Eric Sloof

The VMware OS Optimization Tool helps optimize Windows 7 desktops for use with VMware Horizon View. The optimization tool includes customizable templates to enable or disable Windows system services and features, per VMware recommendations and best practices, across multiple systems. Since most Windows system services are enabled by default, the optimization tool can be used to easily disable unnecessary services and features to improve performance.

In this session, Lee Dilworth and Duncan Epping will discuss the design and operational considerations for VMware vSphere® Metro Storage Cluster environments, also commonly referred to as stretched cluster environments. Best practices for implementation and design will be shared. Various failure scenarios that can occur in a stretched storage environment will also be discussed in depth, including how vSphere 5.x responds to these failures. We will cover the implications for your vSphere High Availability, VMware vSphere Distributed Resource Scheduler™ and VMware vSphere Storage DRS™ configuration and provide recommendations on increasing availability and simplifying operations.

This VMware KB article provides information on the concepts, limitations, and some sample configurations of link aggregation, NIC Teaming, Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP), and EtherChannel connectivity between ESXi/ESX and Physical Network Switches, particularly for Cisco and HP.

If you're using Linux 2.6 kernel-based virtual machines and you're experiencing slow storage performance as compared to physical hosts, the might be a problem with the I/O Scheduler. As of the Linux 2.6 kernel, the default I/O Scheduler is Completely Fair Queuing (CFQ).

The default scheduler will affect all disk I/O for VMDK and RDM-based virtual storage solutions. In virtualized environments, it is often not beneficial to schedule I/O at both the host and guest layers.

If multiple guests use storage on a filesystem or block device managed by the host operating system, the host may be able to schedule I/O more efficiently because it is aware of requests from all guests and knows the physical layout of storage, which may not map linearly to the guests' virtual storage.

Go to VMware Knowledge Base (KB) article 2011861

A snapshot is reproduction of the virtual machine just as it was when you took the snapshot. The snapshot includes the state of the data on all virtual machine disks and the virtual machine power state (on, off, or suspended).

You can take a snapshot when a virtual machine is powered on, powered off, or suspended. When you create a snapshot, the system creates a delta disk file for that snapshot in the datastore and writes any changes to that delta disk. You can later revert to the previous state of the virtual machine. 

Snapshot hierarchies can become fairly complex. For example, assume that, in the example in Virtual Machine Snapshots, you revert to snapshot_a. You might then work with and make changes to the snapshot_a virtual machine, and create a new snapshot, creating, in effect, a branching tree.

In the following videos, VMware Certified Instructor, Joe Desmond, details the best practices in using Snapshot functionality including:

• vSphere Snapshot Overview 
• vSphere Anatomy of Snapshot 
• vSphere Power Tools Come with Big Warning Labels
• vSphere Snapshots in Action
• vSphere Snapshots in Non Production Environments
• vSphere Snapshot Consolidation

Free vSphere Instructional Videos Detailing Snapshot Best Practices

If you're not a big fan of the Finder in MacOS, you definitely have to take a look at muCommander, it's a free lightweight, cross-platform file manager with a dual-pane interface. It runs on any operating system with Java support (Mac OS X, Windows, Linux, *BSD, Solaris...). Here's a non-exhaustive list of what you'll find:

• Virtual filesystem with support for local volumes, FTP, SFTP, SMB, NFS, HTTP, Amazon S3, Hadoop HDFS and Bonjour
• Quickly copy, move, rename files, create directories, email files...
• Browse, create and uncompress ZIP, RAR, 7z, TAR, GZip, BZip2, ISO/NRG, AR/Deb and LST archives check ZIP files can be modified on-the-fly, without having to recompress the whole archive
• Tabbed navigation
• Universal bookmarks and credentials manager
• Multiple windows support
• Full keyboard access check Highly configurable
• Available in 27 languages : American & British English, French, German, Spanish, Czech, Simplified & Traditional Chinese, Polish, Hungarian, Russian, Slovenian, Romanian, Italian, Korean, Brazilian Portuguese, Dutch, Slovak, Japanese, Swedish, Danish, Ukrainian, Arabic, Turkish, Catalan, Belarusian and Norwegian.
• Free Software (GPL)

Download muCommander

One of my students recommended Prowl for sending vCenter Alerts to my iPhone.  Prowl is the Growl client for iOS. It lets you push messages to your iOS device from your Mac or Windows computer, or from a multitude of apps and services. There's also a possibility to easily integrate the Prowl API into your applications. Here are some highlights:

• Push notifications  - When a Growl notification pops up on your computer, Prowl sends it over Push.
• Beautiful, elegant list  - A clean, easy-to-control list of your notifications.
• Redirections  - Opening a push notification can launch a different application, or any website you want.
• Universal, powerful Prowl features an excellent iPad interface to complement you on whatever device you'd like.
• Quiet hours and "Do Not Disturb"  - During quiet hours or DND, only the badge count is updated.
• No sounds, no alerts. Send only what you want - The Growl plugin can be configured to only send under conditions you specify.

View In iTunes - Prowl: Growl Client By Zachary West