FatMin

Latest Vmware Tools Download

I would actually be suprised that I was not aware of this site previously, if I had not ever been to vmware.com and attempted to find a specific software in the past. Needless to say, its rather dificult to find exactly what you are looking for there.

So... apparently vmware calls the latest vmware tools, OSPs, or "Operating System Specific Packages"

The site is below... Navigate to the OS specific to your needs and go to town.

http://packages.vmware.com/tools

 

 

 

 

Considering Alternatives to VMware

Interested in doing some serious virtualization on Cisco's new UCS C-Series line of servers? Seriously, why would'nt you be.  Cisco's UCS C460 M2 server supports up to 4 intel E7-4800 processors -- these are 10 core procs people -- and up to 1tb of memory. Thats 40 cores in 4 RU!

I am eager to get one of these servers, or even one or the two proc models into our lab and test them out. I have been hearing great things about them and think they would be perfect virtualization servers for our non-production infrastructure where we seem to have at least 6 or 7 different QA environments. Plus Vmware and Cicso partnered together on these things.

But slow your roll cowboy, with Vmware's recent licensing announcement regarding Vsphere 5 and vRam limitations, it would take 11 Enterprise plus licenses to utilize 1tb of memory. At 3 to 4k per license you are talking about 40k in licensing for one server. Nasty!

Enter the alternatives in the virtualization world. Citrix ZenServer and Redhat (RHEV-M). Hell I'll even mention Microsoft's Hyper-V.  However, to move to a different technology you need to be able to get your Vmware vms off of ESX and onto your new virtualization flavor of choice.

Here is how to do it in XenServer. Note that I have not tried this in the lab yet, but trust me i will. I will also do the same with RHEV-M, its its only $750 per socket per year.

http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX116603

Sure the alertnatives are not as advanced as Vmware ESX right now, but they making improvements slowly but surely, and I am sure that the recent Vmware licensing announcements are only going to bring more potential customers to other virtualization vendors which will only help to further mature their products.

Find out more about the Cicso USC C-Series via the link below

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/ps10265/ps10493/c_series_comparison.html

 

 

Removing a Virtual Disk from CentOS/RHEL via vSphere Client

When you right click on a VM via the vSphere client and click edit setting you will see your hard disk enumerated as follows:

^{Hard disk 1 - Virtual Disk}

^{Hard disk 2 - Virtual Disk}

However CentOS/RHEL enumerates your disks using a different nomenclature. See below:

<sup>Disk /dev/sda: 21.4 GB, 21474836480 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 2610 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1        1044     8385898+  83  Linux
/dev/sda2            1045        2349    10482412+  83  Linux
/dev/sda3            2350        2610     2096482+  82  Linux swap

Disk /dev/sdb: 268.4 GB, 268435456000 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 32635 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1               1       32635   262140606   83  Linux</sup>

^{[[truncated]]}

While you can assume that the your first disk listed in ESX is your first disk listed via the OS, this is not always the case. You can attempt to compare disk sizes to further determine which disk is which, however the sizes do not always match up.

The best way to identify disks is via the Virtual Device Node, which is visable via the virtual disk properties in ESX and via the command lsscsi in Centos/OS.

More than likely lsscsi is not installed via default so you are going to either need to install via yum, or download a rpm and install. Once installed run as seen below

^{>lsscsi
[0:0:0:0]    disk    VMware   Virtual disk     1.0   /dev/sda
[0:0:1:0]    disk    VMware   Virtual disk     1.0   /dev/sdb
[0:0:2:0]    disk    VMware   Virtual disk     1.0   /dev/sdc
[0:0:3:0]    disk    VMware   Virtual disk     1.0   /dev/sdd}

The first two numbers are unique to the scis contoller and the second two numbers indicate the disk number which can be seen in the disk properties in the vsphere client properties.

For example in vmware Hard disk 4 has a virtual device id of "SCSI (0:3) Hard Disk 4, and by running lsscsi I know for sure that this disk is /dev/sdd. Now I can remove the disk with confidence from esx and have to worry that I removed the wrong disk.

Patching ESXi 4.1 to Update 1 via the VCLI in Linux

In early February VMware release the first update to ESXi 4.1. ESXi 4.1 Update 1 includes additonal drivers, and OS support for RHEL 6 (among others). Also there are a number of bug fixes delivered like random failures on bnx2x nic (yikes). See the entire list below.

http://www.vmware.com/support/vsphere4/doc/vsp_esxi41_u1_rel_notes.html#resolvedissues

Patching ESXi via the VCLI is pretty simple. Below are the steps that i tool to update.

1. Download the Patch here
2. Make sure that your host is in maintenance mode using the following command (vicfg-hostops --server esx30.atlnp1 -operation info)
3. Install Patch (vihostupdate --server <hostname> --install --bundle update-from-esxi4.1-4.1_update01.zip)
4. Wait a bit
   
5. Reboot

You can verify that the patch installed correctly with the command below

vihostupdate --server <hostname> --query

Look for the line below...

ESXi410-Update01            2011-03-23T18:09:05 VMware ESXi 4.1 Complete Update 1 

 

Raising A Virtual Machine From the Dead, or How I Screwed Up a VM and Resurected It

Something really nasty happened to me when I was working on storage vmotioning a ton of VMs onto new datastores. Basically I was not paying attention and tried to manually remove a Virtual Machine from the datastore using the datastore browser. This basically wiped out the .vmx and.vmdk files, leaving only the flat.vmdk file which could not be removed as thankfully it was in use.

Anyway once I had realized what I had done, and got my mini panic attack out of the way, I found the following kb from Vmware. Reference it here.

In order to get your VM back up and running you must create a matching .vmdk file to go with your flat.vmdk file. You do this using the command below. Note that you must know the size of your flat file in bytes.

# ls -l vmdisk0-flat.vmdk (gives you size in bytes)

Create a new virtual disk/vmdk file and a temp flat file.

# vmkfstools -c 4294967296 -a lsilogic -d thin temp.vmdk

Now delete the temp flat file that you just created.

# rm temp-flat.vmdk

Rename your temp.vmdk to match the name of the flat.vmdk from your vm

mv temp.vmdk vmdisk0.vmdk

Now vi the .vmdk file and point it to the flat file at the line below. You may also need to remove the last line if you did not use thin provisioning on the original vm.

# Disk DescriptorFile
version=1
CID=fb183c20
parentCID=ffffffff
createType="vmfs"

# Extent description
RW 8388608 VMFS "vmdisk0-flat.vmdk"

# The Disk Data Base
#DDB

ddb.virtualHWVersion = "4"
ddb.geometry.cylinders = "522"
ddb.geometry.heads = "255"
ddb.geometry.sectors = "63"
ddb.adapterType = "lsilogic"
ddb.thinProvisioned = "1"

Now you can go through the process of creating a new VM via VCenter, only instead of creating a new virtual disk, you use the vmdk file that you just created. You should then be able to power on your rescued VM.

Scary!

 

ESXi 4.1 - Three Ways to Kill a Virtual Machine from the Command Line.

You can log into an esxi 4.1 host and issue the following command to get a list of all running and registered VMs.

# vm-support -x

The vm-support command above will give you the World ID of the VM that you are looking to kill.

# vm-support -X <World_ID> –w <dir>

Another way to kill or shutdown a VM is with the vim-cmd command. Use the command below to find your vmid

vim-cmd vmsvc/getallvms\

Then kill it with...

vim-cmd vmsvc/power.off <vmid>

The nastiest and uncleanest method is to actually kill the unix PPID (parent process id) of the VM. Take a look at the command below and subsitute your VM's name. The PPID is in bold.

# ps | grep  <my_vm_name>
10071899      vmm0:<my_vm_name>
10051474 10071896 mks:<my_vm_name>   /bin/vmx
10084243 10071896 vcpu-0:<my_vm_name> /bin/vmx

Reference here

 

Other HA Configuration Error in ESXi and ESX cluster

Ran into the error below yesterday after rebuilding an ESX 4.0 host as ESXi 4.1 and attempting to enable HA after the newly rebuild ESXi host was added back to the cluster.

Cannot complete the configuration of the HA agent on the host. Other HA configuration error.

Since error message was dissapointingly unspecific, I called VMware Support and asked for their guidance. According to my tech, they are actually getting a lot of calls on this error, as may who are doing in place upgrades to esxi from esx are running into this.

Specfically the error has to do with the fact that ESX has both a Service Console and VMkernel port used for host management, and ESXi only has a VMkernel port. To correct the issue and allow ESXi and ESX to place nice in the same cluster you must add the following.

First under VMkernel Properties make sure that both VMotion and Management traffic have a check mark to indicate that they are enabled.

Second right click on your cluster, and select VMware HA. Then click on Advanced Options and add the following 3 entries.

das.allowNetwork1 = Service Console

das.allowNetwork2 = VMkernel

das. allowVmotionNetworks = true

See screenshot below.

 

 

 

UPDATE: Note that by default the original name of the management port group is,   Management Network. You must change this to VMkernel for this to work.

Quick and Dirty ESXi 4.1 Patching with esxupdate

Most if not all patching for ESX is usually done via Vmware Update Manager, however I downloaded a couple of zip files directly from HP to install when I rebuild my ESX 4.0 cluster as ESX 4.1.

First step is to get your zip files on the ESX host (using scp in my case) and place the box in maintenance mode.

Then using the command below I can determine which updates (or bulletins) will be installed.

_{# esxupdate --bundle  hp-nmi-bundle-1.1.02.zip scan
Applicable bulletins with updates are listed.
----Bulletin ID----- --------Date------- ----------------Summary-----------------
hp-nmi-driver-1.1.02 2010-09-13T01:08:28 HP NMI Sourcing Driver for VMware ESX/ES
Esxupdate local cache states:
 Location: /tmp/updatecache
 Available space: 4087 [MB]}

Then I can do a dry run

_{# esxupdate --bundle  hp-esxi4.1uX-bundle-1.0a.zip stage
Unpacking cross_oem-hp-smx-provider_410.02... ######################################### [100%]}

Then I install

_{# esxupdate --bundle  hp-esxi4.1uX-bundle-1.0a.zip update
Installing packages :cross_oem-hp-smx-provi.. ######################################### [100%]}

 

 

Fat Virtual Machines Suck

Oversized virtual machines suck and here is why. 

http://frankdenneman.nl/2010/12/impact-of-oversized-virtual-machines-part-1/

As a side note, try doing a google image search for fat, its rather awesome.

VCP Practice Test Questions Part 1

I figured that after a good solid two plus years of administering as well as designing, configuring and deploying Vmware ESX that i should get of my rear and finally work on getting my VCP.  A good number for Vmware positions require it nowadays as its a pretty valuable certification, one of the few left other than Cisco.

Anyway, I have been taking a few practice tests and will be posting the questions that I either got wrong, or are pretty sure that I will not get correct if ever asked again.

 

_{Q: To disable a service on a Host's Firewall, what command is used?}

_{A: esxcfg-firewall -d}

_{Q: Which ports does VMware Update Manager use?}

_{A: 8084, 9084, 9087}

_{Q: What command is used to list the current firewall rules on a Host?}

_{A: esxcfg-firewall -q}

_{Q: Strongest block ciphers available to ESX4?}

_{A: 256 bit AES}

_{Q: The /boot partition requires how much free space?}

_{A: 1.25GB}

_{Q: What command is used to close a port in the firewall of an ESX host?}

_{A: esxcfg-firewall -c}

_{Q: vCenter 4 Server minimum requirements are?}

_{A: 2GHz CPU, 3GB RAM, 2GB HD}

_{Q: What is the maximum amount of characters that a vCenter server name should not exceed?}

_{A: 16}

_{Q: What is the default security setting for ESX4?}

_{A: Medium with some outbound ports closed}

_{Q:The minimum amount of disk space required for vCenter Server?}

_{A: 2GB}

_{Q: The minimum recommended space for swap?}

_A:600MB

_{Q: What is the recommended size for the /home partition?}

_{A: 512MB}

_{Q: The maximum amount of RAM that a vSphere Guest can have is?}

_{A: 255GB}

_{Q: Distributed Power Management (DPM) requires which technology to be available on the NIC?}

_{A: WOL (Wake on LAN)}

_{Q: What is the maximum HBA's Supported on VMware vSphere 4 Host?}

_{A: 8}