VM /ETC

Posts Tagged ‘VAC’

The subject of backing up ESX hosts for disaster recovery comes up from time to time, but not nearly as often as backing up the virtual machines. To be specific, I am talking about backing up the ESX Service Console. Honesty, to reinstall ESX takes such little time there is really no need to keep a full system backup for recovery. There is an advantage to saving key configuration files and folders to quickly re-apply after a re- installation, however. This can be done without installing a backup agent on the ESX Service Console.

This post provides information on what ESX Service Console files and directories to backup, how to use the tar command to create a backup file, and then how to restore from the backup file after a new installation. The material comes from one of the VMware Authorized Consultant (VAC) toolkit documents that I often use for customer documentation deliverables. To give credit where credit is due, the author of the document is listed as “VMware PSO – Practice Development”.

The rest of this post is copied from the VAC toolkit document except for a few format changes. Read the rest of this entry »

I posted a Capacity Planner FAQ document last week. The purpose of that post was to offer technical, sales, and security answers to commonly asked questions about the Capacity Planner product. I quickly received a comment asking “what about the free licenses?” I thought what a great topic for another Capacity Planner post, but it really wasn’t relevant to content about the tool itself. Following up on that thought, this post dives into the use of the product by an authorized VMware Partner to deliver either a pre sales estimate or a professional services project. At the end of this post is a high level description of a few common Capacity Planner services projects and the deliverables associated with each service.

First things first. Yes, now VMware is providing free licenses for Capacity Planner to qualified Partners. Virtualization.info reported this announcement back in June, and as Alessandro points out.

“Partners will not be required to buy any license anymore (even if they will still have to attend a classroom course that doesn’t come cheap). They will just have to login on the online portal, create a new profile and start monitoring the customer’s infrastructure. The data will stay online for six months and then will be archived.”

Depending on the relationship between VMware, the partner, and the customer, free licenses were not uncommon before either. Either way, I want to emphasize there is an initial investment by the Partner both financially and intellectually. To get the free licenses Partners must join the Partner program, certify VCPs, and attend the Capacity Planner classes and the Virtualization Assessment boot camp.

What does this mean to VMware’s customers new and old? Read the rest of this entry »

So, I spent most of my day today preparing for a VMware Capacity Planner Virtualization Assessment that I will be starting next week. In typical fashion, the client had many questions and concerns about preparing for the installation of the data collector in their environment. To answer those questions I assembled a very informative and lengthy list of common questions and answers from the official VMware FAQs and I am posting the results of that effort here at VM /ETC.

The FAQs I used to create this post seem to be only available to VAC partners who’s accredited VCPs have completed the necessary Capacity Planner services training. Upon completing the training a VCP is assigned a log in to the VMware Data Warehouse Portal where Capacity Planner data collector’s uploads are processed into consolidation scenarios. Here, from this portal, is where these FAQ documents can be downloaded. I happen to be an accredited VCP, so I have access to the FAQs. All of the FAQs clearly state they are customer documents so I am now providing this information here. I’m not sure why these documents aren’t publicly available because I am sure they would help generate more interest in Virtualization Assessment service projects.

The remainder of this post combines VMware’s information from 3 different documents – the Capacity Planner Technical, Security, and Sales FAQs. The individual documents are provided on the VM /ETC Files page and are linked at the bottom of this post. I have trimmed down or omitted most of the FAQs in this post (and it’s still a lot of info to read), but check out the full .pdfs for more details and other FAQs I left out.

I recommend you at least skim through some of these very popular Q & A’s:

• How is Capacity Planner sold?
• Why should we add Capacity Planner when we already have so many other tools installed?
• What ports need to be open?
• What operating systems does it discover?
• What impact does collection have on my network?
• What impact does collection have on my servers?
• How are the utilization figures determined?
• What are the security features within the software?

Go get a fresh cup of coffee or your favorite beverage and then enjoy! Read the rest of this entry »

I am headed to San Diego today for VMware Partner Exchange 2008. It should be another great week of learning and networking. I am looking forward most to the hands on labs for Site Recovery Manager, ESXi, Virtual Desktop Infrastructure, and Lab Manager. There is also separate technical solution tracks for beginner, intermediate, and advanced breakout sessions. The exhibit pavillion, called the VMware Experience, sounds interesting too. Quoting the event website: Read the rest of this entry »

Over the past several weeks I have attended VMware’s latest VMLive web seminar about VDI as well as a local partner training session. Both the web seminar and the training session provided some great information about the new Virtual Desktop Manager product or VDM 2. The following post is a summary of my notes and some of the slides from the web session. Click on the slides to view a larger version.

VDI & VDM Architecture

With VDM 2 the VDI architecture is scalable and flexible. Multiple installations of VDM allow for larger numbers of users and desktops. Securing virtual desktop access from the Internet is also possible.

When you install VDM 2 you have three choices for the Desktop Manager installation type:

• Standard (first Connecton Server),
• Replica (copies of first server) servers
• Security Server – ssl tunneling, 2 factor authentication – can be installed in DMZ

VDM installs Read the rest of this entry »

Even though VI 3.5 is now generally available you may not be ready to upgrade from version 3 just yet. You should, however, make sure all patches and updates are applied to your VI3 infrastructure. This post explains the upgrading and patching methods I have standardized on and provides some tips for avoiding common issues like HA agent configuration and auto applying numerous ESX patches. All scripts and files referenced are linked at the bottom of this post.

Prepare

Preparing for the upgrade and patching is critical to minimizing what can go wrong.

Upgrade Virtual Center

Read the rest of this entry »