Posted by Brian on Jun 16, 2010 in vCenter Server, VMware, vSphere | 0 comments
In working with a client recently I noticed that they are cloning virtual machines and it’s causing issues with their tool set. This really came to light when working with their XenApp servers. The Citrix team was building servers loaded with apps to create a template that could be cloned to create the other servers in a application pool. The issue with this is that the team was using existing servers already in production that already had the tools installed on them. The problem came to light with issues from the tools used to protect and monitor the virtual machines. This would not be an issue with standard OS templates already created that would have the tools added after the cloning process.
When cloning the virtual machine there are still a lot of registry entries left over with the old server name for tools like Opsware, McAfee and an asset mgmt application. These old registry entries would cause the new VM to knock the old VM out of the tools console and cause issues with reporting and management of the source server. For example Opsware would start talking to the newly cloned server thinking it was the source server and this would leave the source machine not in the patching scheduled.
To clean this up it was necessary to uninstall these tools from the new virtual machine then go back through the registry and clean up any entries that referenced the old server name. Then reboot the server and reinstall the tools. This will clean up the issues and allow everything to work without conflicting with the source server.
So for future requests of this type they have agreed to either use a base OS build and load applications on by hand or create their Citrix template with applications and clone prior to installing any monitoring applications. This will eliminate the issues that they had been experiencing.
Brian is a Technical Architect for a VMware partner and owner of this website. He is active in the VMware community and is helps lead the Chicago VMUG group. This blog Virtualize Tips was started to document and remember things that I come across while working with tech.
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Posted by Brian on Jun 12, 2010 in Certification, VCAP, VMware | 4 comments
The first exam in the new VMware intermediate series has released the Blueprint document. Blueprints are intended to give you a list of topics that are covered on the exam. So that if you are well versed in these topics you should do well on your exam. For this type of exam there is no substitute for real world experience or hundreds of hours of lab time.
The VCAP4-DCA is the VMware Certified Advanced Professional exam focused on Datacenter Administration. This is going to raise the level for VCP’s who want to show that they know their stuff. The exam is 100% hands on lab based exam material. The VDCA410 exam consists of approximately 40 live lab activities and a short pre‐exam survey consisting of 9 questions. Live lab activities consist of multiple tasks, where each task is scored. The total number of activities provided is based on the total number of tasks. Because of this, the actual number of lab activities may vary slightly between exams.
The scoring for the exam is not fully worked out until after the Beta period is over. The scale for scoring this exam will be like other exams and will have a range from 100-500.
For now the exam is available in English and countries where English is one of the languages will get an additional 15 minutes of time for the exam. The retake policy will require someone to wait 10 business days before they are able to try again. Something different or at least I have not noticed this before is that once you achieve a passing score you are not allowed to take the exam again.
Since you cannot yet book this exam the pricing is not yet available. According to earlier estimates from John Hall of VMware this exam should be in the $400 range depending on your location and exam provider.
You can find out all of the details on VCAP and download the blueprint from here.
Brian is a Technical Architect for a VMware partner and owner of this website. He is active in the VMware community and is helps lead the Chicago VMUG group. This blog Virtualize Tips was started to document and remember things that I come across while working with tech.
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Posted by Brian on Jun 11, 2010 in VMware | 0 comments
First off let me say that this is all in good fun and everyone gets a laugh out of a celebrity look alike. Although in this case and in our community we all know who the real vCelebrity is. This is just something that was kind of bugging me for a while and I was watching some late night TV and saw the car make over show with Chip Foose and it hit me. That Chip is Chad’s Doppelganger. For those of you that don’t watch the “How I met your mother” show on TV. A Doppelganger is someones double or look-alike. Heck even their names Chad and Chip both are 4 letters and start with C. This is something that parents do all the time.
Both guys are creative and passionate people in their fields and create some awesome stuff. They could work together and create a sweet ride for Chad and drop a vBlock in for Chip. Heck maybe Chip could design a custom vBlock with a cool paint scheme on the rack. Anyways have a look for yourself and maybe I’m just sleep deprived.
Brian is a Technical Architect for a VMware partner and owner of this website. He is active in the VMware community and is helps lead the Chicago VMUG group. This blog Virtualize Tips was started to document and remember things that I come across while working with tech.
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Posted by Brian on Jun 10, 2010 in vCenter Server, VMware, vSphere | 0 comments
Hot off the presses! The latest update for VMware vSphere is now available for download. Both Update 2 for ESX 4.0, ESXi 4.0 and vCenter 4.0 are all available now. Run don’t walk to your nearest PC with a fast connection and start downloading. Ok don’t run you might crash into something. Have fun playing with the latest update in your labs. You can download the latest version here.
Here are some of the release notes for ESX 4.0 U2, see full list here.
- Enablement of Fault Tolerance Functionality for Intel Xeon 56xx Series processors— vSphere 4.0 Update 1 supports the Intel Xeon 56xx Series processors without Fault Tolerance. vSphere 4.0 Update 2 enables Fault Tolerance functionality for the Intel Xeon 56xx Series processors.
- Enablement of Fault Tolerance Functionality for Intel i3/i5 Clarkdale Series and Intel Xeon 34xx Clarkdale Series processors— vSphere 4.0 Update 1 supports the Intel i3/i5 Clarkdale Series and Intel Xeon 34xx Clarkdale Series processors without Fault Tolerance. vSphere 4.0 Update 2 enables Fault Tolerance functionality for the Intel i3/i5 Clarkdale Series and Intel Xeon 34xx Clarkdale Series processors.
- Enablement of IOMMU Functionality for AMD Opteron 61xx and 41xx Series processors— vSphere 4.0 Update 1 supports the AMD Opteron 61xx and 41xx Series processors without input/output memory management unit (IOMMU). vSphere 4.0 Update 2 enables IOMMU functionality for the AMD Opteron 61xx and 41xx Series processors.
- Enhancement of the esxtop/resxtop utility— vSphere 4.0 Update 2 includes an enhancement of the performance monitoring utilities, esxtop and resxtop. The esxtop/resxtop utilities now provide visibility into the performance of NFS datastores in that they display the following statistics for NFS datastores: Reads/s, writes/s, MBreads/s, MBwrtn/s, cmds/s, GAVG/s(guest latency).
- Additional Guest Operating System Support— ESX/ESXi 4.0 Update 2 adds support for Ubuntu 10.04.
Here are some of the release notes for ESX 4.0 U2, see full list here.
- Enablement of Fault Tolerance Functionality for Intel Xeon 56xx Series processors— vSphere 4.0 Update 1 supports the Intel Xeon 56xx Series processors without Fault Tolerance. vSphere 4.0 Update 2 enables Fault Tolerance functionality for the Intel Xeon 56xx Series processors.
- Enablement of Fault Tolerance Functionality for Intel i3/i5 Clarkdale Series and Intel Xeon 34xx Clarkdale Series processors— vSphere 4.0 Update 1 supports the Intel i3/i5 Clarkdale Series and Intel Xeon 34xx Clarkdale Series processors without Fault Tolerance. vSphere 4.0 Update 2 enables Fault Tolerance functionality for the Intel i3/i5 Clarkdale Series and Intel Xeon 34xx Clarkdale Series processors.
- Enablement of IOMMU Functionality for AMD Opteron 61xx and 41xx Series processors— vSphere 4.0 Update 1 supports the AMD Opteron 61xx and 41xx Series processors without input/output memory management unit (IOMMU). vSphere 4.0 Update 2 enables IOMMU functionality for the AMD Opteron 61xx and 41xx Series processors.
- Enhancement of the resxtop utility— vSphere 4.0 U2 includes an enhancement of the performance monitoring utility, resxtop. The resxtop utility now provides visibility into the performance of NFS datastores in that it displays the following statistics for NFS datastores: Reads/s, writes/s, MBreads/s, MBwrtn/s, cmds/s, GAVG/s (guest latency).
- Additional Guest Operating System Support— ESX/ESXi 4.0 Update 2 adds support for Ubuntu 10.04.
Here are some of the release notes for vCenter 4.0 U2, see full list here.
- Guest Operating System Customization Improvements: vCenter Server now supports customization of the following guest operating systems:
- Windows XP Professional SP2 (x64) serviced by Windows Server 2003 SP2
- SLES 11 (x32 and x64)
- SLES 10 SP3 (x32 and x64)
- RHEL 5.5 Server Platform (x32 and x64)
- RHEL 5.4 Server Platform (x32 and x64)
- RHEL 4.8 Server Platform (x32 and 64)
- Debian 5.0 (x32 and x64)
- Debian 5.0 R1 (x32 and x64)
- Debian 5.0 R2 (x32 and x64)
Brian is a Technical Architect for a VMware partner and owner of this website. He is active in the VMware community and is helps lead the Chicago VMUG group. This blog Virtualize Tips was started to document and remember things that I come across while working with tech.
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Posted by Brian on Jun 10, 2010 in VMware | 0 comments
Well I knew this day would come eventually, we had run out of space on this HP MSA. I knew going into this small project but this is the direction that the team took. So we purchased another 2 TB of space and I needed to add it to the configuration. We ended up buying 6 450 GB SATA disks to use in the MSA 2312sa unit. The drives were used to create one vDisk with just over 2 TB of usable space that was split up into 2 Datastores in VMware.
The configuration was a breeze just like the initial setup. The disks were placed evenly across the disk shelves and appeared into the console as expected. A couple of clicks later I had a vDisk setup and then created to volumes and assigned them to my hosts once I had created the Datastores from the first Host.
If you need to know more about how to setup these you can read my initial post on how to setup a HP MSA 2300 series array here.
Brian is a Technical Architect for a VMware partner and owner of this website. He is active in the VMware community and is helps lead the Chicago VMUG group. This blog Virtualize Tips was started to document and remember things that I come across while working with tech.
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