Posted by Brian on Nov 22, 2011 in Performance, vCenter Server, vCloud, vMA, VMware | 0 comments
I would like to start off by saying that it’s nice to see VMware starting to bundle up some of their offerings into more complete packages. Many of these tools were acquired recently and it takes time to integrate them with their own applications. I have not looked recently to see if there is any price advantage to buying the bundle versus the apps separately. The main thing is that they continue to add functionality by tightly integrating the apps to work together.
The new vCenter Operations Management Suite has 4 versions available for the package, you can view the table here to compare versions. The highest version available is the Enterprise Plus, it looks like maybe VMware is starting to standardize on their version naming to match what vSphere has been using for years. This version offers the performance monitoring of vCOPs, Infrastructure Navigator, Chargeback manager and Configuration Manager. Until recently you would normally have to purchase these all separately and the cost was per VM based and could be pretty expensive for large environments.
One of the features that has me most excited was the integration between configuration manager and vCOPs. I saw a demo and cannot find it again right now. It showed that when viewing a host for example that is experiencing a performance issue you can correlate the change in performance with any configuration changes that took place at the same time the issue started. So if another team member or maybe yourself was updating a value on network cards and it did not produce any noticeable errors during the change. But vCOPs was tracking a change in performance the new suite will help brings these 2 separate tracks of information together to help fix issues and find root causes faster. Once I can find the screen shot again I will try to remember to update this post with it.
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 2, 2010 in Troubleshooting, VMware | 0 comments
Whether your tracking down an issue on your own or collection data to submit a support request to VMware your gonna need to round up the necessary log files. I have collected and listed some of the main log locations from VMware and also linked to KB articles covering a full list of log file locations.
VMware ESX log files
- From the Service Console
- From the vSphere Client connected directly to the ESX host (click Home > Administration > System Logs)
- From the VMware Infrastructure Client connected directly to the ESX host (click Administration > System Logs)
The vmkernel logs (which log everything related to the kernel/core of the ESX) are located at /var/log/vmkernel.
The vmkwarning logs (which log warnings from the vmkernel) are located at /var/log/vmkwarning.
The vmksummary logs (which provide a summary of system activities such as uptime, downtime, reasons for downtime) are located at /var/log/vmksummary.
The hostd log (which is the log of the ESX management service of the ESX) are located at /var/log/vmware/hostd.log.
The messages log (which log activity on the Service Console operating system) is located at /var/log/messages.
The VirtualCenter Agent log is located at /var/log/vmware/vmware/vpx/vpxa.log.
The Automatic Availability Manager (AAM) logs are located at /var/log/vmware/aam/vmware_<hostname>-xxx.log.
The SW iSCSI logs are located at /var/log/vmkiscsid.log.
The System boot log is located at /var/log/boot-logs/sysboot.log.
The vmkernel, vmkwarning, and hostd logs are located at /var/log/messages.
The Host Management service (hostd = Host daemon) log is located at /var/log/vmware/hostd.log\.
The VirtualCenter Agent log is located at /var/log/vmware/vmware/vpx/vpxa.log.
The System boot log is located at /var/log/sysboot.log.
The Automatic Availability Manager (AAM) logs are located at /var/log/vmware/aam/vmware_<hostname>-xxx.log.
vCenter log files – (KB Article)
The SRM configuration files are located at:
- C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware Site Recovery Manager\config\extension.xml
- C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware Site Recovery Manager\config\vmware-dr.xmlOr
- C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager\config\extension.xml
- C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager\config\vmware-dr.xml
The SRM Logs (on vCenter Server for connection with SRM and on SRM for SRM workflow) are located at:
- %ALLUSERSPROFILE%\VMware\VMware Site Recovery Manager\Logs, which translates by default to C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\VMware\VMware Site Recovery Manager\LogsOr
- %ALLUSERSPROFILE%\VMware\VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager\Logs, which translates by default to C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\VMware\VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager\Logs
The SRM Installation Logs (on the SRM Server, which may not be the vCenter Server) are located at C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Local Settings\Temp\1.
The location of the SRA Logs (on the SRM server) depends on the SRA type and vendor. They may be located in:
- C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager\scripts\SAN\*\logOr
- C:\Program Files\<SRA Vendor or Name>\
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 22, 2010 in vCenter Server, VMware | 4 comments
I know this would seem like an easy thing and you might not give it a second thought. But if you’ve ever had an alarm that just wont clear and the virtual machine is no longer suffering from the event that caused it. Then you might benefit from the following suggestions that I came across. As always I recommend that you investigate each alarm and make sure that your are not ignoring any serious issues before clearing any alarms.
Sure alarms can alert you to some pretty serious events, but many are triggered by short term or non-reoccurring events. You might get an event for excessive CPU utilization due to something crazy happening on a Windows server. It passes or was dealt with by the SA and does not return. But that nagging alarm keeps staring you down each time you visit vCenter. Sure you have acknowledged the alarm and plenty of time has passed without a re-occurrence. But that little red diamond alarm still remains.
Option #1 is the simplest way and will not cause any interruptions to any tasks. This method will clear the alarms but it will clear them for all hosts, VMs, datastores or whatever you are clearing the alarm for. Also you must do this at the level that the alarm was created on, for example if the alarm was created at the Datacenter level then it will clear the alarm for every object in that Datacenter for the specific alarm that you are modifying. Once you located the correct alarm at the proper level you need to edit the alarm and uncheck the Enable this Alarm setting. Give it a few seconds for the command to complete then you can re-edit the alarm and enable it again. This will clear all occurrences of this alarm at this level and below.
Option #2 is a more manual way but will also only clear alarms on a specific host. With this method you need to be able to restart services on the host. I will usually just use Putty and SSH to the host and run from the command line. You the command that I have listed just below to restart the VPXA service and this should clear All alarms on this ESX host. Just be sure that you have looked at the cause of all alarms for this host before clearing them.
# service vmware-vpxa restart
If there are any other good options for clearing these alarms feel free to drop a note in the comments and I will update the post.
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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