Eric Sloof

VLANs can be configured at the port group level. The ESXi host provides VLAN support through virtual switch tagging, which is provided by giving a port group a VLAN ID (by default, a VLAN ID is optional). The VMkernel then takes care of all tagging and untagging as the packets pass through the virtual switch.

I’ve created this white boarding session on my new Sketch Design Tablet which came with an awesome sketching tool called Artweaver.

VMware is about to launch a new course. It’s the long awaited SRM 5 training which will be most likely available in the first quarter of 2012. This new 3 day training course replaces the current 1.0 version which is a very welcome update. SRM 5 is still in beta, but there’s a datasheet available at this link.

SRM 5 Beta.pdf

This three-day, hands-on training course equips experienced VMware vSphere administrators with the knowledge to install, configure, and manage VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager 5.0. This course also equips vSphere administrators with the knowledge to assist in disaster planning and to test disaster recovery plans with SRM. At the end of the course, you should gain an understanding of the functionality in SRM 5.0 and be able to do the following:

•  Install SRM 5.0
•  Configure placeholder datastores
•  Configure inventory mappings in SRM
•  Configure datastore mappings
•  Replicate virtual machines using physical couriering
•  Configure vSphere replication-based protection groups in SRM
•  Create, edit, execute, test, and remove a recovery plan in SRM
•  Reprotect virtual machines
•  Configure SRM alarms
•  Troubleshoot SRM problems

http://www.vmware.com/products/site-recovery-manager/

What are datastore heartbeats?

The host-X-hb (where X is the host’s MOID) is Located on each heartbeat datastore, this file is used to check for slave liveness through the heartbeat datastore. This file is checked by the master host if the master loses network heartbeats from the slave.
 
For VMFS datastores, the vSphere HA agent locks this file with an exclusive lock and relies on the VMkernel heartbeat to indicate liveness. For NFS datastores, vSphere HA periodically updates the time stamp to this file to indicate liveness.

The host-X-poweron (where X is the host’s MOID) is a per-host file that contains the list of all virtual machines that are powered on. This file is used as a communication channel if a management network outage occurs. Isolated slaves use this file to tell the master that it is isolated as well as to tell the master which virtual machines it has powered off.

The master host must determine whether the slave host:

• Actually crashed
• Is not responding because of a network failure
• The HA agent is in an unreachable state

The absence of both a network and datastore heartbeat indicates full host failure. Datastores are used as a backup communication channel to detect virtual machine and host heartbeats. Datastore heartbeats are used to make the distinction between a failed, an isolated or a partitioned host.

Some things never change, or do they? vSphere is getting new and improved features with every release. These features change the characteristics and performance of the virtual machines. If you are not up to speed, you will probably manage your environment based on old and inaccurate information. The vMythbusters have collected a series of interesting hot topics that we have seen widely discussed in virtualization communities, on blogs and on Twitter. We’ve put these topics to the test in our lab to determine if they are a myth or not.

• Defrag your Guest OS disks for best performance
• E1000 is faster than VMXNET3
• CBT causes significant overhead on your VMs
• HA datastore heartbeats prevents host isolation
• LSI SCSI is always better than Paravirtual SCSI

Mythbusters_Dutch_VMUG.pdf

During the opening of the Dutch VMUG, Viktor van den Berg got a call from Steve Herrod announcing the MosterVM was on his way. Shortly after he apaered on stage.

During my visit to Bergen (Norway), where I’m delivering a VMware vSphere Training course this week, I hooked-up with fellow vExpert Christian Mohn. Before heading into town :-) I’ve recorded a short interview with him.



Christian Mohn works as a Network Manager for a Norwegian shipping company where his responsibilities include developing and maintaining their IT infrastructure.  He’s also the thin line between agile and fragile as blogger over at vNinja.net. Together with Chris Dearden and Ed Czerwin, Christian is running the vSoup shows. Oh, I almost forgot to mention Christian's 500px.com photo website.

I/O Analyzer is a virtual appliance solution by VMware that provides a simple and standardized way of measuring storage performance in a VMware vSphere virtualized environments. I/O Analyzer automates the traditional storage performance analysis cycle and reduces the performance diagnosis time from days to hours.
 
Features include:

• Integrated framework for storage performance testing
• Readily deployable virtual appliance
• Easily configure and launch I/O tests on multiple hosts
• View integrated performance results at both guest and host levels
• Easily export performance data for off-site analysis

 

vPanorama provides an integrated simpler and smarter view of all the resources in a VMware environment. vPanorama gives VMware Administrators and Managers a simple, action-oriented way to grasp the complete VMware environment including storage and network resources. It shows you where in the network and storage bottlenecks are occurring, identifies which VMs are responsible for the bottlenecks, and provides a integrated way to address the bottleneck using vMotion, or Storage vMotion.



For up to 250 VMs it is free, get the Big Picture at http://www.vpanorama.com/

Learn how to plan for and take a snapshot that captures the virtual machine's memory. This video shows how to take a snapshot and discusses prerequisites and best practices for taking memory snapshots of vSphere virtual machines.

vCenter Chargeback Manager is an end-to-end cost reporting solution for virtual environments that are using VMware vSphere. vCenter Chargeback Manager provides functionality to define unit costs and calculate the overall costs based on the actual usage or reservation of computing resources. This Web-based application interacts with the vCenter Server Database to retrieve usage information, calculates the cost by using the defined chargeback formulas, and generates cost and usage reports.

vCenter Chargeback Manager runs on an Apache Tomcat server instance. Users interact with vCenter Chargeback Manager through a load balancer (Apache HTTP Server). vCenter Chargeback Manager connects to the vCenter Chargeback Manager database that stores application-specific information, such as the defined chargeback hierarchies, cost models, users, roles, and so on. The application interacts with the vCenter Server using VIM APIs and with the vCenter Server database through a data collector. The data collector communicates with the vCenter Server Database using JDBC.

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