VM /ETC

Posts Tagged ‘esxi’

Managing and troubleshooting ESXi 4 can be a little alien when an administrator is used to the Service Console of ESX Classic. Specifically, troubleshooting remote connectivity to the ESX management interface after adding a second NIC involves local esxcfg-vswitch commands on ESX, but with ESXi the esxcfg commands are only available via the RCLI. Problem is you can’t use the RCLI if you lost remote management connectivity! Luckily, the local ESXi GUI lets you reconfigure your mistake and re establish remote connections.

Hit F2 on the ESXi Console and enter the System Configuration Menu

  Choose to Configure Management Network > Network Adapters

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I received an email today from VMware addressed to all customers about the end of availability for VMware Consolidated Backup (VCB). Quoting from the beginning of the communication but not the entire message, it reads:

“The purpose of this letter is to inform you of our vSphere backup product strategy, ongoing enhancements, and end of availability plans for VMware Consolidated Backup.

VMware Backup Product Strategy
VMware released vStorage APIs for Data Protection (VADP) with the vSphere 4.0 release in May, 2009. VADP is the next generation of VMware’s backup framework. We have also been working with several backup partners to integrate VADP into their solutions to make backup of vSphere Virtual Machines fast, efficient and easy to deploy compared to VCB and other backup solutions. Several of our major backup partners have already released VADP integrated backup products and we expect most of the major backup partners to have VADP integrated backup software by the upcoming feature release of the vSphere platform in 2010.

Future Product Licensing
Given the strong interest and adoption of VADP by our backup eco-system and the benefits offered by VADP compared to VMware Consolidated Backup (VCB), we are announcing the End of Availability for VCB starting with next vSphere feature release in 2010. Starting with the next vSphere platform feature release, VCB will be removed from vSphere platform. VADP integrated backup products (including VMware Data Recovery) will be the recommended option for efficient backup and restoration of vSphere Virtual Machines. This will allow us to focus new value added feature development on VADP instead of two backup frameworks (VCB and VADP).”

[omited]

I’ll go out on a limb and say that most of the VMware community will

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ESXi doesn’t have a Service Console like ESX. Therefore, you can’t SSH to the server without entering unsupported mode. That process may be a hassle if all you need to do is modify VM configuration files. Of ourse, you could use the Datastore Browser from the VI/vSphere Client, but to make file edits you would have to download a file to your desktop, edit it, and then upload the changed version back to ESXi again. On the other hand, with Veeam’s free FastSCP editing files on ESXi datastores is easy.

To be clear, you can’t edit configuration files of the ESXi host itself with FastSCP, but there really should not be a need to do so. That’s one of the benefits of ESXi not having a Service Console!

Download FastSCP here. You will have to register with Veeam first, and the registration form will not accept a personal email. I’m guessing there is some kind of lead qualification strategy and support registration involved with this requirement for download, but I learned a work address is unavoidable. I tried to use my gmail address but received a message similar to “you must use a company email address.” The registration process ends with a confirmation email to be acknowledged before you can download, so making up a fake email is futile. Hey, it’s a small price to pay for a free, quality admin tool.

After you install FastSCP you’ll discover you have access to a trial period of Veeam Backup and Replication. I suggest exploring

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To entice SMB interest and acceleration in building cloud infrastructure, today VMware announced new offerings centered on the ESXi 4 hypervisor. In 2 separate press releases, VMware revealed that a new agreement was signed with Intel to effectively distribute ESXi to more SMB customers, and that these customers can now easily automate the installation and configuration of ESXi with VMware Go. This post summarizes the official announcements and then offers some opinion on other factors that continue to influence the ultimate adoption of ESXi.

VMware Signs Agreement with Intel to Expand Reach of VMware vSphere 4 to SMB Customers

“The Intel global reseller community of more than 50,000 Premier and Associate members will benefit from the new agreement by being able to resell the industry-leading virtualization platform to their SMB customers. The agreement supports Intel’s strategy to proliferate virtualization technology on the recently announced Intel Xeon Processor 5500 series into SMB markets and it provides resellers with low-cost high availability solutions, including the three new VMware vSphere 4 product editions for SMBs that enable Always On IT. The Intel ESAA program also provides resellers with pre-certified Intel server platforms for VMware vSphere 4 with the ability to have their products listed on the VMware Hardware Compatibility List (HCL) at no additional charge. This reduces deployment costs and speeds time to market for resellers to address new opportunities.”

VMware Introduces VMware Go—A New Service that Will Make Virtualization Even Easier for First Time Users

“VMware Go is a free web-based service that will enable SMB customers to fly through the ESXi setup process with just a few mouse clicks.  The award-winning VMware ESXi is the industry’s most widely deployed hypervisor, with hundreds of thousands of users worldwide.  VMware ESXi, also available for free, allows companies to reduce overhead and simplify business operations by running multiple operating systems and applications on a single server, spending less money on hardware, power and cooling, and server administration. VMware ESXi together with VMware Go is an on-ramp for companies new to virtualization, especially small businesses who may not think they have the time or budget to get started.

VMware Go was developed in partnership with Shavlik Technologies, a member of VMware’s Technology Alliance Partner Program. VMware Go will be made available as a beta offering on August 31, 2009 to customers who go to http://www.vmware.com/go/vmware-go-beta. VMware Go is expected to become generally available as a free service in 2010″

As first pointed out to me by Eric Sloof on the NTPRO.NL blog, the VMware Go Beta is available today at Read the rest of this entry »

There have been a couple of bloggers this week that, while responding to Microsoft’s competitive analysis on Hyper-V versus ESX/ESXi footprints, have revealed some very interesting and helpful information about what exactly is contained in ESXi installations and on the bootable ESXi flash drive. For reference I’ll summarize a few posts and then link to a VM /ETC post from last year explaining why the ESXi .ISO is so large as well.

First, Nate from Techopsguys.com provides a realistic, and “colorful” at times view of the actual amount of space consumed by ESXi when you install it in Does size matter?. Read his post, but the condensed message and my interpretation of what Nate is saying is “VMware please stop telling people your ESXi hypervisor is so small when so much more space is required to install it.” 

“ESXi v3.5 was unable to boot directly from SAN so I can’t tell with the same level of accuracy how big it is, (”df” says about 200MB) but I can say that our ESXi v3.5 systems are installed on 1GB USB sticks, and the image I decompressed onto those USB sticks is 750MB(VMware-VMvisor-big-3.5.0_Update_4-153875.i386.dd), regardless, it’s FAR from 32MB or even 75MB, at best it’s 10x larger than what they claim.”

If VMware ESXi 4 is so small, why is it so big? is a post by Eric Gray that explains why the 32 mb ESXi 3 and the 60 mb ESXi 4 hypervisors on bootable flash drives require a 1 GB drive.

“Not only does a 1GB flash device contain the ESXi hypervisor, it also provides VMware Tools for various supported operating systems and a copy of the vSphere Client which administrators can download and install to their workstations.  These components are not executed by the hypervisor at all — they can be obtained through other means, but it is very convenient to have them right on the host.”

Gray’s post also provides GParted screen shots of showing the partition layout as well as an image of the directory listing of the tools, drivers, and vSphere Client.

ESXi is as small as VMware says it is… by Mike Laverick also similarly discusses the contents of ESXi flash drives. Laverick also points out that for roll back purposes, ESXi installations also maintain copies of the previous installed versions. When an upgrade goes wrong a local copy of the former working ESXi version can be quickly recovered to.

If your curious about VMware’s methodology for coming up with the hypervisor footprint calculations they base their claims on then check out the Virtual Reality Blog post Our position on hypervisor footprints, patching, vulnerabilities and whatever else Microsoft wants to throw into a blog post. Eric Horschman gives you the gorey details on ESXi disk partition sizes as well as direct replies to the several other topics Microsoft has competitive issues with.

“A df -h command will then show you that the total size of those compressed ESXi boot images in the directory corresponding to /bootbank is 59.3MB — somewhat less than the 70MB figure we’ve publicly stated.  The other partitions in the listing are either loaded only in memory (/), or they are excluded per the rules above.  Note that this is not just a stripped down ESXi installation, it is a fully capable ESXi host supporting all licensed vSphere features.”

Finally If ESXi is so small why is the download so big? is a post I wrote after talking to Amir Sharif, VMware Senior Product Manager about the reasons the ESXi .ISO download(s) are over 200 MB. Copying what I wrote in the original post:

Amir explained to me that the VMware ESXi downloads (both for installation media and patches) contain 4 major components.  These components and their approximate sizes are:

• VMware ESXi (32 MB)
• VMware VI Client (48 MB)
• VMware Tools (120 MB)
• Global and regional server vendor value-add customization bits (30 MB)

It’s important to note that there are several versions of the VMware Tools depending on the target OS, and there are two different bundle types for Linux OSes (.rpm and .tgz).  There are multiple versions of server vendor customization bits as well. Therefore, VMware’s completeness to include all of these items in a single download makes for a large .iso file. In case you noticed the math doesn’t match the current version’s download size, that is because the 4 component sizes are approximates and will change from version to version.

Alex Barrett’s SearchServerVirtualization.com VMware clampdown on free ESXi may prompt defection to Hyper-V article presents VMware’s reasons for making a request to Veeam to stop supporting Veeam Backup with the free ESXi versions. Quoting the interview from Barrett’s story:

“We provide certain APIs [application programming interfaces] and methods particular to the virtualization environment,” said Patrick Lin, the vice president of product management for VMware’s server business unit. By offering access to the hypervisor via a preferred set of APIs, “our intent is to provide a level playing field in the basis of backup,” he said.

But Veeam did not use VMware-approved methods to develop its product, said Parag Patel, VMware’s vice president of alliances. “We’re not exactly sure what they did, but it didn’t seem sound,” Patel said. “For us it’s a question of what’s built and how it’s built. … To be perfectly honest, we didn’t want to be associated with it because it wasn’t satisfactory.”

Perhaps more to the point, Veeam Backup is inconsistent with VMware’s vision of free ESXi deployments. “It’s meant to be a starter … walk before you run,” Patel said. “It’s not supposed to be for complex software environments.” With free ESXi, “you shouldn’t need a whole lot of other tools to make it work.” If you do, you are free to upgrade.

On the other hand, Barrett’s interview also helps confirm the idea that VMware does not wish
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In the official press release today Veeam Software Offers New Essentials Bundle, Acceleration Kits for VMware vSphere 4 Veeam mentions a new policy removing support for the use of Veeam Backup with the free version of ESXi.

“At the same time, Veeam introduced a new policy with respect to support for the free edition of VMware ESXi. “As a longtime Premier Technology Alliance Partner and supporter of VMware’s product strategy, Veeam Software takes great pride in creating innovative software products that enhance the customer value of VMware ESX, ESXi, and ESXi Free,” said Ratmir Timashev, Veeam president and CEO. “One such example is support for the free edition of VMware ESXi in Veeam Backup and Replication.

“Recently, VMware requested that Veeam discontinue support for ESXi Free in Veeam Backup and Replication in order to comply with VMware’s updated licensing policy,” Timashev continued. “In light of VMware’s request, and our close technical partnership, Veeam Backup and Replication will no longer support ESXi Free. We will still continue to offer support for ESXi Free to existing Veeam customers who purchased Backup & Replication prior to version 3.1.””

Be sure to read those two paragraphs again.

Veeam, a company that seems to have found a successful niche marketing to SMBs and remote branch office VMware deployments, has been asked to remove support of the use of one it’s popular products with free ESXi. Possibly shedding some additional light on this mystery, the press announcement mentions respect for VMware’s product strategy and Veeam’s long time status as a technology partner. There is no mention of Veeam pulling free ESXi support of the popular FastSCP file management tool.

Without any inside information about the VMware ESXi roadmap and strategy, here is a quick review of ESXi’s public timeline: Read the rest of this entry »