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Archive for the ‘vSphere’ Category

You’ve probably heard VMware virtualization and storage talk about VAAI (vStorage API for Array Integration. If you’ve listened to episode 4 of VIRTUMANIA or watched the recent video from the vExpert Panel session at the Carolina VMUG Summit then you’ve heard me talk about it with some of those most in the know on the topic. But what is VAAI exactly and how will it impact virtualization in the future?

Side note – I hate saying “V A A I”. IMO it’s quite a tongue twister. I have adopted saying “V double A I” because it is much easier to get out.

VAAI Introduced 2 years ago

Although it does not exist in vSphere 4.0 today, believe it or not VAAI was first introduced at VMworld 2008 when the vStorage API was announced.

VMware Unveils New vStorage Technologies to Deliver Leading Efficiency and Manageability for the Virtual Datacenter Operating System

New Capabilities Deliver Deeper Integration with Storage Partner Functionality
vStorage enables intelligent integration of storage products within the Virtual Datacenter OS through the new vStorage APIs. 

vStorage APIs deliver tight integration of advanced capabilities from storage partners with the Virtual Datacenter OS from VMware.  vStorage APIs for array integration will enable customers to leverage array-based capabilities, such as snapshots, provisioning, replication and restore, directly with individual virtual machines in conjunction with the clustering and pooling capabilities of VMware Infrastructure.  vStorage APIs for multi-pathing will provide customers the ability to integrate advanced load balancing capabilities provided by leading partners’ multi-pathing software with their virtual environment.

If you are like me you were probably so overwhelmed by the news of the VCD-OS (That’s what VMware was calling the hybrid Cloud at the time … I guess?) that you missed (or were not capable or ready to comprehend) how complete of a strategy already existed for building Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) with the vStorage API. For me, looking back 2 years later it is amazing to me it was all there – at least in concept.

Don’t confuse VADP and VAAI

VAAI is only one part of the vStorage API. VADP (vStorage API for Data Protection) is another, but the these two seem to have been easily confused lately. VADP is

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VMware announced the U2 (update 2) release of ESX 4.0, and unfortunately early adopters quickly discovered VMware View virtual desktop connections using the PCoIP protocol were failing. This post provides some quick info on both the new release and the new VDI problem it creates.

UPdate 2 Info

VMware ESX 4 Update 2 is available for download here. The following is a cut and paste of What’s New from the Release Notes:

• 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. For a complete list of supported guest operating systems with this release, see the VMware Compatibility Guide.
• Resolved Issues – In addition, this release delivers a number of bug fixes that have been documented in the Resolved Issues section.

PCoIP Connections Issue

The following cut and paste is from the VMware KB Article Upgrading VMware Tools in a virtual desktop causes PCoIP connections to fail: Read the rest of this entry »

Tom Howarth, VMware Communities Moderator and blogger at PlanetVM.net, posted this week how he was informed by a developer of a virtualization backup vendor about a scenario involving reverting to an ESX snapshot that results in corrupted incremental backups when using vSphere’s Change Block Tracking (CBT). Howarth’s post Major issue with Change Block Tracking recounts his conversation and exploration of the problem with the developer. In summary, Howarth reported “there is a major issue with the way VMware handles the indexing of the ChangeID.”

Almost a week later and after a flurry of comments from most of the vendors leveraging CBT for virtual machine backups, VMware has published a KB article on the subject.

VMware KB: Reverting to a pre-existing snapshot under specific conditions can cause incremental backups based on CBT (Changed Block Tracking) to become inconsistent

The KB Article describes the exact scenario that causes the problem:

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With the recent news that VMware will be phasing out VMware Consolidated Backup and make the vStorage API for Data Recovery (VADR) the business continuity and full virtual machine backup enabler of the future, I want to better understand where VMware Data Recovery (vDR) fits in a virtual infrastructure today. This post outlines my notes as I explored both features and limitations of vDR in order to help explain how, where and when the product can be leveraged.

vSphere Editions needed for vDR

A great place to start is by understanding what licensed versions of vSphere 4 vDR can be used with. Using VMware’s vSphere edition comparison table you can clearly see that vDR is only available for use with the Essentials Plus, Advanced, Enterprise, and Enterprise Plus versions.

Although vDR is available in the Enterprise and Enterprise Plus editions, the limitations described in the next section present some design challenges for deploying vDR in larger environments.

Disclaimer: I am a systems engineer for Veeam Software.

Special Considerations For Using vDR

The following list of vDR limitations was taken from the VMware Data Recovery 1.1 Administration Guide:

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VMware made upgrading to vSphere 4 easy enough, but there are still a few things that can go wrong. One example is that admins must consider the patch and version levels of VirtualCenter and ESX  to begin. After the vCenter upgrade specific  compatibilities between vCenter 4 and ESX 3.x must be understood if a mixed mode environment will exist during the span of the upgrade.

vCenter 4 Pre-Upgrade Check

Although the Agent Pre-Upgrade Check Utility was introduced last Fall when VMware released vCenter 4 Update 1, I had not come across a situation where using the tool identified problems with ESX upgrades. Judging by several other blog posts that demonstrated the utility on the web already, most all of these bloggers showed “pass” scenarios as well. For me that was the same result until this week. In fact, the vCenter Pre-Upgrade Check proved it’s worth to me in a huge way.

For those not familiar how to use the Pre-Upgrade Utility, just start the autorun.exe in the vCenter 4 U1 .zip file or from the install DVD. At the bottom of the vCenter Installer menu is the option to start the pre-upgrade check. See the image to the right of this post.

Once the tool starts point it at the VirtualCenter 2.5 server. After less than 5 minutes

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A recent announcement from Likewise Software hints that future versions of VMware vSphere may make it easier for companies to manage ESX hosts using Active Directory (AD) credentials. vCenter, which runs on a Windows Server operating system, is commonly added to an AD domain already, but special configurations are necessary to authenticate ESX host access with domain credentials today. Here’s a clip from the announcement:

“The integration will enable VMware vSphere users to manage privileged user access with Microsoft Active Directory, providing large enterprises with a scalable means to improve authentication and access control in virtualized environments to help meet IT security audit requirements. Likewise is a member of the VMware Technology Alliance Partner (TAP) program.”

I recently ran across this announcement via virtualization.info’s article VMware to embed Likewise authentication in next vSphere, but originally read about it in the vreference.com post ESX 4.1 to include likewise AD authentication?

Likewise Open is an “open source application that joins Linux, Unix, and Mac machines to Microsoft Active Directory and securely authenticates users with their domain credentials.” The Open edition is free to download and use. Likewise also offers

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The vSphere Enterprise Plus vNetwork Distributed Switch (vDS) has been heralded as, and I might add lives up to it’s reputation of, an administrator’s time saver and single point of virtual networking configuration and visibility across many ESX/ESXi 4 hosts. However, the vDS presents some administrative challenges unique from the traditional vNetwork Standard Switch (vSS) that admins are used to. Specifically, since the vCenter 4 Server actually maintains the vDS configuration, some extra design thinking needs to be built into a vSphere 4 environment where a vDS will be used. If vCenter 4 Server itself will be a virtual machine in the environment with a vDS, the design gets even more involved.

There are a few possible problems to consider. In this post I’ll first cover (with the help of a several others) general VM and vCenter vDS networking issues, but along the way I’ll explore thoughts about designing around a vDS for keeping vCenter as a VM.

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