Virtualization

Changing VMware vCenter Logging on Windows Server 2008

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I’ve had occasion, over the last 24 hours, to change the logging level of my vCenter server. It’s been a little more crashy than usual, and I’ve discovered that a number of KB articles are not updated for vSphere 4.0 Update 2 or Windows Server 2008. If you want to change the log retention policies, you can follow most of the instructions in KB 1004795 but there are two things I think you should know if you’re running on Windows 2008: 1. Your vpxd.cfg file and your logs are actually in: C:ProgramDataVMwareVMware VirtualCenter 2. The XML stanza for the logging is commented out in 4.0 Update 2, so remove the <!– and –> lines to make it work. For example, …

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VMware Data Recovery & Paravirtualized SCSI

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If you’ve added a volume to a VMware Data Recovery appliance you’ve probably read the part of the Administration Guide entitled “Add a Hard Disk to the Backup Appliance,” especially page 18 where it says: If creating a SCSI virtual disk, it is recommended that you set the SCSI value to SCSI 1:0. When you specify a SCSI Virtual Device Node the numbering scheme is Bus:ID, so what they’re really recommending by suggesting 1:0 is to let vSphere create another virtual SCSI controller. By default, that new SCSI controller will be set to “LSI Logic Parallel.” What I’ve noticed, though, is that the VMware Data Recovery appliance has the pvscsi modules installed, so you can change the type of SCSI …

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More Equipment Means More To Go Wrong

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“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.” – Albert Einstein Over the last couple years my organization has been building out an alternate site, for disaster recovery and business continuity purposes. I’ve noticed a disturbing trend, both among my own coworkers and others who are starting to think about DR & BC: that by having multiple data centers, multiple servers, or using multiple cloud vendors they’ll reduce the number of problems they’ll have. From a system administrator’s point of view that idea is absolutely false. Every piece of equipment you have can fail, and the more equipment you possess the more likely a failure will be. The more servers, switches, chillers, PDUs, and power grids you …

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Levels of Indirection

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“All problems in computer science can be solved by another level of indirection… Except for the problem of too many layers of indirection.” – David Wheeler, though often attributed to Butler Lampson, who has some great quotes, too: “When in doubt, use brute force.” “In handling resources, strive to avoid disaster rather than to attain an optimum.” Lots of good stuff if you read his “Hints for Computer System Design.”

VMware vSphere 4 Update 2 Highlights

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I’ve been reading through the release notes for VMware vSphere 4 Update 2, and there’s a few big highlights buried in with all the bug fixes, at least for me. Of course, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and if you were waiting for a bug fix that shipped that’ll be way more important than new functionality. Some of these are pretty big, though. 1. Enhancement of the esxtop/resxtop utility. esxtop & resxtop can now show you NFS datastore performance stats, as well as power statistics (via the ‘y’ key). Both are very welcome changes, but NFS stats are killer. 2. Speed and duplex settings for a NIC might not be retained after ESX/ESXi server reboots — fixed! …

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SLES For Free + vSphere 4.1 Information Leak

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From the vmware.com page entitled “SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) for VMware:” When you make a qualifying purchase of VMware vSphere, the industry’s leading virtualization platform, you will be entitled to receive SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) for VMware and a subscription to patches and updates at no additional cost (see terms and conditions below). By running SLES for VMware, you’ll also have the option to purchase technical support services for directly through VMware. The list of eligible VMware SKUs is pretty long, you might want to check it out and see if you qualify, especially if you have been doing some upgrading lately to support 12-core CPUs. I am a Red Hat Enterprise Linux person, but I know a …

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vExpert 2010

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Holy buckets, I’ve been invited to be a 2010 VMware vExpert! Thanks to all that were involved in doing this, especially John Troyer and all the VMware Communities folks. I’m speechless[0], being in such wonderful company. ———————- [0] Which is a feat, for those of you that know me.

Disk Space Usage from the ESX CLI

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Want to find out how much space is being consumed in your datastores, and by what? You can do this from the VMware ESX CLI using the ‘du’ command. For example, if you have a set of datastores named with the prefix “netapp-” you can display the disk usage for all of the virtual machines in them with: # du -s /vmfs/volumes/netapp-*/* 26214528        /vmfs/volumes/netapp-linux-1/vm-hr-1.company.com 40952192        /vmfs/volumes/netapp-linux-1/vm-payroll-2.company.com 49340800        /vmfs/volumes/netapp-linux-2/vm-payroll-1.company.com 48292224        /vmfs/volumes/netapp-linux-2/vm-hr-2.company.com 69263744        /vmfs/volumes/netapp-linux-3/vm-wiki.company.com If you’d like the output with human-readable numbers, try using ‘-h’ with du: # du -sh /vmfs/volumes/netapp-*/* 26G /vmfs/volumes/netapp-linux-1/vm-hr-1.company.com 40G     /vmfs/volumes/netapp-linux-1/vm-payroll-2.company.com 48G     /vmfs/volumes/netapp-linux-2/vm-payroll-1.company.com 47G        /vmfs/volumes/netapp-linux-2/vm-hr-2.company.com 67G        /vmfs/volumes/netapp-linux-3/vm-wiki.company.com Maybe you’d like to sort by VM name. Use the ‘sort’ command: # du -s /vmfs/volumes/netapp-*/* | sort -k 5 -t …

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VMware SRM Survey = $10 to UNICEF

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Mike Laverick of RTFM Education/TechTarget fame emailed some of us this morning to say that if you are one of the first 1000 people to take the VMware Site Recovery Manager survey three things will happen: 1. VMware will gain some information about who is and isn’t using SRM, and how they are or aren’t using it. This is important, because surveys like this are how VMware product teams gather information about what customers want to see in upcoming releases. It’s also important if you aren’t using SRM, because it helps tell them that and why. 2. You’ll get a free PDF copy of Mike Laverick’s book “Administering VMware Site Recovery Manager 4.0.” The book is the only SRM book …

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Why Am I Still Buying Physical Servers?

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Why am I still buying physical servers? 1. Services that require specialized internal hardware. Some of our applications require internal PCIe cards for FAX capabilities. One even requires a modem. It might be possible to virtualize these things using VMDirectPath, but that breaks VMotion and we really like VMotion. I wish application designers would use cloud-based services for these things, like an Internet-based FAX provider or emailing PDFs. In the modem case, I wish they’d learn how this new-fangled Internet thing works. 2. Services that require specialized external hardware. USB dongles will be the death of me. Applications that keep their licenses on a USB dongle? We’ve got some. Application that has a USB serial dongle for talking to the …

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