Vmware User Group Hyderabad

Under Renovation

2019-08-22T16:36:00.003+05:30

This Blog Is

Under Renovation

vSphere 6.5 Technical Overview

2017-05-05T23:19:00.001+05:30

Using vSphere Host Profiles in the vSphere Web Client

2017-05-05T23:01:00.001+05:30

What's new in vSphere 5.1

2012-09-12T18:46:00.000+05:30

What's new in vSphere 5.1

Posted by Mike_Laverick

VMware (the company I now work for) have released the .PDFs which outline what's new in vSphere5.1...

I've got 12 blogposts that I will be releasing daily that outline each area:

Vsphere 5 New Features

2012-09-11T11:37:00.002+05:30

1. Storage DRS

2. Storage I/O Control for NFS

3. VMFS-5

4. ESXi Firewall

5. VMFS Scalability and Performance enhancements

6. 2TB+ pass-through RDM support

7. vCenter inventory extensibility

8. Storage APIs -- VAAI T10 Compliancy

9. Storage APIs -- VAAI Offloads for NAS

10. Storage APIs -- VAAI Thin Provisioning

11. Storage APIs -- Storage Awareness/Discovery

12. Storage APIs -- Data Protection compatible with MN

13. APD, Permanent APD Survivability Enablement

14. Snapshot enhancements

15. Storage vMotion scalability improvements

16. iSCSI Enablement: iSCSI UI Support

17. iSCSI Enablement: Stateless Support

18. Multi-queue Storage IO adapters

19. Increase NFSv3 Max Share Count to 256

20. SATA 3.0

21. Software FCoE initiator support

22. Enhanced logging support

23. Enhanced Storage metrics

24. Profile-Driven Storage

25. Storage vMotion support for snapshots

26. vSphere Storage Appliance (VSA)

27. SSD Detection and Enablement

28. vSphere Replication

29. vSphere Data Recovery 2.0

30. VADP enhancements

31. vCenter Orchestrator (vCO) Enhancements

32. vCO -- Library extension and consolidation

33. vCO -- Scalability

34. Network I/O Control (NIOC) Phase 2

35. NIOC -- User Defined Resource Pools

36. NIOC -- HBR traffic type

37. NIOC -- 802.1p tagging

38. Network Traffic Stats for iOPS

39. Improvement to UDP and Multicast traffic types

40. New networking drivers for server enablement

41. vDS support for Port mirror, LLDP and NetFlow V5

42. vDS Manage Port Group UI enhancement

43. Hot-Insert/Remove of Filters

44. Enhanced vMotion Compatibility

45. Storage vMotion support for Linked Clones

46. vMotion scalability (dual-NIC & longer latency support)

47. vNetwork API enhancements

48. vNetwork Opaque Channel

49. Support for 8 10GbE Physical NIC ports per host

50. Add Host Resources MIB to SNMP offering

51. Metro vMotion

52. Host Profile for DRS to support Stateless ESX

53. HA interop with agent VMs

54. DRS/DPM interop with agent VMs

55. DRS enhancements for Maintenance Mode

56. Enhanced processor support for FT

57. vSphere 5.0 HA aka "FDM / Fault Domain Manager"

58. vSphere HA - Heartbeat Datastores

59. vSphere HA - Support for partitions of management network

60. vSphere HA - Default isolation response changed

61. vSphere HA - New Status information in UI

62. vSphere HA - IPv6 support

63. vSphere HA - Application Awareness API publicly available

64. Extensions to create special icons for VMs

65. ESX Agent Management

66. Solution Management Plugin

67. Next-Gen vSphere Client

68. Host Profiles Enhancements

69. vCenter enhancements for stateless ESXi

70. vCenter Server Appliance

71. vCenter: Support for FileManager and VirtualDiskManager APIs

72. Virtual Hardware - Smartcard support for vSphere

73. Virtual Hardware Version 8

74. Virtual HW v8 -- 1TB VM RAM

75. Virtual HW v8 -- 32-way Virtual SMP

76. Virtual Hw v8 -- Client-Connected USB Devices

77. Virtual HW v8 -- EFI Virtual BIOS

78. Virtual HW v8 -- HD Audio

79. Virtual Hw v8 -- Multi-core Virtual CPU Support UI

80. Virtual HW v8 -- New virtual E1000 NIC

81. Virtual HW v8 -- UI and other support

82. Virtual HW v8 -- USB 3.0 device support

83. Virtual HW v8 -- VMCI device enhancements

84. Virtual HW v8 -- xHCI

85. Support SMP for Mac OS X guest OS

86. Universal Passthrough (VMdirect path with vMotion support)

87. Guest Management Operations (VIX API)

88. Guest OS Support -- Mac OS X Server

89. VM Serial Port to Host Serial Port Redirection (Serial Port Pass-Through)

90. Passthrough/SR-IOV

91. VMware Tools Portability

92. VMRC Concurrent Connections enhancements

93. Scalability: 512 VMs per host

94. ESXCLI enhancements

95. Support SAN and hw-iSCSI boot

96. Hardware -- Interlagos Processor Enablement

97. Hardware -- SandyBridge-DT Processor Enablement

98. Hardware -- SandyBridge-EN Processor Enablement

99. Hardware -- SandyBridge-EP Processor Enablement

100. Hardware -- Valencia Processor Enablement

101. Hardware -- Westmere-EX Processor Enablement

102. Platform -- CIM Enhancements

103. Platform -- ESX i18n support

104. Host Power Management Enhancements

105. Improved CPU scheduler

106. Improved scalability of CPU (NUMA) scheduler

107. Memory scheduler improvements to support 32-way VCPU's

108. Swap to host cache

109. API enhancements to configure VM boot order

110. VMX swap

111. Support for ESXi On Apple XServe

112. Redirect DCUI to host serial port for remote monitoring and management

113. UEFI BIOS Boot for ESXi hosts

114. Scalability -- 160 CPU Threads (logical PCPUs) per host

115. Scalability -- 2 TB RAM per host

116. Scalability -- 2048 VCPUs per host

117. Scalability -- 2048 virtual disks per host

118. Scalability -- 2048 VMs per VMFS volume

119. Scalability -- 512 VMs per host

120. Stateless -- Host Profile Engine and Host Profile Completeness

121. Stateless -- Image Builder

122. Stateless -- Auto Deploy

123. Stateless -- Networking Host Profile Plugin

124. Stateless -- VIB Packaging Enhancement

125. Stateless -- VMkernel network core dump

126. Host profiles enhancements for storage configuration

127. Enhanced driver support for ESXi

128. Intel TXT Support

129. Memsched policy enhancements w.r.t. Java balloon

130. Native Driver Autoload support

131. Root password entry screen in interactive installer

132. vCenter Dump Collector

133. vCenter Syslog Collector

134. VMware Update Manager (VUM) enhancements

135. VUM -- Virtual Appliance enhancements

136. VUM -- vApp Support

137. VUM -- Depot management enhancements

138. vCLI enhancements

139. PowerCLI enhancements

140. VProbes -- ESX Platform Observability

Using VMware vCenter Operations Manager to pinpoint and solve issues

2012-09-10T20:12:00.001+05:30

By Lauren Malhoit

Takeaway: Lauren Malhoit walks us through a couple of demos of using VMware vCenter Operations Manager to pinpoint and then solve annoying problems.

I had the pleasure of attending VMware’s VMworld conference this past week in San Francisco and sat in on several sessions. One of my favorites was called Troubleshooting Using vCenter Operations Manager, given by Kit Colbert and Praveen Kannan. They did a live lab in the session that turned out really well and showed how useful vCenter Operations Manager can be. I thought I’d take this opportunity to share some of what they showed us in the lab.
Before we get started, it might be useful to share some introductory details on vCOPS (vCenter Operations Manager). It can be installed as a plug-in in your current vSphere environment. After some minimal configuration it will be up and running. vCOPS works best after it has been in the environment for at least a few weeks. Its usefulness does not necessarily lie in finding outright errors (although it can do that), but in finding anomalies in your environment. It “learns” the environment and can point out what is out of the norm. There are three core scores that are given on the main dashboard as shown in Figure A.

Figure A

VMware calls these core elements badges. There’s the health badge that shows immediate problems, the risk badge that shows future problems, and the efficiency badge that shows opportunities to optimize. There are then subcategories under each of these badges which contribute to the scores.
In the live demo, they offered up three scenarios to show the value of the tool. The first showed how to find what’s causing the slow performance of a workload as shown in the steps below.

In the search field found in the upper-right corner, type in the name of the VM that is slow.
Under the Alerts pane there is an option to filter by workload. Click on the workload filter.
Find the workload alert and then click on it.
From here you can see the symptoms, such as heavy disk I/O.
Now click on the Operation Tab.
Check out the Workload section and you can see that the datastore “skittle” (icon representing the datastore) is red.
Click on the datastore skittle and click details.
Click on the Analysis tab and select Storage as a focus area then filter by VM.
You can see that the color is based on latency, and if your problem is storage latency you’ll see it in here.
You can deduce that you either need faster storage or more spindles because the current datastore can’t handle the VM workload.

The next scenario dealt with capacity constraints. vCOPS can show you which of your VMs are undersized, meaning they don’t have enough memory, CPU, etc., configured. Here are the steps you can follow to find out if you have a sizing problem with your VMs:

Search for the problematic VM by name.
By looking at the dashboard you will be able to see the workload is very high and it’s hitting the memory pretty hard. Although you can see this right in the dashboard, you may want to see if this is a common issue with this machine.
Click on the Planning Tab. then click on the Stress badge
Here you’ll be able to see how much of the time memory has been undersized. So if your memory is showing that it’s been undersized for 80% of the time, it may be time to add more memory!

The last scenario was the most interesting to me. It demonstrated how you can find out which changes to a VM may have caused downtime. It’s such a useful thing to be able to narrow down, and even reverse, changes in one click if you have vCenter Configuration Manager. Here are the steps:

Search for the problematic VM
Click on the red VM skittle under the Operations tab.
Click on the host of the VM and you’ll be able to see the CPU is showing as red.
Click on the CPU
Click on the Events tab
There is a time window that can be changed if necessary. You’ll want to look for the time where the graph changes from green to red. This is most likely when the change was made to your VM.
Drill in to where the change is and look at the events list.
In the events list, you’ll be able to see if something was installed, like an antivirus. This installation or restart, etc., will most likely be the reason the CPU kept spiking and started showing red in vCOPS. As mentioned above, if you combine this with vCenter Configuration Manager, you can actually find out which user made the change and roll it back in one click!

VMware's First Cloud Certification

2012-07-03T10:34:00.000+05:30

VMware's First Cloud Certification

By: David Davis From http://blogs.vmware.com/vcloud/2012/07/vmwares-first-cloud-certification.html

Recently VMware’s first certification around cloud computing quietly went into beta. Let’s learn more about this new certification option, the VCP-Infrastructure as a Service (or VCP-IaaS) certification…

Top 10 Must-Knows for the New VCP-IaaS

As this certification is still in beta, as of today, we don’t have a lot of official information yet but here’s what we do know:

VMware Education confirmed the existence of this new certification on their blog, here.
The VCP-IaaS will focus on Installing, Configuring, and Administering Infrastructure as a Service clouds based on vCloud Director.
It’s expected to be launched in late-July.
It requires that you already have a VCP so it’s the second form of the VCP with the VCP-DT being the other.
According to Eric Sloof from NTPRO.NL, the current beta exam consists of 115 questions and a short pre-exam survey consisting of 8 questions. The passing score for this exam is 300, using a scaled scoring method. Eric said that the scoring scale ranges from 100 to 500.
Also according to Eric, “Candidates interested in this certification should be capable of installing and configuring vCloud Director and related components, utilizing vCD to create and manage vApps, Service Catalogs, Organization/provider VDCs, and administering cloud enabled networking and storage.”
If you don’t already have your VCP5, that is where you need to start on your way to this new VMware vCloud certification.
If you do have your VCP5 then I recommend that you get started learning vCloud Director by trying out either myTrainSignal vCloud Director Essentials video training course or the VMware Education vCloud Director Fundamentals course.
You can try vCloud Director (and vSphere with vCenter) FREE for 60 days, here.
If you are already a vSphere user, vCloud solutions – either via private cloud with vCloud Director or public cloud through vCloud providers – are what you need to be considering next.

To sign up to receive notification when the new VCP-IaaS is publicly available, click here.

My Take on the VCP-IaaS

I am super-excited about the VCP-IaaS and look forward to its public release. One of the best ways for the some 100,000+ VCPs out there to learn about vCloud Director is to do it through a certification program. As vCloud Director becomes more prolific in the datacenters of today, look for more great blog posts, certifications, books, and video training about it (in fact, I know of a vExpert current producing an upcoming vCloud Director Organizational Admin video training course). VMware is smart to create their first cloud certification and I hope that they won’t stop there and decide to follow this up with a VCAP and VCDX on cloud infrastructure and vCloud Director. Exciting times!

Note: I’ll be following up with more information about the VCP-IaaS on this blog as soon as it is released. To stay up to date, be sure to follow @vCloud on Twitter.

David Davis is a VMware Evangelist and vSphere Video Training Author for Train Signal. He has achieved CCIE, VCP,CISSP, and vExpert level status over his 15+ years in the IT industry. David has authored hundreds of articles on the Internet and nine different video training courses for TrainSignal.com including the popular vSphere 5 and vCloud Director video training courses. Learn more about David at his blog or on Twitter and check out a sample of his VMware vSphere video training course from TrainSignal.com.

2012-06-07T23:40:00.001+05:30

VMware vSphere Fault Tolerance

VMware Fault Tolerance (FT) is a new feature that is available with vSphere 4.0. VMware FT is based on vLockstep technology and aims to provide zero downtime, zero data loss, and continuous availability for applications. FT provides this continuous availability for applications by creating a secondary, live shadow instance of a virtual machine (VM) that is in virtual lockstep with the primary VM instance.

Next, VMware FT builds on VMware High Availability (HA). Therefore, HA has to be running correctly in order to enable FT. VMware FT can be turned on or off for individual virtual machines with a click of the mouse. In addition, since it leverages existing VMware HA clusters with a maximum node limit of 16 servers, any number of virtual machines in the cluster can be protected with VMware FT.

Finally, if you have set up VMware HA cluster and meet the Prerequisites and Requirements below, enabling FT is only a few mouse clicks away. Check out the step-by-step screen captures of enabling FT and testing failover with FT enabled at FT Example Down Below.

VMware vSphere FT Prerequisites

For VMware FT to perform as expected, it must run in an environment that meets specific requirements.

The primary and secondary fault-tolerant virtual machines must be in a VMware HA cluster.
Primary and secondary virtual machines must not run on the same host. FT automatically places the secondary virtual machine on a different host.
Virtual machine files must be stored on shared storage.
Shared storage solutions include NFS, FC, and iSCSI.
For virtual disks on VMFS-3, the virtual disks must be thick, meaning they cannot be thin or sparsely allocated.
Turning on VMware FT automatically converts the virtual machine to thick-eager zeroed disks.
Virtual Raw Disk Mapping (RDM) is supported. Physical RDM is not supported.
Multiple gigabit Network Interface Cards (NICs) are required.
A minimum of two VMKernel Gigabit NICs must be dedicated to VMware FT Logging and vMotion.
The FT Logging interface is used for logging events from the primary virtual machine to the secondary FT virtual machines.
For best performance, use 10Gbit NIC rather than 1Gbit NIC, and enable the use of jumbo frames.
VMware FT requires that Hardware Virtualization (HV) be turned on in the BIOS. The process for enabling HV varies among BIOSs. Contact your vendor for specifics.

VMware vSphere FT Requirements

There are a number of requirements which must be met before FT can be set up:

CPUs: limited processors must be the same family (no mix/match).
Requires Intel 31xx, 33xx, 52xx, 54xx, 55xx, 74xx or AMD 13xx,23xx, 83xx series of processors.
SMP virtual machines are not supported.
Hardware Virtualization must be enabled in the BIOS.
Hosts must be in a VMware High Availability-enabled cluster.
Storage: shared storage (FC, iSCSI, or NAS).
Network: minimum of 3 NICs for various types of traffic (ESX Management/VMotion, virtual machine traffic, FT logging).
GigE required for vMotion and FT logging.
Minimized single points of failures in the environment. For example, NIC teaming, multiple network switches, storage multipathing.
Primary and secondary hosts must be running the same build of ESX.

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?cmd=displayKC&docType=kc&externalId=1010601&sliceId=1&docTypeID=DT_KB_1_1&dialogID=29660642&stateId=1%200%2029664181

Guest Operating Systems

The following table displays guest operating system support for VMware FT. For specific guest operating system version information, see the Guest Operating System Installation Guide at http://www.vmware.com/pdf/GuestOS_guide.pdf.

The following values appear in the table:

Yes - Virtual machine can be FT-enabled while powered on.
Yes/Off - Virtual machine must be powered off before FT is enabled.
No - Not supported by VMware FT.

Guest Operating System	Fault Tolerance Support with Intel Xeon Based on 45nm Core 2 Microarchitecture	Fault Tolerance Support with Intel Xeon Based on Core i7 Microarchitecture	Fault Tolerance Support with AMD 3rd Generation Opteron
Windows Server 2008	Yes	Yes/Off	Yes/Off
Windows Vista	Yes	Yes/Off	Yes/Off
Windows Server 2003 (64 bit)	Yes	Yes/Off	Yes/Off
Windows Server 2003 (32 bit)	Yes	Yes/Off	Yes/Off (Requires Service Pack 2 or greater)
Windows XP (64 bit)	Yes	Yes/Off	Yes/Off
Windows XP (32 bit)	Yes	Yes/Off	No
Windows 2000	Yes/Off	Yes/Off	No
Windows NT 4.0	Yes/Off	Yes/Off	No
Linux (all ESX-supported distributions)	Yes	Yes/Off	Yes/Off
Netware Server	Yes/Off	Yes/Off	Yes/Off
Solaris 10 (64-bit)	Yes	Yes/Off	Yes/Off (Requires Solaris U1)
Solaris 10 (32-bit)	Yes	Yes/Off	No
FreeBSD (all ESX-supported distributions)	Yes	Yes/Off	Yes/Off

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1008027

VMware vSphere FT Step by Step Example

1. Image depicting the Network configuration.

2. Turning on FT.

3. 54% through setting up FT.

4. FT setup complete.

5. vLockstep Interval and Log Bandwidth information are now updated.

6. Primary VM is located on 10.10.10.146.

7. Secondary VM is running on the Secondary Host- 10.10.10.145.

8. Testing FT using the built in Test Failover command.

9. Failover test completes. Notice that 10.10.10.146 has become the secondary location.

10. After the Failover Test, the primary host server is now 10.10.10.145 and the primary VM is running on it.

11. Furthermore, after the Failover Test, the secondary VM runs on the secondary host server, 10.10.10.146.

12. Failover test completion will result in showing the primary VM on the new primary host server and the new secondary host server with the accompanying vLockstep Interval and Log Bandwidth.

13. Finally, VMware vSphere FT is ready to provide continuous protection to your VMs.

How to configure NIC teaming in VMware vSphere

2012-06-06T18:13:00.001+05:30

How to install patches or updates for your VMware ESX host using Update ...

2012-06-06T18:12:00.001+05:30

VMware ESXi 4: How to Add VMFS Datastore Using vSphere Client ( with Screenshots )

2012-06-05T15:48:00.001+05:30

VMware ESXi 4: How to Add VMFS Datastore Using vSphere Client ( with Screenshots )

1. View Existing ESXi VMware Datastores

Launch vSphere Client -> Click on the top node in the left tree -> Configuration tab -> Click on the storage menu item under “Hardware” section, as shown below. This storage section, will display all available VMware datastores as shown below.

Fig: Vmware ESX Datastores

For example, the current VMware datastore1 on this ESXi server has following information.

Volume Label ( Datastore ): datastore1
device: locall dell disk ( naa.xxxx )
Capacity: 131 G
Free: 2.45 GB
File system: vmfs3

Please note that the VMS file system can be created across multiple partitions to form one logical VMFS volume.

2. Create VMFS Datastore – Select ESX Storage Type

Click on ‘Add Storage..’ link on the top right hand corner, which will display the “Add Storage” wizard.

The first step is to specicy the esx storage type for the new ESX VMFS datastore. Select Disk/LUN as shown below. (other option is to select network file system – nfs datastore)

Fig: Select ESXi Storage Type – Disk/LUN

3. Select Disk/LUN

This step will display all the available disk groups on the server. This is a dell poweredge 2950 server, which already has a raid-1 logical disk group created at the hardware raid level. The raid-1 diskgroup that was created at the hardware level is now visible to the ESXi server. If you have more than one diskgroup available to the hardware, they’ll be listed here.

Fig: vSphere VMware Select disk

4. Current Disk Layout Configuration

This is only a information screen that says that the hard disk is blank etc.,. Click on Next to continue

Fig: VMware VMFS Disk Layout Configuration

5. VMFS Datastore Name

Specify the VMFS datastore name in the properties screen.

Fig: VMFS datastore Name

6. Disk/LUN Formatting

Specify the maximum file size for this esx datastore. In this example, I selected 256GB as maximum file size with 1MB block size. Following options are available for the maximum file size:

256 GB, Block size: 1 MB
512 GB, Block size: 2 MB
1024 GB, Block size: 4 MB
2048 GB, Block size: 8 MB

Leave the capacity check-box as maximum capacity.

Fig: VMware Datastore Disk Formatting

7. Final confirmation – Ready to Complete

The final confirmation section confirms our selection as shown below.

Fig: VMware Datastore creation confirmation

8. New ESX datastore Created

The new datastore3 is created as shown below.

VMware Fault Tolerance

2012-05-30T21:40:00.000+05:30

VMware Fault Tolerance: What it is and how it works
New SiteSurvey utility from VMware checks for Fault Tolerance compatibility
More details on VMware’s Fault Tolerance feature

I. And VMware said, ‘Let there be Fault Tolerance’
Fault Tolerance was introduced as a new feature in vSphere that provided something that was missing in VMware Infrastructure 3 (VI3), the ability to have continuous availability for a virtual machine in case of a host failure. High Availability (HA) was a feature introduced in VI3 to protect against host failures, but it caused the VM to go down for a short period of time while it was restarted on another host. FT takes that to the next level and guarantees the VM stays operational during a host failure by keeping a secondary copy of it running on another host server. If a host fails, the secondary VM becomes the primary VM and a new secondary is created on another functional host.
The primary VM and secondary VM stay in sync with each other by using a technology called Record/Replay that was first introduced with VMware Workstation. Record/Replay works by recording the computer execution on a VM and saving it as a log file. It can then take that recorded information and replay it on another VM to have a replica copy that is a duplicate of the original VM.

II. Power to the processors
The technology behind the Record/Replay functionality is built in to certain models of Intel and AMD processors. VMware calls it vLockstep. This technology required Intel and AMD to make changes to both the performance counter architecture and virtualization hardware assists (Intel VT and AMD-V) that are inside the physical processors. Because of this, only newer processors support the FT feature. This includes the third-gen AMD Opteron based on the AMD Barcelona, Budapest and Shanghai processor families, and Intel Xeon processors based on the Penryn and Nehalem micro-architectures and their successors. VMware has published a knowledgebase article that provides more details on this.

III. But how does it do that?
FT works by creating a secondary VM on another ESX host that shares the same virtual disk file as the primary VM, and then transferring the CPU and virtual device inputs from the primary VM (record) to the secondary VM (replay) via a FT logging network interface card (NIC) so it is in sync with the primary VM and ready to take over in case of a failure. While both the primary and secondary VMs receive the same inputs, only the primary VM produces output such as disk writes and network transmits. The secondary VM’s output is suppressed by the hypervisor and is not on the network until it becomes a primary VM, so essentially both VMs function as a single VM.
It’s important to note that not everything that happens on the primary VM is copied to the secondary VM. There are certain actions and instructions that are not relevant to the secondary VM, and to record everything would take up a huge amount of disk space and processing power. Instead, only non-deterministic events are recorded, which include inputs to the VM (disk reads, received network traffic, keystrokes, mouse clicks, etc.,) and certain CPU events (RDTSC, interrupts, etc.). Inputs are then fed to the secondary VM at the same execution point so it is in exactly the same state as the primary VM.
The information from the primary VM is copied to the secondary VM using a special logging network that is configured on each host server. This requires a dedicated gigabit NIC for the FT Logging traffic (although not a hard requirement, this is highly recommended). You could use a shared NIC for FT Logging for small or test/dev environments and for testing the feature. The information that is sent over the FT Logging network between the host can be very intensive depending on the operation of the VM.
VMware has a formula that you can use to determine this:

VMware FT logging bandwidth ~= (Avg disk reads (MB/s) x 8 + Avg network input (Mbps)) x 1.2 [20% headroom]

To get the VM statistics needed for this formula you need to use the performance metrics that are supplied in the vSphere client. The 20% headroom is to allow for CPU events that also need to be transmitted and are not included in the formula. Note that disk or network writes are not used by FT as these do not factor in to the state of the virtual machine.

As you can see, disk reads will typically take up the most bandwidth. If you have a VM that does a lot of disk reading you can reduce the amount of disk read traffic across the FT Logging network by using a special VM parameter. By adding a replay.logReadData = checksum parameter to the VMX file of the VM, this will cause the secondary VM to read data directly from the shared disk, instead of having it transmitted over the FT logging network. For more information on this see this knowledgebase article.

IV. Every rose has its thorn
While Fault Tolerance is a useful technology, it does have many requirements and limitations that you should be aware of. Perhaps the biggest is that it currently only supports single vCPU VMs, which is unfortunate as many big enterprise applications that would benefit from FT usually need multiple vCPU’s (vSMP). Don’t let this discourage you from running FT, however, as you may find that some applications will run just fine with one vCPU on some of the newer, faster processors that are available as detailed here. Also, VMware has mentioned that support for vSMP will come in a future release. It’s no easy task trying to keep a single vCPU in lockstep between hosts and VMware developers need more time to develop methods to try and keep multiple vCPUs in lockstep between hosts. Additional requirements for VMs and hosts are as follows:
Host requirements:

CPUs: Only recent HV-compatible processors (AMD Barcelona+, Intel Harpertown+), processors must be the same family
All hosts must be running the same build of VMware ESX
Storage: shared storage (FC, iSCSI, or NAS)
Hosts must be in an HA-enabled cluster
Network and storage redundancy to improve reliability: NIC teaming, storage multipathing
Separate VMotion NIC and FT logging NIC, each Gigabit Ethernet (10 GB recommended). Hence, minimum of 4 NICs (VMotion, FT Logging, two for VM traffic/Service Console)
CPU clock speeds between the two ESX hosts must be within 400 Mhz of each other.

VM requirements:

VMs must be single-processor (no vSMP)
All VM disks must be “thick” (fully-allocated) and not thin; if a VM has a thin disk it will be converted to thick when FT is enabled.
No non-replayable devices (USB, sound, physical CD-ROM, physical floppy, physical Raw Device Mappings)
Make sure paravirtualization is not enabled by default (Ubuntu Linux 7/8 and SUSE Linux 10)
Most guest operating systems are supported with the following exceptions that apply only to hosts with third generation AMD Opteron processors (i.e. Barcelona, Budapest, Shanghai): Windows XP (32-bit), Windows 2000, Solaris 10 (32-bit). See this KB article for more.

In addition to these requirements your hosts must also be licensed to use the FT feature, which is only included in the Advanced, Enterprise and Enterprise Plus editions of vSphere.

V. How to use Fault Tolerance in your environment
Now that you know what FT does, you’ll need to decide how you will use it in your environment. Because of high overhead and limitations of FT you will want to use it sparingly. FT could be used in some cases to replace existing Microsoft Cluster Server (MSCS) implementations, but it’s important to note what FT does not do, which is to protect against application failure on a VM. It only protects against a host failure.
If protection for application failure is something you need, then a solution like MSCS would be better for you. FT is only meant to keep a VM running if there is a problem with the underlying host hardware. If protecting against an operating system failure is something you need, than VMware High Availability (HA) is what you want, as it can detect unresponsive VMs and restart them on the same host server.
FT and HA can be used together to provide maximum protection. If both the primary host and secondary host failed at the same time, HA would restart the VM on another operable host and spawn a new secondary VM.

VI. Important notes
One important thing to note: If you experience an OS failure on the primary VM, like a Windows Blue Screen Of Death (BSOD), the secondary VM will also experience the failure as it is an identical copy of the primary. The HA virtual machine monitor will detect this, however, restart the primary VM, and then spawn a new secondary VM.
Another important note: FT does not protect against a storage failure. Since the VMs on both hosts use the same storage and virtual disk file it is a single point of failure. Therefore it’s important to have as much redundancy as possible to prevent this, such as dual storage adapters in your host servers attached to separate switches, known as multi-pathing). If a path to the SAN fails on one host, FT will detect this and switch over to the secondary VM, but this is not a desirable situation. Furthermore if there was a complete SAN failure or problem with the VM’s LUN, the FT feature would not protect against this.

VII. So should you actually use FT? Enter SiteSurvey
Now that you’ve read all this, you might be wondering if you meet the many requirements to use FT in your own environment. VMware provides a utility called SiteSurvey that will look at your infrastructure and see if it is capable of running FT. It is available as either a Windows or Linux download and once you install and run it, you will be prompted to connect to a vCenter Server. Once it connects to the vCenter Server you can choose from your available clusters to generate a SiteSurvery report that shows whether or not your hosts support FT and if the hosts and VMs meet the individual prerequisites to use the feature.
You can also click on links in the report that will give you detailed information about all the prerequisites along with compatible CPU charts. These links go to VMware’s website and display the help document for the SiteSurvey utility, which is full of great information, including some of the following prerequisites for FT.

The vLockstep technology used by FT requires the physical processor extensions added to the latest processors from Intel and AMD. In order to run FT, a host must have an FT-capable processor, and both hosts running an FT VM pair must be in the same processor family.
When ESX hosts are used together in an FT cluster, their processor speeds must be matched fairly closely to ensure that the hosts can stay in sync. VMware SiteSurvey will flag any CPU speeds that are different by more than 400 MHz.
ESX hosts running the FT VM pair must be running at least ESX 4.0, and must be running the same build number of ESX.
FT requires each member of the FT cluster to have a minimum of two NICs with speeds of at least 1 Gb per second. Each NIC must also be on the same network.
FT requires each member of the FT cluster to have two virtual NICs, one for logging and one for VMotion. VMware SiteSurvey will flag ESX hosts which do not contain as least two virtual NICs.
ESX hosts used together as a FT cluster must share storage for the protected VMs. For this reason VMware SiteSurvey lists the shared storage it detects for each ESX host and flags hosts that do not have shared storage in common. In addition, a FT-protected VM must itself be stored on shared storage and any disks connected to it must be shared storage.
At this time, FT only supports single-processor virtual machines. VMware SiteSurvey flags virtual machines that are configured with more than one processor. To use FT with those VMs, you must reconfigure them as single-CPU VMs.
FT will not work with virtual disks backed with thin-provisioned storage or disks that do not have clustering features enabled. When you turn on FT, the conversion to the appropriate disk format is performed by default.
Snapshots must be removed before FT can be enabled on a virtual machine. In addition, it is not possible to take snapshots of virtual machines on which FT is enabled.
FT is not supported with virtual machines that have CD-ROM or floppy virtual devices backed by a physical or remote device. To use FT with a virtual machine with this issue, remove the CD-ROM or floppy virtual device or reconfigure the backing with an ISO installed on shared storage.
Physical RDM is not supported with FT. You may only use virtual RDMs.
Paravirtualized guests are not supported with FT. To use FT with a virtual machine with this issue, reconfigure the virtual machine without a VMI ROM.
N_Port ID Virtualization (NPIV) is not supported with FT. To use FT with a virtual machine with this issue, disable the NPIV configuration of the virtual machine.

Below is some sample output from the SiteSurvey utility showing host and VM compatibility with FT and what features and components are compatible or not:

Another method for checking to see if your hosts meet the FT requirements is to use the vCenter Server Profile Compliance tool. To use this method, select your cluster in the left pane of the vSphere Client, then in the right pane select the Profile Compliance tab. Click the Check Compliance Now link and it will begin checking your hosts for compliance including FT as shown below:

VIII. Are we there yet? Turning on Fault Tolerance
Once you meet the requirements, implementing FT is fairly simple. A prerequisite for enabling FT is that your cluster must have HA enabled. You simply select a VM in your cluster, right-click on it, select Fault Tolerance and then select “Turn On Fault Tolerance.”

A secondary VM will then be created on another host. Once it’s complete you will see a new Fault Tolerance section on the Summary tab of the VM that will display information including FT status, secondary VM location (host), CPU and memory in use by the secondary VM, the secondary VM lag time (how far behind the primary it is in seconds) and the bandwidth in use for FT logging.

Once you have enabled FT there are alarms available that you can use to check for specific conditions such as FT state, latency, secondary VM status and more.

VIII. Fault Tolerance tips and tricks
Some additional tips and tidbits that will help you understand and implement FT are listed below.

Before you enable FT be aware of one important limitation, VMware currently recommends that you do not use FT in a cluster that consists of a mix of ESX and ESXi hosts. The reason is that ESX hosts might become incompatible with ESXi hosts for FT purposes after they are patched, even when patched to the same level. This is a result of the patching process and will be resolved in a future release so that compatible ESX and ESXi versions are able to interoperate with FT even though patch numbers do not match exactly. Until this is resolved you will need to take this into consideration if you plan on using FT and make sure you adjust your clusters that will have FT enabled VMs so they only consist of only ESX or ESXi hosts and not both.
VMware spent a lot of time working with Intel/AMD to refine their physical processors so VMware could implement its vLockstep technology, which replicates non-deterministic transactions between the processors by reproducing the CPU instructions on the other processor. All data is synchronized so there is no loss of data or transactions between the two systems. In the event of a hardware failure you may have an IP packet retransmitted, but there is no interruption in service or data loss as the secondary VM can always reproduce execution of the primary VM up to its last output.
FT does not use a specific CPU feature but requires specific CPU families to function. vLockstep is more of a software solution that relies on some of the underlying functionality of the processors. The software level records the CPU instructions at the VM level and relies on the processor to do so; it has to be very accurate in terms of timing and VMware needed the processors to be modified by Intel and AMD to ensure complete accuracy. The SiteSurvey utility simply looks for certain CPU models and families, but not specific CPU features, to determine if a CPU is compatible with FT. In the future, VMware may update its CPU ID utility to also report if a CPU is FT capable.
Currently there is a restriction that hosts must be running the same build of ESX/ESXi; this is a hard restriction and cannot be avoided. You can use FT between ESX and ESXi as long as they are the same build. Future releases may allow for hosts to have different builds.
VMotion is supported on FT-enabled VMs, but you cannot VMotion both VMs at the same time. Storage VMotion is not supported on FT-enabled VMs. FT is compatible with Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) but will not automatically move the FT-enabled VMs between hosts to ensure reliability. This may change in a future release of FT.
In the case of a split-brain scenarios (i.e. loss of network connectivity between hosts) the secondary VM may try and become the primary resulting in two primary VMs running at the same time. This is prevented by using a lock on a special FT file; once a failure is detected both VMs will try and rename this file, and if the secondary succeeds it becomes the primary and spawns a new secondary. If the secondary fails because the primary is still running and already has the file locked, the secondary VM is killed and a new secondary is spawned on another host.
You can use FT on a vCenter Server running as a VM as long as it is running with a single vCPU.
There is no limit to the amount of FT-enabled hosts in a cluster, but you cannot have FT-enabled VMs span clusters. A future release may support FT-enabled VMs spanning clusters.
There is an API for FT that provides the ability to script certain actions like disabling/enabling FT using PowerShell.
The four FT-enabled VM limit is per host, not per cluster, and is not a hard limit, but is recommended for optimal performance.
The current version of FT is designed to be used between hosts in the same data center, and is not designed to work over wide area network (WAN) links between data centers due to latency issues and failover complications between sites. Future versions may be engineered to allow for FT usage between external data centers.
Be aware that the secondary VM can slow down the primary VM if it is not getting enough CPU resources to keep up. This is noticeable by a lag time of several seconds or more. To resolve this try setting a CPU reservation on the primary VM which will also be applied to the secondary VM and will ensure they will run at the same CPU speed. If the secondary VM slows down to the point that it is severely impacting the performance of the primary VM, FT between the two will cease and a new secondary will be found on another host.
When FT is enabled any memory limits on the primary VM will be removed and a memory reservation will be set equal to the amount of RAM assigned to the VM. You will be unable to change memory limits, shares or reservations on the primary VM while FT is enabled.
Patching hosts can be tricky when using the FT feature because of the requirement that the hosts must have the build level. There are two methods you can use to accomplish this. The simplest method is to temporarily disable FT on any VMs that are using it, update all the hosts in the cluster to the same build level and then reenable FT on the VMs. This method requires FT to be disabled for a longer period of time; a workaround if you have four or more hosts in your cluster is to VMotion your FT enabled VMs so they are all on half your ESX hosts. Then update the hosts without the FT VMs so they are the same build levels. Once that is complete disable FT on the VMs, VMotion them to the updated hosts, reenable FT and a new secondary will be spawned on one of the updated hosts that has the same build level. Once all the FT VMs are moved and reenabled, update the remaining hosts so they are the same build level, and then VMotion the VMs so they are balanced among your hosts.

IX. And there’s more! Additional resources
We’ve provided you with a lot of information on the new FT feature that should help you understand how it works, how to set it up ,and how use it. For even more information on FT you can check out the following resources:
VMware White Papers:

Documentation:

Multimedia:

Utilities

VMware SiteSurvey Tool

VMworld sessions:

Fault Tolerant VMs in VMware Infrastructure: Operation and Best Practices (VMworld 2008, free registration required)
VMware Fault Tolerance Architecture and Performance (BC2961) (VMworld 2009, only available to paid attendees or subscribers)
VMware Fault Tolerance Real-World Use Cases (BC3369) (VMworld 2009, only available to paid attendees or subscribers)
VMware Fault Tolerance - Overview and Best Practices (BC3370) (VMworld 2009, only available to paid attendees or subscribers)
VMware Fault Tolerance - vSphere Workflows and API Considerations (BC3602 - online session) (VMworld 2009, only available to paid attendees or subscribers)

Additional Information:

VMware KB Articles:

2012-05-26T00:29:00.000+05:30

How do I use das.isolationaddress[x]?

by Duncan Epping

Recently I received a question on twitter how the vSphere HA advanced option "das.isolationaddress" should be used. This setting is used when there is the desire or a requirement to specify an additional isolation address. The isolation address is used by a host which "believes" it is isolated. In other words, if a host isn't receiving heartbeats anymore it pings the isolation address to validate if it still has network access or not. If it does still have network access (response from isolation address) then no action is taken, if the isolation address does not respond then the "isolation response" is triggered.

Out of the box the "default gateway" is used as an isolation address. In most cases it is recommended to specify at least one extra isolation address. This would be done as follows:

Right click your vSphere Cluster and select "Edit settings"
Go to the vSphere HA section and click "Advanced options"
Add "das.isolationaddress0" under the option column
And add the "IP Address" of the device you want to use as an isolation address under the value column

Now if you want to specify another isolation address you should add "das.isolationaddress1". In total 10 isolation addresses will be used. Keep in mind that all of these will be pinged in parallel! Many seem to be under the impression that this happens sequential, but that is not the case!

Now if for whatever reason the default gateway should not be used you could disable this by adding the "das.usedefaultisolationaddress" to "false". A usecase for this would be when the default gateway is a "non-pingable" device, in most scenarios it is not needed though to use "das.usedefaultisolationaddress".

I hope this helps when implementing your cluster,

VMware Fault Tolerance FAQ

2012-05-16T13:27:00.002+05:30

Purpose

This article provides information for users of VMware Fault Tolerance (FT). The article contains Frequently Asked Questions that can help to resolve Fault Tolerance related issues.

Resolution

What is VMware Fault Tolerance?

VMware Fault Tolerance is a feature that allows a new level of guest redundancy. Information regarding this feature can be found in the vSphere Availability Guide for your version of ESX.

How do I turn it on?

The feature is enabled on a per virtual machine basis. Instructions for enabling Fault Tolerance can be found in the Turning on Fault Tolerance for Virtual Machines section of the vSphere Availability Guide for your version of ESX.

What happens when I turn on Fault Tolerance?

In very general terms, a second virtual machine is created to work in tandem with the virtual machine you have enabled Fault Tolerance on. This virtual machine resides on a different host in the cluster, and runs in virtual lockstep with the primary virtual machine. When a failure is detected, the second virtual machine takes the place of the first one with the least possible interruption of service. More specific information about how this is achieved can be found in the Protecting Mission-Critical Workloads with VMware Fault Tolerance whitepaper.

Why can't I turn Fault Tolerance on?

VMware Fault Tolerance can be enabled on any virtual machine that resides in a cluster that meets the necessary requirements. If you have difficulty enabling Fault Tolerance for a specific virtual machine, see The Turn on Fault Tolerance option is disabled (1010631).

How do I turn Fault Tolerance off?

Instructions for disabling Fault Tolerance can be found in the article in Disabling or Turning Off VMware FT (1008026).

How do I tell if my environment is ready for Fault Tolerance?

The VMware SiteSurvey Tool is used to check your environment for compliance with VMware Fault Tolerance. It can be downloaded at http://www.vmware.com/download/shared_utilities.html.

Where do I find the product's website?

VMware has a website for the Fault Tolerance product available online here at http://www.vmware.com/products/fault-tolerance/.

What happens during a failure?

When a host running the primary virtual machine fails, a transparent failover occurs to the corresponding secondary virtual machine. During this failover, there is no data loss or noticeable service interruption. In addition, VMware HA automatically restores redundancy by restarting a new secondary virtual machine on another host. Similarly, if the host running the secondary virtual machine fails, VMware HA starts a new secondary virtual machine on a different host. In either case there is no noticeable outage by an end user.

What is the logging time delay between the Primary and Secondary Fault Tolerance virtual machines?

The actual delay is based on the network latency between the Primary and Secondary. vLockstep executes the same instructions on the Primary and Secondary, but because this happens on different hosts, there could be a small latency, but no loss of state. This is typically less than 1 ms. Fault Tolerance includes synchronization to ensure that the Primary and Secondary are synchronized.

In a cluster with more than 3 hosts, can you tell Fault Tolerance where to put the Fault Tolerance virtual machine or does it chose on its own?

You can place the original (or Primary virtual machine). You have full control with DRS or VMotion to assign to it to any node. The placement of the Secondary, when created, is automatic based on the available hosts. But when the secondary is created and placed, you can VMotion it to the preferred host.

What happens if the host containing the primary virtual machine comes back online (after a node failure)?

This node is put back in the pool of available hosts. There is no attempt to start or migrate the primary to that host.

Is the failover from the primary virtual machine to the secondary virtual machine dynamic or does Fault Tolerance restart a virtual machine?

The failover from primary to secondary virtual machine is dynamic, with the secondary continuing execution from the exact point where the primary left off. It happens automatically with no data loss, no downtime, and little delay. Clients see no interruption. After the dynamic failover to the secondary virtual machine, it becomes the new primary virtual machine. A new secondary virtual machine is spawned automatically

Where are Fault Tolerance failover events logged?

All failover events are logged by vCenter.

I encountered an error message that I can't find in the knowledge base. Where else should I check?

The vSphere Availability Guide contains a list of known errors in the Fault Tolerance Error Messages section.

Does Fault Tolerance support Intel Hyper-Threading Technology?Yes, Fault Tolerance does support Intel Hyper-Threading Technology on systems that have it enabled. Enabling or disabling Hyper-Threading has no impact on Fault Tolerance.

What happens if vCenter Server is offline when a failover event occurs?

Once Fault Tolerance is configured for a virtual machine, vCenter Server need not be online for FT to work. Even if vCenter Server is offline, failover will still occur from the primary to the secondary virtual machine. Additionally, the spawning of a new secondary virtual machine will also occur without vCenter Server.

Fault Tolerance Checklist

Required c ESX/ESXi Hardware: Ensure that the processors are supported: AMD Barcelona+, Intel Penryn+ (run the CPU compatibility tool to determine compatibility).

Required c ESX/ESXi Hardware: Ensure that HV (Hardware Virtualization) is enabled in the BIOS.

Optional c ESX/ESXi Hardware: Ensure that power management (also known as power-capping) is turned OFF in the BIOS (performance implications).

Optional c ESX/ESXi Hardware: Ensure that hyper-threading is turned OFF in the BIOS (performance implications).

Required c Storage: Ensure that FT protected virtual machines are on shared storage (FC, iSCSI or NFS). When using NFS, increase timeouts and have a dedicated NIC for NFS traffic.

Required c Storage: Ensure that the datastore is not using physical RDM (Raw Disk Mapping). Virtual RDM is supported.

Required c Storage: Ensure that there is no requirement to use Storage VMotion for VMware FT VMs since Storage VMotion is not supported for VMware FT VMs.

Required c Storage: Ensure that NPIV (N-Port ID Virtualization) is not used since NPIV is not supported with VMware FT.

Optional c Storage: Ensure that virtual disks on VMFS3 are thick-eager zeroed (thin or sparsely allocated will be converted to thick-eager zeroed when VMware FT is enabled requiring additional storage space).

Optional c Storage: Ensure that ISOs used by the VMware FT protected VMs are on shared storage accessible to both primary and secondary VMs (else errors reported on secondary as if there is no media, which might be acceptable).

Optional c Network: Ensure that at least two NICs are used (NIC teaming) for ESX management/VMotion and VMware FT logging. VMware recommends four VMkernel NICs: two dedicated for VMware VMotion and two dedicated for VMware FT.

Required c Network: Ensure that at least gigabit NICs are used (10 Gbit NICs can be used as well as jumbo frames enabled for better performance).

Optional c Redundancy: Ensure that the environment does not have a single point of failure (i.e. use NIC teaming, multiple network switches, and storage multipathing).

Required c vCenter Server: Ensure that the primary and secondary ESX hosts and virtual machines are in an HA-enabled cluster.

Required c vCenter Server: Ensure that there is no requirement to use DRS for VMware FT protected virtual machines; in this release VMware FT cannot be used with VMware DRS (although manual VMotion is allowed).

Required c vCenter Server: Ensure that host certificate checking is enabled (enabled by default) before you add the ESX/ESXi host to vCenter Server.

Required c ESX/ESXi: Ensure that the primary and secondary ESX/ESXi hosts are running the same build of VMware ESX/ESXi.

Required c Virtual Machines: Ensure that the virtual machines are NOT using more than 1 vCPU (SMP is not supported).

Required c Virtual Machines: Ensure that there is no user requirement to use NPT/EPT (Nested Page Tables/Extended Page Tables) since VMware FT disables NPT/EPT on the ESX host.

Required c Virtual Machines: Ensure that there is no user requirement to hot add or remove devices since hot plugging devices cannot be done with VMware FT.

Required c Virtual Machines: Ensure that there is no user requirement to use USB (USB must be disabled) and sound devices (must not be configured) since these are not supported for ecord/Replay (and VMware FT).

Required c Virtual Machines: Ensure that there is no user requirement to have virtual machine snapshots since these are not supported for VMware FT. Delete snapshots from existing virtual machines before protecting with VMware FT.

Required c Virtual Machines: Ensure that virtual machine hardware is upgraded to v7.

Optional c Virtual Machines: Ensure that there are will be no more than four (to eight) VMware FT enabled virtual machine primaries or secondaries on any single ESX/ESXi host (suggested general guideline based on ESX/ESXi host and VM size and workloads which can vary).

Required c Guest OS: Ensure that the virtual machines do not use a paravirtualized guest OS.

Required c 3rd Party: Ensure MSCS clustered virtual machines will have MSCS clustering removed prior to protecting with VMware FT (and make sure that the virtual machines are not SMP).

Comparison between VMFS3 & VMFS5

2012-05-14T13:40:00.003+05:30

Posted on May 14, 2012

Comparison between VMFS3 & VMFS5

VMFS3	VMFS5
Single Largest extent of 2TB less 512bytes Uses MSDOS partition table Supports 64TB Spanned Volume (32 extents x 2TB) Different block size based on the datastore size (1MB/2MB/4MB/8MB) Max size of RDM in physical compatibility mode would be 2TB less 512bytes.	Single largest extent of 64TB Uses GPT partition table Supports 64TB Spanned Volume (32 extents with any size combination) Unified 1MB Block Size Performance improvements in comparison with VMFS3 Max size of RDM in virtual compatibility mode would be 2TB less 512bytes. Max size of RDM in physical compatibility mode would be 64TB.

You will use VMFS3 if you have a vSphere environment which is mix of vSphere 4.x (also 3.x) & 5.x hosts. Presently VMFS5 datastores cannot be accessible to hosts running an ESXi version less than vSphere 5.0
You can upgrade from VMFS3 to VMFS5 but cannot downgrade.
On upgrading a VMFS3 datastore, the datastore starts to use GPT partition format only after the datastore has been extended (within the extent) beyond 2TB (less 512bytes). Not sure if the behaviour is similar for a spanned volume as well, but I believe that is how it should behave.
Storage vMotion (migration across datastores) between a VMFS3 and VMFS5 volume is supported if you are using a vSphere 5.x host.
vMotion (migration across hosts) in vSphere 5.x is supported in either cases when shared storage is VMFS3 or VMFS5.

From http://virtual-drive.in

Fault Tolerance

2012-05-14T12:35:00.000+05:30

Fault Tolerance

Posted on May 14, 2012

Fault Tolerance (FT) is a feature of vSphere HA cluster. Hence to be able to use FT you need to configure an HA cluster first. FT is enabled on those VMs which need a higher level of protection. On enabling FT on the selected VM, a selected VM becomes primary and a new secondary VM is created on one of the hosts in the HA cluster.
For being able to configure FT on VMs:

Configure a VMKernel portgroup enabled for FT Logging on all ESXi hosts which would host FT VMs
Virtual disks on FT VMs have to be “Thick Provisioned Eager Zeroed”
ISO/Floppy images have to be stored on Shared Storage
Hosts in cluster Should meet vMotion requirements, (again I don’t think this is requirement per se but would be very beneficial)

FAQs on FT VMs:
Q. Does FT support vSMP on VMs?
A. No. VMs with vSMP cannot be enabled for FT. i.e. VMs with more than 1 vCPU cannot be protected with FT.
Q. Is FT supported on AMD processors.
A. Yes, both Intel & AMD processors are supported for FT. The VMware’s KB#1008027 article lists what processors and guest operating systems are supported for FT.
Q. How many FT VMs can be hosted on a single ESXi host?
A. Maximum 4 FT VMs supported per ESXi host (either Primaries or Secondaries).
Q. What is a primary VM?
A. Primary VM is a VM which is serving the user requests. The access to this VM is always read-write.
Q. What is a secondary VM?
A. Secondary is a backup VM, which is promoted to primary in case of (original) Primary VM failure. When it is a Secondary VM, the access to this VM is always read-only.

From: http://virtual-drive.in/

Vmware Admin Interview Questions & Answers

2012-05-02T10:25:00.001+05:30

1. VMWare Kernel is a Proprietary Kenral and is not based on any of the UNIX operating systems, it's a kernel developed by VMWare Company.

2. The VMKernel can't boot it by itself, so that it takes the help of the 3rd party operating system. In VMWare case the kernel is booted by RedHat Linux operating system which is known as service console.

3. The service console is developed based up on Redhat Linux Operating system, it is used to manage the VMKernel

4. To restart webaccess service on vmware
service vmware-webaccess restart – this will restart apache tomcat app

5. To restart ssh service on vmware
service sshd restart

6. To restart host agent(vmware-hostd) on vmware esx server
service mgmt-vmware restart

7. Path for the struts-config.xml
/usr/lib/vmware/webAccess/tomcat/apache-tomcat-5.5.17/webapps/ui/WEB-INF/

8. To start the scripted install the command is
esx ks=nfs:111.222.333.444:/data/KS.config ksdevice=eth0
location device name

9. Virtual Network in Simple……………….

Virtual Nic(s) on Virtual Machine(s) ----->

Physical Nic on the ESX Server (Virtual Switch - 56 Ports) ----->

Physical Switch Port Should be trunked with all the VLANS to which the VM's need access

All the ESX servers should be configured with Same number of Physical Nics (vSwitches) and Connectivity also should be same, So that vMotion succeeds
All the Virtual Machines are connected to one vSwitch with Different VLANS, this means the Physical Nic(vSwitch) needs to be trunked with the same VLANS on the Physical Switch Port

10 What are the three port groups present in ESX server networking
   1. Virtual Machine Port Group - Used for Virtual Machine Network
   2. Service Console Port Group - Used for Service Console Communications
   3. VMKernel Port Group - Used for VMotion, iSCSI, NFS Communications

11. What is the use of a Port Group?
The port group segregates the type of communication.

12. What are the type of communications which requires an IP address for sure ?
Service Console and VMKernel (VMotion and iSCSI), these communications does not happen without an ip address (Whether it is a single or dedicated)

13. In the ESX Server licensing features VMotion License is showing as Not used, why?
Even though the license box is selected, it shows as "License Not Used" until, you enable the VMotion option for specific vSwitch

14. How the Virtual Machineort group communication works ?

All the vm's which are configured in VM Port Group are able to connect to the physical machines on the network. So this port group enables communication between vSwitch and Physical Switch to connect vm's to Physical Machine's

15. What is a VLAN ?
A VLAN is a logical configuration on the switch port to segment the IP Traffic. For this to happen, the port must be trunked with the correct VLAN ID.

16. Does the vSwitches support VLAN Tagging? Why?
Yes, The vSwitches support VLAN Tagging, otherwise if the virtual machines in an esx host are connected to different VLANS, we need to install a separate physical nic (vSwitch) for every VLAN. That is the reason vmware included the VLANtagging for vSwitches. So every vSwitch supports upto 1016 ports, and BTW they can support 1016 VLANS if needed, but an ESX server doesn’t support that many VM’s. :)

17. What is Promiscuous Mode on vSwitch ? What happens if it sets to Accept?
If the promiscuous mode set to Accept, all the communication is visible to all the virtual machines, in other words all the packets are sent to all the ports on vSwitch
If the promiscuous mode set to Reject, the packets are sent to inteded port, so that the intended virtual machine was able to see the communication.

18. What is MAC address Changes ? What happens if it is set to Accept ?
When we create a virtual machine the configuration wizard generates a MAC address for that machine, you can see it in the .vmx (VM Config) file. If it doesn't matches with the MAC address in the OS this setting does not allow incoming traffic to the VM. So by setting Reject Option both MAC addresses will be remains same, and the incoming traffic will be allowed to the VM.

19. What is Forged Transmits ? What happens if it is set to Accept ?
When we create a virtual machine the configuration wizard generates a MAC address for that machine, you can see it in the .vmx (VM Config) file. If it doesn't matches with the MAC address in the OS this setting does not allow outgoing traffic from the VM. So by setting Reject Option both MAC addresses will be remains same, and the outgoing traffic will be allowed from the VM.

20. What are the core services of VC ?
VM provisioning , Task Scheduling and Event Logging

21. Can we do vMotion between two datacenters ? If possible how it will be?
Yes we can do vMotion between two datacenters, but the mandatory requirement is the VM should be powered off.

22. What is VC agent? and what service it is corresponded to? What are the minimum req's for VC agent installation ?
VC agent is an agent installed on ESX server which enables communication between VC and ESX server.
The daemon associated with it is called vmware-hostd , and the service which corresponds to it is called as mgmt-vmware, in the event of VC agent failure just restart the service by typing the following command at the service console

" service mgmt-vmware restart "
VC agent installed on the ESX server when we add it to the VC, so at the time of installtion if you are getting an error like " VC Agent service failed to install ", check the /Opt size whether it is sufficient or not.

23. How can you edit VI Client Settings and VC Server Settings ?
Click Edit Menu on VC and Select Client Settings to change VI settings
Click Administration Menu on VC and Select VC Management Server Configuration to Change VC Settings

24. What are the files that make a Virtual Machine ?
     .vmx - Virtual Machine Configuration File
     .nvram - Virtual Machine BIOS
     .vmdk - Virtual Machine Disk file
     .vswp - Virtual Machine Swap File
     .vmsd - Virtual MAchine Snapshot Database
     .vmsn - Virtual Machine Snapshot file
     .vmss - Virtual Machine Suspended State file
     .vmware.log - Current Log File
     .vmware-#.log - Old Log file

25. What are the devices that can be added while the virtual Machine running
In VI 3.5 we can add Hard Disk and NIC's while the machine running.

In vSphere 4.0 we can add Memory and Processor along with HDD and NIC's while the machine running

26. How to set the time delay for BIOS screen for a Virtual Machine?
Right Click on VM, select edit settings, choose options tab and select boot option, set the delay how much you want.

27. What is a template ?
We can convert a VM into Template, and it cannot be powered on once its changed to template. This is used to quick provisioning of VM's.

23. What to do to customize the windows virtual machine clone,?
copy the sysprep files to Virtual center directory on the server, so that the wizard will take the advantage of it.

24. What to do to customize the linux/unix virtual machine clone,?
VC itself includes the customization tools, as these operating systems are available as open source.

25. Does cloning from template happens between two datacenters ?
Yes.. it can, if the template in one datacenter, we can deploy the vm from that template in another datacenter without any problem.

26. What are the common issues with snapshots? What stops from taking a snapshot and how to fix it ?
If you configure the VM with Mapped LUN's, then the snapshot failed. If it is mapped as virtual then we can take a snapshot of it.
If you configure the VM with Mapped LUN's as physical, you need to remove it to take a snapshot.

27. What are the settings that are taken into to consideration when we initiate a snapshot ?
Virtual Machine Configuration (What hardware is attached to it)
State of the Virtual Machine Hard Disk file ( To revert back if needed)
State of the Virtual Machine Memory (if it is powered on)

28. What are the requirements for Converting a Physical machine to VM ?
An agent needs to be installed on the Physical machine
VI client needs to be installed with Converter Plug-in
A server to import/export virtual machines

29. What is VMWare consolidated backup ?
It is a backup framework, that supports 3rd party utilities to take backups of ESX servers and Virtual Machines. Its not a backup service.

The user must be member of administrator, The user should have "Logon as service" privileges - To give a user these privileges,open local sec policy, select Logon as service policy and add the user the user should have read access to AD to send queries

Migrating virtual machines with Raw Device Mappings (RDMs)

2011-12-24T11:20:00.000+05:30

Migrating virtual machines with Raw Device Mappings (RDMs)

Purpose

This article discusses some of the common questions that arise when migrating virtual machines that utilize Raw Device Mappings (RDMs).

Migrating of virtual machines with RDMs can be performed in three ways:

Warm migration (vMotion) with the virtual machine powered on.
Cold migration with the virtual machine powered off.
Storage migration (Storage vMotion) with the virtual machine powered on.

Resolution

vMotion

Files for a virtual machine are not relocated when it is vMotioned.
The virtual machine is re-registered to the destination host.
Any RDMs remain as RDMs when the virtual machine is registered to another host. That is, no changes to the virtual machine itself are made.

Cold Migration

With file relocation:

Any non-RDM virtual disks are physically moved to the destination.
The virtual machine configuration files are physically moved to the destination.
Raw LUNs themselves cannot be moved, as they are raw disks presented from the SAN. However the pointer files (RDMs) can be relocated if required.
When performing a cold migration of a virtual machine with RDMs attached to it, the contents of the raw LUN mapped by the RDM are copied into a new .vmdk file at the destination, effectively converting or cloning a raw LUN into a virtual disk. This also applies when the virtual machine is not moving between ESX hosts. In this process, your original raw LUN is left intact. However, the virtual machine no longer reads or writes to it. Instead, the newly-created virtual disk is used.
If you wish to cold migrate a virtual machine without cloning or converting its RDMs, remove them from the configuration of the virtual machine before migrating. You can delete the RDM from the disk when removing it (the raw LUN contents are not changed). Re-add them to the configuration when completed.

Without file relocation:

The virtual machine registration changes, but the files are left untouched.

Cloning

If you want to clone a virtual machine without its RDMs, remove them from the configuration of the virtual machine before migrating. You can delete the RDM from the disk when removing it (the raw LUN contents are not changed, only the RDM mapping file is deleted). Re-add them to the configuration when completed.

Storage vMotion

When you perform Storage vMotion, the virtual machine files are physically relocated to a destination datastore. The same host retains ownership or registration of the virtual machine after Storage vMotion completes.
For Virtual Infrastructure 3.5, Virtual Disks and Virtual and Physical Mode RDM pointer files can be relocated to the destination datastore but cannot be converted to thick-provisioned or thin-provisioned disks during migration.The RDM pointer files of the virtual machine remain as RDM pointer files when the process completes.
For vSphere 4.0 and higher, Virtual Disks and Virtual Mode RDM pointer files can be relocated to the destination datastore, and can be converted to thick-provisioned or thin-provisioned disks during migration as long as the destination is not an NFS datastore. Physical Mode RDM pointer files can be relocated to the destination datastore, but cannot be converted.

For instructions on using Storage vMotion, see Moving virtual machines with Storage vMotion (1005544).

This table summarizes the available options and requirements:

Storage vMotion (SvMotion)	VirtualCenter 2.5	vCenter Server 4.x	RDM virtual compatibility mode	RDM physical compatibility mode	Can the virtual machine change hosts?	Virtual machine Snapshots
ESX/ESXi 3.5	Supported using the remote CLI script:svmotion.pl.	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Virtual machine must not have snapshots while performing SvMotion.
ESX/ESXi 4.0 and higher	Not supported: VirtualCenter 2.5 cannot manage ESX/ESXi 4.0 and higher hosts.	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Virtual machine must not have snapshots while performing SvMotion.

Note: Storage vMotion of virtual machines using virtual compatibility mode RDMs is supported, however clustered applications or clustered virtual machine configurations do not support Storage vMotion.

For information about the Storage vMotion CLI script, see:

Storage vMotion Remote Command-Line Syntax in the Basic System Administration Guide for your version of VMware ESX.
The vSphere Command-Line Interface Documentation .

For Storage vMotion requirements and limitations, see the Storage vMotion Requirements and Limitations section of theBasic System Administration Guide for your version of ESX.

Additional Information

Snapshots

Ensure that snapshots are committed before performing storage migrations, especially if you are removing mappings or disks from your virtual machine configuration and later re-adding them. During re-addition of the respective disk, the VMware Infrastructure or vSphere Client does not allow you to re-select a specific (the previous) snapshot level or .vmdkfile to add back to the virtual machine configuration.

Block size and capacity limitations of your destination datastore

Raw Device Mappings occasionally represent large raw LUNs. If you clone virtual machine with an RDM still attached, the contents of the raw LUN mapped by the RDM are copied into a new virtual disk (.vmdk) file at the destination. Converting a RDM into a virtual disk (.vmdk) file does not succeed if your destination or target datastore does not have the capability of storing single contiguous files as large as the raw LUN. Large virtual disks have the same requirements or constraints.

For example, if your destination datastore is VMFS 3 created with a 2 MB block size and the RDM or virtual disk being converted or migrated is 640 GB, the process fails. A VMFS 3 block size of 4 MB or higher is required so you can store files larger than 512 GB. For more information, see Block size limitations of a VMFS datastore (1003565).

vCenter Server Installation On Windows 7

2011-12-14T22:36:00.000+05:30

Warning: This hacking is not supported by VMware !!!

1. extract iso image of vCenter (e.g. in 7zip or in WinRar) to any folder in destination machine

2. Download the Msi Editor application for editing msi file and install

e.g. from http://www.instedit.com/download.html

3. run this application and open file …\vpx\VMware vCenter Server.msi

4. in Tables click on item “LaunchCondition”

5. on the right find row with text:

“Installed Or (VersionNT>=501 And VersionNT < 600) Or (VersionNT = 600 And MsiNTProductType <> 1) Or (VersionNT = 601 And MsiNTProductType = 3)”

and modify it to:

“Installed Or (VersionNT>=501) Or (VersionNT = 600 And MsiNTProductType <> 1) Or (VersionNT = 601 And MsiNTProductType = 3)”

after that save and close

6. download 64-bit verison of Microsoft AD LDS (new name for ADAM) from:

Windows Vista:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=e1b7f0a5-2131-44fd-9dde-fa146154e13a

Windows 7:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=a45059af-47a8-4c96-afe3-93dab7b5b658

and install

7. run ..\autorun.exe to install vCenter

Cheers

Studying for the VCP5 exam

2011-10-09T22:34:00.000+05:30

Even though the VCP5 exam is only 5 weeks old at the time of writing, there are some amazing resources already available to help with those preparing for the exam.

I've always been an advocate of trying to prepare yourself using the official resources that VMware make available - the exam blueprint tells you what aspects of vSphere 5 you will get tested on, the exam format, number of questions, time limit, and the scoring system. The exam blueprint makes references to the official vSphere 5 documentation, which VMware validate the exam items against, and the mock exam gives a decent indication of the exam format. The VCP community forum is an excellent way of asking VCP5-related questions and getting furter information.
VCP5 homepage
VCP5 exam blueprint
VCP5 mock exam
VCP community forum
vSphere 5 documentation

Something that VMware don't publish is an expanded exam blueprint that includes all the relevant study notes, however there are a number of sites where people have done exactly that - be careful when using these study notes in case they're not accurate in comparison to the official documentation.
Forbes Guthrie's vReference documentation notes for vSphere 5
Prep Guide for VCP5.0
Andre Mauro's vInfrastructure VCP5 notes

There are a number of people in the VMware community that write and publish their own practice questions, normally as part of their own preparations - it should be noted that these do not necessarily indicate the types and styles of questions you will get in the real exam, and the accuracy of these practice exams cannot be guaranteed either.
Robert Stothard's VCP5 practice questions
Simon Long's VCP5 practice exams
Paul McSharry's VCP5 practice questions

To finish, here are a couple of exam experience blog posts from people that have taken the exam themselves - I'll post my own review once I've taken the exam myself!
Eric Sloof's VCP5 exam experience
Brian Tobia's VCP5 exam thoughts and experience

Best of luck....!

Introduction to VMware vSphere 5

2011-10-01T19:09:00.000+05:30

Introduction to VMware vSphere 5

CLARiiON Integration With VMware ESX Server

2011-09-30T16:57:00.002+05:30

Emc Clariion Integration with Vmware Esx Server

http://www.vmware.com/pdf/clariion_wp_eng.pdf

VLAN Configuration on Virtual Switch, Physical Switch, and Virtual Machines

2011-09-28T14:51:00.002+05:30

VLAN Configuration on Virtual Switch, Physical Switch, and Virtual Machines

Purpose

This article describes the various VLAN tagging methods used with ESX/ESXi.

Virtual LAN (VLAN) implementation is recommended in ESX/ESXi networking environments because:

It integrates ESX/ESXi into a pre-existing network
It secures network traffic
It reduces network traffic congestion
iSCSI traffic requires isolated network

Resolution

There are three methods of VLAN tagging that can be configured on ESXi:

External Switch Tagging (EST)
Virtual Switch Tagging (VST)
Virtual Guest Tagging (VGT)

External Switch Tagging

All VLAN tagging of packets is performed on the physical switch.
ESX host network adapters are connected to access ports on the physical switch.
The portroups connected to the virtual switch must have their VLAN ID set to 0.
For more information, see Sample configuration - ESX/ESXi connecting to physical switch via VLAN access mode and external switch VLAN tagging (EST Mode) (1004127).
See this example snippet of a code from a Cisco switch port configuration:switchport mode accessswitchport access vlan x

Virtual Switch Tagging

All VLAN tagging of packets is performed by the virtual switch before leaving the ESX/ESXi host.
The ESX host network adapters must be connected to trunk ports on the physical switch.
The portgroups connected to the virtual switch must have an appropriate VLAN ID specified.
For more information, see Configuring a VLAN on a portgroup (1003825).
For a sample of VST, see Sample configuration of virtual switch VLAN tagging (VST Mode) (1004074).
See the following example snippet of code from a Cisco switch port configuration:switchport trunk encapsulation dot1q
switchport mode trunk
switchport trunk allowed vlan x,y,zspanning-tree portfast trunk

Note: The Native VLAN is not tagged and thus requires no VLAN ID to be set on the ESX/ESXi portgroup.

Virtual Guest Tagging

All VLAN tagging is performed by the virtual machine.
You must install an 802.1Q VLAN trunking driver inside the virtual machine.
VLAN tags are preserved between the virtual machine networking stack and external switch when frames are passed to/from virtual switches.
Physical switch ports are set to trunk port.
For more information, see Sample configuration of virtual machine VLAN tagging (VGT Mode) (1004252).
See this example snippet of code from a Cisco switch port configuration:switchport trunk encapsulation dot1q
switchport mode trunk
switchport trunk allowed vlan x,y,zspanning-tree portfast trunk

Using vSphere Management Assistant(vMA) to collect ESX and ESXi logs

2011-09-22T22:20:00.000+05:30

Purpose

The VMware vSphere Management Assistant (vMA) can be configured to accept logs from your ESX and ESXi host. For more information about downloading, installing, and configuring vMA, see the vSphere Management Assistant Documentation.

Resolution

Configuring your VMware vSphere Management Assistant (vMA) appliance to collect the logs from an ESX/ESXi host:

Run this command to add the ESX/ESXi host to the vMA appliance:

# sudo vifp addserver [ESX/ESXi IP or HOSTNAME]

You are prompted for the root password for the target system.
Run this command to view the list of ESX/ESXi hosts connected to the vMA appliance.

# sudo vifp listservers
Run this command to enable the vilogger interface and to configure vMA to collect log files from the target ESX/ESXi or vCenter Server hosts according to the specified log policy:
# vilogger enable --server [ESX/ESXi IP or HOSTNAME] --numrotation <ROTATION: 1 to 1024> --maxfilesize <SIZE in MB: 1 to 1024> --collectionperiod <PERIOD in seconds: 10 to 3600>
Where is the ESX/ESXi IP or HOSTNAME is the IP address or hostname of the ESX/ESXi host.

For example, the command with default values is:

# vilogger enable --server [ESX/ESXi IP or HOSTNAME] --numrotation 5 --maxfilesize 5 --collectionperiod 10

In the vMA 4.x versions, the logs are located at /var/log/vmware. In earlier vMA versions, the logs are located at /var/log/syslog.

Each host managed by the vMA appliance has a subdirectory within /var/log/vmware. Each of these subdirectories, in turn, contains the log files, such as hostd.log, messages.log, vmkernel.log, vmkwarning.log, and vpxa.log.

To read the log files, you can use commands such as tail -f. For example, to read the contents of the vpxa.log file, run this command:

# tail -f /var/log/vmware/<FQDN of Host>/vpxa.log

To customize the options for the vilogger command, see the vilogger Daemon and Log Management Commands section of the vSphere Management Assistant Guide.

Additional Information

The syntax of the vilogger command is:

vilogger <command>

Where <command> can be one of the following:

enable         [--server <SERVER>]
               [--logname <LOGNAME>]
               [--collectionperiod <PERIOD in seconds: 10 to 3600>]
               [--numrotation <ROTATION: 1 to 1024>]
               [--maxfilesize <SIZE in MB: 1 to 1024>]
disable        [--server <SERVER>]
               [--logname <LOGNAME>]
               [--force]
list [--server <SERVER>]
[--logname <LOGNAME>]
updatepolicy   [--server <SERVER>]
               [--logname <LOGNAME>]
               [--collectionperiod <PERIOD in seconds: 10 to 3600>]
               [--numrotation <ROTATION: 1 to 1024>]
               [--maxfilesize <SIZE in MB: 1 to 1024>]
help | --help | -h [<command name>]

To increase disk space on an installed vMA appliance refer to How to increase/resize vMA Disks.

Cisco plans virtual switch for Hyper-V in Windows Server 8

2011-09-20T10:08:00.001+05:30

Cisco is collaborating with Microsoft to bring its virtual switch to Hyper-V next year when Windows Server 8 is released. While Cisco’s Nexus 1000V distributed virtual switch already supports VMware software, Hyper-V in Windows Server 2008 R2 does not get the same love. The new support for Hyper-V will only apply to the forthcoming Windows Server 8, which introduces greater ability to integrate third-party modules than its predecessor, according to Cisco.

Click here for Full Story

Vmware User Group Hyderabad

Under Renovation

This Blog Is Under Renovation

Under Renovation

vSphere 6.5 Technical Overview

Using vSphere Host Profiles in the vSphere Web Client

What's new in vSphere 5.1

Mike Laverick's Blog

What's new in vSphere 5.1

Vsphere 5 New Features

Using VMware vCenter Operations Manager to pinpoint and solve issues

Figure A

VMware's First Cloud Certification

VMware's First Cloud Certification

Top 10 Must-Knows for the New VCP-IaaS

My Take on the VCP-IaaS

VMware vSphere Fault Tolerance

VMware vSphere FT Prerequisites

VMware vSphere FT Requirements

VMware vSphere FT Step by Step Example

How to configure NIC teaming in VMware vSphere

How to install patches or updates for your VMware ESX host using Update ...

VMware ESXi 4: How to Add VMFS Datastore Using vSphere Client ( with Screenshots )

VMware ESXi 4: How to Add VMFS Datastore Using vSphere Client ( with Screenshots )

2. Create VMFS Datastore – Select ESX Storage Type

3. Select Disk/LUN

4. Current Disk Layout Configuration

5. VMFS Datastore Name

6. Disk/LUN Formatting

7. Final confirmation – Ready to Complete

8. New ESX datastore Created

VMware Fault Tolerance

How do I use das.isolationaddress[x]?

VMware Fault Tolerance FAQ

Purpose

Resolution

Comparison between VMFS3 & VMFS5

VMFS3

VMFS5

Fault Tolerance

Fault Tolerance

Vmware Admin Interview Questions & Answers

Migrating virtual machines with Raw Device Mappings (RDMs)

Migrating virtual machines with Raw Device Mappings (RDMs)

Purpose

Resolution

vMotion

Cold Migration

Cloning

Storage vMotion

Additional Information

Snapshots

Block size and capacity limitations of your destination datastore

Tags

See Also

vCenter Server Installation On Windows 7

Studying for the VCP5 exam

Introduction to VMware vSphere 5

CLARiiON Integration With VMware ESX Server

Emc Clariion Integration with Vmware Esx Server

VLAN Configuration on Virtual Switch, Physical Switch, and Virtual Machines

VLAN Configuration on Virtual Switch, Physical Switch, and Virtual Machines

Purpose

Resolution

External Switch Tagging

Virtual Switch Tagging

Virtual Guest Tagging

Using vSphere Management Assistant(vMA) to collect ESX and ESXi logs

Purpose

Resolution

Additional Information

Cisco plans virtual switch for Hyper-V in Windows Server 8

This Blog Is

Under Renovation