vCenter Server

Which storage array vendors support VMware VAAI today

Posted by Brian on Nov 11, 2010 in vCenter Server, VMware, vSphere | 2 comments

I’ve been waiting for someone to put something like this together for awhile now. If you wanted to know which Storage vendors are supporting VMware VAAI today or when they will be this list should help out. For myself it was clear that EMC and Equalogic had plugins out but only heard that others were coming soon. I would like to give big thanks to Tomi Hakala for pulling this list together. Watch his blog v-reality.info for updates.

I have to say that I’m a bit skeptical of the HP release dates for VAAI support. I have inquired about this internally with Product Managers and all I could get was sometime in calendar year 2011. That makes me think that it wont be Q1. I guess time will tell.

Update 12/22/2010 – I have been hearing the VAAI support for HP EVA and XP series will be in second half of 2011. Looks like they are saying that next major release of vSphere will be supporting a SCSI T10 standards based support for VAAI functions and they are waiting on this to release support. They will develop based on the standards support vs proprietary support.

About Brian

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.

Mail | Web | Twitter | LinkedIn | More Posts (169)

Properly size VMware Update Manager 4.1 with VUM Sizing Estimator

Posted by Brian on Aug 11, 2010 in vCenter Server, VMware, vSphere | 0 comments

The top notch team that runs the VMware VROOM blog recently announced the release of a new sizing tool. The tool will help you estimate the size of your VUM database, patch store and temporary disk space. It will also give you recommendations on where to place your VUM database and if you should install VMware Update Manager on your vCenter server. The tool is a Excel document and that requires you to answer about 20 questions and then displays 5 recommendations based upon your details.

The following input parameters are used to estimate how much disk space VUM will need:

-    Feasibility for virtual machine remediation
-    Number of ESX and ESXi flavors in the deployment
-    Number of hosts, virtual machines, Windows distributions, average number of locales for Windows distribution, average number of different Service Pack levels for Windows distribution
-    Patch scan frequency for virtual machines
-    VMware Tools upgrade scan frequency for virtual machines
-    Virtual machine hardware upgrade scan frequency
-    Patch scan frequency for hosts
-    Upgrade scan frequency for hosts
-    Whether VUM 4.1 is upgraded from 4.0 and old ESXi upgrade bundles are still used

The following are the outputs from the tool:

-    VMware vCenter Update Manager 4.1 database deployment model recommendations
-    VMware vCenter Update Manager 4.1 server deployment model recommendations
-    Initial disk space utilization in MB for database, patch store, and temporary space
-    Monthly disk space utilization growth in MB for database and patch store
-    The upper and lower bounds on the estimation, assuming a 20% variance

You can see from the screen shot I took below from the document that it’s a very simple tool to use. Most are yes/no questions and others are just inputting a number count for the question.

About Brian

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.

Mail | Web | Twitter | LinkedIn | More Posts (169)

VMware best practices for virtual machine snapshots

Posted by Brian on Aug 3, 2010 in vCenter Server, VMware, vSphere | 0 comments

I will start this post off with the standard snapshot warning. Just a reminder that Snapshots are not backups, they are only a change log of the original virtual disk. You should not count on them as a backup. There are a number of different reasons that you might use a snapshot for. One of my most used reasons would be for a software upgrade I would use the snapshot to allow for an easy rollback to the machine state prior to the upgrade. If you have some other reasons leave a comment to share with others.

• The maximum supported amount in a chain is 32. However, VMware recommends that you use only 2-3 snapshots in a chain.
• Use no single snapshot for more than 24-72 hours.
• • This prevents snapshots from growing so large as to cause issues when deleting/committing them to the original virtual machine disks. Take the snapshot, make the changes to the virtual machine, and delete/commit the snapshot as soon as you have verified the proper working state of the virtual machine.
  • Be especially diligent with snapshot use on high-transaction virtual machines such as email and database servers. These snapshots can very quickly grow in size, filling datastore space. Commit snapshots on these virtual machines as soon as you have verified the proper working state of the process you are testing.|
• If using a third party product that takes advantage of snapshots (such as virtual machine backup software), regularly monitor systems configured for backups to ensure that no snapshots remain active for extensive periods of time.
• • Snapshots should only be present for the duration of the backup process.
  • Snapshots taken by third party software (called via API) may not show up in the vCenter Snapshot Manager. Routinely check for snapshots via the command-line.
• An excessive number of snapshots in a chain or snapshots large in size may cause decreased virtual machine and host performance.

You can find some more details from VMware on troubleshooting snapshots here.

About Brian

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.

Mail | Web | Twitter | LinkedIn | More Posts (169)

Some cool new features in vSphere Command Line Interface CLI 4.1

Posted by Brian on Jul 29, 2010 in CLI, vCenter Server, VMware, vSphere | 0 comments

Now that vSphere 4.1 has been out for a couple of weeks you’ve probably had some time to play with it in a lab. I’m sure you have also spent some time reading the release notes getting up to speed on the large list of new features that were released. After spending time myself getting familiar with many of the new options I wanted to dig in and see what was new with the Command Line Interface in 4.1. Since this is going to play a big part in how you will be managing ESXi hosts once you move your environment over to the platform of the future.

I have grabbed a list of the new commands added to vCLI 4.1, these command will help narrow the gap that had existed between what you could run on the ESX console (COS) and what you could do via the vCLI with an ESXi host. Notice the part at the end where it lists some of the commands that cannot be executed against a vCenter server for a host in lock down mode.

• vicfg-hostops – Allows you to examine, stop, and reboot hosts and to instruct hosts to enter and exit maintenance mode.
• vicfg-authconfig – Allows you to add an ESX/ESXi host to an Active Directory domain, remove the host, and list Active Directory domain information.
• vicfg-ipsec – Supports IPsec setup.

vSphere CLI 4.1 also includes the following new functionality:

• The following options have been added to esxcli:
  • esxcli swiscsi session – Manage iSCSI sessions.
  • esxcli swiscsi nic – Manage iSCSI network interfaces.
  • esxcli swiscsi vmknic – List VMkernel network interfaces available for binding to particular iSCSI adapter.
  • esxcli swiscsi vmnic – List available uplink adapters for use with a specified iSCSI adapter.
  • esxcli vaai device – Display information about devices claimed by the VMware VAAI (vStorage APIs for Array Integration) Filter Plugin.
  • esxcli corestorage – List devices or plugins. Used in conjunction with hardware acceleration.
  • esxcli network – List active connections or list active ARP table entries.
  • esxcli vms – List and forcibly stop virtual machines that do not respond to normal stop operations.
• Some of the parity issues between vSphere CLI and the ESX service console have been resolved.
• You can now run vCLI commands using SSPI (--passthroughauth) against both vCenter Server and ESX/ESXi systems.
• Lockdown mode allows vSphere administrators to block direct access to ESXi systems. With lockdown mode enabled, all operations must go through a vCenter Server system. The following commands cannot run against vCenter Server systems and can therefore not be used in lockdown mode:
  • vicfg-snmp
  • vifs
  • vicfg-user
  • vicfg-cfgbackup
  • vihostupdate
  • vmkfstools
  • esxcli
  • vicfg-ipsec

If you want to run these commands against an ESXi system, turn off lockdown mode using the vSphere Client.

About Brian

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.

Mail | Web | Twitter | LinkedIn | More Posts (169)

VKernel announces Chargeback 2.0 for vSphere and Hyper-V shops

Posted by Brian on Jul 27, 2010 in Hyper-V, Tools, vCenter Server, vSphere | 1 comment

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.

About Brian

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.

Mail | Web | Twitter | LinkedIn | More Posts (169)

Pre-install requirements for upgrade to VMware vCenter 4.1 server

Posted by Brian on Jul 15, 2010 in vCenter Server, VMware, vSphere | 0 comments

With this weeks release of vSphere 4.1 from VMware the operating system requirements have been raised to 64 bit. What this means is that all management consoles and related tools have moved or will be moving soon to 64 bit only systems. Most importantly is that vCenter server 4.1 is now dependent on a 64 bit OS to run. This means that before you rush to upgrade you will need to make sure if your running on a physical server that it is 64 bit capable. If not then you will require a new server or you could elect to move it to a 64 bit virtual machine.

Currently only the operating systems listed below are the only 64 bit options support by the new vCenter 4.1 server.

Something new with this release is the vCenter Server Data Migration Tool. This new tool will help to migrate some of your data and settings over to a new server depending on what your configuration was. There are some very rigid rules on what it will and wont move across. The list below is the only options that it will migrate. Judging from that list every production setup I’ve ever seen is going to require the usual manual steps to be done. Since I don’t think anyone out there is using SQL express as their DB in anything other than maybe a small lab environment. Your gonna need to configure 64 bit DSN’s for your vCenter and Update Manger Databases on the new server yourself.

You can use the vCenter Data Migration Tool to automatically migrate the following to a new server:

• vCenter Server Software and its configuration
• vCenter Update Manager Software and its configuration
• VMware Orchestrator Software and its configuration
• The default SQL Express 2005 database that comes installed with vCenter Server.

To see the full details from VMware on this process refer to this article.

About Brian

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.

Mail | Web | Twitter | LinkedIn | More Posts (169)