VM /ETC

Posts Tagged ‘networking’

The VIRTUMANIA continues with Episode 14! Marc, Rick and I host very special guests David Davis and Greg Schulz for a discussion about networking for virtualization. The following is the podcast summary:

VIRTUMANIA Podcast Episode 14 – Virtualization and Networking Turf Wars. Hosts Rich Brambley (@rbrambley) of VMETC and Marc Farley (@3parfarley) of 3Par and StorageRap.com with regular Rick Vanover (@rickvanover) of RickVanover.com are joined by special guests David Davis (@davidmdavis)vmwarevideos.com and Greg Schulz (@storageio) of storageioblog.com. This week’s episode covers the important but often overlooked network architecture needed for successful virtual infrastructure. Our discussion eventually compares the data center battle for control, management, and monitoring of virtual machine traffic to rival gangs dancing for superiority in the Michael Jackson music video "Bad". Thanks to Greg Knieriemen (@knieriemen) of Chi Corporation for this Infosmack Production.

Listen to the podcast with the embedded player or subscribe to get a weekly copy so you can listen when convenient.

Check out the VM /ETC VIRTUMANIA Page to listen to past episodes as well as episodes of Infosmack.

The following links offer more information on some of the topics mentioned in VIRTUMANIA Episode 14:

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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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http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1010718 explains the normal way for disabling and removing a VMware ESX/ESXi vNetwork Distributed Switch (vDS or DVS or VDS – LOL), but when I recently tried to do so I received the following error:

“The resource ’1′ is in use. DVS [vDS Name] port 1 is reserved by to entity <not-found.> vnic 4000, type:vmVnic”

The screen shot shows the actual error I received.

After thinking about that message, I decided to check to see if any ports were in fact being used on the vDS. Although PortID 1 dvPortGroups did not show it being used as expected, other PortIDs were, in fact, in use. See image below.

I tried messing around with disabling the ports (blocking was the terminology in the vSphere Client, I believe) but I still could not delete the vDS. It was Saturday and I had family stuff to do so I reluctantly gave up at the time. However, 3 days later I was able to easily remove it via the Remove link on vDS Configuration screen just like I was supposed to be able to do all along. Needless to say I was a bit perplexed.

After researching I discovered that

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If you’ve ever had to manually trace the cables from servers to network switches in a rack you probably were not very happy about it. In fact, if you’ve ever had to trace 10 cables from each ESX host to multiple network switches you were most likely aggravated to say the least. The good news is that if you have ESX 3.5 and Cisco switches you can determine the switch ports in use via the Cisco Discovery Protocol (CDP). Even better, the VMware administrator doesn’t even need access to the network switch and can obtain the switch port information directly from the VI Client.
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Let’s say you need to quickly figure out if a remote server is a VMware virtual machine (VM). I won’t go into reasons why you might not already know, or why you would need to know, but let’s just say you do. If you have Remote Desktop access you can check the hardware devices, but what if you can’t and you need to tell remotely? I can’t think of an easier indicator than the server’s MAC address.

When ESX Server automatically generates a MAC address, the first three bytes are the VMware Organizationally Unique Identifier, or OUI. ESX Server uses one of two VMware OUIs for network adapters:

• If you initiate the virtual machine directly in ESX Server, ESX Server uses 00:0C:29:XX:XX:XX
  
• If you initiate the virtual machine in VirtualCenter, ESX Server uses 00:50:56:XX:XX:XX

If I am not mistaken the VirtualCenter generated MAC OUI is also the same for VMware Workstation, Fusion, and Server, but don’t hold me to that.

Armed with knowledge of the standard OUIs, it’s now easy to tell a VMware VM by the MAC address.

To get the remote MAC address using a Windows XP or Vista desktop, for example, enter the following at a command prompt: Read the rest of this entry »

Jason Boche posted a VMware VI network communications and port usage diagram that I had to have a copy of for my knowledge base. The diagram is apparently collaboration between Jason and Nigel Metheringham that was started on communities.vmware .com. The result is a single page solution to important port information that I always seem to have to dig out of the VMware installation and quick start manuals.

Here’s an image of the current version of the diagram. Go to the post on boche.net for the .pdf version. Read the rest of this entry »

Chad Sakac has a great post on his Virtual Geek blog titled The Case For And Against Stretched ESX Clusters. In this post Chad discusses the possibilities of configuring ESX Clusters between 2 different physical data centers. That is, spanning the SAN across a wide area network so that VMs can be vmotioned between sites. The concept is a frequently discussed desire of many administrators, and Chad brings to light some great points for and against this design with specific configuration details about making it work with VMware ESX.

For example, the post explores several options: Read the rest of this entry »