VMware vSphere Labs – Foundations – First Series
Well, I have decided to dub my basic intro into VMware workstation labs as “Foundations” . I, like many others, enjoy discussing and learning about everything. Storage, networking, what I want to achieve, what I am designing for, name a few things you will have to consider in your lab. Sure, there is the easy stand up a lab slap some storage on it, run ESXi, Build vCenter, but for the few, the proud, and the pros… we like to cover it all. This series is pretty much going to go through every bit of that. Yeah, every bit… even the crumbs from the table. So here is the outline and obviously post videos and notes on each. Duly note, that at any time I may add a few dozen more post to foundations as I embark on this journey. I am looking forward to it and I hope you do as well! (Perhaps when I get to it I will do some CommVault vs. Veeam videos when I get a chance – OH, the drama!)
- The different kinds
- The Downloads and what you need to know
- VMware Workstation Storage Considerations
- Networking Considerations and Design
- Installing Custom VMware Workstation 8
- Creating you windows 2008 R2 template VM in VMware Workstation 7 and 8
Yeah, I know who would’ve ever thought a lab took this much thought. It’s just good stuff to think about and if people are board well you got something to do or watch. By the way, some videos have some music others don’t. Again feedback always appreciated!
***Disclaimer: The thoughts and views expressed on VirtualNoob.wordpress.com and Chad King in no way reflect the views or thoughts of his employer or any other views of a company. These are his personal opinions which are formed on his own. Also, products improve over time and some things maybe out of date. Please feel free to contact us and request an update and we will be happy to assist. Thanks!~
VMware vSphere Labs – Foundations – VMware Workstation Storage Considerations
This video informs you of what you may or may not know about the different types of storage you can use for your VMware vSphere lab set up. Things like physical iSCSI and NFS and Virtual Storage Appliances (VSA) are important to know about and some are MIUCH cheaper than the other.
Links Show in the video:
http://www.techhead.co.uk/how-to-configure-openfiler-v23-iscsi-storage-for-use-with-vmware-esx
http://go.iomega.com/en-us/products/network-storage-desktop/storcenter-network-storage-solution/network-hard-drive-ix4-200d-cloud/?partner=4760
http://nickapedia.com/2010/05/01/celerra-vsa-uber-smaller-faster-easier-geekier/
http://thehyperadvisor.com/?p=934
http://www.vmware.com/products/datacenter-virtualization/vsphere/vsphere-storage-appliance/overview.html
***Disclaimer: The thoughts and views expressed on VirtualNoob.wordpress.com and Chad King in no way reflect the views or thoughts of his employer or any other views of a company. These are his personal opinions which are formed on his own. Also, products improve over time and some things maybe out of date. Please feel free to contact us and request an update and we will be happy to assist. Thanks!~
VMware vSphere Labs – Foundations – The Template on Workstation 7 and 8 – Windows 2008 R2
This videos covers the template we will be setting up for deploying windows server 2008 r2 from. On this template we will be installing Active Directory, DNS, vCenter Server, and a lot more stuff. At the bottom of the blog will be references for ensuring your template is supremely prepped for space and performance!
Here are both the videos one for doing it:
VMware workstation 7:
On this video I made a few mistakes… but this wouldn’t be VirtualNoob if I didn’t make a few of those.
VMware workstation 8:
Really great resource:
http://www.happysysadm.com/2010/11/vmware-windows-2008-r2-template.html
***Disclaimer: The thoughts and views expressed on VirtualNoob.wordpress.com and Chad King in no way reflect the views or thoughts of his employer or any other views of a company. These are his personal opinions which are formed on his own. Also, products improve over time and some things maybe out of date. Please feel free to contact us and request an update and we will be happy to assist. Thanks!~
VMware vSphere Labs – Foundations – Networking Considerations and Design
This how to will go into some detail of the Networking consideration for your VMware Lab. It’s all in what you want to do.
This video addresses those considerations and provides some details on how you may want to do that. If you want some resources for particular lab setup head on to the bottom.
Another Lovely Video 
Networking (As seen in the video if you want to reproduce
- Management Stack for vCloud :
- Production stack for tenants:
- VMnet1 192.168.240.xxx – ESXi Management Host-Only (isolated for security )
- VMNET2 192.168.238.xxx – iSCSI (vmkernal port group and NFS will be shared)
- VMNET3 192.168.237.xxx – vMotion
- VMNET4 192.168.5.xxx – VM Networks for ESXi host
-
VMnet8 192.168.4.xxx – Production-MGMT
.10 = Domain Controllers
.20 = vCenter Servers (2 interfaces one for ESXi MGMT and Production)
.30 = All Other systems
- VMNET5 192.168.120.xxx – vCloud Mgmt
Other Wonderful Links on vSphere Labs and Networking Design included are SRM and vCloud Director Setups:
http://nickapedia.com/2010/10/07/lights-camera-replication-uber-srm-video-guide/
http://www.hypervizor.com/2010/09/video-guide-taking-vmware-vcloud-director-for-a-spin-and-on-the-go/
http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2010/09/13/creating-a-vcd-lab-on-your-maclaptop/
http://blog.tsugliani.fr/featured/create-your-own-virtual-vcloud-lab-part-1/
http://www.chriscolotti.us/vmware/vsphere/vmware-vcloud-in-a-box-for-your-home-lab/
***Disclaimer: The thoughts and views expressed on VirtualNoob.wordpress.com and Chad King in no way reflect the views or thoughts of his employer or any other views of a company. These are his personal opinions which are formed on his own. Also, products improve over time and some things maybe out of date. Please feel free to contact us and request an update and we will be happy to assist. Thanks!~
VMware vSphere Labs – Foundations – Downloads and knowing what you need
This video just covers the basics of what you need to download to get your vSphere Lab up and going. For more this video isn’t useful but it does address understanding Trials, how to access to products, and etc. This is covering a VMware Workstation 8 Lab set up.
Basically here is an overview of what the video covers:
- 60 Day Trials
- The Value of Partnerships
- Understanding the foundation and products for building your lab
- What to consider from a product stand point
- #VMTNSubscription Movement
***Disclaimer: The thoughts and views expressed on VirtualNoob.wordpress.com and Chad King in no way reflect the views or thoughts of his employer or any other views of a company. These are his personal opinions which are formed on his own. Also, products improve over time and some things maybe out of date. Please feel free to contact us and request an update and we will be happy to assist. Thanks!~
VMware vSphere 4 and 5 Labs – Foundations – The different kinds…
To Build a lab:
I have been thinking a lot about how there seems to be a few gaps in the VMware community when it comes to learning to set up a VMware vSphere lab environment. So I thought I would take the time to try and put together a full on post dedicated to resources on building a VMware Lab. When I first thought about this I wasn’t sure if I wanted to do a full A-Z build. Covering every single feature or deployment, but often times I would rather not re-invent the wheel. There are MANY post covering how to do this in general but I wanted to make a point of identifying the types of labs that you can set up and how to exactly go about it as well. The key word is “lab” so you don’t want to spend a ton of money (unless you have it) on your lab. To start off there are a multitude of setups you can do and many ways you can do it. I also want to stress that if you are getting ready for your test then YOU need to have one of these labs.
vSphere Lab video 2 Cents and quick overview! (this is my fist video post)
Nested VMware vSphere Lab
- Hosted on a Desktop Virtualization Product Like VMware Workstation 7 or 8
- Allows for easy HCL compliance
- Does require a robust desktop
- Can get slow depending on what you’re doing (design)
- Networking is all virtualized (plus)
- Storage can be virtualized or something like iSCSI can be used
- Mobility (can move VM’s around between desktops and laptops)
Physical VMware vSphere Lab
- Runs ESXi as bare metal
- Is more expensive
- “Real World” set up so is truly a lab
- Must meet HCL
- Will need Physical Networking (Managed networking highly recommended)
- Takes longer to build out or rebuild
- Can run nested labs on top of ESXi (pretty much using ESXi in the way you would use VMware Workstation)
- Storage can be virtualized or something like iSCSI can be used
- Can move hosted VM’s but the physical systems are not portable/mobile (depends I guess)
In a nutshell I will be covering the nested set-up since that seems to be the less expensive rig. I also love the fact that I can move it around to my laptop and desktop which is quite handy. Also fairly easy to backup as well.
***Disclaimer: The thoughts and views expressed on VirtualNoob.wordpress.com and Chad King in no way reflect the views or thoughts of his employer or any other views of a company. These are his personal opinions which are formed on his own. Also, products improve over time and some things maybe out of date. Please feel free to contact us and request an update and we will be happy to assist. Thanks!~
VMware Certified Professional on vSphere 5! – My Experience
On January 31, 2012 I officially passed my vSphere 5 exam and I am now a VCP 5. The test was very interesting indeed. You hear all sorts of rumors and things of that nature before you take it. I have made a post previously HERE. This pretty much covers everything you need to know. I don’t think I can discuss testing material but what I can tell you is learn a lot about the components of vSphere 5 clustering. Also learn about the Pros and the Cons centered around all the vSphere 5 features.
The test in of itself was actually harder than the vSphere 4 test I took over a year ago. I was also a lot more prepared and had some pressure on me to get it done because I wouldn’t have to pay for training. I would encourage that if any of you are familiar with vSphere 5, Been running it in a lab, and constantly learning new features, know vSphere 4.1 well, then I would go ahead and go take the test. Reason being is that you can end up spending more money waiting to take it later when you can possibly pass it now. Most companies are also going to be more willing to reimburse the expense of an exam then to actually spend money on an course.
Notice my comment on 4.1. Previous VCP were based off of 4.0 only. If you are really familiar with 4.1 then you already have a good lead into the knowledge base of 5.0. If you are a VMware partner then head to the partner portal and take some other course ware related to “What’s New” in vSphere 5. I did pretty good considering the amount of time and the pressure. I would definitely vote on subscribing to the latest VMware Certified Professional on vSphere 5 brown bags over at Cody Bunch’s site.
Either way, now that I have my VCP 5 out of the way I can hopefully attempt to get some advanced certifications around vSphere 4 taken care of.
***Disclaimer: The thoughts and views expressed on VirtualNoob.wordpress.org and Chad King in no way reflect the views or thoughts of his employer or any other views of a company. These are his personal opinions which are formed on his own. Also, products improve over time and some things maybe out of date. Please feel free to contact us and request an update and we will be happy to assist. Thanks!~
CommVault Simpana 9 Vs. VEEAM 6 Round 2 “DING!!” – Features – VMware Backup
CommVault Notes are currently ommitted for the time being:
The Bad:
VEEAM:
- vCloud Integration is supported but “lacking” for a better term (requires some manual work)
- Apparently doesn’t have the best dedupe (Is still debated I believe)
- CPU based (Socket) licensing (You know what your getting upfront. No additional cost when compared to A la Carte or Capacity)
- No Physical backup (yeah, yeah, we all know that)
- NFS best performance is a Linux installed OS with NFS mounted for a target
- Not a TON of features or granularity as it seemed to me when compared to commvault. CommVault just has a ton of bells and whistles. (Can be pro or con)
The Good:
Similarities: (Yes you can correct me here if you like)
- Both can scale out (CommVault uses Media Agents and Veeam uses Backups servers and repositories
- Offer Central Management Solutions
- Both do SAN based backups (LAN-Free, snap protect, whatever you want to call it)
- Load Balanced Based Backups (Media agent in CommVault can do this and Veeam does it with Backup Proxies)
- Both have certifications on various storage arrays for the SAN-Based backup
- Both have VCD support but not completely automated restores (I do see this hopefully changing)
VEEAM
- Very Simple Basic approach. In some ways this can be good or bad but the fact it has a simple approach was nice this makes it easier for people to learn and use.
- Restores super easy (single click)
- Can install easily as a single instance (all in one backup server) or scale out for enterprise wide deployments (NOTE:easy)
- Backs up Object Level without an agent (This is a nice plus no agents = no special networking)
- Can Dedupe to a NFS (Dedupe) Media Target (not sure how but they say they can do it, please correct me if I am wrong)
- Licensing is CPU sockets based so you can now what you are licensed for. (Can be more than an ala carte version of CV. However I would think would be cheaper in most instances)
- Can verify and test backups in a sand box environment (i.e. send an email from an exchange server)
- For whatever reason we had no snapshots left by Veeam ever… really nice.
***Disclaimer: The thoughts and views expressed on VirtualNoob.wordpress.com and Chad King in no way reflect the views or thoughts of his employer or any other views of a company. These are his personal opinions which are formed on his own. Also, products improve over time and some things maybe out of date. Please feel free to contact us and request an update and we will be happy to assist. Thanks!~
Cisco UCS Journey – When to update firmware
Don’t update if its not broke. If it breaks then update it. If you have issues with false alerts you may want to update firmware. I saw this with 1.4j.
The issue is not with the IOM but with the chassis communication bus(i2c bus) and hence the IOM is not getting detected and backplane ports never come up. If you seeing alerts related to PSU and those types of things then you may want to pay attention.
I2C is a bus that provides connectivity between different components in the chassis.
The PCA9541 is an I2C part that helps us control access to the shared devices in a chassis; the chassis serial eeproms, power supplies, and fan modules.
The 9541 I2C mux has known hardware/hang issues that can cause failures to access hardware components on the chassis. This can result in failures to read fan and PSU sensor data (such as fan speed and temp), triggering faults to be raised for the component (such as fan inoperable).
Some early PCA9541s that were used have a bug that if they are switched back and forth between IOM1 access and IOM2 access too quickly, they will get stuck and not allow any connection to the devices behind them.
Action Required:
Required to upgrade firmware version to 1.4(3q) or above.
Workaround to be followed before going for firmware upgrade:
• Reseat all the PSUs one by one in the chassis. Wait for 10min after inserting one unit ,so that it could stabilize.
• Reseat all the Fan Units on the backside of the chassis. Wait for 3min before going for the next one.
• Reseat both the IO modules. Wait for 20min before going for the next one.
• Verifying the i2c counter for the chassis.
• (Requires Down Time)Power cycle to reset all counters to fix issues in the running version.
• (Requires Down Time)Upgrading to firmware version 1.4(3q) or above (2.0 release) for a permanent fix.
Please follow the link to download the 1.4(3q) bundle:
Related Issue with firmware version used:
Incorrect behavior of I2C bus or CMC software interpreting I2C transactions?
- Fans (count 8 or less), PSU (count 4 or less) can be reported as inoperable. State never cleared.
- Fans are running at 100% rotation rate.
- UCSM cannot retrieve the PSU/Fan part detailed information
- Transient errors indicating Fan inoperable, cleared in one minute time interval.
- LED state does not match faults reported in UCSM and actual health of the system.
- Incorrectly reported thermal errors on blades and chassis .
Fixes that are promised for 1.4(3q):
- CSCtl74710 I2C bus access improvements for 9541
PCA9541 (NXP I2C bus multiplexor) workaround to improve bus access for parts built prior of mid 2009. The workaround assures that if internal clock fails to #:start it gets retried. The change designed and works as expected for both PCA9541 and PCA9541A parts from NXP. PCA9541 parts due to the internal clocking bug #:had a high number of bus_lost events.
- CSCtn87821 Minor I2C driver fixes and instrumentation
New Linux I2C driver has optimization to handle I2C controller and slave devices synchronization. With older driver simple synchronization error could appear as uncorrectable device errors.
- CSCtl77244 Transient FAN inoperable transition
During UCS (CMC) firmware upgrade and switching to new master/slave mode CMC erroneously takes information from the slave IOM and evaluates fans as inoperable based on stale data.
- CSCtl43716 9541 device error. Fan Modules reported inoperable, running 100%
Software code routine bug where single bus_lost event followed by successful retry will result in an infinite loop. As result Fans are reported as inoperable and are not controlled by CMC.
- ??
Removed an artificial cumulative threshold to enable amber color LED upon reaching 1000 bus_lost events. This was implemented as a monitoring mechanism to simplify identification of the PCA9541 devices. This is no longer needed since a proper software workaround is implemented.
Since this email we have started the update to firmware 2.0. This is a separate blog I am going to write because that too was pretty intense. I will provide some additional steps that we performed to lessen the impact. One thing is for certain don’t expect it to NOT be impacting….
***Disclaimer: The thoughts and views expressed on VirtualNoob.wordpress.com and Chad King in no way reflect the views or thoughts of his employer or any other views of a company. These are his personal opinions which are formed on his own. Also, products improve over time and some things maybe out of date. Please feel free to contact us and request an update and we will be happy to assist. Thanks!~
Network Troubleshooting 101 – vSphere VM Guest (Updated)
General Information (VMware information): (Updated)
What is Beacon Probing?
Well, if you don’t know I would give the following Kb a read.
You can find that here:
Let’s hope I can do this some “Justice”
A few weeks ago I ran into an issue where VM NICS would just randomly go down. The only way I could get them back online was to perform a vMotion of the VM to another host and resetting the port connection on the dvSwitch seemed to fix the issue. So essentially I wanted to highlight some basic troubleshooting steps and things you can do to help you better pin point where the issue may be occurring.
- From the Guest VM having the issue attempt to ping any other VM on the same host, switch, and portgroup. This will allow to pin point the issue to see if it is related to the physical or virtual networking.
- Enabling Beacon Probing can help detect upstream failures. (Be sure to read up on it) Enabling beacon probing will increase bandwidth utilization and CPU cycles on an ESXi host so simply consider the tradeoffs.
Why I need to enable it?
VMware recommends to introduce this change for either permanent or temporary use. Beacon probing as stated above can help or allow us to detect other failures which may occur upstream. When the failure occurs on the VM this will help you isolate the issue as being related to the VMware Virtual networking or the Physical switching (So can troubleshooting). If the failure happens on the VM and the Virtual Switch uplinks trigger an alert this will help you to pin point the issue.
Implementation Instructions:
Enabling Beacon Probing for Distributed Virtual Switch for a vCenter:
- Before enabling Beacon Probing I will engage James Hendrock to get Bandwidth utilization before and after enabling Beacon probing.
- Log on into the vSphere Client and connect to any vCenter you want to change it on
- Browse to Home > Inventory > Networking
- Expand the following objects in the tree to the left: (see figure)
-
Right Click a Port Group under the dvSwitch switch > Edit settings…
-
Highlight under policies the Teaming and Failover: (see figure)
- Select Network Failover Detection Dropdown (should currently say Link Status only) > Select Beacon Probing (see figure)
- Click Ok
- Repeat steps 4-7 for all other Port Groups on dvMgmt dvSwitch.
Take Away:
- Beacon probing is best used with a 3-pNIC configuration with even a N+2 Switching design being highly recommended
- Beacon probing configured with 2-pNICs means that whether or not you use it in a N+1 configuration it will detect a downstream failure but it has no way of knowing which uplink is bad.
- In a 2-pnic configuration if one fails it will trigger a redundancy lost message but at the same time just shotgun traffic down both pNICs to ensure communication is sent.
- If you are going to use Beacon Probing you must also consider the network design.
Resources:
http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?cmd=displayKC&docType=kc&externalId=1005577&sliceId=1&docTypeID=DT_KB_1_1&dialogID=273348945&stateId=0 0 273356736
http://blogs.vmware.com/networking/2008/12/using-beaconing-to-detect-link-failures-or-beaconing-demystified.html
http://www.bctechnet.com/?p=10
http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?cmd=displayKC&docType=kc&externalId=1012819&sliceId=1&docTypeID=DT_KB_1_1&dialogID=273348945&stateId=0 0 273356736
http://frankdenneman.nl/2011/02/ip-hash-versus-lbt/
http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2010/08/04/high-physical-switch-cpu-load/
***Disclaimer: The thoughts and views expressed on VirtualNoob.wordpress.com and Chad King in no way reflect the views or thoughts of his employer or any other views of a company. These are his personal opinions which are formed on his own. Also, products improve over time and some things maybe out of date. Please feel free to contact us and request an update and we will be happy to assist. Thanks!~
