53:00 GMT

This session was on CPU scheduling and was rubbish. There was this poor mumbling Indian chap who drowned on for an hour. It was just like making a support call to Bangladesh. After an hour he had to rush the last slide which had the important stuff on it.

Esxtop is a command line tool used in the console to monitor performance.

When VMware use the term virtual worlds they mean virtual cpu’s.

%used = cpu utilization

%readytime=the amount of time the VM is waiting for a cpu cycle

%TWAIT=the amount of time the cpu is waiting and idling

%CSTP=the amount of time the m is in a descheduled stop state ( I think descheduled is a word that VMware made up).

A High %readytime means you have hardware constraints.

A HIGH %wait time means its not CPU intensive

A High %CSTP means you need to reduce your number of VM’s

Next on the list was some intensive networking, once again I got there on time and got a chair, those late arrivals had to sit on the floor.

I will cover some high lights but its all in the slides to be published later if anyone understands this in depth networking stuff.

Virtual switches maintain a Mac port forwarding table like a normal switch

Their is a direct channel from the virtual Nics to the physical Nic for checksum and segmentation offload.

There is no learning of unicast.

There is no ICMP snooping for multicast

5 Different Nic types

Vlance – Old slow AMD PCnet emulation
E1000 - Used for 64 bit guest emulation
Vmxnet which most VM’s use (1GB)
Vswif – service Console Nic based on Vmxnet
Vmkernal – Used for ISCSI traffic and vmotion stuff.

These are all strictly layer 2 NIC devices

Virtual ports are the same as physical ports

Port groups allow common network configurations to be recorded across separate ESX servers. They contain VLAN Info – teaming policies, traffic shaping and vswitch name.

Uplinks connected on the same switch are teamed automatically so you don’t need to do trunking, though in a later better lecture they told me that if you have more than 4 physical nics then it is worth doing trunking.

Beacon probing doesn’t work in 3.01

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Lastly I did the programming session in the hope that I might come out of a conversation with Bonde next time, feeling like I new what he was talking about.

But its all gobbledey gook to me. We spent time editing some basic scripts checking syntax and stuff on a French keyboard that was setup as U.S. so there wasn’t a chance in hell anyone was going to get the right funny { and it has come to my attention that the French have pretty much removed or hidden the dollar sign from their keyboard in a move designed to raise two fingers at our Yankee brothers. So the end result was that no one had progressed past exercise 3 of 7 by the end of session, the only good thing about the keyboard was that it levelled the playing field between the have skills and have no skills, a bit like the labour government was supposed to do. Perhaps we should get a French government ?

Basically there is a Perl toolkit you can download with SOAP built in to keep it clean. Once you have got this you can use some of their sample scripts to report on interesting things like VM disks filling up.

Scripts are found at

www.Run-virtual.com

and www.VI3Demo.com

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I spent the rest of the evening smooching round all the stalls on the ground floor in the hope that their might be a foxy looking sales lady to remove the blurred images of all those sandals and pony tails from may poor tired eyes. – Oh yeah they had free bear and wine plus dubious looking French finger food

Highlights from the stands (in no particular order)

- got a couple of pens and a magnetic paper clip holder, plus one dubious object that looks like a fish hook but I’m not sure what it is.

- Provision Networks offer a Virtual access suite for VDI but not sure how good it is

- ThinPrint do a printing solution for VDI – ask the citrix guys!

- VizionCore – covered earlier

- Told the HP guy their outsourcing was rubbish (I used to work for them)

- Met this Welsh guy who works for HP that used to work for Robin (during the war) and did the best “Shuffa” impression I have ever seen, I should have videoed it for you guys.

- ZXTM do a whole networking SSL and I quote “Layer 8” management thing and have tagged on the end a connection broker

- Pinched the lab documentation for SDK programming and VCB so we can use it back in the office

- Sysload do agent based performance management which is probably no use to Ultima for Vmware

- HP have a snapin for insight manager that manages virtual machines but I get the impression its pretty rubbish.

- Nobody in Europe knows what an Elevator pitch is (or cares) despite the fact its in the Vmware VSP exam.

- Dunes have some great stuff built around business processes but basically you can tailor it to do pretty much anything for VMware. They already have a connection broker module. Looks like it could be great for enterprise customers.

- Left hand networks have an ISCI SAN you build on HP or IBM hardware the magic bit being that it can be distributed across sites and will automatically replicate.

- Equalogic also have a great ISCSI network offering but based on their own SAN hardware.

- Storage vendors are desperate to get some sales on the back of VMware and realise that customers are clever enough to know that they don’t need to pay through the nose any more to get a SAN. They keep pushing SAN virtualisation though and its just not necessary unless you are an enterprise customer.

Met our ETC product development Services manager at supper, he was a nice chap who new what he was taking about ( looks like the spitting image of Family Guy). Basically ETC are making all the money from training in VMware as the demand is huge and margin is enormous while making no money from software sales or box shifting. They also have techies that can do the pre-sales and consultancy for those resellers that don’t have the skills. If you ask me (not that you did) I can’t see where the line starts or ends between disti and reseller any more.

VMware TSX EMEA Intro

AJ GB — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 17:48:00 GMT

The vmware TSX didn't start till Tuesday (had a nice weekend with the wife in cannes though untill I reversed the brand new audi A3 hire car in to a green metal post. Turns out that they don't sell Tcut in france but nail varnsih remover is a god send). Also when the little man turns green at a pedestrian crossing in france it doesn't actually mean that it is clear to cross.

But I did make some notes for Monday.

I went for dinner with the product manager for magerius (one of our distis) in Germany.

Magerius have a remote training facility that we can use to deliver onsite training to customers. Something we can't do at the moment due to the amount of hardware required.

Magerius are a German company.(this should obviously count against them)

Magerius have an online quoting system in the UK now to give instant quotes including margin to their resellers.

I was chatting with this German guy and just saying how I felt San virtualisation wasn't necessary as vmware does it at the front end when the lead technical guy for equallogic walked buy and took me apart. (where is Steve Dawes when you need him).

Equallogic do iscsi only sans where you pay one price only for the hardware and all the software including snapshotting and multipathing comes free. It does sata sas and scsi. Can aggregate the storage and the networking. 10gb over ethernet coming soon. One management interface, you can carve up the storage on the fly. Any luns are spread across all the spindals. Looks really good.

Anyway got to go now since the consolidated backup lab is starting now. I got here early (first time ever) and am sitting in the front row. Bound to have some complete geek sitting next to me.

Script to install ESX / VI3 patch

AJ GB — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 22:40:00 GMT

This is a simple script to deploy ESX 3.01 patches with out having to tar all the patches and reboot 14 times.

I have arranged the script so that the patches are installed in the correct order.

Copy all the patches into /tmp using winscp or Veeam Fast SCP then either copy and paste the lines in or create a txt file and run it. You will have to chmod the txt file before you can execute it.

To change the execute permissions use "chmod 777 file.txt"

If you don't have /tmp you can modify the script and use another folder instead.

tar -zxvf ESX-2158032.tgz
tar -zxvf ESX-1410076.tgz
tar -zxvf ESX-1006511.tgz
tar -zxvf ESX-9986131.tgz
tar -zxvf ESX-8173580.tgz
tar -zxvf ESX-6921838.tgz
tar -zxvf ESX-2066306.tgz
tar -zxvf ESX-6075798.tgz
tar -zxvf ESX-5497987.tgz
tar -zxvf ESX-3996003.tgz
tar -zxvf ESX-2092658.tgz
tar -zxvf ESX-2031037.tgz
tar -zxvf ESX-1917602.tgz
tar -zxvf ESX-1271657.tgz
tar -zxvf ESX-9865995.tgz
tar -zxvf ESX-6856573.tgz
tar -zxvf ESX-6050503.tgz
tar -zxvf ESX-5885387.tgz
tar -zxvf ESX-5031800.tgz
tar -zxvf ESX-3199476.tgz
tar -zxvf ESX-9916286.tgz
tar -zxvf ESX-6431040.tgz
tar -zxvf ESX-2559638.tgz
tar -zxvf ESX-2257739.tgz
tar -zxvf ESX-1541239.tgz
tar -zxvf ESX-7557441.tgz
tar -zxvf ESX-7408807.tgz
tar -zxvf ESX-7302867.tgz
tar -zxvf ESX-7281356.tgz
tar -zxvf ESX-6704314.tgz
tar -zxvf ESX-6657345.tgz
tar -zxvf ESX-5140477.tgz
tar -zxvf ESX-5095559.tgz
tar -zxvf ESX-4825991.tgz
tar -zxvf ESX-1000073.tgz
tar -zxvf ESX-1000070.tgz
tar -zxvf ESX-1000039.tgz

esxupdate -n -r file:/tmp/ESX-2158032 update
esxupdate -n -r file:/tmp/ESX-1410076 update
esxupdate -n -r file:/tmp/ESX-1006511 update
esxupdate -n -r file:/tmp/ESX-9986131 update
esxupdate -n -r file:/tmp/ESX-8173580 update
esxupdate -n -r file:/tmp/ESX-6921838 update
esxupdate -n -r file:/tmp/ESX-2066306 update
esxupdate -n -r file:/tmp/ESX-6075798 update
esxupdate -n -r file:/tmp/ESX-5497987 update
esxupdate -n -r file:/tmp/ESX-3996003 update
esxupdate -n -r file:/tmp/ESX-2092658 update
esxupdate -n -r file:/tmp/ESX-2031037 update
esxupdate -n -r file:/tmp/ESX-1917602 update
esxupdate -n -r file:/tmp/ESX-1271657 update
esxupdate -n -r file:/tmp/ESX-9865995 update
esxupdate -n -r file:/tmp/ESX-6856573 update
esxupdate -n -r file:/tmp/ESX-6050503 update
esxupdate -n -r file:/tmp/ESX-5885387 update
esxupdate -n -r file:/tmp/ESX-5031800 update
esxupdate -n -r file:/tmp/ESX-3199476 update
esxupdate -n -r file:/tmp/ESX-9916286 update
esxupdate -n -r file:/tmp/ESX-6431040/ESX-1161870 update

esxupdate -n -r file:/tmp/ESX-6431040/ESX-3416571 update

esxupdate -n -r file:/tmp/ESX-6431040/ESX-5011126 update

esxupdate -n -r file:/tmp/ESX-6431040/ESX-7737432 update

esxupdate -n -r file:/tmp/ESX-6431040/ESX-7780490 update

esxupdate -n -r file:/tmp/ESX-6431040/ESX-8174018 update

esxupdate -n -r file:/tmp/ESX-6431040/ESX-8852210 update

esxupdate -n -r file:/tmp/ESX-6431040/ESX-9617902 update
esxupdate -n -r file:/tmp/ESX-2559638 update
esxupdate -n -r file:/tmp/ESX-2257739 update
esxupdate -n -r file:/tmp/ESX-1541239 update
esxupdate -n -r file:/tmp/ESX-7557441 update
esxupdate -n -r file:/tmp/ESX-7408807 update
esxupdate -n -r file:/tmp/ESX-7302867 update
esxupdate -n -r file:/tmp/ESX-7281356 update
esxupdate -n -r file:/tmp/ESX-6704314 update
esxupdate -n -r file:/tmp/ESX-6657345 update
esxupdate -n -r file:/tmp/ESX-5140477 update
esxupdate -n -r file:/tmp/ESX-5095559 update
esxupdate -n -r file:/tmp/ESX-4825991 update
esxupdate -n -r file:/tmp/ESX-1000073 update
esxupdate -n -r file:/tmp/ESX-1000070 update
esxupdate -n -r file:/tmp/ESX-1000039 update

WHEN SNAPSHOTS GO BAD (and fill the disk)

AJ GB — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 21:44:00 GMT

A recent experience of mine has shown a flaw in the use of snapshots.

How Do Snap Shots Work? Essentially, a snapshot is a point in time image of your VM that can also contain the memory data. After taking a snapshot any further data written to the VM's disk is written into a new vmdk file on the vmfs partition. As time goes on the new vmdk file grows in size. This is where issues arise.The VMDK has the potential to grow in size and fill the disk. When this happens the vm will stop working and it may well affect any other VM's on the same partition. So the standard approach is to delete the snapshots either through the GUI and "Snapshot Manager" or through the command line. The trouble is you need to have free space available to delete any snapshots and consolidate your VMDK files and the process errors out if you have no space.

The Solution? Free some space. Delete or move a VM to another disk. In the above scenario I had to delete the whole VM and restore it from tape as it got corrupted when the "remove snapshot process" failed.

Lessons Learnt. :

Set an alarm in Virtual Center to email you when your disks get 90% full
If you don't have Virtual Center use your hardware management agents to send an email. e.g. HP Insight Manager or IBM RAID Manager
Delete any snap shots after a prearranged period of time in order to contain their growth
If snapshots disappear from you VM you can remove it from the inventory and re import and it may rediscover missing snapshots. Adding an extra snapshot can also force a VM to rediscover previous snapshots that it is missing.
VMware partner support is only GOLD ie 9am to 7pm.

More info http://www.rtfm-ed.co.uk/docs/vmwdocs/whitepaper-vmware-esx2.x-redo-demystified.pdf

VDI Pros and Cons

AJ GB — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 22:40:00 GMT

I pinched this excellent articule from Patrick Rouse :

http://www.msterminalservices.org/articles/Virtual-Desktop-Infrastructure-Overview.html

There are many advantages and some disadvantages to any VDI Solution, but some common usage scenarios are:

Enterprise Desktop Consolidation – many organizations struggle with management of their client computers. Tasks like procurement of desktop computer hardware, deploying or patching desktop operating systems, updating antivirus signature, securing data, and desktop support become more and more challenging as the size of an organization grows, and the disbursement of employees across multiple locations increases. Replacing all or a bulk of an organization’s computer workstations with expendable thin client terminals and managing the client OS and applications in a centralized location is something most CIOs would love to be able to do.
Remote Developer Support – as companies have outsourced all or some of their development efforts, some problems have arisen. How does one provide a remote application developer with a powerful, secure working environment, while protecting the parent organization’s source code and intellectual property. VDI addresses these issues by providing a remote developer with one or a group of virtual machines that can be used, rebooted, destroyed and easily rebuilt. Since the working environment is contained in the corporate data center, source code remains in the hands of the owners.

Advantages of VDI

Reduced cost in purchasing desktop computers, as thin clients often last two to three times longer than a desktop computer
Centralized Client OS Management
Rapid Client Deployment
Reduction in desktop support costs
Reduction in electricity costs, as thin client computers use only a fraction of amount of energy that is used by a desktop computer.
Improved Data Security
Secure Remote Access, as most connection brokers offer an SSL VPN Component and Web Portal
Compliance with HIPAA and Sarbanes Oxley (SOX)
Fewer Application Compatibility Problems than with Terminal Server and Citrix, as users have their own, single user OS.

Disadvantages of VDI

Many items that are problematic in Terminal Server and Citrix environments exist in VDI, i.e.:
- Printing often requires a 3^rd party add-on
- PDA Sync not supported
- Scanning is not natively supported
- Bi-Directional Audio is not natively supported
- Display protocols not suitable for Graphics Design
- Requires low-latency connection between the client and virtual infrastructure
Requires Enterprise Class Server Hardware and Storage Area Network
For VMs permanently assigned to specific users, these machines need to be patched just like a physical client computer.
Requires IT Staff skilled with VMware and terminal server. These are usually different staff, as the people using VMware are historically using it for consolidating servers, whereas those skilled with terminal server or Citrix are used to dealing with end user applications and devices. Although talk of VDI does not typically mention terminal server, every XP Pro or Vista Remote Desktop Host is a single user terminal server.
Does not scale as well as terminal server, which often can host 25 to 100 users per dual CPU server. VDI will likely scale from 10 to 20 VMs per dual CPU server, depending on how each VM is configured.

Conclusion

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure acceptance is becoming more widespread every day. This was evident by the number of VDI sessions at the 2006 VMWORLD Conference, and the percentage of the 7000 attendees that flooded them. There is also no lacking in the number of vendors offering VDI solutions that work with VMware. The question will be which solution to choose, and which solutions still exist a few years from now. As usually happens, new technology causes a lot of companies to jump on the bandwagon. It usually takes a few years to weed out those with solid product and strategy that will continue to grow with the needs of their customers.

VI3 Performance Tuning

AJ GB — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 22:27:00 GMT

Good new doc available

URL=http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi_performance_tuning.pdf

How much can VI 3 Handle

AJ GB — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 22:28:00 GMT

Another good doc

Configuration Maximums

http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi3_301_201_config_max.pdf

Command to expand a disk in Vmware VI3 / esx 2.5x

AJ GB — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 16:10:00 GMT

vmkfstools -X 10G disk1.vmdk

will extend disk1.vmdk to 10GB

You will then need to let windows know that it can use the entire disk - if it isn't a boot or system disk then this is easy. You simply go to the command prompt run diskpart. Select the disk then the volume and run extend.

If its a system disk or got the page file. You need to either boot off of a bartpe cd and run the command or temporarily attach it as a secondary disk to another VM and run the same command.

If like me you get..

Failed to extend disk : One of the parameters supplied is invalid. (1)

This is because its a disk I imported from ESX 2.5x and needs t be converted first with vmkfstools -M disk1.vmdk

Vmware Time Sync

AJ GB — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 13:57:00 GMT

If you want to completely disable time synchronization in the guest, open the virtual machine's configuration file (.vmx) in a text editor and set the following options to FALSE.

tools.syncTime
time.synchronize.continue
time.synchronize.restore
time.synchronize.resume.disk
time.synchronize.shrink

If instead you want the guest to have a constant offset from real time as maintained by the host, you can use the rtc.diffFromUTC option, or simply set the CMOS TOD clock time from the virtual machine's BIOS setup screen or from within the guest operating system. In Microsoft Windows, setting the system time automatically updates the CMOS clock. If you want, you can force the CMOS TOD clock's offset to be initialized to a specific value at power on. To do so, set the option rtc.diffFromUTC in the virtual machine's .vmx configuration file to a value in seconds. For example, setting rtc.diffFromUTC = 0 sets the clock to UTC at power on, while setting rtc.diffFromUTC = -25200 sets it to Pacific Daylight Time, seven hours earlier than UTC. The guest operating system can still change the offset value after power on by writing directly to the CMOS RTC. For more info see http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vmware_timekeeping.pdf