VM /ETC

Posts Tagged ‘vSphere’

Recently a disgruntled vSphere administrator was able to delete 88 of his former employer’s virtual machines (VMs) remotely from a McDonald’s WiFi connection. We all know virtualization makes things a lot easier, and unfortunately, this is a scary example of the dark side of just that. I’ll argue it’s also a wake up call for IT departments to realize how virtualization changes the dynamics of data center security,  risk management, and overall data vulnerability, but I’ll leave that for the experts in those fields. What made me go “hmmmm” was the thought “what if I was on the team that had to investigate and recover from this incident?” I also wondered “What if the attack was less obvious?” What if only slight configuration changes were made to the virtual machines instead of  obvious deletions? For example adding limits and reservations to the vCPU and vRAM of the virtual guests or their resource pools thus making them sluggish, unresponsive, and unable to conduct business as usual.

How Long Would It Take To Troubleshoot And Recover?

Put yourself on the team that suddenly realized 88 VMs were gone! Where would you start? The storage  jumps out at me as a logical place to begin, but after your storage area network  is online, healthy, and normal then what? It’s time to try to crack open the VMware Black Box and scour event logs, alarms, permissions, and actions. Put that aside for a minute and think about how would you start the rebuild process and get the business reconnected!?

I don’t have an easy answer. My goal is asking you to think about this for yourself.

Warning! The Veeam Pitch

Since I work with Veeam products every day I’ll briefly suggest how they could help in this scenario. Decide for yourself what tools are best for your company. I’ll point out that Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve had the luxury of staying away from the math of the new vSphere 5 licensing. Honestly, I haven’t read the new guide, and I’ve only skimmed through posts that explore the pros and cons of different upgrade costs and future growth impact scenarios from virtualization admins, consultants, and architects of  various size VMware virtual infrastructures. My opinion to date – VMware’s goal is to be a total Cloud solution, and this change in licensing reflects and fosters that plan. If you are able to correctly size you infrastructure, or if you can oversubscribe it so that you can offset the costs, then the hypervisor with the most features, the best performance, and the best partner ecosystem (in terms of available third party products leveraging vSphere APIs) is still a no-brainer. That would be vSphere 5.

Storm Clouds

I’ve also read the virtualization pundits’ predictions year after year. They usually go something like “this year is the year of VDI”, “sixty something percent of all servers can still be virtualized”, and “VMware’s market share will shrink to the advances of Microsoft and Citrix”. Is the record skipping? (does anyone know what a skipping record is anymore?). Personally, I’ve always felt a balanced market of hypervisor vendors would be the most likely prophecy for the datacenter, but VMware has always managed to innovate and stay ahead of the competition. Feature-wise, they continue to do so. But, the recent announcement of licensing changes may have changed things.

Whether right, wrong, misunderstood, reluctant to change, or just emotional, many VMware shops initially viewed the new licensing announcement like dark, thunder clouds approaching. Some reactions were as hot as a flash of lightning. Virtual warning sirens sounded across the community, but after a few days and some damage control from VMware, eventually calmer heads prevailed. But, like in the aftermath of any large storm, people began to build for the future. More so than ever before, public discussion of future plans seem to include a new possibility of alternative vendor virtual datacenters.

An Opening In The Clouds

My hunch is that current VMware shops will  Read the rest of this entry »

Like everyone else, I have been reviewing the Release Notes for the latest Update 1 release of vSphere 4.1, but I decided to point out specific fixes that will make full image VM backups better for everyone. Note that I work for Veeam Software, but the fixes I am referring to are all VMware resolved issues that surface from time to no matter what backup solution you use. There are numerous other fixes and impovements in the U1 release, but, since most of my world is backup these days, these particular items “popped out” at me.

For a great overview of the entire U1 release check out Rick Vanover’s post vSphere 4.1 update 1 released from his Rickatron Blog and via his Servers and Storage Column/Blog at TechRepublic.

The rest of this post contains cut and pastes from the Release Notes and some commentary about them from me. I want to stress again that these are issues that have now been fixed!

Finally, I’ll point out the one huge VM backup issue (that I can think of right now) that still does not appear to be resolved.

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David Davis has done it again! A new vSphere Troubleshooting video training course from Train Signal has been released. According to Davis, the course took 3 months to create, and it’s full of 30 videos with almost 14 hours of content. Like all Train Signal training, it’s available via streaming online video (iPad compatible) and in the DVD offline format.

Davis explained more about the video training in an email I received:

In this course, I educate viewers on how to troubleshoot vSphere networking, storage, management processes (and much more), from the GUI but especially from the CLI.

The new vSphere Troubleshooting course will be part of an upcoming VCAP-DCA training package so I have covered all topics related to troubleshooting on the DCA blueprint. Even if viewers aren’t interested in the VCAP-DCA certification, I designed the course so that it is an excellent resource to learn how to solve virtual infrastructure trouble.

I was honored that Mike Laverick agreed to be the tech editor for the course.

Go to the vSphere Troubleshooting course product page where you can see the entire course outline.

Check out the following sample videos from the new training, and then be sure to get a full copy for your own library.

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Your vSphere VMs may be running from snapshots even though you didn’t create them. That is, if a scheduled job which auto creates snapshots runs into a datastore with insufficient free space. In this scenario a special Consolidate Helper snapshot will be created. 

The following screenshot shows the mysterious snapshot as I found it on my lab domain controller

In my case, the scheduled job that needs to create and then normally commit the snapshot is a Veeam Backup and Replication job. At some point in the life of my lab I did run out of space, and although it’s not an issue anymore, the snapshot still exists even when the jobs aren’t running! I was a bit surprised that backup jobs could even complete with this snapshot in place.

VMware KB article 1003302 explains that the Consolidate Helper snapshot is actually created when trying to commit (delete all) a snapshot.

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Image of Train Signal

If you did not already know about Train Signal and their video training series then I hate to be the one to break it to you, but you have been missing out. If you read this blog or listen to the VIRTUMANIA podcast then surely you’re in the know. Train Signal is a long time sponsor here at VM /ETC (as well as at most all of the popular v12n blogs), a friend to and guest of the podcast, a returning sponsor of the VMUnderground VMWorld Warm Up Party, and always highly visible in the community with free video give aways at VMUGs, conferences and events.

I do not just blog about Train Signal because of business, however. I possess several of their videos and know several of the instructors. Train Signal is well worth the investment whether for one individual or an entire staff.

With the recent release of the vSphere Pro Series Vol 2 containing instruction provided by vExperts and recent VIRTUMANIA guests David Davis, Hal Rottenberg, Rick Scherer, Eric Siebert, and Sean Clark (Hey Rick, I got to get you on the show too!) Train Signal keeps adding great content to an already awesome collection for those looking for cost effective, at your own pace virtualization training.

What I find most amazing about Train Signal is the multiple formats available. With DVD, AVI, WMV, MP3, MP4 for iPods/iPads/smartphones, and even PDF you have the flexibility to learn where ever you are and how ever you need. Now, with instant online access via the My Training Portal as well, you don’t even have to wait for the media to be shipped to you! I was recently amazed when I was able to stream videos to my HTC EVO!

Here’s a quick list of the virtualization training series that I feel are well worth checking into. Be sure to check the free videos listed at the end of this post too!

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The VMUNDERGROUND invades VIRTUMANIA Episode 21 with a special VMWorld 2010 Warm Up Party announcement! Rick Vanover is my co host and we are joined by special guests Sean Clark and Brian Knudtson. The following is the podcast summary:

VIRTUMANIA Podcast Episode 21 – Announcing WUPaaS. Exploring vSphere 4.1. Denying ESXi. Predicting VMWorld. Rich Brambley (@rbrambley) of VMETC and Rick Vanover (@rickvanover) of Rickatron.us are joined this episode by Sean Clark (@vseanclark) of VMUnderground.com and Brian Knudtson (@bknudtson) of Knudt.net. This week we talk about everything VMworld 2010, point out some changes introduced with vSphere 4.1, air some concerns about using ESXi in the future, and announce the 2010 theme of the VMUnderground VMWorld Warm Up Party. Virtumania is an Infosmack Production.

Before, between, and after the important stuff we also have some fun with Sean’s hat, swagger wagons, iPads (again!), Dr. Seuss, VMworld 2010, and more!

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 21:

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