VM /ETC

Archive for the ‘VirtualCenter’ Category

So you’ve downloaded your free version of ESXi. Maybe you’ve built a couple of ESX Servers but you haven’t purchased a full VI 3.5 Enterpise license. You might even have an enterprise license but your VirtualCenter (VC) server will be a virtual machine (VM) and you want to build a template VM as a gold image first. These are some of several possible scenarios where it helps to have VC -like functionalities without VirtualCenter. This post is a summary of 3 freely available tools that can provide some of VirtualCenter’s features.

First let me state that there is not an exact substitute for VirtualCenter, and the automation and ease of management VC provides is well worth it’s cost. Now for some alternatives. Read the rest of this entry »

It happens more frequently than I would ever imagine, but from time to time I find clients have not installed the VMware tools in their virtual machine’s (VM) operating system. I find it more often in Linux VMs than Windows, but I’ve discovered it for both types of guests none-the-less. Some times the tools install is overlooked or forgotten, but every once in a while I am told something like “Does Linux needed VMware tools?” or “what do the VMware tools do for me anyways?”.

Well, I do not have any unique insight or clever commentary to add, but I am providing the following cut and pastes from the VMware .pdf Basic System Administration Guide as a easy reference. At the very least this post will save me some time because I won’t have to dig this info out of the .pdf again when I am asked.

The following sections provide info on what you install when you install VMware tools as well as steps for installing the tools for both Windows and Linux VMs. The rest of this post is not my material but comes straight from the linked guide above – although not necessarily in the order it appears in the original document, however. Download and read the current version for yourself! Read the rest of this entry »

Lately, I have had several clients and peers ask me how to get disk usage and performance statistics from their current virtual infrastructure of ESX hosts and virtual machines . Some needed data for planning and sizing a new SAN, while others needed statistics for upgrading, adding more disks, or for optimizing multi path and VMFS performance. In one case the customer was trouble shooting poor VM performance issues. Regardless of the objectives there are some built in tools in both VirtualCenter and ESX server that can get this information for you. This post explains 2 native methods:

• Using the VI Cleint to access the Performance data in VirtualCenter
• Using esxtop from the ESX Service Console

I have included plenty of screenshots. As always, click on them for larger views. The rest of this post is in an outline format, but should be easy enough to follow. Read the rest of this entry »

Yes, this post uses another movie reference.

In the film 28 Days Later the Rage virus infects the Island of Great Britain turning all but a few survivors into zombie-like monsters called “The Infected”. The virus was unleashed when animal activists released medical research chimpanzees which ended up attacking the activists and scientists. This post is about what could cause a similar rage 730 days after installing VirtualCenter, potentially causing VI administrators to become lifeless, rabid, and insane.

After installing VirtualCenter (VC), you should check the installed SSL certificate used by the VI Client because you will most likely need to manually replace it. After a fresh installation the default certifcate expires in 730 days (or 2 years). If the certificate expires you will be unable to log in to the VirtualCenter Management Server using either the VI Client or the web administration interface.

Unfortunately, it is unclear to me at this writing if upgrading the VC Server within the 730 day period updates the certificate store. Read the rest of this entry »

I was helping a customer P2V a large development SQL server this week and ran into a VMFS configuration issue that failed the conversion. We were using the Converter Enterprise for VirtualCenter 2.5 plugin. Almost as soon as we kicked off the job it failed with an error starting with “file size is larger than the maximum size supported by datastore”. The VMFS LUN we were using as the target was an empty 1.5 TB volume, and the new VM consisted of 2 virtual disks that totaled roughly 450 GB. We had plenty of room, but the problem was not the available storage space. Instead, the issue was that we exceeded the maximum possible .vmdk size for the default VMFS 1MB block setting.

When you add new storage to an ESX host and you format the LUN with the VMFS file system you have to choose what block size setting you want to use. See the screenshot for the dropdown box used to make this choice. Notice the Maximum file size description supposedly provided to help you understand this setting. It’s hardly intuitive in my opinion, so let me try to translate – Choosing the block size determines what maximum possible .vmdk size can be created on this LUN.

If you do not change the default setting when you format a VMFS LUN
Read the rest of this entry »

Carlo Costanzo over at ipmer.com has a great post about how to quickly and easily solve issues resulting from VM snapshots. As Carlo points out, too many administrators misunderstand the ESX snapshot to be a point in time backup and unfortunately do not realize it is instead a live and growing file. More often than not the snapshot is forgotten until the LUN is completely out of space at which time the VM is unstable. Trying to commit the snapshot becomes a time consuming burden.

The post 70GB Snapshot, YIKES! explains how Carlo used some “outside of the box” thinking to use VMware Converter to rescue VMs without going through the commit process. The idea is so simple it’s brilliant! Carlo writes:

Read the rest of this entry »

A Google Group discussion thread asking for help with hung tasks in VirtualCenter points out an important Service Console configuration best practice. Killing tasks on vcenter starts off by asking if there is a way to kill several VirtualCenter tasks that are bogging down the management server. Although the method for killing individual tasks is never realized, understanding potential reasons for the problem is the more important take away. Fixing the VirtualCenter performance problem results after correcting ESX host resource issues. Read the rest of this entry »