VMware Technical Items
- New Articles Published for Week Ending 8/13/11 -
- Mouse not working after installing VMware Tools in converted virtual machine
(1003665) -
Mouse not working after installing VMware Tools in converted virtual machine (1003665) · Your mouse stops working in a converted Windows virtual machine after installing VMware Tools. · VMware Tools is causing a conflict with mouse drivers. · You are
Download VMware Products | Privacy | Update Feed Preferences
Copyright © 2010 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.
- Microsoft Cluster Service (MSCS) support on ESX/ESXi
(1004617) -
Microsoft Cluster Service (MSCS) support on ESX/ESXi (1004617) This article provides supportability and setup information for Microsoft Cluster Service (MSCS) on ESX. *Note:* Currently, VMware does not support any other clustering solution for
Download VMware Products | Privacy | Update Feed Preferences
Copyright © 2010 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.
- Unable to install hardware video drivers in virtual machine
(1004941) -
Unable to install hardware video drivers in virtual machine (1004941) · Attempting to install physical hardware's video card drivers in a Windows guest operating system fails. · You receive an error indicating that no matching hardware can be found
Download VMware Products | Privacy | Update Feed Preferences
Copyright © 2010 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.
- Collecting diagnostic information for the VMware Virtual Disk Development Kit
(1006186) -
Collecting diagnostic information for the VMware Virtual Disk Development Kit (1006186) VMware Technical Support routinely request diagnostic information from you when a support request is handled. This diagnostic information contains product
Download VMware Products | Privacy | Update Feed Preferences
Copyright © 2010 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.
- Preventing Boot Camp from appearing in Fusion's Virtual Machine Library
(1014806) -
Preventing Boot Camp from appearing in Fusion's Virtual Machine Library (1014806) You can prevent Fusion from automatically detecting and displaying the Boot Camp partition in Fusion 3.x. Note: Fusion 1.x and 2.x do not support preventing the
Download VMware Products | Privacy | Update Feed Preferences
Copyright © 2010 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.
- Troubleshooting issues when Update Manager is unable to scan an ESX/ESXi host
(1032444) -
Troubleshooting issues when Update Manager is unable to scan an ESX/ESXi host (1032444) · You are unable to scan an ESX/ESXi host using Update Manager. · You receive one or more of these errors when scanning a host: · Cannot find the patch
Download VMware Products | Privacy | Update Feed Preferences
Copyright © 2010 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.
- Dell PowerVault MD3600i/MD3620i/MD3600f/MD3620f storage arrays configured with VMware ESX/ESXi fail
(1037925) -
Dell PowerVault MD3600i/MD3620i/MD3600f/MD3620f storage arrays configured with VMware ESX/ESXi fail (1037925) · Creating a VMFS datastore on Dell MD3600i, MD3620i, MD3600f or MD3620f fails · You see the rror: Call
Download VMware Products | Privacy | Update Feed Preferences
Copyright © 2010 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.
- Ubuntu 10.04.1 32-bit Guest Fails to Start on VMware ESX 4.0.x and 4.1.x
(2003670) -
Ubuntu 10.04.1 32-bit Guest Fails to Start on VMware ESX 4.0.x and 4.1.x (2003670) On VMware ESX 4.0.x and 4.1.x, using the Update Manager to update all the components of the Ubuntu 10.04.1 32-bit causes the virtual machine to fail. After you install
Download VMware Products | Privacy | Update Feed Preferences
Copyright © 2010 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.
- VMware Service Manager reports are printed single sided only, irrespective of the duplex printer setting
(2003925) -
VMware Service Manager reports are printed single sided only, irrespective of the duplex printer setting (2003925) After upgrading to VMware Service Manager 9.x, you experience these symptoms: · Service Manager reports are printed single-sided only,
Download VMware Products | Privacy | Update Feed Preferences
Copyright © 2010 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.
- Migrating virtual machine swap (.vswp) files from one datastore to another
(2003956) -
Migrating virtual machine swap (.vswp) files from one datastore to another (2003956) · By default, if the virtual machine swap files (.vswp) are stored in a ESX/ESXi host swapfile datastore, Storage vMotion does not move these files. · Storage
Download VMware Products | Privacy | Update Feed Preferences
Copyright © 2010 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.
- Unable to download MKS plug-in in Firefox 4.0 and 5.0
(2004238) -
Unable to download MKS plug-in in Firefox 4.0 and 5.0 (2004238) The Lab Manger server must have a built-in object certificate to successfully download the VMware Remote MKS plug-in in Firefox 4.0 and 5.0. You must ensure that the SSL certificate is
Download VMware Products | Privacy | Update Feed Preferences
Copyright © 2010 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.
- Unable to unpublish a template in Lab Manager
(2004898) -
Unable to unpublish a template in Lab Manager (2004898) Unpublishing a template in Lab Manager fails with an error similar to the following: Host "hostname" has reported an error. Requested file
is not writable. This error occurs Download VMware Products | Privacy | Update Feed Preferences
Copyright © 2010 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.
- Windows host fails with a blue screen when TrackLockedPages is enabled
(2051) -
Windows host fails with a blue screen when TrackLockedPages is enabled (2051) · Cannot load or power on any virtual machine · Within seconds of attempting to load a virtual machine, the Windows host fails with a blue screen error: STOP 0x000000D9
Download VMware Products | Privacy | Update Feed Preferences
Copyright © 2010 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.
- Configuring USB device filters and redirecting Human Interface Devices (HIDs) in View Client
(1011600) -
Configuring USB device filters and redirecting Human Interface Devices (HIDs) in View Client (1011600) This article provides information about Human Interface Devices not being redirected as a standard practice in VMware View, and information on how
Download VMware Products | Privacy | Update Feed Preferences
Copyright © 2010 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.
- vCloud Director fails to start
(1028117) -
vCloud Director fails to start (1028117) · vCloud Director takes a long time to start · vCloud Director fails during startup · The vCloud web portal fails to load · The services are slow to start · In the vcloud-container-debug.log file, you see
Download VMware Products | Privacy | Update Feed Preferences
Copyright © 2010 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.
- The vCloud web portal is inaccessible
(2004464) -
The vCloud web portal is inaccessible (2004464) · The vCloud web portal is inaccessible · The $VCLOUD_HOME/logs/cell.log contains a message like this: Successfully bound network port: 80 on host address: 192.168.1.2 Successfully bound network port:
Download VMware Products | Privacy | Update Feed Preferences
Copyright © 2010 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.
- Asianux Server 3 SP4 -
Asianux Server 3 SP4 These are the changes or updates made to VMware Compatibility Guide since it was last published:
- Added support for Asianux Server 3 SP4 on ESX 4.1 Update 1.
Check the VMware Compatibility Guide here: http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/search.php?deviceCategory=software
Download VMware Products | Privacy | Update Feed Preferences
Copyright © 2010 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.
- USB devices fail after upgrading to Mac OS X Lion (10.7)
(2004687) -
USB devices fail after upgrading to Mac OS X Lion (10.7) (2004687) After upgrading to Mac OS X Lion (10.7): · You cannot use USB devices in the virtual machine · USB devices do not work in your guest This issue occurs when, after upgrading from Snow
Download VMware Products | Privacy | Update Feed Preferences
Copyright © 2010 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.
- A week in virtualization -
A week in virtualization I’ll start with the old-ish news first: As you know by now, there is the VMwolrd Schedule Builder, so go there and register for the sessions you want to attend. It is in the Las Vegas conference section on vmworld.com, in the left nav.
John and I have been working on finalizing the plans for community events at the show, and it’s coming together nicely. Now you can book your vMeetup sessions using a handy little form linked off the vmworld.com blog. The vMeetups are 30-minute long informal talks that can be held in the Community Lounge. We want to give as many people as possible an opportunity to give a talk in the Lounge.
Anyone can request a time slot, and the rules for selection are fairly simple: one slot per entity per day, some relevance to the show and VMware in general, and keep it clean y’all. John and I have the final authority in selecting topics, but of course you can plead and possibly bribe us. I would have a hard time kicking out a talk about cars, even if it had nothing to do with cloud technology.
Then we’ll also have a Video Podcasting Station available for community members (that is YOU) to run your own show from the Lounge and to stream it live on VMworld TV. We will have a scheduling form available for that too, once we have figured out the logistics. The rules are the same as vMeetups, and again, John and I reserve the right to allow or disallow any topic suggested.
The two of us will be quite busy at the show, running at least one and some days two or more hours of live streaming programming from that same station and also from other events, like maybe the game show (fingers crossed). No promises on anything at this point, but if you are not going to be in Las Vegas physically, you will definitely get plenty of video to get your VMworld fix every day of the show.
On Facebook, the VMware vCloud team shared a link to our humble podcast, the episode where we talked about vSphere 5. We are famous! The vCloud folks frequently share cool links and videos, and you can find them on facebook.com/vmwarevcloud
Now, let’s have a look at the upcoming events in the world of virtualization.
We have nine cool webinars coming up, again. A lot of talks about the new technology in vSphere 5, also some Zimbra talks in Spanish and Portuguese. Head on over to webcasts.vmware.com and check them out.
The VMware Forum is making a stop in Colombia this month, on the 28th of August, then continues on in September to Argentina on the 7th, Ontario on the 14th, and Peru on the 20th of September. To find more details and to register, go to vmware.com and click on the gray box down on the bottom left, which says “VMware Forum 2011.”
From our community of users, there’s a few cool things coming up too.
The following VMUGs are meeting over the next seven days: Brisbane, New Mexico, Cincinnati, Myrtle Beach, Baton Rouge, Ireland, and Western Pennsylvania. You can find all the details and registration links at myvmug.org by clicking on “Events.”
Download VMware Products | Privacy | Update Feed Preferences
Copyright © 2010 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.
- Guest post: Happy 4000th PowerCLI Community! -
Guest post: Happy 4000th PowerCLI Community! This is a guest post by Luc Dekens. If you would like to be a guest blogger, get in touch with Alex Maier, VMware Community Manager.
You may have missed it in the recent flood of vSphere 5 blog posts and tweets, but the PowerCLI Community on VMTN just saw its 4000th thread.
Not a big deal you’d think, there’s plenty of VMTN communities with many more threads. But if you consider what this specific community is about, it is a rather amazing number. The entire PowerCLI community is about a free PowerShell snap-in that helps you automate your vSphere environment.
Since it is a PowerShell snap-in, the users are primarily system administrators with a Windows background and any other administrators who appreciate the ease of use and the simplicity of the tool. Until PowerCLI came around, you needed a solid *nix background to manage your favorite virtualization platform.
The PowerCLI community, formerly known as the VI Toolkit for Windows, started its life around Christmas 2007. At that time it was still a closed Beta community. It wasn’t until version 1.0 of the tool was released, on July 25th 2008, that the PowerCLI community went public.
Some PowerCLI Community facts
Did you know that:
- On average, at least 9 people per day actively participate in the PowerCLI community.
- Since the community went public there was a total of 42928 VMTN points awarded in it.
- The highest number of awarded points on a single day is currently at 209, and that occurred on February 9th 2011.
- There are on average 3.5 replies per PowerCLI thread.
- There are 1446 threads actually marked as answered. That is 36% of all threads.
- The record number of threads started on a single day is 15, and this was on January 6th 2011.
- There are 2135 individual unique users that have posted in the PowerCLI community at any time.
- Jeffrey Snover, the inventor of PowerShell, attended VMworld 2010 US, where he said that the PowerCLI community was the 2nd most active PowerShell related community in the world. First was of course Microsoft’s own PowerShell community.
What is in all those threads?
The subjects of the threads are a mix of nearly all aspects of managing a vSphere environment.
First-time users frequently ask questions about reporting, in cases where the user may be tasked to produce a report, and now needs to find the values for it.
If you are just starting out, you can generate reports based on information that is immediately available through one of the PowerCLI Cmdlets. Later on, you can begin pulling in data that is not so readily available. The PowerCLI snap-in contains a handy tool that allows access to a collection of all public APIs, called the Get-View Cmdlet. The person responsible for adding this little gem to the snap-in deserves free drinks from PowerCLI users for the rest of his life!
A special case of reporting is the performance and capacity report, which is enabled by the Get-Stat Cmdlet. That Cmdlet, and the ease of handling large volumes of data that comes with PowerShell, makes the creation of performance and capacity reports a piece of cake.
Now, if the user wants to automate the lifecycle of their vSphere environment in part or in whole, whatever the regular Set- and New- Cmdlets don’t cover, can be achieved by calling the vSphere API. Remember the Get-View Cmdlet I mentioned earlier on?
Since PowerShell itself was designed with the purpose of automation in mind, the PowerCLI snap-in brings this automation engine to the vSphere world.
And there is more
Following the release of the PowerCLI snap-in, other related tools were also released, some of which even have their own VMTN communities! For question about the Project Onyx tool, which will translate all your actions inside the vSphere Client into PowerShell code, go to the VMware Project Onyx community. The vSphere Update Manager has its own snap-in also, and you can ask your UM questions in the vCenter Update Manager PowerCLI community.
Product History
Name
Version
Build
Date
PS
VMware Infrastructure Toolkit for Windows
1.0
103777
25/07/2008
v1
VMware Infrastructure Toolkit for Windows
1.0 Update 1
113225
04/09/2008
v1
VMware Infrastructure Toolkit for Windows
1.5
142961
27/01/2009
v1
VMware vSphere PowerCLI
4.0
162509
21/05/2009
v1
VMware vSphere PowerCLI
4.0 Update 1
208462
19/11/2009
v1/v2
VMware vSphere PowerCLI
4.1
264274
13/07/2010
v1/v2
VMware vSphere PowerCLI
4.1 Update 1
332441
01/12/2010
v1/v2
Some useful links
If you want to find out a bit more about PowerCLI, the following links can come in handy.
- The VMTN PowerCLI Community
- The Project Onyx Community
- The vCenter Update Manager PowerCLI Community
- The PowerCLI Reference Guide
- The PowerCLI Blog
- The PowerCLI Twitter account
- The PowerCLI Facebook page
- …and numerous blogs that have PowerCLI posts
Use one of the common search engines to find these, or simply ask in the PowerCLI Community ;-)
Luc Dekens, aka LucD, is a three-fold vExpert and since more than 1 year a VMTN Community moderator. Luc contributes to the VMTN PowerCLI Community since the early beta days in 2007, and has recently co-authored a PowerCLI book. He regularly posts on his LucD notes blog, and you can find him on Twitter as @LucD22.
Download VMware Products | Privacy | Update Feed Preferences
Copyright © 2010 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.
- First SAP SD Benchmark on vSphere 5 Shows Performance within 6% of Native -
First SAP SD Benchmark on vSphere 5 Shows Performance within 6% of Native The first SAP sales and distribution (SD) benchmark on vSphere 5 has been published. It takes advantage of the new larger VM support in vSphere 5 to reach 4,600 SD Users and 25,150 SAPs with a 24-vCPU VM running on a Fujitsu Primergy server. This is the largest SAP 2-tier benchmark on vSphere as of today.
Fujitsu took the extra step of using the same server and test configuration to publish a non-virtualized result. Comparing the two tests shows that virtual is only 6% lower than native. This is a result of the hard work that was put into vSphere 5 to optimize its performance and shows that large 24 vCPU VMs can have performance very close to native.
A more detailed technical paper is being worked on by Fujitsu and VMware and will be released soon.
Some details of the SAP configuration used in the tests – SAP ECC 6.0 with EHP 4 on Fujitsu Primergy RX300 S6 with 2 x Intel Xeon X5690 processors and 96 GB RAM. The OS used was SuSE Enterprise Linux 11 SP1 and MaxDB 7.8 for the database. SAP certificates are 2011027 and 2011028.
Download VMware Products | Privacy | Update Feed Preferences
Copyright © 2010 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.
- Next Generation Development Tools -
Next Generation Development Tools Development methodologies and tools never stand still, and have been evolving since the dawn of the computer industry. And the more sophisticated our web applications begome, the larger our datasets grow, and the more need there is for cross-application communication, the more we need powerful and efficient programming tools, models and design patterns.
While it certainly keeps the profession exciting and enables more impressive capabilities, constant changes in software development toolchain make it hard to pick the best ones to do your work most efficiently.
Now, VMware’s Ecosystem Engineering group has been looking at tools and interfaces that our developers use, and trying to find out which ones you guys think are the most useful. So they have created a short survey to better understand your dev environments and how you are using the VMware APIs and SDKs. The survey is fairly short and shouldn't take more than a couple minutes to take.
Once we have all the data, we'll post a follow-up with the survey result right here on the VMTN blog.
Download VMware Products | Privacy | Update Feed Preferences
Copyright © 2010 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.
- Oracle Linux 5.7 -
Oracle Linux 5.7 These are the changes or updates made to VMware Compatibility Guide since it was last published:
- Added support for Oracle Linux 5.7 on ESX 4.0 Update 3, ESX 4.1 and ESX 4.1 Update 1.
Check the VMware Compatibility Guide here: http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/search.php?deviceCategory=software
Download VMware Products | Privacy | Update Feed Preferences
Copyright © 2010 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.
- New Articles Published for Week Ending 8/6/11 -
- Top 5 Planet V12N blog posts for week 31 -
Top 5 Planet V12N blog posts for week 31 VMware made a rather large announcement this week around the new vSphere 5 licensing model which is based on the concept of vRAM. Based on customer feedback the vRAM entitlements per socket have been drastically increased across all lines of vSphere. We have also put a cap of 96GB on the maximum vRAM per virtual machine that would be consumed (i.e. a virtual machine with 128GB of configured vRAM will only use 96GB from the pooled vRAM capacity). The third component that changed was the licensing compliance concept. Rather than a fixed high watermark, VMware has given customer more flexibility and has imposed a 12 month moving average of consumed vRAM. For the official vSphere 5 pricing guide, point your browser here.
On with the Top 5!
Andre Leibovici - The biggest Linked Clone “IO” Split Study – Part 1/2 - In my article Get hold of VDI IOPs, Read/Write Ratios and Storage Tiering I discussed the importance of understanding the virtual desktop IO pattern in VDI deployments. On the same article I briefly discussed the I/O split between Replicas and Linked Clones. The main idea is that at moment ‘zero’ after the creation of a linked clone, the Replica disk is responsible for 100% of the Read IO, and the Linked Clone disk (delta) is responsible for 100% of the Write IO.
Duncan Epping - SDRS and Auto-Tiering solutions – The Injector - A couple of weeks ago I wrote an article about Storage DRS (hereafter SDRS) interoperability and I mentioned that using SDRS with Auto-Tiering solutions should work… Now the truth is slightly different, however as I noticed some people started throwing huge exclamation marks around SDRS I wanted to make a statement. Many have discussed this and made comments around why SDRS would not be supported with auto-tiering solutions and I noticed the common idea is that SDRS would not be supported with them as it could initiate a migration to a different datastore and as such “reset” the tiered VM back to default.
Scott Sauer - vSphere 5 and the new vSphere Distributed Switch – NetFlow - With vSphere 5 comes a plethora of new features and functionality across the entire VMware virtualization platform. One of the core components that got a nice upgrade was the vSphere Distributed Switch (vDS). For those of you that have not had the chance to use the vDS, it is a centralized administrative interface that allows access to manage and update a network configuration in one location as opposed to each separate ESX host.
Cormac Hogan - vSphere Storage Appliance (VSA) - A Very Nice Resilience Feature - Now that you have been introduced to the vSphere Storage Appliance (VSA), lets have a look at some of its cool features. Firstly you should be aware that the VSA can handle failures at both the ESXi host and appliance level, and continue to present the full complement of NFS datastores. This means that if the ESXi host on which the appliance is running goes down, the cluster will seamlessly present that NFS datastore from another node in the cluster.
William Lam - How to Create Custom Firewall Rules in ESXi 5.0 - In ESXi 5.0, the firewall system has been completely revamped to provide the same functionality as the classic ESX Service Console esxcfg-firewall command. To access the firewall configurations, you can use the following esxcli namespace: esxcli network firewall. By default, there are set of predefined services that a user can enable or disable upon startup.
Download VMware Products | Privacy | Update Feed Preferences
Copyright © 2010 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.
- A week in virtualization -
A week in virtualization My world has been consumed by the VMwold, so let me run down a list of all the things you should check out. First, there is the Schedule Builder, which you should use if you are planning to attend any of the sessions you actually like, instead of what’s left over. However, we will have many of the popular sessions running multiple times to ensure everyone who’s interested gets a chance to participate. Simply go to vmworld.com and click on Las Vegas conference link, then look in the left nav for the schedule builder link.
Then there’s your chance to be part of the General Session video. If you submit a short video in which you say things like “My cloud” and “VMware” and stuff, your video can make it into the big mashup the VMworld folks are making for the General Session. Be creative, and funny, and we’ll all see you on the big screen! Go to the conference page, select either Las Vegas or Copenhagen, and you will see the link to the details for this on the left.
Oh, and as of yesterday, I am registered to go to the show, and that is kinda cool. It’s one thing to know you’re going, and it’s a whole different thing to have the confirmation email in your inbox.
On Facebook, the VMware vCloud team shared a bunch of cool links to studies and blog posts you should check out. Among them, a post from Train Signal listing top resources to learn about vCloud Director. You will find all the links at facebook.com/vmwarevcloud
The VMware for Healthcare IT has been sharing their sessions at VMworld as well as a case study from MidMichigan Health. You can find that at facebook.com/vmwarehit
Let’s have a look at the upcoming events in the world of virtualization.
We have nine cool webinars coming up soon, in which you can learn how to move from legacy applications to cloud, an intro to vSphere 5, email and collaboration with Zimbra in Spanish; and a couple of vCenter talks. Head on over to webcasts.vmware.com and check them out.
The VMware Forum is making a stop in Colombia this month, on the 28th of August, then continues on in September to Argentina on the 7th, Ontario on the 14th, and Peru on the 20th of September. To find more details and to register, go to vmware.com and click on the gray box down on the bottom left, which says “VMware Forum 2011.”
From our community of users, there’s a few cool things coming up too.
The following VMUGs are meeting over the next seven days: Northwest Arizona, Brisbane, New Mexico, and Cincinnati. You can find all the details and registration links at myvmug.org by clicking on “Events.”
Download VMware Products | Privacy | Update Feed Preferences
Copyright © 2010 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.
- Ubuntu 10.04.3 -
Ubuntu 10.04.3 These are the changes or updates made to VMware Compatibility Guide since it was last published:
- Added support for Ubuntu 10.04.3 on ESX 4.0 Update 3, ESX 4.1 and ESX 4.1 Update 1.
Check the VMware Compatibility Guide here: http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/search.php?deviceCategory=software
Download VMware Products | Privacy | Update Feed Preferences
Copyright © 2010 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.
- New Articles Published for Week Ending 7/30/11 -
- Top 5 Planet V12N blog posts for week 30 -
Top 5 Planet V12N blog posts for week 30 Great to see this past week a lot of the vExperts gave a shout out to John Troyer for his birthday. For those of you that don’t know him, John Troyer is a VMware employee that leads a lot of the social media activities for VMware and the community. He is also responsible for maintaining this site, and recruited me to help out in highlighting some of the top blog posts every week. It wasn’t so much his birthday but an official “thanks for all you do for the VMware community”.
I second that notion in tipping my hat in honor of Mr. Troyer. For all your valiant efforts, hours of community podcasts, devotion to Twitter, leading the vExpert program, acting as the catalyst for the VMware community, and in general making this a fun experience. Thanks John!
Ok on with this weeks top 5!
Gabrie van Zanten - vSphere 5 – How to run ESXi stateless with vSphere Auto Deploy - A great new feature of vSphere 5 is the possibility to run ESXi stateless. Long, long time ago when ESX 3.0 was hip, we would all install ESX on the local harddisk (or SAN disk). With ESX 3.5, the first ESXi version was released but only few were using it. With 4.x ESXi really got a large install base and more and more people were moving to installing ESXi on USB or SD card. Now with vSphere 5 and ESXi as the only hypervisor (no more ESX), we don’t need to install ESXi at all.
William Lam - New vSphere Health Check 5.0 & ghettoVCB Script - The vSphere Health Check script has now been updated to support vSphere 5.0 and includes the following new features, vCenter Server Instance UUID, vCenter hostname, Storage DRS Configuration (Maintenance Mode, Stats Aggregation, Stats Collection for Datastores), FDM/HA Heartbeat Policy + Datastore, FDM/HA State, Host Agent Settings, Host New iSCSI Configuration/Information…
Eric Sloof - vSphere 5 Video - Storage DRS - So what’s the fuzz about this new vSphere 5 Storage DRS feature? This feature delivers the DRS benefits of resource aggregation, automated initial placement, and bottleneck avoidance to storage. You can group and manage similar datastores as a single load-balanced storage resource called a datastore cluster. Storage DRS makes VMDK placement and migration recommendations to avoid I/O and space utilization bottlenecks on the datastores in the cluster.
Chad Sakac - Even MORE reasons to run Oracle on VMware - If I told you that I could do something to make your most mission critical app, perform better, cost less, have higher overall availaiblity, you would either: A) assume I’m a vendor trying to sell you something and write it off as such; b) assume I’ve made an error – and ignore my advice; c) investigate, and if you agree, you would consider that deployment model for the app. Or, you’d be a person who likes “just keep it the way it is” SO much that you are willing to pay more, for less performance, and suffer more downtime.
Vladan Seget - VMware vSphere 5 performance enhancements whitepaper - After reading this whitepaper, I really started to like some of the new features introduced in vSphere 5. Besides the CPU enhancements which can now scale up to 32 vCPU per VM, which I will implement less likely immediately, or the possibility to configure 1TB of vMem in one single VM, the paper discuss the interesting SSD Swap Cache, which is new feature in ESXi 5.0 and which permits to configure the redirection of those swapped-out memory pages rather on SSD local drive instead of SATA/SAS.
Download VMware Products | Privacy | Update Feed Preferences
Copyright © 2010 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.
- Analysis of Storage Technologies on Clusters using VMmark 2.1 -
Analysis of Storage Technologies on Clusters using VMmark 2.1 Previous blog entries utilizing VMmark 2.1 introduced the benchmark, showed the effects of generational scaling, and evaluated the scale-out performance of vSphere clusters. This article analyzes the performance impact of the type of storage infrastructure used, specifically when comparing the effects of Enterprise Flash Drives (EFDs; often referred to as SSDs) versus traditional SCSI HDDs. There is a general perception, both in the consumer and business space, that EFDs are better than HDDs. Less clear, however, is how much better and whether the performance benefits of the typically more expensive EFDs are observed in today’s more complex datacenters.
VMmark 2 Overview:
Once again we used VMmark2.1 to model the performance characteristics of a multi-host heterogeneous virtualization environment. VMmark 2.1 is a combination of application workloads and infrastructure operations running simultaneously. In general, the infrastructure operations increase with the number of hosts in an N/2 fashion, where N is the number of hosts. To calculate the score for VMmark 2.1, final results are generated from a weighted average of the two kinds of workloads; hence scores will not increase linearly as workload tiles are added. For more general information on VMmark 2.1, including the application and infrastructure workload details, take a look at the expanded overview in my previous blog post or the VMmark 2.1 release notification written by Bruce Herndon.
Environment Configuration:
- Systems Under Test: 2 HP ProLiant DL380 G6
- CPUs: 2 Quad-Core Intel® Xeon® CPU 5570 @ 2.93 GHz with Hyper-Threading enabled per system
- Memory: 96GB DDR2 Reg ECC per system
- Storage Arrays Under Test:
- HDD: EMC CX3-80
- 8 Enclosures: RAID0 LUNs, 133.68GB FC HDDs
- EFD: EMC CX4-960
- 4 Enclosures: RAID0 LUNs, mix of 66.64GB and 366.8GB FC EFDs
- HDD: EMC CX3-80
- Hypervisor: VMware ESX 4.1
- Virtualization Management: VMware vCenter Server 4.1
Testing Methodology:
To analyze the comparative performance of EFDs versus HDDs with VMmark 2.1, a vSphere DRS enabled cluster consisting of two identically-configured HP ProLiant DL380 servers was connected to the two EMC storage arrays. A series of tests were then conducted against the cluster with the same VMs being moved to the storage array under test, increasing the number of tiles until the cluster approached saturation. Saturation was defined as the point where the cluster was unable to meet the minimum quality-of-service (QoS) requirements for VMmark 2.1. The minimum configuration for VMmark 2.1 is a two-host cluster running a single tile. The result from this minimal configuration on the HDD storage array was used as the baseline, and all VMmark 2.1 data in this article were normalized to that result. In addition to the standard VMmark 2.1 results, esxtop data was also collected during the measurement phase of the benchmark to provide additional statistics.
Results:
In a top-down approach to reviewing the two storage technologies, it seems natural that the first point of comparison would be the overall performance of VMmark 2.1. By comparing the normalized scores, it’s possible to immediately see the impact of running our cluster on EFDs versus traditional HDDs at a variety of load levels.
Click to EnlargeThe improvement in score is apparent at every point of utilization, from the lowest-loaded 1-tile configuration out to the saturation point of 6 tiles. Overall, the average improvement in score for the EFD configuration was 25.4%. And while the HDD configuration was unable to meet the QoS requirements at 6 tiles, the EFD configuration not only met the requirements, but also improved the overall VMmark 2.1 score, even when the cluster was completely saturated (as seen in the graph below). VMmark 2.1 can drive a considerable amount of I/O, up to many thousands of IOPS for large numbers of tiles. Digging deeper into the root cause of such dramatic improvement for EFDs led me to investigate the overall throughputs for each of the configurations.
Click to EnlargeIt’s apparent from the above graph that there was significant improvement in the total bandwidth, represented by Total MB/s, in the EFD configurations. Compared to the HDD configuration, the EFD configuration’s total throughput improved (8%, 9.2%, 9.5%, 6.5%, and 14.5%, respectively). The amount of improvement actually increased as the I/O demands on the cluster increased. Another interesting detail that arose from reviewing the data over numerous points of utilization was that %CPU used on the EFD configuration was typically higher than its HDD counterpart at the same load. Although slightly counter-intuitive at first, it makes sense that if the system is waiting less for I/Os to complete, it can spend more time doing actual work as demonstrated by the higher VMmark 2.1 scores. This observation leads to another interesting comparison. Disk latency characteristics are often used to predict hardware performance. This can be useful, but what can be unclear is how this translates to real-world disk latencies running a diverse set of workloads.
Lower is Better:Click to Enlarge
Above is a series of graphs that display the average latency reported per write and read I/Os (note that lower latency is better). In looking at each of the key latency counters we can get a better sense for where the additional performance is derived. There’s a generalization that EFDs have poor write speeds by comparison to today’s HDDs. The results here show that the generalization doesn’t always apply. In fact, when looking at the average write latency for the tested EFDs across all data points, it was within 1% of the average write latency for the tested HDDs. Additionally, reviewing the read latency comparison data showed massive reductions in latency across all workload levels, 76% on average. Depending on the workload being run, this in itself could be all the justification needed to move to the newer technology.
It isn’t surprising that EFDs outperformed HDDs. What is somewhat unexpected is the amount of performance, and the ability for EFDs to show immediate advantages even on the most lightly loaded clusters. With an average VMmark 2.1 score improvement of 25.4%, an average bandwidth increase of 9.6%, and a combined average read latency reduction of 76%, it’s easy to imagine there are a great many environments that might benefit from the real-world performance of EFDs.
Download VMware Products | Privacy | Update Feed Preferences
Copyright © 2010 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.
- Ubuntu 11.04 -
Ubuntu 11.04 These are the changes or updates made to VMware Compatibility Guide since it was last published:
- Added support for Ubuntu 11.04 on ESX 4.1 Update 1 with patch ESX410-201107001.
Check the VMware Compatibility Guide here: http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/search.php?deviceCategory=software
Download VMware Products | Privacy | Update Feed Preferences
Copyright © 2010 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.7 -
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.7 These are the changes or updates made to VMware Compatibility Guide since it was last published:
- Added support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.7 on ESX 4.0 Update 3, ESX 4.1, and ESX 4.1 Update 1.
Check the VMware Compatibility Guide here: http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/search.php?deviceCategory=software
Download VMware Products | Privacy | Update Feed Preferences
Copyright © 2010 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.
- A week in virtualization -
A week in virtualization The VMworld Schedule Builder is up and running for the Las Vegas conference, so if you are planning to attend any sessions, you may want to go and register for the ones you like. We will have many of the popular sessions running multiple times to ensure everyone who’s interested gets a chance to participate. Simply go to vmworld.com and click on Las Vegas conference link, then look in the left nav for the schedule builder link.
The early bird discount for VMworld Copenhagen is still available until this Friday, July 29th, so hurry if you plan on going.
On Facebook, the VMware vCloud team is inviting vExperts to participate in the ESXi Quiz Show at VMworld. They have also shared a bunch of cool links to studies and blog posts you should check out. You will find all this linky goodness at facebook.com/vmwarevcloud
The Fusion team is still looking for Beta participants for the upcoming new version. They have also shared a blog post about OS X Lion and its new features. Go to facebook.com/vmwarefusion for more details.
The VMware View Bootcamp, is in full swing. We have so far released seven videos, so you can catch up on everything and join the fun for the remaining two videos and discussions around them. We release them every day, before 9 am Central European Time, which makes it just before midnight Pacific Time. Go to vmware.com/go/viewbootcamp to learn about VMware View technologies.
Finally, VMware Mobile has shared a link to a Forbes video interview with Steve Herrod, our CTO, where he talks about how our company’s product line will evolve over the next two to five years. Find this at facebook.com/vmwaremobile
Let’s have a look at the upcoming events in the world of virtualization.
We have more than a dozen of cool webinars coming up soon, in which you can learn about such topics as security and compliance in cloud environment, virtualization of Microsoft and Oracle – that one is available in Spanish, as well; and of course vSphere 5. There are more topics listed than I can cover in this quick overview, so head on over to webcasts.vmware.com and see for yourself.
There is one webinar I want to call out though, about Application Modernization in Practice. If you work with middleware and are looking at moving your applications to the cloud, this one will be worth your while.
From our community of users, there’s a few cool things coming up too.
The following VMUGs are meeting over the next seven days: Tasmanian, Perth, Atlanta, Greensboro/Triad, and Phoenix. There is also a full-day user conference in Indianapolis tomorrow, which is like a VMUG on steroids. You get a full program, with interesting speakers, and multiple sessions, and of course you get to hang out with the friends from the local user group. You can find more details and registration links for all these VMUG events at myvmug.org by clicking on “Events.”
Download VMware Products | Privacy | Update Feed Preferences
Copyright © 2010 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.
- vExpert and going to VMworld? We need you! -
vExpert and going to VMworld? We need you! We've attended many VMworld sessions and one thing has always stood out and that is after a couple of hours you tend to slip away. we realized that it was time for a change at VMworld and came up with a new idea for a session... no more Powerpoint! Instead we decided to mix the educational aspect with entertainment and came up with a very exciting Quiz Show which will be all about vSphere 5 and of course ESXi as migrations to ESXi are a hot topic these days.
Now that we have figured out all the details we need Teams of course... We are looking for vExperts who will attend VMworld and want to have their shot to become the VMworld Quiz Champion. We are looking for 8 vExperts forming two teams in total, but keep in mind slots are limited. Now besides 2 vExpert teams we are also internally recruiting a team of VMware employees. Wouldn't it be cool if the vExpert team beats the VMware team? Wouldn't it be great to see Tom Howarth taking on Eric Siebert or Chad Sakac taking on Scott Lowe? More details about the quiz will follow soon, for now if you are a vExpert and will attend VMworld sign up below!
Session ID: VSP1956 : The ESXi Quiz Show
Scheduled: Monday - 13:00 - 14:00We guarantee that this session will be entertaining!
Death to Powerpoint, hail the Quiz Master!
Download VMware Products | Privacy | Update Feed Preferences
Copyright © 2010 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.
- New Articles Published for Week Ending 7/23/11 -
- Top 10 Planet V12N blog posts for week 29 -
Top 10 Planet V12N blog posts for week 29 Well there is just too much great content this past week to fit it all into a Top 5 again. This task seems to be consuming more and more of my time (which is a great thing!) as you guys are pushing out such great content. Here are the top 10 from this past week, enjoy!
Jason Boche - Configure a vCenter 5.0 integrated Syslog server - Now that VMware offers an ESXi only platform in vSphere 5.0, there are logging decisions to be considered which were a non-issue on the ESX platform. Particularly with boot from SAN, boot from flash, or stateless hosts where logs can’t be stored locally on the host with no scratch partition due to not having local storage. Some shops use Splunk as a Syslog server. Other bloggers such as Simon Long have identified in the past how to send logs to the vMA appliance.
Hany Michael - Publishing the vCloud Director portal on the Internet - One of the very frequent questions I see internally on the VMware mailing lists is how to publish a vCloud Director portal on the Internet. I’ve personally went through the dilemma of searching for such information and had no luck to find something documented in a clear way with configuration examples. In this post I will cover both the architecture considerations as well as the technical configuration from my experience in a real-world implementation.
Frank Denneman - Upgrading VMFS datastores and SDRS - Among many new cool features introduced by vSphere 5 is the new VMFS file system for block storage. Although vSphere 5 can use VMFS-3, VMFS-5 is the native VMFS level of vSphere 5 and it is recommended to migrate to the new VMFS level as soon as possible. Jason Boche wrote about the difference between VMFS-3 and VMFS-5.
William Lam - HBR (Host Based Replication) CLI for SRM 5 - Host based replication (HBR) is a new feature in the upcoming SRM 5.0 which gives user the ability to replicate VM’s between dissimilar storage. Traditionally, SRM mainly relied on array-based replication to backup and recover virtual machines residing on set of LUN(s). This required all virtual machines to be backed up to be in a set of protected and common LUN(s). With HBR, you now have the ability to target specific VM and their respective VMDK(s) and backup to different storage type at the destination such as local storage, iSCSI/FC LUN or NFS datastores.
Duncan Epping - Scale Up/Out and impact of vRAM?!? (part 2) - About a year ago I wrote an article about scaling up. I have been receiving multiple requests to update this article as with vRAM many seem to be under the impression that the world has changed but did it really? Yes I know I am about to burn myself but then again I am Dutch and we are known for our bluntness so let me be that Dutch guy again. Now before this turns into a “burn the witch who dares to speak about vRAM” thread let me be clear, this article is not about vRAM per se.
Eric Sloof - vSphere 5 Video - EFI the Extensible Firmware Interface - UEFI virtual BIOS. Virtual machines running on ESXi 5.0 can boot from and use the Unified Extended Firmware Interface (UEFI). When you create a new virtual machine on an ESXi 5.0 host you have the option to choose for virtual machine version 8. This new version brings a lot of extra (scalability) features but there’s one other interesting new feature. The Extensible Firmware Interface can be selected to replace the BIOS of a virtual machine. EFI is the successor of the traditional BIOS which is used since the introduction of the IBM PC back in 1981. If you want to host Apple Mac OS X 10.6 in a virtual machine, you need EFI.
Andre Leibovici - vSphere 5.0 New .vswp file & Storage Tax on VDI - Virtual Machine swap files have been around since the early ESX days and overtime we have learnt how to play with Memory Reservations to constrain their maximum size and reduce storage footprint. This type of operation may not be as effective with server virtualization as it is with desktop virtualization.The size of a .vswp file is equal to the memory size allocated to the VM, minus any assigned memory reservation. As an example, assume a virtual desktop with Windows 7 with2GB RAM, and 1GB memory reservation. In this case the .vswp file is 1GB.
William Lam - Automating ESXi 5.x Kickstart Tips & Tricks - There are some minor changes with kickstarting ESXi 5.0 but the majority of your existing ESXi 4.1 kickstart configurations can be re-used with a few modifications. One of my goals during the vSphere 5.0 beta was to automate as much of the configurations of an ESXi host as possible within the kickstart process. I also converted as many of the legacy esxcfg-* commands as I could over to the enhanced esxcli namespaces as the esxcfg-* commands will eventually be deprecated in favor of esxcli.
Greg Mulholland - Introducing Virtual NUMA in vSphere 5 - There has been a lot of talk already about new features announced in vSphere 5 since the cloud launch last week. After being involved in the beta and doing some of my own discovery/testing in my home lab I stumbled across something that I thought was cool if not interesting. Virtual NUMA is now part of vSphere 5 and although it won’t get the attention of some of the highlight features like Storage DRS I thought it may deserve an introduction at the least.
Michael White - Failback? Where is the button!? - Are you one of the ones that cannot live with the manual nature of the failback operation in SRM 4? You need that Failback button that you have heard about in SRM 5? And you didn’t find it did you! I will help you with that in this blog and hopefully it all makes sense. You will be doing a simplified and automated failover back to the original site soon so no worries!
Download VMware Products | Privacy | Update Feed Preferences
Copyright © 2010 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.
- A week in virtualization -
A week in virtualization The VMworld Schedule Builder is released for the Las Vegas conference, and if you are registered to attend, you can now begin signing up for your favourite break-out sessions. Simply go to vmworld.com and click on Las Vegas conference link, then look in the left nav for the schedule builder link.
And early bird discount for VMworld Copenhagen is still available until July 29th, so hurry if you plan on going.
Also, the VMworld team is inviting everyone to send in their videos to be used as part of the opening keynote session at VMworld this year. Go to vmworld.com and click on the blue button on the right which says “Be part of the VMworld Opening General Session” to find out how you can participate.
Unless you spent the last 8 days under a rock, you already know that last week we have released a number of new Cloud Infrastructure products, among them vSphere 5, vCloud Director 1.5, vCenter Site Recovery Manager 5, and vShield 5. Our CEO Paul Maritz and CTO Steve Herrod announced the release in a live webcast that was attended by dozens of thousands of people. If you were there, good for you! All the news and a bunch of resources are of course linked front and center on vmware.com
On Facebook, the Fusion team is looking for Beta participants for the upcoming new version. They have also shared a blog post about OS X Lion and its new features. Go to facebook.com/vmwarefusion for more details.
The vCloud team has shared a link to a blog post by Matt Sarrel about how vSphere 5 is setting a new standard in virtualization and cloud computing. You can find it at facebook.com/vmwarevcloud
The VMware View Bootcamp, is in full swing. It started yesterday, and at this point, two videos of the nine-part series have been released. It is not too late to jump on the bandwagon and learn about VMware View technologies. Go to vmware.com/go/viewbootcamp and join in the fun.
And now, a look at the upcoming events in the world of virtualization.
The VMware Forum is in Minneapolis on the 21st, after which it will take a short break until August, at which point it will head over to Colombia. The web page with details is as usual linked from vmware.com homepage – in the grey box that says “VMware Forum 2011” on the lower left.
We have six cool webinars coming up soon, covering a variety of topics from three common misconceptions about SAP virtualization, over transition to ESXi, to Application Modernization in Practice. They all are listed at webcasts.vmware.com
That last webinar I mentioned, about Application Modernization, is definitely the one to put on your calendar if you are working with middleware on a regular basis. This webcast has IDC analysts, a NewEdge data architect, and of course our very own VP of Application Platform, Shaun Connoly. Folks, this will be worth your while.
Our friends at EMC are hosting some live webinars covering EMC solutions for VMware, a couple of them together with our VP of Product Marketing, Bogomil Balkansky. Go check them out at vmware.com/go/emcwebinars
From our community of users, there’s a few cool things coming up too.
First, there’s the drawing to win a free trip to VMworld, with all bells and whistles from vDestination. To enter this contest, post one comment/reply on the blog announcement with:
* Your favorite thing about VMware
* What you look forward to most at VMworld 2011
* And who you hope meet at VMworld 2011You can find the announcement and the rules of the game on vdestination.com
Also, there is another contest going on to win a trip to Vegas for the VMwold show, and this one is put together by Niketown588.com
In order to enter, you have to email the organizer, and then eight people will be randomly selected to participate in the contest. The contestants then will have to blog about four or so virtual classes that they will have to attend. All eight of them will be flown to the show, where the winner will be announced. All eight contestants will win something, but the main winner will get a little more. The prizes are secret at this point, so I don’t have much more info. Go to niketown588.com to read the full announcement and to enter.
The following VMUGs are meeting over the next seven days: Sydney, Austin, Boise, San Diego, Adelaide, and US-Federal. New England VMUG’s Summer Slammer is tomorrow, and aside from cool talks, there will also be free lobster and steak at the end for all. You can find more details and registration links for all the VMUG meetings at myvmug.org by clicking on “Events.”
Download VMware Products | Privacy | Update Feed Preferences
Copyright © 2010 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.
- vFabric webcast: Application Modernization in Practice -
vFabric webcast: Application Modernization in Practice Folks, if you get to work with middleware at all, here's a webcast worth joining. It's called Application Modernization in Practice: How NewEdge Revolutionized Their Brokerage Operations with VMware vFabric and will air on Thursday, July 28, 2011, 9:00 AM PDT.
In this live event, you can learn from IDC Analysts and NewEdge's Global Head of Data how a new approach to applications and data is driving revenue growth and cost savings.
Here's a short overview of what the talk will cover:
- Why traditional approaches to middleware can’t support today’s modern applications
- How a cloud application platform can help you deliver applications in weeks instead of months or years
- When it’s time to rethink your approach to data
Save the date and register today.
Download VMware Products | Privacy | Update Feed Preferences
Copyright © 2010 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.
- CentOS 6.0 -
CentOS 6.0 These are the changes or updates made to VMware Compatibility Guide since it was last published:
- Added support for CentOS 6.0 on ESX 4.0 Update 2, ESX 4.0 Update 3, ESX 4.1 and ESX 4.1 Update 1.
Check the VMware Compatibility Guide here: http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/search.php?deviceCategory=software
Download VMware Products | Privacy | Update Feed Preferences
Copyright © 2010 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.
