Source

While going through the COS/HOST and VM documentation, I noticed there were quite a few checks that might benefit from having a script to validate the guidelines and that was the motivation for this script. Not all sections can be validated using the vSphere APIs and will require some manual validation and I’ve seperated the types of passes whether it’s a fail, pass or manual (which requires user intervention).

The script allows you to run the current existing guides as of (01/29/2010) against vCenter 4.0 hosting ESX(i) 4.0 hosts/virtual machines OR run it against an individual ESX(i) 4.0 host. The script allows you to run a subset of the checks and against different type of validation (ENTERPRISE,DMZ or SSLF). Upon completion, a report is generated including a grade for your environment.

A couple of details on the features:

• Email report
• Ability to execute subset of the checks (COS,HOST,VCENTER,VNETWORK,VM)
• Ability execute specific test suite (ENTERPRISE,DMZ,SSLF)
• Detail HTML summary report with letter grade

You can find an example report here. Great work again William, keep it up!

The obvious next question is, won’t I lose a lot of flexibility? Well in a way you do as a simple VMotion to another cluster will not work anymore. But of course there’s always a way to move a host to a different cluster. In my design I usually propose a so called “Transfer Volume”. This Volume(NFS or VMFS) can be used to transfer VMs to a different cluster. Yes there’s a slight operational overhead here, but is also reduces overhead in terms of traffic to a LUN and decreases the chance of scsi reservation conflicts etc.

Here’s the process:

1. Storage VMotion the VM from LUN on Array 1 to Transfer LUN
2. VMotion VM from Cluster A to Cluster B
3. Storage VMotion the VM from Transfer LUN to LUN on Array 2

Of course these don’t necessarily need to be two separate arrays, it could just as easily be a single array with a group of LUNs masked to a particular cluster. For the people who have a hard time visualizing it:

VMware challenges you to build the best, most creative ESXi management scripts possible. The goal of the ScriptoMania contest is to help our wider community adopt ESXi by providing useful, fun and powerful scripts to manage the ESXi platform. The best part is that we give our winners bragging rights and we put some hard cold cash in your pockets. Are you up to the challenge?

Contest Overview:

• Chance to win up to $2500 for your very best ESXi scripts.
• Contest ends March 15th, 2010
• Details at: http://vmware.com/go/scriptomania

The following screenshot depicts the symptoms.

In other words, at times an enormous amount of received packets were dropped. After some research I found an article which actually describes this behavior. (http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1010071) We tried increasing the buffer size for the E1000 virtual network adapter this VM was configured with but it did not resolve the issue. As there were other drivers mentioned in the post we decided to “upgrade” the NIC to a “vmxnet” NIC and this actually resolved the issue. Although performance is not where we expected it would be yet we are not seeing any dropped packets anymore and can focus on the next possible cause.

Latest Version: 2.8 | January 31, 2010
Download | Documentation

• On vHost tab field “# VMs” now only powered on VMs are counted.
• On vHost tab field “VMs per core” now only powered on VMs are counted.
• On vHost tab field “vCPUs per core” now only powered on VMs are counted.
• On vDatastore tab field “# VMs” now only calculated for VM’s which are powered on.
• Health check “Number of running virtual CPUs per core” now only powered on VMs are counted.
• Health check “Number of running VMs per datastore” now only powered on VMs are counted.
• During Installation there will be an application event source created for RVTools. This to fix some security related problems.
• Some users run into a timeout exception from the SDK Web server. The default web service timeout value is now changed to a higher value.
• New fields on vHost tab: NTP Server(s), time zone information, Hyper Threading information (available and active), Boot time, DNS Servers, DHCP flag, Domain name and  DNS Search order
• New Health Check: Inconsistent folder names.
• Improved exception handling on vDisk, vSwitch and vPort tab pages.

What’s new?

VMware vCenter Lifecycle Manager (LCM) 1.1 release enhances the performance, robustness, and scalability of LCM and resolves a number of known issues.

The LCM 1.1 release runs on VMware vCenter Orchestrator 4.0.1. To run LCM 1.1, you must install the version of Orchestrator (4.0.1 Build 4502) that accompanies the LCM 1.1 download. See the vCenter Lifecycle Manager 1.1 Installation and Configuration Guide for installation instructions.

Download now.

VMware vCenter Lifecycle Manager Release Notes
VMware vCenter Lifecycle Manager Installation and Configuration Guide
VMware vCenter Lifecycle Manager Administration Guide
VMware vCenter Lifecycle Manager User’s Guide

I’ve tested it and removing (or renaming) the following file will lead to a blank page when the ESXi host is accessed via http(s):

/usr/lib/vmware/hostd/docroot/index.html

<edit>

William Lam created another work around which is definitely a more elegant solution: Remove the ESXi web welcome screen.

</edit>

Before reading the rest of this article be aware that the target audience for this book is IT Management. It’s an overview of VMware products / technology which enable Cloud Computing. It is by no means intended as a blueprint for cloud computing. If you are a techie this might not be the book for you, we are however working on a more technical book which will detail the process of designing a cloud infrastructure based on VMware products.

Book #21, Foundation for Cloud Computing with VMware vSphere 4, by John Arrasjid, Duncan Epping, and Steve Kaplan, is now online for members and available for purchase. Virtualization is recognized as a foundation for Cloud Computing. This book is an overview of the VMware technologies and how they can support the various services and management pieces required for Cloud architecture. Without diving overly deeply into specific design patterns, it provides insight into the tools to fit your design criteria. Take a look now!

Complete PDF version of the booklet can be found here (Usenix/Sage members only) or purchase the print version.

Open PDFs can be found here:

• Covers/About the Authors PDF
• Frontmatter/Table of Contents PDF
• Acknowledgments PDF
• Glossary PDF
• Foreword by Dr. Stephen Alan Herrod PDF

I want to thank both of my co-authors for allowing me to work with them. Both Steve and John have an unseen drive and expertise. Thanks guys!

• vSphere Security Whitepapers
• Cisco NetApp VMware Announce The Industry’s First Secure Multi-Tenancy Solution
• NetApp Multistore Primer
• Drobo Pro on the VMware HCL soon!
• VSA’s – How Many…
• Drobo configuration
• Drobo Review
• Drobo performance testing
• My homelab – Drobo
• Vizioncore Backup 2.0

• Scott Lowe –> EMC
• Frank Denneman –> VMware
• Rick Scherer –> EMC
• Ken Cline –> Quest
• Massimo Re Ferrè –> VMware
• Ed Saipetch –> EMC
• Mike Laverick –> Tech Target
• …. more to come soon! Believe me.

Now I’m not judging any of the people mentioned or any of the vendors recruiting these experts; It’s merely an observation. Better said I fully understand why this is happening. The VMware community is full of experienced and knowledgeable people and especially the bloggers have a high visibility.

Now, place your bet.