Eric Sloof

This video shows you how slashujh is able how to enable SSH on a ESXi 4 Host without going into the Console.

I’ve recorded an interview with the EMEA UCS specialist/trainer Ron Heheman.

On January 21th, 2010 the 16th edition of the Tech Data and Azlan partner event will take place at the Home Boxx Exhibition Center Nieuwegein.  This Partner Event has become an annual event, with over 60 leading ICT suppliers and over 2000 resellers and is the only ICT exhibition with a unique design, full of information and entertainment.

My session will show you how to Accelerate Deployment of the Private Cloud with Vblock Infrastructure Packages. You can still signup here to reserve your free entrance ticket.

When you’re running a Virtual Machine in a production environment and want to perform some tests on it but don’t have enough time or space on your Datastores to create a full hot clone, there’s an alternative.

vSphere 4.0 supports linked virtual machines, which are two or more virtual machines that share storage. Linked virtual machines support efficient sharing of duplicated data. In its simplest form, shared storage is achieved through the use of delta disk backings. A delta disk backing is a virtual disk file that sits on top of a standard virtual disk backing file. Each time the guest operating system on a virtual machine writes to disk, the data is written to the delta disk.

Each time the guest operating system on a virtual machine reads from disk, the virtual machine first targets the disk block in the delta disk. If the data is not on the delta disk, the virtual machine looks for them on the base disk.

Linked virtual machines can be created from a snapshot or from the current running point. After you create a virtual machine, they share the base disk backing and each virtual machine has its own delta disk backing. You can have up to eight virtual machines in a linked virtual machine group. The virtual machines in the group cannot be part of a VMware HA cluster.

Hal Rottenberg is the author of the New-LinkedClone.ps1 PowerShell script, it’s adapted from a technique published originally by Keshav Attrey. Also see William Lam's Perl script and Leo's manual version for ESX 3.5 but I believe, back in 2007 I was one of the first to discover this technique.

I’ve made some little modifications in Hal’s script and added it as a Script Action to the Virtualization EcoShell by clicking “Add new item” in the actions menu on the right side of the EcoShell console. This enables you to specify a script performing the Action. When you click an Action, objects currently selected in the grid are piped into the script. The LinkedClones Script Action is part of the newest version (1.08) of the NTPRO.NL PowerPack, you can get a copy here. The screen shot shows you how it works.

Update: Alan Renouf has emailed me a link to an interesting knowledge base article regarding Virtual machines from a single disk chain may only run on 8 hosts (VMFS).

During the Dutch VMUG 2009 event NGN’s Community Master, Melle Gloerich has recorded a interview between Bouke Groenescheij and Wietze Albers. They are talking about performance in a VMware enviroment.

While poking around in the service console, I’ve discovered another hidden pearl. It’s called vmware-vimdump. You’ll find it at /usr/lib/vmware/bin and you can execute it by typing ./vmware-vimdump. Before executing this command, configure your  SSH client e.g. Putty to log printable output to a file.
After a second or 10 you’ll see the following output, followed by every property you can think of:

=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~= PuTTY log 2010.01.07 21:41:38 =~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=

./vmware-vimdump
Connecting to : localhost at 443 as root over SOAP
Found 67 managed objects:
1. vim.AuthorizationManager::ha-authmgr
2. vim.ComputeResource::ha-compute-res
3. vim.Datacenter::ha-datacenter
4. vim.Datastore::192.168.178.80:/nfs/public
5. vim.Datastore::496b4b2d-eb377ae5-3a0e-00151798bd3c
6. vim.Datastore::49f35375-879d840a-4a6c-00151798bd3d
7. vim.Datastore::4a1aa279-c94107ae-790a-00151798bd3c
8. vim.DiagnosticManager::ha-diagnosticmgr Continue reading "Hidden tool: vmware-vimdump" »

VMware's Education Services has launched two new vSphere beta courses:

VMware vSphere: Design Workshop

This course explores a design methodology, criteria, and approach for designing a VMware vSphere™ 4 virtual datacenter architecture consisting of VMware ESX™/ESXi 4 and VMware vCenter™ Server 4. This course, by discussing the benefits and risks of available design alternatives, provides information which supports making sound design decisions.  This course also provides an opportunity to practice your design skills by working with peers on a design project.

VMware vSphere: Manage for Performance

This hands-on training course explores the management of performance in a VMware® vSphere™ environment.  It provides the knowledge and skills necessary to make fundamental design decisions that enhance performance and to meet performance goals in an already-deployed vSphere installation.  The course is based on ESX 4.0, ESXi 4.0, and vCenter Server 4.0.

I often speak to people who prefer a virtual machine protected by VMware HA for hosting their vCenter Server instead of using vCenter Server Heartbeat but vCenter Server Heartbeat offers some real great benefits compared to VMware HA. VMware HA only works with virtual machines and protects the operating system and hardware. HA also needs shared storage. vCenter Server Heartbeat is able to clone, synchronize and do real-time replication. vCenter Server Heartbeat works with either virtual machines or physical machines and protects the operating system, the hardware, and the application. You don’t need shared storage but redundant storage. I’ve created a little demo movie showing the vCenter Server Heartbeat console and a real fast switchover to the secondary server.

http://screencast.com/t/MzJjM2E1

http://screencast.com/t/MWJkZjA4MG

Eric Siebert over at vSphere-land is running a new blog contest which let you decide who the most favorite blogger is. You can pick your 10 most popular bloggers; based on your points Eric Siebert will create a vSphere-land blogger top 25. Please cast your vote and make a change to win a copy of the TrainSignal vSphere DVD training course.

Update from @ericsiebert via Twitter: Voting closes Friday for top bloggers, 800+ votes already, results will be published next Monday vote.vsphere-land.com

I’ve created a new Virtualization EcoShell PowerPack with only one Script Node and it’s called “CPUID System Information“ which shows the VMHost CPU Info.  The inspiration for building this new PowerPack came from VMware’s evangelist Richard Garsthagen who has built the well known Visual Basic Application, VMware CPU Host Info.  “CPUID System Information” is completely based on PowerShell and VMware’s PowerCLI. The script is able to show you which features (CPUIDs) are available on your ESX server’s CPUs. Besides checking VMotion compatibility it also shows you:

• Enhanced VMotion Compatibility (EVC) levels which simplifies VMotion compatibility issues across CPU generations. EVC automatically configures server CPUs with Intel FlexMigration or AMD-V Extended Migration technologies to be compatible with older servers.
• All the important CPU features like: VMX, MONITOR/MWAIT , SSE3, SSSE3 ,SSE4.1 ,SSE4.2 ,CMPXCHG8B ,CMPXCHG16B ,NX/XD ,Long mode support ,RDTSCP ,3DNow! ,3DNow! Extensions ,FFXSR ,Prefetch instructions.

I’ve three versions available for download.

The first one can be used as a PowerPack in the Virtualization EcoShell.

     http://www.ntpro.nl/blog/uploads/NTPRO.NL.powerpack

Continue reading "CPUID System Information " »