Lamw has updated his Perl based Health Check Report script (now compatible with vSphere 4.0). This script generates a health check report similar to that of vmwareHealthCheckScript but for the new vSphere release of VMware ESX(i) 4.x and VMware vCenter 4.x and it's managed entities.
Requirements:
Check it out here!!
First and foremost: all credit goes to Hugo Peeters over at http://www.peetersonline.nl. I just took his script and modified what was useful from a VLAN perspective. The code below will create a HTML page with VLAN inconsistencies. This can be a useful script in a large environment to compare all VLANs/portgroups presented on a per cluster basis. I know we use it ;)
Copy/paste this in PowerGUI script editor and run! Make sure c:\temp exists
BTW: in vSphere we will have host profiles and distributed vSwitches to tackle the “not presented everywhere” problem ;)
---------------------------------------------------------------
$outputFile = 'C:\temp\compareVLAN.html'
$VCServer = "<vCenter FQDN>"
$VCUsername = '<username>'
$VCPassword = "<password>"
Function Create-HTMLTable
{
param([array]$Array)
$arrHTML = $Array | ConvertTo-Html
$arrHTML[-1] = $arrHTML[-1].ToString().Replace('</body></html>',"")
Return $arrHTML[5..1000]
}
$output = @()
$output += '<html><head></head><body>'
$output += '<style>table{border-style:solid;border-width:1px;font-size:8pt;background-color:#ccc;width:20%;}th{text-align:left;}td{background-color:#fff;width:20%;border-style:solid;border-width:1px;}body{font-family:verdana;font-size:8pt;}h1{font-size:12pt;}h2{font-size:10pt;}</style>'
$output += '<h1>VMWARE CONFIGURATION INCONSISTENCIES - VLAN</h1>'
$output += '<p>The following VLANs are not available to all ESX servers in the cluster:</p>'
$VC = Connect-VIServer $VCServer -User $VCusername -Password $VCPassword
ForEach ($Cluster in (Get-Cluster | Sort Name))
{
$output += "<h2>" + $Cluster + "</h2>"
$VMHosts = $Cluster | Get-VMHost | Sort Name
$vSwitches = Get-VirtualSwitch -VMHost $VMHosts
$AllPGs = Get-VirtualPortGroup -VirtualSwitch $vSwitches
$myPGCol = @()
$PGdiffs = $VMHosts | ForEach {Compare-Object $AllPGs (Get-VirtualPortGroup -VMHost $_) -SyncWindow 1000} | ForEach {$_.InputObject} | Sort Name | Select Name -Unique
ForEach ($PGdiff in $PGdiffs)
{
If ($PGdiff.Name -ne $null)
{
$myPGObj = "" | Select VirtualPortGroup
$myPGObj.VirtualPortGroup = $PGdiff.Name
ForEach ($VMHost in $VMHosts)
{
$myPGObj | Add-Member -MemberType NoteProperty -Name $VMHost.Name -Value (!!(Get-VirtualPortGroup -Name $myPGObj.VirtualPortGroup -VMHost $VMHost -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue))
}
$myPGCol += $myPGObj
}
}
If ($myPGCol.Count -eq 0)
{
$output += '<p>'
$output += "All VLANs OK."
$output += '</p>'
}
Else
{
$output += Create-HTMLTable $myPGCol
}
Clear-Variable $VMHosts -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
Clear-Variable $myPGObj -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
Clear-Variable $myPGCol -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
Clear-Variable $PGdiffs -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
Clear-Variable $PGdiff -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
}
$output += '</body></html>'
$output | Out-File $outputFile -Force
ii $outputfile
Disconnect-VIServer -Confirm:$False
---------------------------------------------------------------
Duncan over at Yellow-Bricks just wrote an interesting article on the effect of vMMU on Transparent Page Sharing. He concludes that when virtualized MMU was set to “force” Transparent page sharing didn’t take place or at least at a lower grade. Read more here. Make sure you check out the links in the article!
One word of advice: if using a SAN attached ESX deployment, make sure Disk.UseLunReset is set to 1 (default = 1) and Disk.UseDeviceReset is set to 0 (Defaults to 1). The reason to disable the Disk.UseDeviceReset param is because it does a complete SCSI bus reset. All SCSI reservations will be cleared, not for a a specific LUN but for the complete device. This could disrupt your SAN fabric. I would suggest setting the ESX host in maintenance mode and reboot it afterwards. See also page 118 of the Fibre Channel SAN Configuration guide or Yellow Bricks post on the topic for more info.
Alternatively, you can also set this via the Service Console by issuing the following commands:
esxcfg-advcfg -s 1 /Disk/UseLunReset
esxcfg-advcfg -s 0 /Disk/UseDeviceReset
service mgmt-vmware restart
Good morning everybody! First and foremost: congratulations to my Xylos college Geert Baeke on becoming a VMware vExpert!!! Check it out here. He deserves it as he must be one of the granddaddy bloggers. So I guess he will be driving his BMW M5 soon ;)
Here is a small recap on some of the things we did yesterday.
In the general session, Stephen Herrod (the company CTO and Senior Vice President of R&D) talked about VDC-OS, the vCloud and vClient initiatives in more detail.
vCenter is one of the focus points during the keynote:
The new componentized model of vSphere is explained in more detail: vStorage (SAN API’s to offload certain features to the SAN => see my previous comments on the NetApp session yesterday), vNetwork aka distrivuted switching and the omnipresent Cisco Nexus 1000V and vCompute.
vCloud
The concept of the vCloud is definitely an important one: once we have vSphere, VMware will be able to leverage some long distance (storage?) VMotions into or out of the internal/external cloud via a concept known as a “Private cloud”. A short demo with the new vCloud plug-in was shown.
vClient
Stephen talks about Mobile Virtualization Platform (MVP) and the PCoIP (PC over IP) concept using advanced hardware (will be software in the future) acceleration techniques such as Teradici 3D/2D mulitimedia accelerators.
Then a Nokia N800 is brought onto the stage to show what the mobile hypervisor will be capable of: a dual- OS using on the one hand Windows CE as the “business” mobile OS, and Google Android for your personal settings.
We decided it was time to do some Labs. First, we did the vCenter data recovery Lab (BTW, it reminds me of a product called ESXpress). Anyway, it’s based on a virtual appliance and a vCenter plug-in.
In a nutshell: you must prepare your backup destination (for example a network share), and create a backup plan using a specific retention policy. By default, data is de-duplicated
File-level restore will be available to in the final version and it will be possible to change the network settings when doing a restore rehearsal (currently, the restore rehearsal boots up the same VM with the same IP by default)
Check out Yellow-Bricks for more info on the hot-add feature used in the virtual appliance to do the backup: http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2009/02/25/vmworld-day-2-random-stuff-and-data-recovery/
Another lab we followed was the one on the new Cisco Nexus 1000V. As I said in my last blog, this is all about vNetwork: use a managed distributed switch in vSphere to leverage monitoring, Access lists, etc, on your vSwitches. A Virtual machine always uses the same Veth marker, so this is useful after DRS/VMotion is triggered. Check out the key benefits in the screenshot below:
Here is another overview of the Nexus architecture:
A Nexus enabled vSwitch looks something like in the screenshot below: note the UpLink0 (a number of uplink port profiles is created by default BTW) that is used to connect the assigned NICs to your distributed vSwitch. Note the Manage Virtual and Physical adapters links ;)
And then it was… party time! A lot of food/drinks/live music/arcade gaming and beautiful women. Happy times in the Cloud Nine!
Well, last night we had a great party. We did meet with some other colleagues and customers/friends in the evening.
This morning we woke up and…the weather was excellent here in Cannes! We (Geert Verbist over at virtual-scene.info, Guy and myself) attended the general keynote and some sessions.
For the first time (well, that is not counting partner day) Paul Maritz actually used the term vSphere to describe what will be the VDC-OS of the future (this will be the name of the ESX/VI 4.0 suite of products that will be released in the first half of 2009). The 2 main keywords of this VMworld: VDI/vClient solutions and the internal/external (v)Cloud/VDC-OS
Next, I attended a great session on VMware with NetApp integration. The things these guys are doing (combined with the next-gen vStorage API) are just amazing. Soon we will be able to offload all Snapshot/Clone/Thin Provisioning/… tasks to our storage. At last! What used to take minutes (as in: deploying a template is just a copy operation of a .vmdk) is now done in seconds! Needless to say the demo’s were quite impressive.
Oh yes, did I mention Multipathing in vSphere? I didn’t? Well, listen to this: it will be possible to configure the optimal path to your san (using vStorage API) with just 1 click of the mouse: “Apply optimal path configuration” (or something like that, I don’t remember the exact command). Gone are the days of manual multipathing. Anyway, I hope all other vendors will follow NetApps example and integrate all these nice toys in their products.
Next up was the first 3rd party vNetwork Distributed vSwitch: Cisco Nexus 1000V, a (software) plug-in to ESX that creates an advanced vSwitch version built on Cisco NX-OS. We will finally see a managed vSwitch on ESX with full configuration, monitoring and security options! The VEM (Virtual Ethernet Module, or the vSwitches themselves) are managed by a VSM (or Virtual Supervisor Module, a VM or hardware appliance that manages all VEM instances and that tightly integrates with vCenter).
Don’t worry: if the appliance fails, all configuration states are unchanged until the VSM is revived/restored. You can manage the switches as you can manage a “real” Cisco switch. As this is a distributed switch, you must only create it once per cluster. So adding a new ESX host will be a breeze(oh yes, did I mention host profiles ;))
Another session that got my attention was the one about SRM design best practices. Glad to here we already set-up SRM by the book.
Last (but definitely not least) we checked out a session from the (in)famous Brian Madden himself: VDI versus Terminal Services. In his (controversial) typical way he compared VDI to TS as being both SBC (server based computing) with the same problems/advantages since Citrix launched WinFrame (now called XenApp) for NT 3.51 in 1997.
His conclusion: with TS, you currently get more bang for the buck (or should I say more users per server?). HOWEVER: if you see how fast the VDI space is growing and the fact that there is tremendous competition amongst Citrix, Quest and VMware he predicts that by June 2010 all major problems with VDI as such will be gone. We’re thinking graphical enhancements (Terradici, HP RGS, ....), more users per server, thin provisioning on your SAN, etc..). Yay to TS! Yay to VDI!
Next up: the VMware Benelux party with 250+ Benelux people. Happy times and kisses from Cannes and see you tomorrow!
Ok, so we arrived early @ Nice this afternoon, took the bus to the Palais des festivals in Cannes and went through the registration process. All settled then! Tomorrow we’ll have partner day (and the Benelux party of course!) so stay tuned for some nice blogposts on ESX 4.0 (vSphere?), SRM and VMware View!
After installing the VMware Tools on our Suse Linux Enterprise 10 guest, we kept losing the network configuration. Apparently, after loading the vmxnet driver there were 2 network cards present.
So here is the workaround:
VMware has just released the brand new VMware Infrastructure 3 version 3.5, filled with interesting new features:
Petri IT Knowledgebase has some nice articles on the upcoming Windows Server Core product.
Check them out:
Sometimes a Virtual Machine can't be stopped via the VIClient. The job just hangs. There are a number of options to stop your Virtual Machine from within the Service Console. Keep in mind that these are last resort options!
As you know, HA is triggered on an ESX host after 15 seconds when it cannot contact it's cluster partners and the default gateway. By Default, all virtual machines running on the ESX host are shut down and restarted on the remaining ESX hosts in the cluster (using a Legato AAM agent to do it's job).
The only thing you could do up until now was changing the default gateway (via the das.isolationaddress option/value set). However, for most companies this is not enough. When a general network maintenance is scheduled, you should disable HA to avoid an unnecessary HA trigger.
New in VirtualCenter 2.0.2 are the following option/value pairs:
These values can be set under Your Cluster => Edit Settings => VMware HA => Advanced Options.
See also VMware's HA_Tech_Best_Practices.pdf document for more info!
I get a lot of questions concerning the deployment of Windows XP on ESX. By default, ESX will use the LSI Logic driver when deploying a new Windows XP virtual machine. The LSI Logic driver is not found on the CD-ROM media, so Windows XP will not continue with the installation if this driver is not found.
The steps:
NOTE: when using the BusLogic driver instead, you can download & use a preconfigured .flp file from the VMware site: http://download3.vmware.com/software/vmscsi-1.2.0.4.flp. Follow the same procedure as described above. The driver should be name VMware SCSI Controller in Windows XP.
Ever wondered why you could select gazillion performance counters in real-time, but only 1 or 2 counters when selecting Per Day/Per Week/Per Month/Per Year/Custom? Here is the solution: in the VIClient, go to VirtualCenter Management Configuration and then statistics. By default, the Statistics Collection Level is set to 1 (Basic Metrics).
Ideally, you could set the level to 3 or even 4. After a while, you will notice new performance counters available for selection in the chart options menu! These are great for doing memory sizing/ CPU sizing over a longer period of time. Great huh?
HP has released the G5 version of the DL580. This is a lean mean virtualization machine:
This is a great VMware/Viridian/XenSource/... virtualization machine with plenty of room for extra NICs & HBA's. I hope VMware will be able to use this model in their ESXi platform. How hard can it be to stick an extra 32Mb SSD module in this one ;)
Wilco van Bragt (sbc.vanbragt.net) has written a nice how-to article on preparing a Citrix Presentation Server (version 4.0 or 4.5) with Ardence streaming.
Some Advantages of OS streaming in combination with terminal servers:
Citrix MPS/Xensource/Ardence combo anyone ;)
Read the complete article here
Are you interested in virtualizing your Citrix or Terminal Services environment? If so, check out Rene Vester 's article "A short guide to virtualizing Presentation and Terminal servers on VMware ESX 3" on the Brian Madden website. He goes into great detail on the steps required to successfully install WTS or Citrix in a virtualized environment.
This is a great addition to my previous blogpost "Best practices for deploying Citrix on ESX"
Read the entire article here
Patrick Rouse has written a nice little article on the use of folder redirection in a SBC environment.
Folder redirection can limit the amount of data that is copied between the Roaming Profile Share and the Terminal Server at each logon and logoff. This is accomplished by redirecting folders like Desktop, My Documents, and Application Data to a Network Share outside of the Roaming Profile Share, so it is not copied at each logon and logoff.
You can read the complete article on the msterminalservices.org website
Microsoft has created a nice link to all info concerning Windows Server 2008 on technet. It's called the Documentation Survival Guide. Jump to it here
• Windows Server 2008 product information: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=90853
• Windows Server 2008 TechCenter: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=86041
• Windows Server 2008 Troubleshooting: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=90857
• TechNet Troubleshooting and Support: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=90728
• Windows Server 2008 Forums: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=90920
• Windows Server 2008 Podcasts: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=90919
• Windows Server 2008 Chats: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=90918
What can you do to secure your systems? These links to prescriptive security guidance resources, virus alerts, and security bulletins will help you find the security information that you need.
• TechNet Security Center: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=29482
• TechNet Security Virus Alerts: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=26702
• Microsoft Security Bulletin Search: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=24822
Need to find the latest product downloads or other technical information? These links will help you keep your systems current and learn about the latest Microsoft technologies.
• Microsoft Download Center: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=63637
• Microsoft Help and Support: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=7588
• TechNet Products and Technologies: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=26708
• Script Center: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=63080
Need to learn more about what’s new for key Windows Server 2008 technologies and where to get additional information? These links to the Windows Server 2008 Technical Library will provide you with introductory and technical overviews and other resources.
•Active Directory Certificate Services: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=48545
•Active Directory Domain Services: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=48547
•Active Directory Federation Services: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=48542
•Active Directory Rights Management Services: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=48554
•Application Server: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=48544
•Availability and Scalability: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=90922
•DNS Server: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=48548
•File Services: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=48550
•Group Policy: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=90923
•Network Policy and Access Services: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=48552
•Performance and Reliability: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=90924
•Print Services: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=48553
•Security and Protection: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=90925
•Server Manager: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=48541
•Streaming Media Services: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=48551
•Terminal Services: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=48555
•Web Server: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=48558
•Windows Deployment Services: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=48559
•Windows SharePoint Services: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=48560
Holy god, this is breaking news! After rumors on the brianmadden website about Citrix wanting to buy XenSource, there is now an official statement: Citrix has signed a definitive agreement to acquire XenSource.
Citrix’s acquisition of XenSource comes on the heels of a substantial new release of XenEnterprise, the company’s flagship commercial product line. The new XenEnterprise v4 marks a significant milestone. Citrix will thus become one of the major players in the virtualization field (and a direct competitor to VMware & Microsoft).
Read the official announcement on the Citrix website here
