Posted by Brian on Apr 30, 2010 in Tools, VMware | 1 comment
I have written about RV Tools in the past and what a great free tool Rob has created. He has recently updates to version 2.9 with some new features. I recommend that you have a look and I know it’s a staple in my toolkit. Here are some of the updates in this new version. You can download the tool from Rob’s site here.
- 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.
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 Apr 2, 2010 in Guides, Tools | 10 comments
I recently setup a HP MSA 2300 series storage array. It was the SAS model with 4 enclosure trays. I have to admit that I have not setup one of these with Fiber or iSCSI but they are very similar other than the assign to host part. In the setup guide I cover how to configure the management interfaces, create Vdisks, create volumes and then assign them to hosts. It covers different ways to setup your hot spare drives.
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.
Update 1-10-2011
I saw that someone else has created a Best practices document for the P2000 series. It’s not an official document but worth a look for new users. Have a look 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 Mar 29, 2010 in Tools, vCenter Server, VMware | 3 comments
Today at the HP Storage Day blogger event HP announced the integration of HP Insight Control with VMware vCenter. This raises the bar with whats been available to this point via CIM agents provided by hardware manufacturers. I have listed some of the main bullet points from HP below. My biggest question will be can I manage the RAID adapters inside the hosts with this new plugin?
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
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 Mar 21, 2010 in Labs, Tools, VMware | 0 comments
I’ve been taking some time when it’s available to play with some of the great tools available from the VMware Labs site that launched recently. The Labs site offers tools developed by talented people that are not yet ready for general release but are very good programs. The latest one that I tried was the VMware Guest Console. Not knowing what it was going to be since there are a few others like this from 3rd party developers already.
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.
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 Mar 4, 2010 in Featured, Performance, Tools, Troubleshooting, VMware | 1 comment
By now everyone should know that esxtop is a great tool that you can use to find out what might be causing performance issues on your ESX host. I don’t plan on writing a post on how to use esxtop. You can refer to Duncan’s ESXtop post for details on thresholds or to VMwares esxtop bible for good base information.
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.
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 admin on Feb 21, 2010 in Tools | 0 comments
The wonderful free tool from Rob was updated to a new version. You can download RVTools from his website. Be sure to thank the developer for all of his hard work.
- 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.
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