I’ve used the previous version in small amounts in the past. But this new version I think will get used more, especially in my home lab. The update allows you to create groups of servers that you can view thumbnails of what is happening on the server from the group view. So if you were running updates, migrating data or something else that required multiple connections. It will remember your logon credentials or allow you to connect with a different ID. You can connect or disconnect from an entire group with one click. Now if I could find something like this for putty would be cool.
Today Cisco announce a sweet looking Android based Tablet. The tablet will offer HD video streaming, real-time video, multi-party conferencing, plus all the regular tablet functions like messaging, email, and browsing. The expected release date should be some time in first quarter of 2011. Full press release listed below.
I’ve seen a few other guides for this same type of install. I just wanted to put something together to save for myself. I will show you how to use the EDA deployment appliance to install vSphere in VMware Workstation. You can follow most of the same steps for a physical machine install with just a few changes.
For this I was testing things for my home lab and created this on my laptop just using Workstation 7.0. I created two virtual machines, one for the EDA appliance and one blank that will get ESX 4.0 installed from the Deployment script.
Step 2: Import the EDA virtual appliance into VMware workstation.
Step 3: After the input I had to add in a CD-Rom to the VM and attached the vSphere .iso file to the CD drive.
Step 4: You can then start up the EDA appliance and choose Reconfigure.
Step 5: Fill out your network information on the screen shown below. Then press enter or click on OK.
Step 6: You can now log into the configuration web page for the EDA appliance. In my configuration it was http://192.168.1.19
The default login for the page is root - root. You will be presented with several sections that will allow you to configure options for the install. I will briefly cover these parts as I did not change much on them for this test. The Post installation commands section allows you to script any custom changes or adds that you want to make for your install. The General settings section is used for basic network and disk settings for each install, this section is pretty easy to understand.
Step 7: Now you are ready to prepare the Host specific details. Refer to the image below as I describe the steps. You can either modify the sample host that is loaded by default. By clicking on the host name or selecting “new host” you will get a screen like the 2nd picture below. This will allow you to specify host name and IP addresses needed for your base install. Once created if you click on the “ks” link for the hostname you will see what the kick start file contains for commands.
Step 8: Now you will need to setup the options for the DHCP server. Upon clicking on the “configure DHCP server” link from the top menu you will be presented with the following configuration file. I highlighted a few of the important lines that I changed to work for my setup. You will need to make sure all of the normal DHCP options are set in this file.
Step 9: Now you will need to “import PXE files” so that you can boot the server that you will be installing ESX onto. You need to make sure that the ESX CD or .iso file is mounted to your EDA appliance. If the ESX disc or file is properly mounted you will see the confirmation in the top right just like the image below. Then you select the “Import PXE bootfiles” from the menu and you will see a screen like the second image below.
Step 10: If you are using a physical server to install onto you can start now and have the machine PXE boot.
If you are going to use a virtual machine you need to create a VM with the proper OS select, disk size, memory and number of Nic’s that you wish to use. Once this is done you will see a screen like the one below you start the install. I trust that you know what settings need to be used for installing ESX into VMware workstation, if not there are plenty of good guides for it. If you are using Workstation 7.x the process is now built in and very easy to select from the OS choices.
Note: If you created multiple host install names you will get presented with the options and can type the name of the one you wish to install. I circled in red above as an example.
If your lucky enough to be heading to one of the VMworld shows this year or thinking of buying the access to the content on the VMworld website for recorded sessions.
This year’s batch of breakout sessions and labs look to be innovative, technical deep dive, best practices, and partner sessions to be presented at VMworld should satisfy just about anyone.
With more talk about Storage IO Control (SIOC) each month, VMware is starting to leak more details about the feature. The best write up on the feature was by Scott Drummonds last month that you can read here. With SIOC you will be able to have almost a quality of service for VM’s in regards to storage IO control. With a very simple setup showcased in the video below you can level the playing field so that something happening in one virtual machine does not monopolize all of the storage bandwidth and starve other machines.
A few things to keep in mind for now. That SIOC is enabled per datastore, does not have a reservation limit at this time, only enforces limits when a threshold is reached and can enforce limits for IOPS when specified at the VM level. Thanks to Duncan for these details.
In the images below you can get an idea of how Storage IO Control is working along with Shares applied to Virtual Machines to stop any VM from hogging all of the IO.
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