Entries from Eric Sloof

Auto logon enables you to easily configure the vmClient’s built-in auto logon mechanism, besides that the current 4.1 beta version offers some additional features like the favourites menu. It’s also using timers to check on the virtual machine status instead of menu actions so it should perform a bit quicker. Configuring auto logon is really easy, just open the registry editor an fill in the right value at the following entries.

Key Name: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\VB and VBA Program Settings\NTPRO.NL\vmClient

Autologon : True
Host : vcenter.ntpro.local
Username : Administrator
Password : vmware

http://vmClient.nl

This week I’ve delivered my first VMware vSphere Design Workshop and really enjoyed being part of this VMware training course. I’ve recorded an interview with one of the attendees; Martijn Baecke. Martijn is a well know virtualization expert in the Netherlands, he works at Inter Access and has helped many organizations with their vSphere implementations. Currently he’s involved in a big VMware View implementation at a large Dutch bank.

Back in 2006, Martijn was one of my students during my very first delivery of the VI3 Install and Configure, coincidence or not, let’s hear what his findings are.

I’ve recorded a great interview with Vblock guru Jim Wentworth and UCS specialist Ron Heheman.  In this interview they will explain how FAST (Fully Automarted Strorage Tiering) performs data movement based on IOPS. We also touch some other topics like unified storage and the upcoming management software.

If you want to create great looking diagrams with data from the vCenter database look at this demo I’ve recorded with MS SQL Code Factory. It’s a premier Microsoft SQL GUI tool aimed at the SQL queries and scripts development. It is a good choice for everyone who need build SQL statements and edit SQL scripts with a convenient easy-to-use interface. The software provides you with a convenient easy-to-use interface, so it really does not require a deep knowledge of Microsoft SQL from its users.

It also has a Powerful BLOB Viewer/Editor: with MS SQL Code Factory you can view or edit BLOB data in the following ways: hexadecimal dump, plain text, graphical image or HTML page. A graphical representation of BLOB data supports five image formats: BMP, Windows metafile, JPEG, GIF and PNG.

http://www.screencast.com/users/esloof/folders/Online-Training

Last week Chad Sakac over at Virtual Geek has released the news about the availability of the EMC CelerraVSA Version 5.6.48.701.

What’s new:

•New OVA packaging, configuration for latest VMware tools and pvSCSI config – note this makes it vSphere 4 only (the VMware Workstation versions are also provided)
•New dedupe/compression code (faster, better, stronger)
•New VM-level hardware-accelerated fast clone (snapshot) and full clone (clone)
•Support for the new vSphere NFS Plugin.
•Better performance with less CPU, memory constrained configs
•Fixed issue in the 5.6.47.11 version that made eth2 not work right.
•And much, much more!!!

I’ve downloaded the CelerraVSA OVA and deployed this virtual storage appliance within my vSphere 4 environment on SSD storage but it doesn’t seem to make a big difference compared to deploying it local at SATA storage. I also added an 8 GB virtual disk to one of my existing virtual machines, the 8 GB disk is hosted at the EMC CelerraVSA which is connected trough iSCSI to one of the other ESX servers so the iSCSI data flows through the dedicated iSCSI network.

I did some tests with HDtunepro to find out what this Virtual Storage Appliance is up to and it’s looks to perform reasonable well for a VSA. Compared to a local SATA disk it’s about 10 times slower so it‘s not very fast but keep in mind that this is a full Celerra Simulator and can be used to familiarize yourself with all the great features like dedupe and replication. Besides that, it’s fully equipped with everything you need to build an SRM4 setup in a box.

Pablo Roesch has just announced the winners of the Scriptomania contest, congratulations to everyone that participated!

1. @alanrenouf
2. @lamw
3. @avlieshout

We are happy to announce our Script-O-Mania contest Winners. Our judges were extremely excited about all the creative and useful scripts submitted into the community. The decisions were tough to make, some we even considered splitting the prize money but in the end we went with the following line up. Congratulations to all that won and participated. Also wanted to thank Scott L, Robert B, Jeff H. again for their efforts in participating as Judges.

Steve Jin -> Winners of the VMware Script-O-Mania Contest: Who, What, How and Why?

NFS is a great storage solution within a VMware vSphere environment but when the connection to the NFS server is lost, you’re in big trouble. In most circumstances some virtual machines are still connected to the NFS Datastore and since it’s in use, you cannot delete and recreate it. I’ve tried this by using the vSphere Client and trough the command line but didn’t succeed. In the end there’s no other alternative than rebooting the ESX host, or is there… If you want to find out how to remount an NFS Datastore you better watch this online training.

http://www.screencast.com/users/esloof/folders/Online-Training

You also have the ability to embed or link to it at Vimeo.

It's really a rough unprepared video but in the end you'll get the picture :-)

This morning I had a nice email discussion with a fellow VCI who has attended my online VLAN training. His question had to do with the VLAN IDs that need to be configured at the physical Cisco switch. Do you only  need to configure the primary or do you also need to configure the secondary and isolated VLAN IDs?

Hi Eric, when you configure PVLAN, the Switch itself should configured with ONLY the PRIMARY VLAN not the whole range of Primary / secondary… doing so could be a security issue… Could you check at your  side that using 23-23 instead of 23-26 at timecode 31:07 in your movie, don't change the behaviour or the communications between VMs?

After applying 23-23 of both port 2 and 3 at the Cisco switch, virtual machines within both the communities cannot connect to the router and to each other. After  putting in 23-25, the virtual machines in community 2 (26) could not ping each other and in community 1 (25) can.

I knew I’ve seen it somewhere -> Community and Isolated PVLANs traffic travels tagged as the associated Secondary PVLAN. At the bottom of this KB article.

•Promiscuous PVLANs have the same VLAN ID both for Primary and Secondary VLAN.
•Community and Isolated PVLANs traffic travels tagged as the associated Secondary PVLAN.
•Traffic inside PVLANs is not encapsulated (no Secondary PVLAN encapsulated inside a Primary PVLAN Packet).
•Traffic between virtual machines on the same PVLAN but on different ESX hosts go through the Physical Switch. Therefore, the Physical Switch must be PVLAN aware and configured appropriately, to allow the secondary PVLANs to reach destination.
•Switches discover MAC addresses per VLAN. This can be a problem for PVLANs because each virtual machine appears to the physical switch to be in more than one VLAN, or at least, it appears that there is no reply to the request, because the reply travels back in a different VLAN. For this reason, it is a requirement that each physical switch, where ESX with PVLANs are connected, must be PVLAN aware.

During the delivery of VMware Training Courses, I’ve noticed students who are really  interested in how to configure the Cisco Switch in order to use  Private VLAN IDs. This session will show you how to configure dvPortGroup Settings and Private VLANs on a Distributed Virtual Switch and on a Physical Cisco Switch.

• This presentation will lead you trough configuring VLAN IDs at both the vSphere environment and on the physical Cisco switch.

• You’ll get a good understanding of trunking on a Cisco switch and dvPortGroup Settings.

• At the end you’re able to configure a Cisco switch using Cisco’s Network Assistant and understand the different dvPortGroup Settings.

The online training will take around 40 minutes, you can view it here: http://itunes.apple.com/nl/podcast/online-vmware-training/id415180540

You also have the ability to download the complete “Configure VMware vSphere Private VLANS” training, or embed and link to it on Vimeo.

Some of the feedback I’ve received after the initial launch of the vmClient 4.0 a few weeks ago had to do with creating a list of frequently used virtual machines. A lot of people are using the vmClient as a helpdesk app and don’t want to give out the full blown viClient for accessing the virtual machine desktop by their helpdesk staff. The new favourites menu item enables you to create a list with virtual machines. After creating a list through the registry or by adding and removing virtual machines from within the vmClient it’s possible to customize the user interface and hide the obsolete menus. I recorded a demo session with my newly bought Camtasia software.

Here’s the download link for vmClient 4.1 Beta: http://vmClient.nl

Here’s the online demo: http://www.screencast.com/users/esloof/folders/Online-Training