Tuesday, March 31. 2009
Don't forget to check out VESI
VMware ESX Server 3.5 Update 4 is out there
- Newly Supported Management Agents
- Newly Supported Guest Operating Systems
- LSI megaraid_sas and mptscsi Storage Controller Driver Update
- Enablement of Intel Xeon Processor 5500 Series
- Expanded Support for Enhanced vmxnet Adapter
- Intel ICH9
- Intel ICH10
VMware ESX Server 3.5 Update 4 Release Notes
ESX 3.5 supports multiple SATA controllers. Some of these controllers are supported only in the native Advanced Host Controller Interface (AHCI)/SATA mode with SATA hard-drive, and some are only supported in IDE/ATA mode with SATA Optical Drive. For other controllers, VMware provides support in AHCI/SATA or IDE/ATA mode on both types of drives, but you need to be aware of certain feature limitations and trade-offs associated with each mode.
Monday, March 30. 2009
Andrew Kutz is finally into PowerShell
Andrew Kutz just posted a new Hyper9 Cmdlet on sourceforce.net called Out-DataSet.
Out-DataSet is an extremely useful and needed cmdlet. You can use it to pipe any type of data that can be formatted with the built-in cmdlet, Format-Table, into a typed Microsoft .NET System.Data.DataSet. This allows an unlimited manipulation of data that you simply cannot achieve with text globbing. This cmdlet is experimental in nature because it was achieved by reverse engineering the Format-Table cmdlet to pull the data directly from internal data structures that Microsoft does not expose via its public API. This was a necessary task in order to represent the data with 100% accuracy every single time.
Update : A facelift for lostcreations.com
While Andrew Kutz is working at Hyper9, lostcreations.com will become h9labs.com to reflect the bleeding edge R&D that he’s doing. The site redesign is primarily cosmetic, and lostcreations.com still works as a URL. Andrew is just trying to make sure that if you've been coming to his site to get the coolest software in the virtualization industry then you can just keep on coming. If, however, you are new to the game, then h9labs.com and h9labs.hyper9.com work as well.
How to generate a 100% CPU load?
I know there are lots of utilities out there capable of creating a high CPU load. You probably know the cpubusy.vbs from your VMware Install and Configure course and you can also download CPU-Burn freely from the internet. But what if you can’t download such a util and still want to be able to create a high CPU load within your virtual machine. Let’s take a look at the good old Windows Calculator. Go to the scientific view and just punch in a large number, the next step is to hit the n! button. Your calculator is running a mathematical function called factorial and it can consume a large number of CPU cycles. When you choose 5 for instance, it’s 5! = 1*2*3*4*5 =120, but when you choose 20, it’s 2,432,902,008,176,640,000. Hit the n! a few times in a row and your virtual machine will be busy for a while.
Saturday, March 28. 2009
System Files (VMFS metadata files)
When you’re missing some space from a new VMFS data store it’s due to hidden system files. A recent VMware knowledge base article tells us, these files are indexes and descriptors of the files on the file system and cannot be deleted.
- They may take more space if you have a small block size (more addresses).
- They may take less space if you have a large block size (less addresses).
- They are metadata files that are created when the volume is first setup.
- They cannot be changed and cannot be deleted.
- They may grow over time but not significantly.
The VMFS3 file system organizes all space on disk in collections of resources. There are 4 resource types managed by the VMFS3 file system blocks, sub-blocks, pointer blocks, and file descriptors. Each resource type is managed by one of 4 system files which are created during the file system bootstrap process:
.fdc.sf - file descriptor system file
.sbc.sf - sub-block system file
.fbb.sf - file block system file
.pbc.sf - pointer block system file
.vh.sf - volume header system file
Mostafa Khalil’s VMworld 2007 session about Advanced VMFS Configuration and Troubleshooting shows us how to manually back-up VMFS3 volume’s Metadata.
Friday, March 27. 2009
vCenter Mobile Access VI Client plug-in
Ever wish you could restart a virtual machine or migrate it to another host from the convenience of your mobile phone? With VMware vCenter Mobile Access, you can... But wait, you can even use it from your VI Client, just install this new plug-in. :-)
The most useless plug-in ever : vCenterMobileAccess.xml
Btw. @skrishna09:Finalizing pricing for vCMA - it will be part of vCenter, so no extra fee i.e. it's free!