This document describes the technical aspects of NetApp support and integration with VMware® vStorage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI), as well as how to deploy and use this technology. VAAI is a set of application programming interfaces (APIs) and SCSI commands that offload certain I/O-intensive tasks to NetApp® storage systems. By integrating with vStorage APIs, NetApp enables advanced storage capabilities to be accessed and executed from familiar VMware interfaces, improving manageability, performance, data mobility, and data protection.
Friday, November 12. 2010
Understanding and Using vStorage APIs for Array Integration and NetApp Storage
Wednesday, November 3. 2010
Performance Best Practices for VMware vSphere 4.1
VMware has released another great “technical paper” regarding Performance Best Practices for VMware vSphere 4.1. It can be found in the Technical Resource Center which by the way contains a lot of awesome docs.
The technical paper, Performance Best Practices for VMware vSphere 4.1, provides performance tips that cover the most performance-critical areas of VMware vSphere 4.1. It is not intended as a comprehensive guide for planning and configuring your deployments.
Chapter 1 - “Hardware for Use with VMware vSphere,” provides guidance on selecting hardware for use with vSphere.
Chapter 2 - “ESX and Virtual Machines,” provides guidance regarding VMware ESX™ software and the virtual machines that run in it.
Chapter 3 - “Guest Operating Systems,” provides guidance regarding the guest operating systems running in vSphere virtual machines.
Chapter 4 - “Virtual Infrastructure Management,” provides guidance regarding resource management best practices.
http://www.vmware.com/pdf/Perf_Best_Practices_vSphere4.1.pdf
Sunday, October 24. 2010
The ApplicationHA Configuration Wizard – Monitoring SQL Server 2008
After installing the Symantec ApplicationHA Console it’s time to roll out the Symantec ApplicationHA Guest components. You can use a wizard to configure monitoring for applications, services, and processes running on virtual machines. After completing this wizard, you can start, stop, and monitor the configured components from the VMware vSphere Client or using Microsoft Internet Explorer.
You can also perform the application monitoring operations directly from a browser window using the following URL: Https://<virtualmachineNameorIPaddress>:5634/vcs/admin/application_health.html?priv=ADMIN To view the Symantec ApplicationHA view, launch the VMware vSphere Client, select a virtual machine from the Inventory pane, and in the Management pane on the right, click the ApplicationHA tab. If you have not configured single sign-on for the virtual machine, specify the user credentials of a user that has administrative privileges on the virtual machine.
If a component fails, a configurable number of attempts are made to restart it on the machine. If the component does not start, the virtual machine itself can be restarted by VMware HA, depending on the configuration settings.
It’s also possible to configure application monitoring for custom services, processes, and storage mount points on a virtual machine. You can either choose one or multiple components simultaneously.
- Configure multiple services and processes in a single wizard workflow
- Configure storage monitoring to control storage availability on the virtual machine
- Configure dependency to control orderly start and stop of components
In this example I’ve chosen to configure application monitoring for Microsoft SQL Server 2008 instances running on a virtual machine. Now I’m able to:
- Monitor SQL Database Engine service, Analysis service, and FILESTREAM
- Monitor and control the availability of SQL databases on the virtual machine
- Perform a graceful start and stop of SQL services and databases
Symantec ApplicationHA provides an interface, the Symantec ApplicationHA tab, to configure and control application monitoring. The Symantec ApplicationHA tab is integrated with the VMware vSphere Client. Use the Symantec ApplicationHA view to perform the following tasks:
- Configure and unconfigure application monitoring
- Start and stop configured applications
- Enable and disable application heartbeat
- Enter and exit maintenance mode
Saturday, October 23. 2010
Video: ApplicationHA – Install and Configure
I’ve just recorded a real cool video which shows you how to install and configure ApplicationHA. This new product from Symantec and VMware is able to monitor applications within the virtual machine. I’ve uploaded a High Definition version of the video to ScreenCast but you can also watch the video at Vimeo or YouTube.
Symantec ApplicationHA is an easy-to-use availability solution for virtual environments that provides application visibility and control. It is based on the industry-leading Veritas Cluster Server technology and provides application availability in coordination with VMware HA. Together Symantec and VMware work to help customers move business-critical applications into VMware virtual machines.
http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2010/10/20/ha-the-missing-link/
http://blogs.vmware.com/uptime/2010/10/applicationha-bridging-the-gap.html
http://www.ntpro.nl/blog/archives/1622-Technical-White-Paper-ApplicationHA.html
Thursday, October 21. 2010
Technical White Paper: ApplicationHA
http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/techpaper/vsp4-virtualize-biz-critical-apps.pdf Continue reading "Technical White Paper: ApplicationHA" »
Saturday, October 9. 2010
Injecting drivers into the ESXI installer
This article describes how to inject drivers into the VMware ESXi 4.1 installer. It’s written by Ernst Cozijnsen, he already published a great article regarding Deploying VMware ESXi 4.1 in the enterprise. All you need is a Fedora core 13 32 bit virtual machine which can be downloaded from http://www.thoughtpolice.co.uk/vmware/ . This website contains many ready to run virtual appliances with all kinds of open source operating systems.
The following part will show you how to:
- Extracting the driver from driver cd/dvd/floppy/tape/ls120/zip/jazz
- Extracting sys.vgz ESXi installer ramdrive
- Moving the driver(s) into place
- Compressing the newly build sys.vgz structure
- Inserting driver package in the imagedd.bz2 file