Eric Sloof

Scott Vessey, a fellow VMware Certified Instructor started his own blog at http://vmwaretraining.blogspot.com. Scott is Lead Instructor for VMware at Global Knowledge UK and has just discovered when the beta and final VCP on vSphere 4 exams will be available.

The beta exam for vSphere 4 will be available June 29th, 2009. Candidates eligible for the beta exam will automatically be contacted by VMware. These candidates must be VCP3 certified and beta product users.

The final release of the VCP on vSphere 4 exam will be available publicly on August 1st, 2009.

After publishing an article about the free StartWind iSCSI target software, a lot of people were disappointed with the limited size of 2 GB shared storage.

Eric Siebert :Found the link for it, the Free version is limited to 2GB of storage space though which isn't very useful to use with ESX.

William Lam :Don't forget to mention that the max size of the target is 2GB, this is primarily for testing/demo purposes. It's free but you won't be able to do much with it, at least with 2GB

Anonymous:Waste of time, just a trial.

Robert B :Like Eric and William said.. not really useful, since it is limited to only 2 GB, would have been a nice option otherwise.

StarWind took notice of these comments (after I've sent them an email :-) ) and has released version 4.1 which offers an unlimited number of connections and a capacity of 2TB at no cost. StarWind Software now offers their leading iSCSI SAN software – a fully functional basic version - at no cost. Convert any 32- or 64-bit Windows server into a rock solid and powerful SAN for your server applications.

Software includes:

• Unlimited connections.
• 2 TB capacity.
• Supports Windows server clustering.
• Shared storage for any server application including SQL Server, Exchange, SharePoint.
• VMware ESX and ESXi, Hyper-V, XenServer, Virtual Iron.
• Supports VMotion, HA, DRS and VCB ported by VMWare for running ESX.

Update : http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-10359

Dave Mishchenko has published a lot of tips and tricks about running ESXi and ESX 4.0 on unsupported, but working hardware. The list contains motherboards and unsupported servers that work with ESX 4.0 and / or ESXi 4.0 installable. Add your own known to be working model or take a peek at the list at http://www.vm-help.com.

This table contains a list of systems, motherboards, storage controllers and network cards that have been tested and found to work with ESX 4.0 or ESXi 4.0 Installable. Please check out the source column for a system you are considering using as some systems will include special steps to enable ESX / ESXi to run on that system or have other issues to overcome. None of these systems are supported by VMWare for running ESX.

Veeam Software released version 4.0 of its popular Veeam Monitor and Veeam Monitor Free Edition solutions for VMware performance monitoring, capacity planning and troubleshooting. The new versions include support for VMware vSphere 4, newly available from VMware. New features in Veeam Monitor 4.0 include full storage monitoring capabilities, hardware sensor monitoring, and troubleshooting drill-down to both Windows and Linux guest operating systems. “Veeam Monitor gives busy administrators the information they need to see the true performance of their VMware infrastructure,” said Jonathan Franconi, Network Integrator, Guard Insurance Group. “My experience with Veeam Monitor has been amazing. The ability to monitor our infrastructure’s performance from one single window, quickly and easily, makes managing our infrastructure less of a chore. With the built-in VM alerting for performance values and utilization, I can feel comfortable knowing my infrastructure is running as efficiently and reliably as possible.” Continue reading "Veeam Monitor 4.0 includes support for VMware..." »

Rawlinson Rivera a fellow VMware Certified Instructor spilled the beans about the
“New VMware Education Roadmap for vSphere 4”. Rawlinson AKA Punching Mike, “Punches” through topics such as security issues, implementations, and new technologies using videos and how-to demos. You can read all about it at “Punching Clouds”, a blog covering breakthroughs in the Field of Virtualization, Cloud Computing and other Cool Shit!

Here’s a list of the classes that will be available this year:

Virtualization Generalist

• VMware vSphere: Install, Configure, Manage V4
• VMware vSphere: Script & Automate V4
• VMware vSphere: Manage Availability V4
• VMware vSphere: Troubleshooting V4
• VMware vSphere: Design

Security Specialists

• VMware vSphere: Install, Configure, Manage V4
• VMware vSphere: Manage and Design for Security V4

Performance Specialists

• VMware vSphere: Install, Configure, Manage V4
• VMware vSphere: Manage and Design for Perfrmance V4

Virtual Desktop Administrators

• VMware vSphere: Install, Configure, Manage V4
• VMware View: Install, Configure, Manage V3
• VMware View: Design

Availability Specialists

• VMware vSphere: Install, Configure, Manage V4
• VMware vSphere: Manage Availability V4
• VMware Site Recovery Manager: Install, Configure, Test V1
• Business Continuity Data Recovery: Design

The  VMware vSphere: Fast Track V4 class is a five day course designed for accelerated learners that want to learn about a variety of expert topics. The class is based on a well balanced mix of of content from the Install, Configure, Manage, Scripting & Automate, Manage Scalability, Manage Availability and Troubleshooting classes. Classes range from two to five day classes and they will be available in two formats - Instructor Lead Training and Live on Line.

When you’re going to enable Fault Tolerance on a virtual machine, you have to specify vCenter Server SSL settings because vCenter requires verified host SSL certificates in order to use FT. This option can be found at the Administration vCenter Server setting menu option.

When this option is selected, vCenter will verify the validity of the SSL certificates of the remote hosts when establishing SSL connections. This affects operations such as adding a host to vCenter Server, connecting to a VM, and making the VM devices remotely available. Selecting this option will disconnect all hosts which do not have a selected verified checkbox.

I’m upgrading my home-lab environment to the GA release of vSphere. After enabling HA on my two node cluster there was trouble in paradise. Every time I “turned on VMware HA” the task eventually resulted in an unknown HA error.  This usually happened around the 84%. I investigated two interesting log files which can be found at /var/log/vmware/aam.

aam_config_util_addnode.log

05/26/09 09:48:17 [issue_cmd           ] No AAM Primary Agents were found that would accept our connection.
05/26/09 09:48:17 [issue_cmd           ] Connection Unsuccessfully attempted at:
05/26/09 09:48:17 [issue_cmd           ]
05/26/09 09:48:17 [active_primary_ftcli] command did not run successfully on 'esx4-r'.
05/26/09 09:48:17 [active_primary_ftcli] 'esx-r' would not accept our connection.
05/26/09 09:48:17 [find_active_primary ] attempting to find an active primary.
05/26/09 09:48:17 [issue_cli_cmd       ] command is '/opt/vmware/aam/bin/ftcli -domain vmware -cmd "la -l"'
05/26/09 09:48:17 [issue_cmd           ] CMD:    /opt/vmware/aam/bin/ftcli -domain vmware -cmd "la -l"
05/26/09 09:48:17 [issue_cmd           ] STATUS: 1
05/26/09 09:48:17 [issue_cmd           ] RESULT:
05/26/09 09:48:17 [issue_cmd           ] Unable to get Fully Qualified Domain Name
05/26/09 09:48:17 [issue_cmd           ] [Err:0] Unable to get Fully Qualified Domain Name

aam_config_util_listprimaries.log

05/26/09 10:17:09 [print_args          ] KEY: cmd VAL: listprimaries
05/26/09 10:17:09 [print_args          ] KEY: -z VAL: 1
05/26/09 10:17:09 [print_args          ] KEY: uname VAL: Linux
05/26/09 10:17:09 [print_args          ] KEY: shortname VAL: esx4-l
05/26/09 10:17:09 [print_args          ] KEY: domain VAL: vmware
05/26/09 10:17:14 [issue_cmd           ] CMD:    /opt/vmware/aam/bin/ft_gethostbyname esx4-l |grep FAILED
05/26/09 10:17:14 [issue_cmd           ] STATUS: 0
05/26/09 10:17:14 [issue_cmd           ] RESULT:
05/26/09 10:17:14 [issue_cmd           ] ft_gethostbyname(esx4-l) FAILED

Ok, that sounds fair, there is a problem with hostname resolution, and this is the most common error source for VMware HA problems. Since I didn’t have a proper DNS server in my lab, I was relying on host files. Eventually the problem was caused by the short host name. When editing your host files don’t forget to add the short hostname after the fully qualified domain name.

192.168.178.180 myserver.domain.com myserver

In addition to VMware’s announcement that vSphere 4 is now generally available, VMware is also pleased to announce that as of May 21, 2009 the vSphere vShield Zones product is also generally available. VMware vShield Zones 1.0 offers the following key features and benefits for vSphere 4 environments:

Continue reading "The vSphere vShield Zones Product" »

Yes, its true, Cisco virtual networking goodness is available to one and all. To kick things off, we have worked with the fine folks at VMW to put together a 60-day eval program so you can check things out in your own environment.  As a quick reminder, you will need a (free) cisco.com account to access the software (don’t worry, we won’t spam you).

Head over to https://www.vmware.com/tryvmware/ to get your 60-day vSphere 4.0 eval license
Go to http://www.cisco.com/go/1000v to access the design, install and upgrade guides—look for the “Support” box on the upper right part of the page
Go to http://www.cisco.com/go/1000vdownload a pull down a copy of the software - install it per instructions
Go to http://www.cisco.com/go/1000veval and obtain your eval license
Install, enjoy, and marvel at how you ever got along without it

Posted by Omar Sultan at the Cisco Blog.

Here are the Windows 2008 license requirements for running vms in any virtual environment. Licensing Microsoft Windows Server 2008 to Run with Virtualization Technologies VMware’s ESX Server, VMware’s VMotion, Microsoft’s System Center Virtualization Machine Manager, and Parallels’ Virtuozzo.

Windows Server Licensing on top of VMware’s ESX

If a server is running ESX as the virtualization technology, then Windows Server is not deployed as a host operating system in the physical OSE. However, a license is required for every instance running in a virtual OSE.

If you have assigned a single license for Windows Server 2008 Standard to a server running ESX, then you may run one instance of Windows Server 2008 Standard at a time. The right to run an instance of Windows Server 2008 in the physical OSE cannot be used in this case since ESX runs on the physical OSE (and as a result, Windows Server 2008 cannot be deployed as the operating system on the physical OSE.) 

If you have assigned a single license of Windows Server 2008 Enterprise to the server running ESX, then you may run up to four instances at a time of Windows Server 2008 Enterprise. You may not run a fifth instance under the same  license since that right requires that the fifth instance be running hardware virtualization software and software managing and servicing the OSEs on the server.