We had come across a situation where we wanted to decide whether we can install vCenter and SRM in work group and then join the VM to Domain.

Following are the test results and observations

Setup Components

vCenter 5.0

SRM 5.0

SQL 2008 R2

vCenter 5.0 Install Procedure

Install SQL Native Client

Install SQL Server 2008 R2 in mixed mode i.e. with Windows Integration

If SQL Server is on separate server then we have to use SQL Credentials

Create ODBC required for vCenter Installation

We used Windows Credentials which used local administrator account

Install vCenter 5.0

Test and ensure we are able to connect to vCenter using vSphere Client

Join the Windows VM to the domain

Observations

It doesn’t impact the vCenter Setup as it used the local administrator account

We need to ensure that local administrator account has “Password Never Expires” policy so that it doesn’t impact the SRM installation

We didn’t have to provide vCenter access as it added Domain Admins to Local Administrator group which has Administrator access on vCenter by default

SQL setup was also not impacted as it used the local administrator credentials

Results /Findings

The only finding is that we had to manually give Domain User access to the SQL server as by default it only gave local administrator and SQL credentials

SRM 5.0 Install Procedure

Create Database Instance for SRM on the Database Server

Create ODBC required for SRM Installation

As Database Server was on separate server then SRM we had to use SQL credentials

Install SRM 5.0

Install vSphere Client along with Plug-in to ensure we are able to connect to SRM Server

Join the Windows VM to the domain

Observations

It doesn’t impact the SRM Setup as it used the local administrator account

We are able to access the SRM Server as it added the Domain Admins part of the Local Administrator group which has Administrator access by default

VMware Best Practices

If the system that you use for your vCenter Server installation belongs to a workgroup rather than a domain, not all functionality, such as vCenter Server Linked Mode, are available to vCenter Server. If assigned to a workgroup, the vCenter Server system is not able to discover all domains and systems available on the network when using some features.

Reference

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=2003790

vCartoon of the Week (01/31/2013)

知り合いからODBCエラーでvCenterがインストールできないという連絡がありました。

DBをvCenterとは違うSQL Serverに作成したとのことで、エラーメッセージは次の通りでした。

"The DSN is pointing to an unsupported ODBC driver. Please re-configure your DSN to use of the supported drivers."

■ 原因

原因はODBC設定時、データソースのドライバーがSQL Serverになっていたからでした。

マニュアルにも明記されていますが、データソースのドライバーは"SQL Native Client"を利用する必要があります。

■ 解決方法

SQL Native Clientがインストールされてない場合は、ここからダウンロードし、インストールします。その後、vCenterのインストールを再実施します。

From the editors Virtual Desk
Hi everyone and welcome to this weeks newsletter. I hope that the new old format is working for you and you are finding it easy to read. I have been testing this on a number of devices including Mac, Windows, iPhone 4/5 and iPad/Mini. The goal is to try and make the newsletter simple to digest as well as search. Of course the newsletter is also archived still each week and we have not changed the awesome news we try and bring you every week.

So without further ado enjoy this weeks newsletter and please feel free to send me any feedback.

Best Wishes
Neil Isserow (Newsletter Editor)
Queensland Technical Account Manager
Newsletter Archive: communities.vmware.com/blogs/vmwaretam

PARTNER
Essential VMware Education Information for VMware Partner Exchange 2013
We are ramping up for a great Partner Exchange 2013. This year we are expanding upon the VMware tradition of partner enablement with:

• Over 200 sessions focused on VMware solutions and specialized verticals
• More than 30 special VMware and Sponsor Conference Boot Camps
• 30 hands-on labs
• Certification exams
• 90+ exhibitors
• Unlimited networking opportunities

SECURITY-ADVISORIES
December 20, 2012 VMSA-2012-0018
VMware security updates for vCSA and ESXi

PATCH-NOTIFICATION
www.vmware.com/go/downloadpatches

PRESS-RELEASES
November 13, 2012
Survey: Australian companies see cloud computing as important to competitive footing

TRAINING-SCHEDULE

WEBCASTS
http://tinyurl.com/293vuyg

Cloud IT Teams Exposed: Private Cloud Service Delivery Models That Work
Quantifying the Business Value of Virtual Desktops with VMware View
VMware vCloud Suite Overview with Operations Management Demonstration

TAM
Introducing VMware vCenter™ Support Assistant™ 5.1
Back in September we started a Beta Program for the VMware vCenter Support Assistant with our VMware TAM Program customers and we later extended the program to the public with great community response.
Today, VMware is very pleased to announce that VMware vCenter Support Assistant 5.1 is now generally available to the public.
VMware vCenter Support Assistant 5.1 is a free, downloadable plug-in for VMware vCenter Server. It provides an easy-to-use, secure, one-stop shop both for creating and managing support requests and generating and uploading logs. It is deployed as a virtual appliance and integrates with VMware vCenter Server as a plug-in that can be accessed using either the VMware vSphere Client or the VMware vSphere Web Client.
TV
http://www.youtube.com/user/vmwaretv
VMwareTV: Case Study: Making the Case for VDI - BYOD

VFABRIC
10 Big Data Disasters and 1 Way To Prevent Them
In a guest post today, David Klee, a solutions architect from House of Brick Technologies shares with us some of the top data disasters in recent IT, and one way he sees to avoid it:

VCLOUD
New ‘Cloud Computing & VMware vCloud Powered Services’ Training Video from VMware
One of the benefits of becoming a provider of vCloud Powered services is that you can tout being able to provide end-users seamless access to an on-demand infrastructure that’s compatible with their existing VMware-based environment.

Another VMware Cloud – F5 Networks DevCentral Runs Its Public Cloud on VMware
According to Jeff Browning, Senior Director of Online Strategy at F5 Networks, “With DevCentral’s move to Bluelock’s public cloud environment, we’ve increased DevOps agility, achieving faster, more frequent application updates that optimize development cycles.”

Stretched vCloud Director Infrastructure
A while back I wrote about design considerations when designing or building a stretched vCloud Director infrastructure. Since then I have been working on a document in collaboration with Lee Dilworth, and this document should be out soon hopefully. As various people have asked for the document I decided to throw it in to this blog post so that the details are already out there.

SECURITY
A New Year and New VMware vShield Protection: Symantec Endpoint Protection
One year ago, there was really only a single option available if a VMware customer wished to use the vShield Endpointintrospection possible on vSphere to protect servers or virtual desktops.  As 2013 begins, the number of partner solutions has grown to a half-dozen and continues to grow. It’s probably an understatement to call the latest of these, “much anticipated”.  The introduction I’m referring to is Symantec’s Endpoint Protection 12.1.2. With the mid-December availability of Symantec’s entry to the field of virtual guest protection, we welcome a new year.

EUC
Case Study: Making the Case for Desktop Virtualization for BYOD
As employees increasingly look to bring personally owned laptops and other devices into the workplace, many organizations find themselves considering a bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policy. For an IT professional, this raises key questions, like how to ensure users have access to the applications and resources they need for their work and how to implement a secure, data protection plan for their organization. Managing disparate, complex environments can multiply business continuity and security risks quickly as employees bring personal smartphones, tablets and laptops into the workplace. During a recent Google+ Hangout, Rick Varju of Foley & Lardner LLP describes how implementing VDI within his organization allowed the firm to realize a secure BYOD policy – ultimately reducing costs and the overhead of “technology touches.” Learn more about Rick’s experience in the video below, and download the Desktop Virtualization Business Case Information Guide to help make your organization’s case.

Tackling BYOD? Here’s Some Food for Thought
Looking to support bring your own device within your company? You’re not alone. Today over 65% of organizations are exploring how to embrace BYOD. In fact, it seems as though most customers I talk to have some sort of BYOD initiative in play or at the very least, on their to-do list for the year.
But tackling BYOD in a physical world can be tricky. How do you manage the influx of 2-3X the number of endpoints and images? How do you protect company networks, data and IP-especially when only 20% of end users run any kind of anti-virus software on their endpoints and less than half of employee-owned devices are encrypted.  And how do you do all of this without blowing your budget sky high? Because we’ve all heard the stories about companies seeing their costs go up not down when it comes to supporting BYOD with physical devices and infrastructure.

VSPHERE
vSphere 5.1 – VDS New Features – Rollback Recovery and Backup Restore
Some of the key features released in vSphere Distributed Switch (VDS) addresses the management and operational aspects. I talked about the Network Health Check feature, which reduces the time it takes to identify configuration issues across virtual and physical switches, in an earlier post . In this post I am going to cover the following features that further simplify the management and operation of VDS:

PEX 2013 Storage Picks
As many of you are already aware, PEX, the VMware Partner Exchange for 2013 is almost upon us. As usual, I decided to call out a number of sessions which I thought you might be interested in attending from a storage perspective, if you are indeed attending PEX.

vSphere 5.1 – Network I/O Control (NIOC) Architecture – Old and New
Recently there has been some discussion around the egress traffic management feature of vSphere Distributed Switch (VDS) also called as Network I/O Control (NIOC). Thanks to my colleague Frank Denneman for providing more details about this feature on his blog site and bringing to my attention an architectural change in the vSphere 5.1 release. This change impacts how the Limit parameters are applied at the host level. In this post, I will first describe the old architecture of NIOC and then discuss the change. I will also talk about the impact of this change and what users need to keep in mind while configuring limit parameter.

BUSINESS CRITICAL APPS (BCA)
Windows Server 2012 VM-Generation ID Support in vSphere
Update 1/25/2013: The vSphere versions required for VM-Generation ID support have been updated below.
Active Directory Domain Services has been one of those applications that, to the naked eye, seemed like it was a no brainer to virtualize. Why not? In most environments it’s a fairly low utilization workload, rarely capable of efficiently using the resources found in many of the enterprise-class servers that have been available for the past few years. Many organizations have adopted this way of thinking and have successfully virtualized all of their domain controllers. What about the hold-outs? What is it about Active Directory that has left so many AD administrators and architects keeping their infrastructure, or at least a portion of it on physical servers?

EDUCATION
Vidcast: Automating vSphere with vCenter Orchestrator
In this vidcast, VMware Press author Cody Bunch overviews his book Automating vSphere with VMware vCenter Orchestrator which provides guidance, downloadable scripts, and workflows designed to automate key elements of virtual infrastructure using VMware’s Orchestrator product.

Last Minute vFabric Training Offer
SpringSource still has some seats left for the top Spring Framework classes: Core Spring, Spring Web and Enterprise Integration with Spring in Europe. If you register now, you can SAVE 30% on the remaining Spring training class seats for:

VCDX Defense Dates Annouced
More VCDX Defenses dates for 2013 have been announced:

• February 23-28, 2013 – VMware Partner Exchange (PEX), Las Vegas, NV, USA
• April 22-26, 2013 – VMware Partner Exchange (PEX) on Tour, Tokyo, Japan
• April 29-May 3, 2013 – VMware Partner Exchange (PEX) on Tour, Sydney, Australia
• August 26-29, 2013 – VMworld San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA
• October 15-17, 2013 – VMworld Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain

SUPPORT - VMWARE SUPPORT INSIDER
Implementing vSphere Metro Storage Cluster using HP LeftHand Multi-Site
This new presentation spells out what you need to know if you are planning a vSphere Metro Storage Cluster (vMSC) across two datacenters or sites using HP LeftHand Multi-Site storage. Some concepts here are better understood with pictures and so we have added multi-media to the accompanying KB article:
Implementing vSphere Metro Storage Cluster using HP LeftHand Multi-Site (2020097).

How to successfully deploy vSphere Storage Appliance 5.1 in Brownfield deployments
Today we have a new video for you.
This video demonstration was produced as a visual aid to VMware Blog posts which were provided by Rawlinson Rivera who is a senior Technical Marketing Manager in the Cloud Infrastructure Technical Marketing group at VMware.

• vCloud Suite – vSphere Storage Appliance (VSA) 5.1 Considerations for Successful Brownfield Deployments – Part I
• vCloud Suite – vSphere Storage Appliance (VSA) 5.1 Considerations for Successful Brownfield Deployments – Part II

USB 3.0 with VMware Workstation
We recently heard some complaints about how VMware Workstation behaves when using USB 3.0 devices. One Tweet said:
“Dear @vmware, why do you suck so much at handling USB 3.0 devices with Workstation? Sincerely, <name omitted>”
We wondered if any Knowledgebase articles existed that could mitigate these issues and we were right – two articles in the KB address existed. What we decided however, is that these articles could use some significant beefing up. We don’t know if every customer encountering issues with USB 3.0 saw our KB articles, but if they did, they clearly did not help. We took this as an action item to see what we could do about it.
We got several support engineers to review these articles and update them with new information. Here are the two new and improved KBs. We heard you and we responded.

1. Using USB 3.0 devices in Workstation on a Windows host (1025956)
2. Host and guest OS USB 3.0 and virtual xHCI support with Workstation 9 (2041591)

OFFICIAL-BLOGS
Introducing VMware vCenter Support Assistant 5.1
Today, VMware is very pleased to announce that VMware vCenter Support Assistant 5.1 is now generally available to the public.
VMware vCenter Support Assistant 5.1 is a free, downloadable plug-in for VMware vCenter Server. It provides an easy-to-use, secure, one-stop shop both for creating and managing support requests and generating and uploading logs. It is deployed as a virtual appliance and integrates with VMware vCenter Server as a plug-in that can be accessed using either the VMware vSphere Client or the VMware vSphere Web Client.

VMware Go Blog: This Week in Patching – 1/25/2013
After an eventful past couple of weeks in patch management, this week was relatively quiet.  Here is a quick recap in the happenings of patch management this week.
On Monday, a new version of Audacity was released.  Audacity 2.0.3 is a non-security update fixing numerous issues.
On Tuesday, Google released new security updates for their Chrome and Chrome Frame browsers.  Google Chrome / Chrome Frame version 24.0.1312.56 fixes three high, and two medium vulnerabilities.
On Wednesday, Core FTP released a new version with version 2.2.  This version was originally released on January 17th, but the details were provided on Wednesday.  This new version is a non-security update.
Last up for this week are new versions of MozyHome and MozyPro released today.  MozyHome and MozyPro version 2.18.3.247 are both non-security updates.

VMware Accelerate: How CIOs Are Creating Business Transformation
Cloud computing is an efficient, flexible and cost-effective way to help an organization transform its business. But how do you manage the transition? Adam Burns speaks with Rob Jenkins, Director of VMware’s Accelerate Advisory Services EMEA, to find out. In this two-part video series, Adam Burns speaks with Rob Jenkins, Director of VMware Accelerate Advisory Services EMEA, about increasing business agility and how CIOs can manage the transition to cloud computing.

VMware Go Blog: Install ESXi through VMware Go
VMware Go, for those that missed the last post, is a cloud based service for small businesses and new VMware admins to help manage and setup their VMware environment.  There are “two” ways to install ESXi from VMware go – by converting an existing Windows server/machine or downloading the ISO and installing manually.  The later isn’t really installing “through” VMware Go but certainly a viable path, and then you can simply add the host once your install is finished.

VMware for Small-Medium Business Blog: At Washington Trust Bank, Data Security and Mobility Come Together
We know that for those in the financial industry, a paramount business objective is keeping proprietary data and sensitive customer information secure.  With more and more of today’s workforce operating remotely, and using multiple devices, securing sensitive data is an even greater challenge.

VMTN Blog: VMware Communities Roundtable Podcast – Show Notes #216 – vCloud Networking & Security
Hosts
John Mark Troyer, VMware @jtroyer
Lauren Malhoit, @malhoit
Guests
Ranga Maddipudi, VMware

VMware Virtualization Management Blog: NYC! Deploying Spring Apps to EC2+Hybrid? Join Jan 30th Java SIG!
If you are in NYC next Wednesday, come see SpringOne 2GX presenter David Winterfeldt share his experience deploying Spring-based apps to the cloud. If you missed this event last fall, it is definitely worth checking out his presentation for the NY Java SIG this coming Wednesday at 6PM at 11 Madison Ave.

The Console: VMware & Puppet Labs – Redefining Management for the Software-Defined Datacenter
VMware & Puppet Labs – Redefining Management for the Software-Defined Datacenter
By recasting every layer of datacenter infrastructure into software services running across pools of industry standard hardware, the software-defined datacenter promises to redefine automation and orchestration to completely change what is possible for customers to achieve in terms of operational scale, efficiency and agility.

VMware Go Blog: Cloud Management of VMware hosts using VMware Go for new admins and SMBs
VMware Go is a is a cloud based management solution for (small) vSphere deployments and includes features such as  the IT Advisor, ESXi and vCenter installation automation and patch/inventory scanning (though my free version is prompting me to upgrade to Go Pro for those right now).

EXTERNAL-BLOGS
Now available as Rough Cut - VCDX Boot Camp: Preparing for the VCDX Panel Defense
The Rough Cuts service from Safari Books Online gives you exclusive access to an evolving manuscript that you can read online or download as a PDF and print. A Rough Cuts book is not fully edited or completely formatted, but you'll get access to new versions as they are created.

Cloud Infrastructure Design (VCAP-CID) available for registration
VMware has released the VCAP-CID exam. It’s available for registration now. If you’re attending VMware Partner Exchange in Las Vegas this year you are also eligible for a 50% discount.
You can register at: http://www.pearsonvue.com/vmware/vmpe/

#vBrownBag Chargeback Manager Part 2 w/Lawrence Kohan (@LawrenceKohan)
A follow up to the excellent #vBrownBag two weeks ago.  Lawrence dives deeper into business reasons and use cases for VMware Chargeback manager.  The demo/live walk through at the end will be re-recorded and posted next week.
Chargeback manager can be used for traditional corporate environments to help show the cost associated with maintaining infrastructure or in vCloud deployments to charge back customers.  Chargeback manager is also on the blueprint for VCP-IaaS.

Storage vMotion does not rename files?
A while back I posted that 5.0 U2 re-introduced the renaming behavior for VM file names. I was just informed by our excellent Support Team that unfortunately the release notes missed something crucial and Storage vMotion does not rename files by default. In order to get the renaming behavior you will have to set an advanced setting within vCenter.. This is how you do it:

Groovy 2.1 released
The Groovy team is pleased to announce the release of Groovy 2.1.0. With over 1.7 million downloads in 2012, a strong ecosystem of successful projects like Grails, Gradle, Spock or Griffon built on Groovy, the Groovy programming language continues its development and adoption, refines existing features and evolves new ones. In this new release, Groovy 2.1: offers full support Read more...

New Technical White Paper - The CPU Scheduler in VMware vSphere 5.1
The CPU scheduler in VMware vSphere® 5.x (ESXi™ 5.x) is crucial to providing good performance in a consolidated environment. Because most modern processors are equipped with multiple cores per processor, or chip  multiprocessor (CMP) architecture, it is easy to build a system with tens of cores running hundreds of virtual  machines. In such a large system, allocating CPU resources efficiently and fairly is critical.

Scaling Real-time Apps on Cloud Foundry Using Node.js and Redis
Common applications being built on Node.js like social networking and chat require real-time scaling capabilities across multiple instances. Developers need to deal with sticky sessions, scale-up, scale-down, instance crash/restart, and more. Cloud Foundry PaaS provides a ready platform to achieve this quickly.
The following blog post will walk you through deploying and managing real-time applications on Cloud Foundry using common Node.js examples and Redis key-value store capabilities.

Quick VM Disk Alignment Check with PowerCLI
Hey Everyone! vNoob back for another post. Hope you aren’t tired of me yet!
Although I have seen many tools out there that will check disk alignment, most of them require you to install or run some sort of program for it to do the checks.
For this reason, I wanted to write a script that would do the check for us.  I am pulling you leg, I just like doing stuff with PowerCLI!

Heads Up! Valid Static Address Ranges in vSphere 5.1
If you are planning to upgrade to vSphere 5.1, you need to pay attention to this, especially if you have assigned static MAC addresses to your virtual machines. After upgrading to vSphere 5.1, VMs with statically assigned MAC address may fail to power on with the error: “The MAC address entered is not in the valid range.”

Configuring SSH Equivalence for Oracle RAC
There are a number of posts on how to do this like here or here, and Oracle even have been so kind as to provide a script that will do this for you (even though it is not 100% automated.
The process is relatively simple (when you break it down piece by piece)

What is VMware CTK file format?
A file with extension CTK can be found by using the VMware datastore browser, in the same folder as other VMDK file, where the VM stores all its files (VMDK, VMX, VMSD, NVRAM….). What is VMware CTK file for? The CTK file is used by Changed Block Tracking (CBT). It lists the block changes made since last backup. [...]
Read the full post What is VMware CTK file format? at ESX Virtualization.

Sign-up for Virtualizing Business Critical Applications Boot Camps at PEX 2013
For those of you who are VMware Partners there will be a number of advanced bootcamps at Partner Exchange 2013 (PEX) in Las Vegas next month that will help you get your Virtualizing Business Critical Applications (VBCA) competency and accreditations. The bootcamps are designed to give your people all the VBCA specific training they need, and also will provide the opportunity to do the required tests.  This will be one of the best chances to get this competency, and in a very efficient manner. Here are the links to these sessions in the PEX Content Catalog.

VMware View Database Sizing
How to size VMware View Composer database is a common customer question and I have recently seen it once again in on of the internal discussion lists. Unfortunately, VMware does not have an official number for View Composer and Event database sizing.
However, some of VMware EUC Technical Enablement guys have adopted a ‘standard’ that seems to hold up very well  across VMware View 4.6 and 5.x installations.

Disk.SchedulerWithReservation aka mClock
A long time ago when playing around in my lab with vSphere 5.1 I stumbled across this advanced setting called Disk.SchedulerWithReservation. I start digging to see what I could do with it and what it was about… if I could anything with it at all.

The SSH Key Problem With Cloned Linux VM’s
First let me start off this by saying – the way this is effects you will differ entirely on your organizational procedures and security requirements.
We all love templates – don’t we? I mean they are the best! You configure your VM to your liking, OS patches, company policy settings etc.. etc.. and every new VM that you deploy – will have the exact same baseline.

Maximize VM performance, Recover datastore Space and IOPS – 3 Technical Papers
There are some good technical PDFs here on my website, where you can learn about maximizing VM performance for your VMs, recovering some space on your datastores or learn more about IOPS. All those documents are provided for free by my partners and I’ve created a dedicated page on my blog – Free technical PDFs. [...]
Read the full post Maximize VM performance, Recover datastore Space and IOPS – 3 Technical Papers at ESX Virtualization.

How to disable ESXi firewall
For a project I had to disable the ESXi firewall on a host permanently. To be honest, it isn’t something I would do normally or would recommend even. It wasn’t listed in “chkconfig”, which kinda makes sense, so I looked at the networking section of esxcli. What an awesome command by the way! Quickly after “tab’ing” through esxcli I figured out how to disable it permanently:
esxcli network firewall set --enabled false

vCloud can’t delete Organizational VDC
In my last VMware vCloud Director project I ran into an issue that I want to share with you. Initially the design was to create two OrgVDC to use different allocation models, but the resources would be almost the same because it was only a fairly small environment. I created one Edge Gateway and two OrgVDCs connected to this Edge Gateway, with a shared Org network. The first OrgVDC was meant to be for real performance testing and would get FC Storage, while the second orgVDC would host most VMs and was only for Development and testing.

Importing virtual disks of hosted formats in ESXi 5.1
Recently I stumbled over a new issue that really puzzled me. I was trying to import a virtual appliance (the Bitnami ownCloud stack) into my lab ESXi host. This appliance is provided with a virtual disk in 2gbsparse format to make it compatible with VMware Workstation. For using it in ESXi instructions were given to clone the disk into an ESXi supported disk format usingvmkfstools like this:

VMware Mirage: Speed Up Centralization In Your Test Environments
I've been working with Mirage quite a bit over the past few months and I wanted to share a little tweak that can help speed up Centralization and other network intensive processes.

VCAP5-DCD : My Experiences
I thought I would put out a posting around my experiences of the VCAP5-DCD exam I sat yesterday and what I felt helped me in my preparations and what I plan to use to better my knowledge for my resitting.
Yep I am going to need to re-sit the exam as unfortunately I just failed the exam but I do feel that what I studied was extremely helpful as without having done it I wouldn’t have been close so that is very positive and now i have a great idea of what I need to do in preparation before my retry.

Adaptive Queueing vs. Storage I/O Control
This post is to look at two different technologies available in vSphere to manage the queue depth on your ESXi host(s). A queue determines how many outstanding I/Os can be sent to a disk. In the case of vSphere environments, where many hosts can be doing I/O to the same shared disk device, it can be helpful to throttle the LUN queue depth from time to time when congestion arises. In this post, we will compare and contrast Adaptive Queues with Storage I/O Control (SIOC).

What is VMware .vSphere-HA folder for?
If you’re running VMware vSphere High Availability (HA) cluster, you have certainly noticed a folder named “.vSphere-HA” on several of your shared datastores. What is VMware .vSphere-HA folder for? This folder has something to do with HA, you think, but what exactly is stored there? You certainly do not want to delete it, do you? [...]
Read the full post What is VMware .vSphere-HA folder for? at ESX Virtualization.

One piece of advise for VCAP5-DCA exam candidates
I finally sat the VCAP5-DCA exam on Friday a week ago, way overdue and necessary before I can start teaching the vSphere Optimize and Scale course.
My experience was similar to many others and similar to my experience with the version 4 exam. There are a heap of resources out there including the vBrownBags and many vExpert’s writings.

How does vSphere recognize an NFS Datastore?
This question has popped up various times now, how does vSphere recognize an NFS Datastore? This concept has changed over time and hence the reason many people are confused. I am going to try to clarify this. Do note that this article is based on vSphere 5.0 and up. I had a similar article a while back, but figured writing it in a more explicit way might help answering these questions. (and gives me the option to send people just a link.

VMware datastore hearbeating – How this functionality works?
When configuring VMware High Availability (HA) cluster, you have the possibility to check as a secondary communication channel  a datastore (or several ones), during the configuration wizard. VMware Datastore Hearbeating provides an additional option for determining if host is in failed state or not. Before vSphere 5.0 era, in vSphere 4.1, if host had a hardware [...]
Read the full post VMware datastore hearbeating – How this functionality works? at ESX Virtualization.

KB-ARTICLES
Please consider checking - http://blogs.vmware.com/kbdigest/ regularly for new and updated KB Articles.

VMware Knowledge Base Weekly Digest: New Articles Published for Week Ending 1/19/13
VMware ESXi
Cannot create a quiesced snapshot of a virtual machine if Symantec BackupExec is installed within the virtual machine (2041719)
Date Published: 1/16/2013
Out of heap memory in ESXi 5.0 with NetQueue and Jumbo Frames enabled (2042587)
Date Published: 1/18/2013
Out of memory with enabled NetQueue when using jumbo frames on ESXi 5.1 and later (2042874)
Date Published: 1/18/2013
VMware Horizon Connector
Unable to bind to Active Directory when configuring Horizon Connector (2033063)
Date Published: 1/16/2013
VMware Service Manager
New columns added to the search result pane Service Manager 9.x are too wide (2042846)
Date Published: 1/14/2013
Text in the description field of the call template is overwritten when a call is created by an incoming email in Service Manager (2042852)
Date Published: 1/15/2013
Service Manager Configuration Items are deleted and restored in the same scan (2043060)
Date Published: 1/17/2013
Federated CMDB scans in Service Manager do not delete CI/Person records that are locked (2042743)
Date Published: 1/16/2013
Forwarding a Service Manager task that has a CI fails with the error: Parameter ‘ITEM_REFS’ not supplied to query ‘AVAILABILITY GET LINKED ASSETS FOR OUTAGE’ (2043059)
Date Published: 1/18/2013
VMware ThinApp
Requirements for an application that is captured with ThinApp (1034339)
Date Published: 1/16/2013
Application captured by Thinapp is unable to open Microsoft Office files or Microsoft Office does not start (1039016)
Date Published: 1/19/2013
Hummingbird 2008 that has been captured with ThinApp does not successfully connect to SFTP sites (2005130)
Date Published: 1/16/2013
VMware vCenter Configuration Manager
Cannot select any domains in the Select Domains dialog during vCenter Configuration Manager (vCM) installation (2043184)
Date Published: 1/17/2013
VMware vCenter Operations Manager (vApp)
vCenter Operations Manager instance associated with a lower SKU loses features (2042054)
Date Published: 1/17/2013
VMware vCenter Server
A virtual machine with a snapshot is using more than the correct number of datastores in VMware vCenter Server 5.0.x (2014468)
Date Published: 1/18/2013
vCenter Server fails when forced encryption is enabled on the database (2041550)
Date Published: 1/18/2013
VMware vCenter Server 5.1.x Single Sign On fails after reboot of Windows host machine (2041818)
Date Published: 1/17/2013
VMware vCenter Update Manager
Initializing the vCenter Update Manager database without reinstalling it (2043170)
Date Published: 1/18/2013
VMware vCloud Director
Removing Mac OS from list of operating systems when creating a new virtual machine in VMware vCloud Director 5.1.x (2043270)
Date Published: 1/18/2013
VMware vCloud Usage Meter
Changing the Reporting Day on a Usage Meter Automatic Report does not cause a new report to be generated in the current month in VMware vCloud Usage Meter 2.3.x (2031225)
Date Published: 1/18/2013
VMware vFabric Hyperic Agent
VMware vFabric Hyperic Agent 5.0.x does not start in Solaris 10 or later (2043181)
Date Published: 1/18/2013
VMware vFabric Hyperic Server
Metrics do not display when Metric Display Range is set to Advanced Mode in VMware vFabric Hyperic Server 4.6.x / 5.0.x (2042976)
Date Published: 1/18/2013
Limiting the size of VMware vFabric Hyperic server logs and the number of generations saved (2021540)
Date Published: 1/16/2013
VMware vFabric tc Server
Encrypting system properties used by VMware vFabric tc Server 2.x (2035425)
Date Published: 1/16/2013
VMware vFabric Web Server
Hyperic discovery of vFabric Web Server mod_bmx management framework fails (2042971)
Date Published: 1/16/2013
VMware View Manager
Increasing PhoneFactor Radius authentication timeout settings (2042851)
Date Published: 1/16/2013
Enabling RSA SecurID authentication on a View Connection Server fails when there are multiple network interfaces on the Connection Server (2043055)
Date Published: 1/18/2013

[As I was working through my "unpublished" blogposts I found this - which should have been posted AGES ago...]

Once vCD has imported and the welcome options dealt with (EULA, Licensing and so on), you will be able to login to vCloud Director proper. The default user name is admin and default with the virtual appliance version, but you can easily change this under the "Administration" tab, and the Users node.

As with a great many products from VMware now there's a step-by-step wizard that will take you through the main configuration, and these "light" up as each step is completed.

So my first task was to make vCloud Director aware of my vSphere environment, by adding in my vCenter system. That's where I hit my first change in vCloud Director 5.1. With the release of vSphere5.1 we now have new "single sign on" (SSO) service. That enables the ability to use your directory service credentials to logon via the SSO service to another service that is registered with it. That was something I hadn't done with vCloud Director yet.

As you can see vCD 5.1 is fully-aware of new web client that shipped as part of vSphere5.1. You have two options on how to make vCD aware of the Web Client URL either by using the lookup service (which lists all the service registered with SSO) or by just manually typing the URL. Quick google of the phrase "Configure vCloud Director to use vCenter Single Sign On" took me to the online documentation. The configuration to register vCD with the Lookup Service for SSO is located under the "Administration" tab and "Federation". There's a small button that allows you to register vCD with SSO. In my simple configuration using the vCenter Server Appliance - the vCenter/SSO/Web Client all reside on the same instance, but remember it is possible to split the services out into a more dedicated configuration.

You need to be a little bit careful at this point. It's important not to log out of vCD, before first including a "domain" account from the directory service that you configured with SSO - in my case this is the "corp" domain. The next step is to "import" accounts from the directory service (in my case the Corp domain hosted with Active Directory) into vCD and to make sure that account has rights.

The alternative is not to use the SSO service, and instead manually specify the vCenter/Web Client in the UI - of course whatever method you use to communicate to vCenter - you will also need to supply the IP/FQDN of the vShield Manager that is part of the vCenter instance.

Once you've completed this task you will find that "Attach vCenter" on the "Home" page becomes "Attach another vCenter". Additionally, you should also see it in the "Manage & Monitor" tab, under > vSphere Resources, >vCenters. Of course, you can add additional vCenter here as well. I noticed two things here - first the right-click option to open the Web Client on the vCenter5.1 appliance, and also that the vShield Manager IP address is exposed. In fact despite specifying the vShield by FQDN, the edit dialog box shows not the name but the FQDN.

Once you have vCenter listed in vCloud Director you should see it appears as a solution in >vCenter Solutions Manager >Extension Types:

[As I was working through my "unpublished" blogposts I found this - which should have been posted AGES ago...]

Warning:

Remember for sysprep to join a VM to the domain you will need to have DHCP on your network where your vApp resides - alternatively you will need to use Sysprep to change the SID, and then use a script and something like netdom.exe or PowerShell to add the VM to the domain. This is because ALL sysprep "clients" start their life as DHCP clients, before any static address is assigned to them. This is true in vCenter and vCD.

One of things that foxed me recently was why after importing an .OVF template into vCloud Director catalog are all the guest customization options greyed out?  I first I thought it was a problem with my .OVF file, and then I thought perhaps it was user rights issue.

Joining a computer to the domain using vCloud Director Customization

It turned out I had problem with my expectations. Really these options open out once you have created a vApp FROM the catalog. Once the vApp has "deployed" its possible to edit these values on each VM within the vApp and modify them. That can include such things as forcing a complete guest customization or a reset of the administrators password. What I do like about this customization is the way vCloud Director can pick up on the Organization's OU location as well. My plan was to have VMs within a vApp join the domain automagically without having to do by hand - and to also ensure they were dropped in the right OU.

With this configuration (Use Organization's domain) above vCD use the LDAP configuration set for the Organization (held in OrganizationName, Administration, Settings, LDAP) and uses the account specified in the System LDAP configuration (System, Administration, System Settings, LDAP)

In my case I wanted to drop the computer object into a sub-OU called "Servers" at this path ou=servers,ou=CorpHQ-Organization,DC=corp,DC=com rather than the computer accounts being located in the CorpHQ-Organization OU. So I overrided the Organization's domain with specific path, and I also did a spot of delegation in Active Directory to allow the account called "joindom@corp.com" to have the right's to join computers to the corp.com domain, but specifically only to the path ou=servers,ou=CorpHQ-Organization,DC=corp,DC=com

However, for this to work with my vApps on the Organization Network, I need to configure the NAT on the Edge Gateway to allow communications to the domain controllers (something I did a while back). Additionally, I needed to enable DHCP on the networks where my vApps reside. This can be in one of two places - either on the vCNS Edge Gateway that services the Organization Network or the vCNS Edge Gateway that services the vApp Network.

For the Organization Network (OrgName, Administration, Cloud Resources, Virtual Datacenter, vDCName, Edge Gateways, right-click Edge Gateway, Edge Gateway Services)

For the vApp Network (OrgName, My Cloud, vApps, select vAppName, Networking tab, right-click vApp Network, Configure Services)

Join the domain by script - without requiring DHCP:

Now, admittedly it could be the case that your "not allowed" to run DHCP on your network where your virtual servers reside. For me that's a bit funny for a couple of reasons. Firstly, the management of the DHCP lies within the scope of the person who manages the Organization or the vApp - not the network guys. Who are these network guys to tell me what I can do in my own vApp? Secondly, by using vCloud Director were all ready handing out network IDs in the shape of VLANs, vCD-NI, Portgroup or VXLAN enabled networks - how's a little DHCP going to harm things. Thirdly, I regularly use PXE to either install ESX (UDA or EDA are good virtual appliances for this!) or for AutoDeploy. PXE requires DHCP - so what gives...?

But seriously, I know that some shops see DHCP on server network as some cardinal sin. For that reason the other option is to use scripted methods.

Firstly, you need create this directory structure on the source VM that will become your vApp Template: C:\Windows\Setup\Scripts. On a Windows 2008 R2 server I found that the scripts directory did not exist and I had to create it.

Next, create .cmd file called: SetupComplete.cmd

Finally, edit this cmd file with notepad and add the required entries for the netdom.exe command:

netdom.exe join %COMPUTERNAME% /DOMAIN:corp.com /OU:ou=servers,ou=CorpHQ-Organization,DC=corp,DC=com/userd:corp\joindom /passwordd:Password1 /reboot

Note: Userd and passwordd are not typos. The extra D represents that this is a domain account used for joining computers to the domain/ou.

Finally my other tip for handling customization comes not from me but from Rick Vanover (and fellow vExpert) who works over at Veeam. He's got a good blogpost on TechRepublic which shows how to use the tzutil to set the correct time zone. I thought I'd fixed this issue in my template in vCenter, but seems like the Sysprep process as triggered by vCloud Director resets the TZ to be Pacific Time. Although my bogus company Corp.com is based in New York, as I'm in the UK and the lab is in the UK, I set my TZ to be GMT. I found Rick's article fixed my issue just fine:

http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/datacenter/set-a-windows-servers-time-zone-using-group-policy/3673

Observations:

So what's the best way? Well, I actually like the script method. As it doesn't require me to configure DHCP on every Organization Network or vApp Network. Enabling DHCP just once on the Organization Network is one time configuration that I don't mind, but having it remember to do it for each and every vApp Network I create - and remembering to do that BEFORE the first power on seems to be a bit of administrative burden to me. But that's just my opinion. I'm tempted to have Windows 2008 R2 vApp Template - one that does the join and one that doesn't - which seems a bit excessive but the reality is not every VM I created in my lab needs to be joined to the domain. Although it can be handy because I can use the GPOs to turn off the Windows Firewall and enabled Remote Desktop Services. One thing I've noticed is if you take a vApp that has domain membership already, and copy that into the catalog - even when it gets customized it doesn't seem to join the domain properly - it seems to think its existing domain membership is good enough - when actually a new computer account needs to be created in the OU. I've experimented with taking VMs within the vApp out of the domain before importing them into the catalog - and this seems to work much better. It means they are sysprep, renamed, and joined to the domain as net-new entities.

Now my period of non-compete is over - I'm free to now blog over at mikelaverick.com

Content here has been copied over there...

It’s always a challenge to ensure HA restarts Virtual Machines in case of a Hardware failure.

Had long discussions with VMware consultants and other specialists  but at least the only suitable way is to enable admission control on  the Cluster object and set proper resource reservation on each Virtual Machine.

As more hosts are within a cluster as higher is the risk that more hosts fail and  that’s why I different between Clusters with more than 5 Host and  increase the resource reservation for bigger clusters. You can change  this value in row 8

Load Vi Toolkit in powershell

add-pssnapin VMware.VimAutomation.Core

Connact to one or more vCenter Server

Connect-VIServer "<VIServer1>","<VIServer2>" -wa 0 | out-null

Check if min one vCenter Server is connected

if ($global:DefaultVIServers.Count -gt 0){

Load only clusters who are HA and admission control enabled. This makes sense to control this script with the vCenter client. To exclude a Cluster simply disable AC

    foreach($cluster in (get-view -viewtype "clustercomputeresource"|?{$_.configuration.dasconfig.admissioncontrolenabled -eq $true -and $_.configuration.dasconfig.enabled -eq $true})){

Count hosts within a cluster and calculate the correct percentage of reserved cluster resources as failover spare capacity. In this example a cluster with more than 5 hosts I calculate a failover spare capacity for two possible failing host

        $amount_hosts=$cluster.host.count        $currentCpuFailoverResourcesPercent=$cluster.configuration.dasconfig.admissioncontrolpolicy.cpufailoverresourcespercent        $currentMemoryFailoverResourcesPercent=$cluster.configuration.dasconfig.admissioncontrolpolicy.memoryfailoverresourcespercent        if ($amount_hosts -gt 0 -and $amount_hosts -lt 6){            $cpuFailoverResourcesPercent    = [math]::round(100/$amount_hosts)            $memoryFailoverResourcesPercent = [math]::round(100/$amount_hosts)        }else{            $cpuFailoverResourcesPercent    = [math]::round((200)/$amount_hosts)            $memoryFailoverResourcesPercent = [math]::round((200)/$amount_hosts)        }

Load Cluster objects and handover previously defined variables. Compare the current failover capacity values and apply the newly calculate values only if they doesn't match

        $spec = New-Object VMware.Vim.ClusterConfigSpecEx        $spec.vmSwapPlacement = "vmDirectory"        $spec.dasconfig = New-Object VMware.Vim.ClusterDasConfigInfo        $spec.dasconfig.admissioncontrolpolicy = New-Object VMware.Vim.ClusterFailoverResourcesAdmissionControlPolicy        $spec.dasconfig.admissioncontrolpolicy.cpufailoverresourcespercent = $cpuFailoverResourcesPercent        $spec.dasconfig.admissioncontrolpolicy.memoryfailoverresourcespercent = $memoryFailoverResourcesPercent        if($currentCpuFailoverResourcesPercent -ne $cpuFailoverResourcesPercent -or $currentMemoryFailoverResourcesPercent -ne $memoryFailoverResourcesPercent){            $cluster.ReconfigureComputeResource_Task($spec, $true)        }

At his point we are finished with the cluster configuration and continue in the same loop with the VMs within this cluster. The folowing query searchs for VMs within the previously checked or configured cluster that are NOT Fault Tolerance (FT) enabled and loads Virtual machine PS objects

        foreach($vm in (get-view -viewtype "virtualmachine" -searchroot $cluster.moref|?{$_.Config.FtInfo -eq $null})){            $spec = New-Object VMware.Vim.VirtualMachineConfigSpec            $spec.cpuAllocation = New-Object VMware.Vim.ResourceAllocationInfo            $spec.memoryAllocation = New-Object VMware.Vim.ResourceAllocationInfo

If you make difference between more or less important VMs like Production and Development or Test VMs you have to identify them accordantly and set the proper reservation. In my case I'm looking for Production VMs and reserve 75% of the allocated memory. (VIEPAPPAT101)

            if($vm.name.length -eq 12 -and $vm.name.substring(3,1)-eq "p"){                $MemReservationMB=$vm.config.hardware.memorymb*0.75                if($vm.config.memoryAllocation.Reservation -ne $MemReservationMB -and $vm.runtime.connectionstate -eq "connected"){                     $spec.memoryAllocation.reservation = $MemReservationMB                    $vm.ReconfigVM_Task($spec)                }            }

Same for Development and UAT VMs but with only 50% memory reservation of the actual allocated memory (VIEDAPPAT101)

            if($vm.name.length -eq 12 -and $vm.name.substring(3,1)-eq "d" -or $vm.name.substring(3,1)-eq "u"){                $MemReservationMB=$vm.config.hardware.memorymb*0.50                if($vm.config.memoryAllocation.reservation -ne $MemReservationMB -and $vm.runtime.connectionstate -eq "connected"){                     $spec.memoryAllocation.reservation = $MemReservationMB                    $vm.ReconfigVM_Task($spec)                }            }

Close open brakets

        }        }
}

http://rafaelcamison.wordpress.com/2013/02/02/admission_control_automation

Just installed 2 servers with ESXi 5.

The installing went through a PXE installation.

The PXE server is running on openSUSE 12.2.

This is the second of a two part series, read part I here.

Common  community cloud conversation questions include among others:

Who  defines the standards for community clouds?

The  members or participants, or whoever they hire or get to volunteer to do it.

Who  pays for the community cloud?

The  members or participants do, think about a co-op or other resource sharing  consortium with multi-tenant (shared) capabilities to isolate and keep members  along with what they are doing separate.

Who  are community clouds for, when to use them?

If  you cannot justify a private cloud for yourself, or, if you need more  resiliency than what can be provided by your site and you know of a peer,  partner, member or other with common needs, those could be a fit. Another  variation is you are in an industry or agency or district where pooling of  resources, yet operating separate has advantages or already being done. These  range from medical and healthcare to education along with various small medium businesses  (SMBs) that do not want to or cannot use a public facility for various reasons.

What  technology is needed for building a  community cloud?

Similar  to deploying a public or private cloud, you will need various hard products  including servers, storage, networking, management software tools for provisioning,  orchestration, show back or charge back, multi-tenancy, security and authentication,  data protection (backup, bc, dr, ha) along with various middleware and  applications.

What  are community clouds used for?

Almost  anything, granted there are limits and boundaries based tools, technologies,  security and access controls among other constraints. Applications can range  from big-data to little-data on  all if not most points in between. On the other hand, if they are not safe or  secure enough for your needs, then use a private cloud or whatever it is that you are currently using.

What  about community cloud security, privacy and compliance regulations?

Those  are topics and reasons why like-minded or affected groups might be able to  leverage a community cloud. By being like-minded or affected groups, labs,  schools, business, entities, agencies, districts, or other organizations that  are under common mandates for security, compliance, privacy or other regulations  can work together, yet keep their interests separate. What tools or techniques  for achieving those goals and objectives would be dependent on those who  offer services to those entities now?

Where  can you get a community cloud?

Look  around using Google or your favorite search tool; also watch the comments section to see how long it  takes someone to jump in to say how he or she can help. Also talk with solution  providers, business partners and VARs. Note that they may not know the term or phrases  per say, so here is what to tell them. Tell them that you would like to deploy  a private cloud at some place that will then be used in a multi-tenant way  to safely and securely support different members of your consortium.

For  those who have been around long enough, you can also just tell them that you  want to do something like the co-op or consortium time-sharing type  systems from past generations and they may know what you are looking for. If although they look at you with a blank deer in the head-light stare eyes  glazed over, just tell them it’s a new lead-edge, software defined new and revolutionary  (add some superlatives if you feel inclined) and then they might get excited.  If they still don’t know what to do or help  you with, have them get in touch with me and I will explain it to them, or, I’ll  put you in touch with those can help.

Where  do you put a community cloud?

You  could deploy them in your own facility, other member’s locations or both for resiliency.  You could also use a safe secure co-lo facility already being used for other  purposes.

Do  community clouds have organizers?

Perhaps,  however they are probably more along the lines of a coordinator, administrator,  manager, controller as opposed to a community organizer per say. In other words,  do not confuse a community cloud with a cloud community organized, aligned and  activated for some particular cause. On  the other hand, maybe there is value prop for some cloud activist to be  organized and take up the cause for community clouds in your area of interest  ;).

Are  community clouds more of a concept vs. a product?

If  you have figured out that a community or peer cloud is nothing more than a  different way of deploying, using and managing a combination of private, public  and hybrid and putting a marketing name on them, congratulations, you are now  thinking outside of the box, or outside of the usual cloud conversations.

What  about public cloud services for selected audiences such as Amazons GovCloud? On one hand, I  guess you could call or think of that as a semi-private public cloud, or a  semi-public private cloud, or if you like superlatives an uber gallistic  hybrid  community cloud.

How you go about building, deploying and managing your community, coop, consortium, and agency, district or peer cloud will be how you leverage various hard and software products. The results of which will be your return on innovation (the new ROI) to address various needs and concerns or also known as valueware. Those results should be able to address or help close gaps and leverage clouds in general as a resource vs. simply as a tool, technology or technique.

Ok, nuff said...

Cheers gs

Have  you heard of a community clouds?

Cloud  computing including cloud storage and services as products, solutions and  services offer different functionality and enable benefits for various types  of organizations, entities or individuals.

Public  clouds, private clouds and hybrids leveraging public and private continue to evolve  in technology, reliability, security and functionality along with the awareness  around them.

IT  professionals tell me they are interested in clouds however they have concerns.

Cloud concerns range from security,  compliance, industry or government regulations, privacy and budgets among  others with private, public or hybrid clouds. Peer, cooperative (co-op),  consortium or community clouds can be a solution for those that traditional  public, private, hybrid, AaaS, SaaS, PaaS or IaaS  do not meet their needs.

From  a technology standpoint, there should have to be much if any difference between  a community cloud and a public, private or hybrid. Instead, they community  clouds are more about thinking outside of the box, or outside of common cloud  thinking per say. This means thinking beyond what others are talking about or  doing and looking at how cloud products, services and practices can be used in  different ways to meet your concerns or requirements.

What's your take on clouds, click here to cast your vote and see results

Read more about community clouds including common questions in part II here.

Ok, nuff said (for now)...

Cheers gs

Depending on whom you talk to or ask, you will get  different views and opinions, some of them stronger than others on if magnetic  tape is dead or alive as a data storage medium. However an aspect of tape that  is alive are the discussions by those for, against or that simply see it as one  of many data storage mediums and technologies whose role is changing.

Here  is a link to an a ongoing discussion over in one of the Linked In group  forums (Backup & Recovery Professionals) titled About  Tape and disk drives. Rest assured, there is plenty of fud and hype  on both sides of the tape is dead (or alive) arguments, not very different from  the disk is dead vs. SSD or cloud arguments. After all, not everything is the same in data  centers, clouds and information factories.

Fwiw, I removed tape from my environment about 8 years ago,  or I should say directly as some of my cloud providers may in fact be using  tape in various ways that I do not see, nor do I care one way or the other as  long as my data is safe, secure, protected and SLA's are meet. Likewise, I consult and advice for organizations where tape still exists yet its role is  changing, same with those using disk and cloud.

I am not ready to adopt the singular view that tape is  dead yet as I know too many environments that are still using it, however agree  that its role is changing, thus I am not part of the tape cheerleading camp.

On the other hand, I am a fan of using disk based data  protection along with cloud in new and creative (including for my use) as  part of modernizing data protection. Although I see disk as having a very  bright and important future beyond what it is being used for now, at least  today, I am not ready to join the chants of tape is dead either.

Does that mean I can’t decide or don’t want to pick a  side? NO

It means that I do not have to nor should anyone have to  choose a side, instead look at your options, what are you trying to do, how can  you leverage different things, techniques and tools to maximize your return on  innovation. If that means that tape is, being phased out of your organization  good for you. If that means there is a new or different role for tape in your  organization co-existing with disk, then good for you.

If somebody tells you that tape sucks and that you are  dumb and stupid for using it without giving any informed basis for those  comments then call them dumb and stupid requesting they come back when then can  learn more about your environment, needs, and requirements ready to have an  informed discussion on how to move forward.

Likewise, if you can make an informed value proposition  on why and how to migrate to new ways of modernizing data protection without  having to stoop to the tape is dead argument, or cite some research or  whatever, good for you and start telling others about it.

Otoh, if you need to use fud and hype on why tape is  dead, why it sucks or is bad, at least come up with some new and relevant  facts, third-party research, arguments or value propositions.

You can read more about tape and its changing role at tapeisalive.com or Tapesummit.com.

Ok, nuff said.

Cheers gs

Sometimes what should be understood, or that is common sense  or that you think everybody should know needs to be stated. After all, there  could be somebody who does not know what some assume as common sense or what others  know for various reasons. At times, there is simply the need to restate or have  a reminder of what should be known.

Consequently, in the data center or information  factory, either traditional, virtual, converged, private, hybrid or public cloud,  everything is not the same. When I say not everything is the same, is that  different applications with various service level objectives (SLO's) and service  level agreements (SLA's).  These are based on different characteristics from performance, availability, reliability,  responsiveness, cost, security, privacy among others. Likewise, there are  different size and types of organizations with various requirements from  enterprise to SMB, ROBO and SOHO, business or government, education or  research.

There are also different threat risks for various  applications or information services within in an organization, or across  different industry sectors. Thus various needs for meeting availability SLA's, recovery  time objectives (RTO's)  and recovery  point objectives (RPO's)  for data protection ranging from backup/restore, to high-availability (HA),  business continuance (BC), disaster recovery (DR) and archiving. Let us not  forget about logical and physical security of information, assets and people, processes  and intellectual property.

Some data centers or information factories are compute intensive  while others are data centric, some are IO or activity intensive with a mix  of compute and storage. On the other hand, some data centers such as a communications  hub may be network centric with very little data sticking or being stored.

Even within in a data center or information factory, various  applications will have different profiles, protection requirements for big data  and little data. There can also be a mix of old legacy applications and new  systems developed in-house, purchased, open-source based or accessed as a  service. The servers and storage may be software defined (a new buzzword that  has already jumped the shark), virtualized or operated in a private, hybrid or  community cloud if not using a public service.

Here are some related posts tied to everything is not the  same:
  Optimize Data  Storage for Performance and Capacity
  Is SSD only for  performance?
  Cloud  conversations: Gaining cloud confidence from insights into AWS outages
  Data  Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) and IRM
  Saving  Money with Green IT: Time To Invest In Information Factories
  Everything  Is Not Equal in the Datacenter, Part 1
  Everything  Is Not Equal in the Datacenter, Part 2
  Everything  Is Not Equal in the Datacenter, Part 3

Thus, not all things are the same in the data center, or  information factories, both those under traditional management paradigms, as  well as those supporting public,  private, hybrid or community clouds.

Ok, nuff said.

Cheers gs

이 문서는 이해를 돕기위해 KB#1029039를 한글로 번역한 것입니다. 번역본과 원문의 의미가 상이한 경우 원문이 우선함을 밝힙니다.

- VMware 한국  GSS L3 Tech. Support

목적

이 문서는 vmkernel.log에서 확인할 수 있는 NMP에러에서  SCSI 호스트 상태 메세지에 대한 정보를 제공합니다.

설명

아래 표는 VMware에서 정의되고 갱신되는 VMkernel의 SCSI 호스트 상태 메세지를 설명합니다.:

이 문서는 이해를 돕기 위해 KB#1030381을 한글로 번역한 것입니다. 원문과 번역본의 의미가 상이한 경우 원문이 우선함을 밝힙니다.

- VMware 한국 GSS L3 Tech. Support

목적

이 문서는 vmkernel.log에서 확인할 수 있는 NMP에러에서  SCSI장치 상태 메세지에 대한 정보를 제공합니다.

설명

t10.org에서 정의, 수정및 유지되는 SCSI 장치/타깃 상태 메세지들이 있습니다.

추가정보

주: 링크정보에서 제공되는 내용은 있는 그대로를 반영한 것으로 VMware는 내용의 정확성이나 적용범위에 대해 어떠한 보증도 하지 않습니다. 링크들은 2010년 12월 21일 현재 정확한 것입니다. 링크가 동작하지 않으면, 피드백을 주시기 바라며 그에 다라 링크정보들은 수정될 것입니다.

이 문서는 이해를 돕기 위해 KB#1001805를 한글로 번역한 것입니다. 원문과 번역본의 의미가 상이한 경우 원문이 우선함을 밝힙니다.

- VMware 한국 GSS L3 Tech. Support

배경

네트워크 어뎁터 선택은 가상머신에서 실행되고 있는 게스트 운영체제와 버전에 따라 이루어집니다. 이 문서는 가상머신에 가용한 네트워크 어뎁터들에 대해 설명합니다.

네트워크 타입에 대한 자세한 정보는 Understanding networking types in hosted products (1006480)를 참조합니다.

설명

가용한 네트워크 어뎁터들

생성하려는 가상머신에 적용할 수 있는 네트워크 어뎁터들만이 Choose Network윈도우에  설정 가능한 옵션으로 리스트됩니다.

• Vlance: 이것은AMD 79C970 PCnet32- LANCE NIC 의 에물레이티드 버전입니다. 이것은 Windows Vista 이후를 제외한 대부분의 32비트 게스트 운영체제에서 지원하는 오랜된 10 Mbps  NIC입니다. 이 네트워크 어뎁터로 구성된 가상머신은 네트워크를 즉시 사용할 수 있습니다.
• VMXNET: VMXNET 가상 네트워크 어뎁터는 상응하는 물리 어뎁터가 없습니다. VMXNET은 가상머신에서의 성능에 최적화 되었습니다. 운영체제 업체에서 이 어뎁터에 대한 빌트-인 드라이버를 제공하지 않기 때문에 , VMXNET 네트워크 어뎁터를 위한 드라이버를 가지려면 VMware Tools를 반드시 설치해야 합니다.
• Flexible: Flexible 네트워크 어뎁터는 가상머신이 부팅할 때 Vlance로 인식이 되고 이것을 초기화 하는 드라이버에 따라 Vlance 또는 VMXNET 어뎁터로 초기화 됩니다. VMware Tools가 설치되어 있으면, VMXNET드라이버가 Vlance 어뎁터를 고성능의 VMXNET어뎁터로 변경합니다.
• E1000: Intel 82545EM Gigabit Ethernet NIC의 에뮬레이티드 버전입니다. 이 NIC의 드라이버는 모든 게스트 운영체제에 포함되어 있지 않습니다. 일반적으로 Linux versions 2.4.19 이상, Windows XP Professional x64 Edition 이상, 그리고 Windows Server 2003 (32-bit) 이상이 E1000 드라이버를 포함하고 있습니다.     
  
  주: E1000은 ESXi/ESX 4.1 이전 버전에서 Jumbo Frame을 지원하지 않습니다.
• E1000e: 이것은 가상 하드웨어에서Intel Gigabit NIC (number 82574)의 새버전을 에뮬레이션합니다. 이것은 "e1000e" vNIC으로 알려져 있습니다. e1000e는 vSphere 5에서 하드웨어 버전 8 (이상) 에서만 지원됩니다. Windows 8 또는 이상 (Windows) 게스트 운영 체제에서 기본 NIC입니다. 리눅스 게스트에서는, e1000e은 UI(e1000, flexible vmxnet, enhanced vmxnet, 및 vmxnet3이 리눅스에 가용합니다)에서 가용하지 않습니다..
• VMXNET 2 (Enhanced): VMXNET 2 어뎁터는 VMXNET 어뎁터에 기초하지만 jumbo frame, 하드웨어 offload와 같은 현대 네트워크에서 일반적으로 사용되는 고성능 기능들을 제공합니다.  이 가상 네트워크 어뎁터는ESXi/ESX 3.5 이상에서 일부 게스트 운영체제에만 사용할 수 있습니다.
  
  VMXNET 2는 제한된 범위의 게스트 운영체제만 지원합니다:
  • Microsoft Windows 2003 32-비트와 64-비트 버전(Enterprise, Datacenter, 및 Standard Editions).
    
    주: 다른 버전의 Microsoft Windows 2003 operating system에서enhanced VMXNET 어뎁터를 사용할 수 있지만, VMware Infrastructure (VI)  Client 또는vSphere Client 에서 옵션을 활성화 하려면 워크어라운드가 필요합니다. Enhanced VMXNET 이 옵션으로 제공되지 않으면, Enabling enhanced vmxnet adapters for Microsoft Windows Server 2003 (1007195)를 참조 합니다.
  • Microsoft Windows XP Professional 32-비트 버전
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.0 32-비트와 64-비트 버전
  • SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 32-비트와 64-비트 버전
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.0 64-비트 버전
  • Ubuntu Linux 64-비트 버전

ESX 3.5 Update 4 또는 이상에서, 아래 의 게스트 운영체제들도 지원합니다:

• Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Standard Edition (32-bit)
• Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Standard Edition (64-bit)
• Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Web Edition
• Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2003

주: VMXNET 2의 Jumbo frames는 Solaris Guest OS에서 지원하지 않습니다.

• VMXNET 3: VMXNET 3 어뎁터는 성능을 위해 설계된 차세대 반가상화 NIC이며 VMXNET또는 VMXNET2와 관계가 없습니다. VMXNET2의 모든 기능들을 제공하면서multiqueue support (Windows 에서Receive Side Scaling으로 알려진), IPv6 offloads, 그리고 MSI/MSI-X interrupt delivery와 같은 여러 새로운 기능들을 제공합니다.
  
  VMXNET 3는 가상머신 버전 7이상과 제한된 게스트 운영체제만 지원합니다:
  • Microsoft Windows 7, XP, 2003, 2003 R2, 2008, 2008 R2, 및 Server 2012 32-비트와64-비트 버전 
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.0 이상32-비트와64-비트 버전
  • SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 이상 32-비트와64-비트 버전
  • Asianux 3 이상 32-비트와64-비트 버전
  • Debian 4 32-비트와64-비트 버전
  • Ubuntu 7.04 이상 32-비트와64-비트 버전
  • Sun Solaris 10 U4 이상 32-비트와64-비트 버전

주:

• ESXi/ESX 4.1와 이전 릴리즈에서, Solaris Guest OS 에서VMXNET 2 와 VMXNET 3 jumbo frames은 지원하지 않습니다. 이 기능은 ESXi 5.0 for VMXNET 3 부터 지원합니다.
  
  자세한 정보는Enabling Jumbo Frames on the Solaris guest operating system (2012445)를 참조합니다.
• vSphere 4.0에서 VMXNET 3 vNIC으로 구성된 가상머신의 Fault Tolerance 는 지원하지 않습니다. vSphere 4.1부터 지원합니다.
  
    
• Windows Server 2012 는 ESXi 5.0 Update 1이상에서 VMXNET 3을 지원합니다.

어뎁터 주의사항

• enhanced VMXNET을 사용하는 가상머신의 마이그레이션
  
  VMXNET 2 는ESX 3.5에서 도입되었습니다. VMXNET 2어뎁터를 가진 가상머신은 , 비록 가상머신이 ESX 3.0과 ESX 3.0.;x사이에서 자유로이 마이그레이션 할 수 있지만, 이전 버전의 ESX호스트로 마이그레이션할 수 없습니다.
  
  가상머신을 이후 버전과 이전버전의 호스트들 사이에서 마이그레이션 해야 한다면 VMXNET 2를 선택하지 마십시오.
• ESX 2.x에서 ESX 3.x로의 업그레이드
  
  가상 하드웨어 업그레이드가 ESX 2.x에서 생성된 가상머신을 ESX 3.x 호스트로 변형할 때 Vlance 어뎁터는 자동적으로 Flexible로 업그레이드됩니다. 반대로, VMXNET 어뎁터는 대부분의 리눅스 게스트 운영체제 버전들이 네트워크 어뎁터가 교체될 때 내트워크 구성을 유지하지 않기 때문에 자동적으로 업그레이드 되지 않습니다. 게스트 운영체제는 여전히 Flexible 어뎁터가 Vlance라고 여기기 때문에 이 경우 설정을 유지합니다.   만약 업그레이드가 VMXNET 어뎁터를 Flexible 어뎁터로 변경하면, 게스트 운영체제가 설정을 지우게됩니다.
  
  가상 하드웨어 업그레이드  후에 네트워크 어뎁터는, Flexible 어뎁터의 호환성 이슈 없이, 여전히 VMXNET입니다. 원래의 이전 호스트에서와 마찬가지로, 만약 VMware Tools가 가상머신에서 언인스톨되면, 가상머신은 네트워크 어뎁터를 사용할 수 없게 됩니다.
• 가상 디스크 추가
  
  기존의 이전버전(ESX 2.x) 가상 디스크를 ESX 3.x 가상 머신에 추가하게 되면 가상머신은  ESX 2.x로 다운그레이드됩니다. 만약 enhanced VMXNET이나 Flexible 네트워크 어뎁터와 같은 ESX 3.x 기능들을 사용하고 있었다면, 가상머신은 일치되지 않는 상태가 됩니다. 기존의 ESX 2.x 가상 디스크를 ESX 3.x 가상머신에 추가할 때, 즉시Upgrade Virtual Hardware 명령을 사용하여 가상머신을  ESX 3 버전으로 복구해야 합니다.      이 문제는 이전 버전의 가상 디스크를 ESXi/ESX 4.0 가상머신에 추가할 때는 발생하지 않습니다.     
  
  주: Upgrade Virtual Hardware 명령 실행은 ESX 2 가상 디스크를 변경 시키고 더 이상 ESX 2 가상머신에서 사용할 수 없게 합니다. 디스크를 ESX 3 포멧으로 업그레이드 하기전에 복사본을 만들것을 고려하십시오.

게스트 운영체제에 대한 자세한 정보는 VMware Compatibility Guide를 참조 합니다.

Execellent book from Bill Ferguson

Although the retail sector has a lower probability of store downtime, it does suffer from a higher cost of downtime per hour. This high cost of downtime is a result of employee dependency on the in-store infrastructure.

For infrastructure management teams, implementing network storage in-store ensures availability of business applications. However implementing SAN storage in business and mission-critical retail locations actually increases risk because of its inherent complexity. Additionally, the capital and management costs make no business sense for these environments as they raise concerns and challenges such as:

-          High Capex and Opex associated with acquisition, management and implementation of physical solutions across multiple stores/sites,

-          Physical storage solutions re-introduce complexity into virtualized environments.

-          As a single point of failure if the storage fails your site goes down.

-          Potential extended downtime as physical solutions require on-site IT for hardware failure resolution

The combination of server virtualization and virtual storage appliances (VSA) changes the landscape providing a solution that is simple to use and cost effective while still providing high availability.

In this recent webinar we discuss how StorMagics SvSAN has reinvented network storage for retail environments:

-          Simple to implement over dozens, hundreds and thousands of remote locations

-          Ease of ongoing management and support across remote locations

-          Changes the business economics including capex and opex

-          Ensures in-store application availability cost effectively

-          Examination of a real world use case of a major retailer with over 2,000 locations

Watch Now:http://www.stormagic.com/Webinars/webinar_2013_01_30.php

Мне очень нравится продукт Starwind. Я пользовал и другие iSCSI-таргеты, но сердце мое принадлежит именно Starwind'у

Около года назад попался мне в руки сервер с корзиной и начал я сравнивать "попугаев" - иопсы и mb\s у Старвинда и конкурентов. И что-то неправильно я у Старвинда поначалу сконфигурил и результат был ниже ожидаемого. Отписал я здесь свое недоумение, и...неожиданно, пишут мне парни из Старвинда- ошибка у тебя, лучше должны быть показатели, давай подскажем, поможем и все будет ок. ОК. Стер я негативный пост, начали с ребятами правильные тесты делать и тут, вот незадача, забрали у меня тот сервер под боевые задачи. И тесты так и остались недоделанными

А недавно нашелся сервер. Корзина на 16 дисков. 2 Ксеона Е5420, 24ГБ памяти. 2 гигабитных интеловских сетевухи. 2 контроллера Intel RS2BL080. Задача была освободить одну FC-хранилку на которой лежали ВМ с медийными файловыми серверами на несколько терабайт. Времени тестировать не было, поставил на сервер Win2008R2Sp1, Starwind Free. Сделал по таргету на контроллер, дедупликацию и кэширование не включал.

На одном контроллере 2 диска в зеркало под ОС и 6 7k2 SAS-NL в рэйд50, на втором 8 таких же дисков в рэйд50. На рэйдах режим отложенной записи и размер блока по дефолту 256кб.

На ESXi -под iscsi 2 карты с мультипасингом, на хранилки, соответственно- на каждую сетевуху свой IP.

Запустил миграцию двух ВМ, лежащих на разных хостах ESXi и на разных ЛУНах FC-хранилки на оба таргета. Результаты при одновременной миграции (смотрел в Veeam ONE):

На таргет1 (на рэйд50 из 6 дисков) - 52мб\с, 570 иопсов.

На таргет2 (рэйд50 из 8 дисков) - 60мб\с, 980 иопсов.

На обоих гигабитных сетевухах нагрузка одинаковая- примерно 50%.

На таргет2 миграция закончилась быстрее и на таргете1 результаты сразу подскочили: 77мб\с, 850 иопсов.

Потом на таргет2 еще одну миграцию запустили (см.рисунок)

Одиночную миграцию сервера с медийным контентом на таргет2 запустить не получилось из-за отсутсвия такового, пришлось мигрировать VDI-машину. Результаты: 75мб\с, 1220иопс.

P.S. Есть такой же сервер, там iscsi-таргет на RHEL6. 4гигабитных сетевых карты (2 IP). Диски с такой же скоростью. Таргет1 -рэйд10 на 6 дисках, таргет2- рэйд 10 на 8 дисках.

Миграция на таргет1

На таргет2:

VMware vFabric Postgres 9.2 is now available for download.

It also features a new WebUI which is available as a war file in Drivers and Tools section.

Also visit the vFabric Postgres Discussion forum on VMware communities  if you have questions.