The release also adds support for mixed chargeback models. VKernel Chargeback 2.0 now supports both allocated and actual resource consumption models. By reporting on both measures, infrastructure teams can chargeback for actual resource consumption, allocated resources, or simply show application teams the difference in real dollars between their allocated capacity and actual usage. This cost visibility is critical to capacity management, reducing VM spral and supporting private cloud initiatives.

Hi There,

You may have seen a recent VMware marketing sheet comparing VMware CapacityIQ to VKernel’s products. We are flattered by their attention!

So here is our challenge: download CapacityIQ from VMware and do the same for Capacity Analyzer. See which one more accurately shows current performance bottlenecks in your VM environment or predicts future bottlenecks.

If we lose, dinner is on us from Omaha Steaks, or we will make a $100 contribution to a charity of your choice.

Either way, you will end up with a full belly or a VM environment free of performance problems.

Best regards,
Bryan Semple
CMO, VKernel
Blog: http://blog.vkernel.com

VKernel Corp.
300 Brickstone Square, Suite 503
Andover, MA 01810

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 1: Download the EDA appliance http://www.vmware.com/appliances/directory/va/89313/download

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.

1. Performance & Scalability -
   1. VM retrieval is enhanced to discover VMs in much lesser time.
   2. VGC can manage up to 315 Powered On VMs on all connected servers. Number of VMs retrieved from a server will be limited once this limit is reached.
2. Support for 64 bit Windows has been added.
3. Remote Console feature has been extended to work with VMs hosted on vCenter.
4. Workspace files created with this version of VGC will be encrypted. However, workspace files created using earlier versions are not compatible with this release.
5. VM Templates are differentiated from regular VMs.
6. Workspace files can now be loaded in VGC by double clicking the .vgc files.

• On vHost tab new fields: Vendor and model.
• On vHost tab new fields: Bios version and Bios release date.
• On vInfo tab new field: VM overall size in bytes (visible when using VI API 4.0)
• On vSnapshot tab new fields: Snapshot filename and size in bytes (visible when using VI API 4.0)
• New vNic tab. The vNic tab displays for each physival nic on the host the following fields: Host, datacenter, cluster name, network device, driver, speed, duplex setting, mac address, PCI and wakeon switch.
• Layout change on vHost, vSwitch and vPort tabpages. They now all start with host name, datacenter and cluster name.
• The commandline function ExportAll extended with an extra optional parameter. It’s now possible to specify the directory where the export files are written.

After reading this short document you will be able to get that new MSA array up and running quickly. I set my array up to talk to a small 3 node vSphere cluster but the setup would be the same if you were using for a Windows cluster or most other uses.

You can download the PDF of the document How to Setup MSA array here.

The HP Insight Control extension for VMware vCenter Server delivers powerful HP hardware management capabilities to virtualization administrators, enabling comprehensive monitoring, remote control and power optimization directly from the vCenter console. In addition, Insight Control delivers robust deployment capabilities and is an integration point for the broader portfolio of infrastructure management, service automation and IT operations solutions available from HP. Key capabilities integrated into the vCenter console include:

• Combined physical and virtual view: From a single pane of glass, monitor status and performance of virtual machines and the underlying host systems that support them.
• Integrated troubleshooting: Receive prefailure and failure alerts on HP server components and invoke HP management tools, such as Systems Insight Manager and Onboard Administrator, in-context, directly from the vCenter console
• Powerful Remote Control: Remotely manage and troubleshoot HP ProLiant and BladeSystem servers using HP Integrated Lights Out Advanced capabilities directly from the vCenter console.
• Proactive power management: Get the most out of your existing power envelope by comprehending and proactively managing power for hosts and pools of virtual machines across hosts

The VGC as it’s also known has been a pleasant surprise. It’s way more than just a remote control application. I have broken down some of the biggest features below along with screen shots. Some of my favorite features so far are the ability to open a putty session to the ESX host, Open the VM console or RDP session to the VM from the application. You can also use file explorer to see the local drives on the VM and Task Manager of the VM to see what processes are running. You can download the VGC application here.

Once you have connected to a ESX host or vCenter server you will get many of the standard options for a host or virtual machine. You work with snapshots of a Virtual Machine such as Create, Go To or Remove a Snapshot. There are also the standard VMware power related tools to allow for power on/off, reset and suspend of a Virtual Machine. You also have the option to upgrade the tools in the guest machine.

Lets take a look at the guest console options. You have a few options related to the Terminal and Console buttons depending on if you are selecting a Host or Guest machine. You can see from the picture below that if you choose the console selection from menu while selecting a Guest machine you will get the VM console of that guest. From there you can use the Device menu to connect to a Floppy or CD image and see details about the network adapters. Along the bottom of the screen you also have icons giving you feed back about what devices are connected to this guest machine. You can launch a RDP session by clicking the Terminal button while selecting a Windows guest machine.

Next up would be the ability to look into the Guest machine and work with Task Manager. Once you have authenticated with the Guest machine you will be able to access the Task Manager to see and interact with the process running on the machine. For this I used a Windows guest machine and was able to End a process or End a similar process by right clicking on an item. If you use the Applications menu from the menu at the top you can also select the “New Task” selection to execute a application in the Guest Machine.  There is also an option to Save Processes Details which will export to a .CSV file. The file will give you a listing of the processes running at the time of the capture into a file.

Next up would be the File Explorer section. From this section you will be able to browse the local drives of the Guest Machine much like using Windows Explorer. From here you can choose to download a file or folder and also be able to upload files to the Guest. This could be very handy in uploading something that you need to while connected to the console.

There are a few other basic features of the application that are very similar to working with guests and the host from the vSphere client or vCenter server so I did not cover them here.  One nice thing was the ability to click on a host then the Virtual Machine tab and you get the following view that shows things like Guest name, IP Address, Uptime, OS Type, Authenticated user and some basic virtual hardware information.

So if any of these features sound appealing to you I would highly suggest that you give the VGC a test run and see how it might help you in your daily work. Remember you can download it from the VMware Labs.

This post is more of a starting point on what ESXplot is and how to install and use. By now most of you should know that ESXplot was born out of the mind of Geoff White of VMware. Geoff is a coworker of Scott Drummonds the well known ESX performance expert.  Esxplot is a GUI application that lets you explore the data collected by esxtop in batch mode. The program takes a single command line argument which is the esxtop batch mode output file.

Why would you want to use esxplot? Well in the past your options to examine these files were to use Excel or Perfmon. Both options were very slow, sometimes taking hours to import the file before viewing. With esxplot your dump file will open within seconds usually. For more details you can read Scott’s post on version 1.0.

If you are using Windows to view your files you have 2 options. You can use the Windows binary file or run the python script. If you wish to run the python script you will need the following applications installed.
Python 2.6 or higher but not Python 3.x – Download
wxPython – Download
NumPy is also needed – Download

Once installed the application is very easy to use. First thing to do in capture some data from esxtop in batch mode using the command below. Then copy the file over to your workstation that you will run esxplot on. Open the app and the File ->Import->Dataset option from the menu to view your file. Then from the lower left section that will list your Hosts name open the tree to view all the captured values.

esxtop -b -d 2 -n 100> esxtopcapturefile.csv

You can download esxplot from here.

• On vHost tab new field: number of running vCPUs
• On vSphere VMs in vApp where not displayed.
• Filter not working correct when annotations or custum fields contains null value.
• When NTP server(s) = null the time info fields are not displayed on the vHost tabpage.
• When datastore name or virtual machine name contains spaces the inconsistent foldername check was not working correct.
• Tools health check now only executed for running VMs.