VM /ETC

Archive for the ‘storage vmotion’ Category

VMware has been running a blogging contest in order to promote the new vSphere Blog. The current contest topic is vSphere Thin Provisioning. A lot has been written on this topic already, but I thought I would point out a storage design conclusion I’ve come up with based mostly from the explanations and recommendations of others about handling what happens when an over allocated, thin provisioned LUN runs out of space.

This post first walks through an basic explanation of the administrative concern caused by thin provisioning and how built in vSphere monitoring and alerting can be used to proactively handle an over allocation issue. I’m using quotes from a few bloggers to help describe the potential for problem and offer ways to handle it. At the end I make a simple LUN provisioning suggestion based on combining the vSphere feature with storage device’s thin provisioning capabilities.  Read the rest of this entry »

Edwin Yuen, Microsoft Virtualization Team Senior Technical Product Manager, has introduced Hyper-V’s latest feature closely emulating VMware’s virtual infrastructure enterprise product offerings. Quick Storage Migration (QSM) is being added to System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) 2008 R2. SCVMM 2008 R2 Release Canidate was recently released to the public. Hyper-V’s final release was integrated in Windows Server 2008 SP2.

Quoting Yuen’s post on the Microsoft Virtualization Team Blog titled System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 – Quick Storage Migration, here are some high level notes about QSM:

• QSM enables the migration of a VM not only between storage locations but also from one SAN to another
• QSM relies on Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V and Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS)
• QSM can move the virtual disks of a running virtual machine independent of storage protocols (iSCSI, FC) or storage type (local, DAS, SAN), with minimal downtime
• QSM will not be available on the free Hyper-V Server 2008 version and requires Microsoft’s Virtual Machine Manager (VMM)
• Quick Storage Migration is included with System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 both in the Enterprise Edition and the Workgroup Edition
• A VM can remain running for the almost the entire duration of the transfer of its virtual disks from one storage location to another. The post estimates the VM downtime to be under 1 minute in most cases assuming W2K8 R2.
• The VM is put into save-state (Hyper-V snapshot) for a brief interval to migrate its memory state and associated differencing disks.

Yuen’s post provides a feature comparison table of QSM versus VMware’s Storage Vmotion. The following is a screen shot of the table. Read the rest of this entry »

Some buzz was generated today when Andrew Kutz of Lostcreations.com announced a new svmotion plugin in the VMware Community forums. From http://communities.vmware.com/thread/126141:

SVMotion is a VI 2.5 client plugin (the FIRST released, third-party plugin in fact) that extends the client’s functionality by providing an integrated, graphical tool that can be used to invoke storage VMotion (SVMotion) operations. This plugin is not supported by VMware. In fact, the plugin is not anywhere close to supported by VMware because it is the result of a two-week dive into the inner-workings of the VI client libraries with popular reflection tools (reverse-engineering). l o s t c r e a t i o n s is working on a white paper that describes how to build VI plugins.

Read more about SVMotion and download it here http://www.lostcreations.com/code/wiki/vmware/viplugins/svmotion.

Replies to the post in the forum so far are positive.

Another improvement alternative to the cumbersome storage vmotion feature has been made by the user community. I am assuming (and hoping) that one day soon we will all be announcing (and celebrating) the patch that includes the native VC 2.5 ability to call and configure storage vmotion from the VI Client, but until VMware does that the user community can be counted on to continue to make the process easier.

Graphical Front-End for Storage VMotion – blog.scottlowe.org is where I found out about Alexander Gaiswinkler’s post in the VMware Communities announcing his GUI for SVMotion. Installation instructions from Alexander’s post: Read the rest of this entry »

While doing some research to get ready to implement the new ESX 3.5 storage vmotion feature I came across some helpful blog posts, and a script that will be a real time saver.

Unlike the vmotion we are used to, you can not right click on a vm in the vi client and initiate a storage vmotion. You have to download VMware-VIRemoteCLI and install it. The VIRemoteCLI can be downloaded as:

* a virtual appliance
* a windows installer
* a linux installer

Once the RemoteCLI is installed in Windows for example, Read the rest of this entry »