Virtualization

Distributed Power Management, the new experimental feature in VMware VI 3.5, seems like a cool idea[0], but it occurs to me that my NOC guys aren’t really going to like the idea of switch ports changing state as machines go to sleep. The current line of thinking is that a port changing state without an entry in our change control system indicates a problem. Hmmm. I foresee an interesting conversation with them in my future. [0] Really, no pun intended. Ha!

CD-ROMs are so 1988, and we forgot about ESX 2.5 upgrade tarballs decades ago. As such, you’ll want to grab the freshly-minted “Upgrade package from ESX Server 3.0.x to ESX Server 3.5,” unzip it on a web server somewhere, and upgrade all your ESX 3.0 Servers with: esxupdate -r http://your.web.server.com/3.5.0-64607 update That’s what all the cool kids are doing, anyhow. (It also looks like a great way to fix those ESX Servers you built with the sorta-almost-released ESX 3.5 from a week ago. Not that anybody did that. Nope.)

By default the VMware RCLI virtual appliance uses DHCP to configure its Ethernet interface. If you don’t want it to use DHCP you can change it fairly simply. There are two ways to do it: 1. Put it on a DHCP-capable subnet, let it DHCP an IP, then go to that hostname with a web browser and change the network settings through the web interface. 2. Change the settings manually. To do that, log in to the RCLI appliance as root with the password you set on the first boot. Use vi to edit /etc/network/interfaces. If you are not familiar with the UNIX editor ‘vi’ you might want to take a few minutes and go through a short tutorial. A …

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Things I like so far in the ESX 3.5/VC 2.5, based on the upgrade I just did to my test servers: Round-robin multipath support. NTP configuration via VirtualCenter. Virtual machine MAC address configuration via VirtualCenter. Growing disk files via VirtualCenter. Paravirtualization options, even though it’ll probably be decades before any OS I run takes advantage of it.[0] The fact that you can VMotion between ESX 3.0 and 3.5 so the upgrade process looks almost brainless.[1] The one thing that annoys me so far is the option to “Check and Upgrade VMware Tools at Power-up.” On the surface it looks cool, but on my Red Hat Enterprise Linux VMs the upgrade process leaves a non-functional network stack. At least with Windows …

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If you install the VMware RCLI under Windows and are getting libxml2-related errors, log out and log back in so the environment variable changes from the install take effect. I was getting errors similar to: Can’t load ‘C:/Program Files/VMware/VMware VI Remote CLI/Perl/site/lib/auto/XML/LibXML/Common/Common.dll’ for module XML::LibXML::Common: load_file:The specified module could not be found at C:/Program Files/VMware/VMware VI Remote CLI/Perl/lib/DynaLoader.pm line 230. with corresponding dialog boxes about libxml2.dll.

It looks like VMware ESX Server 3.5 and VirtualCenter 2.5 aren’t actually out. Those links floating around look like a GA, but until they show up on the actual download page I wouldn’t use them for much. Someone purporting to be a program manager has commented in the forum thread: “I can tell you that what is posted is NOT the final bits so please do not download.” Likewise, someone posted an email snippet from VMware: “This delay from our previous communication is the result of a critical quality issue that is necessary to resolve for the release.” I’ve been in this game long enough that when I see a release date get pushed back suddenly I know it’s a …

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Intel released their next generation of Xeon CPUs today: New to the Intel line-up of server processors are 15 server dual-core and quad-core 45nm Hi-k Intel Xeon processors. The 12 new quad-core chips boast clock speeds ranging from 2GHz up to 3.20GHz, with front side bus speeds (FSB) up to 1600MHz, and cache sizes of 12MB. The three new dual-core chips feature clock speeds of up to 3.40GHz, an FSB of up to 1600MHz, and cache sizes of 6MB. The 5400 series looks very attractive for smaller virtualization environments. Not only can you continue to get eight cores in a 1U or 2U server but with the addition of FlexMigration the CPUs are VMotion-compatible with older CPUs. This means I …

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Call it a hunch, but I think this server will be fine as a virtual machine.

I wish VMware would hurry up and release VI 3.5[0]. It’s getting hard to figure out what information has been released to the public and what I only know because of my NDA status[1]. I say this as I put a presentation on VMware together. It’s easy for me to forget that to others the basics of virtualization are new and exciting. It’s been my reality for nearly four years.[2] [0] Within reason, as I’d rather it be stable. 🙂 [1] Not that things like NDAs have stopped some other bloggers. [2] Virtual reality? 🙂