VM /ETC

Posts Tagged ‘virtualcenter’

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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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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I haven’t always covered all the vCenter, VirtualCenter, and ESX/ESXi updates in the past. Several updates have been released since the last time I did. VirtualCenter 2.5 Update 6’s announcement caught my attention because of a fix to uploading files with the datastore browser. This issue has been reported in one of the longest comment threads here at VM /ETC. More on that later in this post, but I received the following email notification that VMware VirtualCenter 2.5 Update 6 was released:

VMware VirtualCenter 2.5 Update 6 is Generally Available

We are pleased to inform you that VMware VirtualCenter Server 2.5 Update 6 (English and localized) is generally available as of late night January 29, 2010.

VirtualCenter 2.5 Update 6 provides the following improvements:

• Guest Operating System Customization Improvements
• Support for Firefox 3.x Browsers with VirtualCenter Web Access
• Bug and security fixes

For details regarding the new fixes and improvements, please refer to the release notes.

VirtualCenter Server 2.5 Update 6 is available for download.

For details regarding compatibility, please view vSphere Compatibility Matrixes.

Thanks,
VMware Infrastructure Product Management Team

Some of the highlights for me when reading the Release Notes are:

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In order to create customized Windows 2003 and earlier virtual machines (VMs) the Microsoft Sysprep tools need to be added to VMware vCenter (also formerly known as VirtualCenter). Doing so is not a difficult process, but can be a bit confusing if an administrator has never used Sysprep before. Fortunately, VMware has a helpful KB article on the topic that explains where to download the Sysprep files from Microsoft and then where to put the extracted contents of those downloads on the vCenter Server. I’m going to high lite the instructions from VMware for downloading from Microsoft, but then I’ll explain how to get Sysprep from an alternate and arguably easier source – the Windows install CD.

Note that integrating the Sysprep files are still required in all versions of vCenter to customize VMs. This includes vCenter 4 for vSphere. Sysprep is no longer used for Server 2008, however, but VMware has added native customization of Server 2008 VMs in vCenter 4 without adding any additional files.

KB Article 1005593 titled Sysprep file locations and versions not only provides download links and extract to locations but also explains the common symptoms when Sysprep is not installed correctly on vCenter.

• When attempting to customize the deployment of a virtual machine the radio buttons are disabled (greyed out).
• When a virtual machine (VM) is deployed from a Template, you find that the SID is always the same, despite the fact that you chose the option to generate a new SID during Template deployment and guest operating system customization.
• When attempting to create a new virtual machine from a Template in ESX v3.5 you receive the following error message

Warning: Windows customization resources were not found on this server

• Message in the guestcust.log:

deploy doesn’t contain known sysprep files

The KB article explains the cause

Microsoft has a different version of Sysprep for each release and service pack of Windows. According to Microsoft, “You need to use the version of Sysprep specific to the operating system you are deploying”. The differences are not immediately visible in the packaging and documentation of the service packs, so it is necessary to manually investigate.

Use either of the following methods to obtain the appropriate Sysprep files. All instructions in this post assume vCenter has been installed in the default location. Read the rest of this entry »

So, who wants free VMware High Availability? That’s the title of a post created by Leo Raikhman on his Leo’s Ramblings blog. In this post, Leo has published the steps and scripting necessary to simulate VMware’s VI3 High Availability (HA) feature. Leo’s script works without VirtualCenter (VC), so VMware customer’s who have not implemented VC can manually create “HA -like” awareness between 2 ESX hosts. If one of the ESX servers goes offline then the virtual machines (VMs) are auto restarted on the other host. Of course, the VMs must be created on shared storage for this to work.

Before considering this script as a replacement understand the major differences between VirtualCenter HA and Leo’s HA:

• Leo’s script only works between 2 ESX hosts while VC HA can be configured with up to 32 ESX hosts as of VI 3.5 (actually using 32 host HA clusters is another topic, but it can be done)
• Leo’s script needs the ESX Service Console as written. It would need to be ported for the RCLI to work with ESXi. VC HA works with both ESX and ESXi
• VC provides a visual status for the health of your HA cluster via the VI Client
• VC HA provides HA fail over capacity for more than 1 ESX host at a time

I’ve held this post in my drafts because I wanted to try this configuration myself, but alas, I have never gotten around to it.  For those that can benefit from VC -less HA and give this script a test, let me (and Leo) know your results.

Leo’s post says: Read the rest of this entry »

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 »

As expected, several news releases from VMware can be found this morning to coincide with the first day of the VMworld Europe 2009 Conference under way in Cannes, France. The initial reports I have seen of Paul Maritz’s opening Keynote session (mostly via live blogs and Twitter) indicate that most, if not all, of the content in these press releases was presented to the thousands of VMworld Europe attendees. I plan to watch the recorded Keynote when it becomes available on Vmworld.com.

Here is my early take on what has been announced.

• VMware has confirmed that the VDC-OS initiative will ship in 2009 and foster the adoption of internal, private cloud infrastructure. VMware envisions this shift in infrastructure to include the desktop with technologies that provide the vClient initiative. I am hoping to hear a clearer message about the VDC-OS / vSphere / ESX naming of initiatives / technology layers / products, but news provided today does not seem to offer any additional clarity.
• VMware has a bare metal desktop hypervisor and it’s name is CVP. Working with VMware View, CVP will allow users to work offline and be managed centrally by VDI administrators.
• VMware and Neverfail have developed a high availability solution for VirtualCenter (VC) in the form of an active / passive host based cluster named VMware vCenter Server Heartbeat. This solution appears to be primarily designed for VC to fail over to a standby server on the LAN, but apparently a WAN configuration is also available. Previously, virtual administrators would have to rely on MSCS Clustering solutions to provide high availability for physical instances of VC.
• The introduction of VMware vShield Zones in ESX Clusters will allow for a more efficient mix of virtual machines without compromising security. VI design in the past has presented challenges when considering how to isolate VMs in the DMZ from VMs in production for example, and this has lead to the creation of additional ESX hosts and Clusters to insure isolation and prevent system compromise. Now with the vShield Zones virtual appliance, different security policies can be created and enforced even as guests migrate between ESX hosts thus allowing the consolidation of ESX hosts and VMs.
• Fujitsu Siemens Computers and VMware have announced Flexframe for SAP which allows companies to virtualize SAP. Flexframe is a solution that provides guaranteed resources for the best end user experience under dynamically changing conditions.

In the rest of this post I am providing a link to all the announcements along with some key quotes from each press release. For full details read the original announcements in their entirety. Read the rest of this entry »