Dave Convery's Blog

Setting up a Splunk Server to Monitor a VMware Environment

dconvery — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 00:26:15 GMT

In a previous article, I compared syslog servers and decided to use Splunk.
Splunk is easy to set up as a generic Syslog server, but it can be a
pain in the ass getting the winders machines to send to it. There is a
home brewed java based app on the Splunk repository of user submitted
solutions, but I have heard complaints about its stability and decided
that I was going to set out to find a different way to do it.

Dear VMware: Pick a Common (SUPPORTED) Virtual Appliance OS…Please….

dconvery — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 15:24:19 GMT

One of my pet peeves is that each virtual appliance coming out of
VMware is that each different virtual appliance released by them is
based on a different OS. Some of these do not even have documented
methods for updating the OS. We all know that no matter what OS is
running on a system, there will be updates for stability and security.
Almost every time I begin an engagement with a customer and it involves
using a virtual appliance, their security wonks get all pissy with me
and I need to show that I have the latest security patches installed
before I even connect the appliance to their network.

This all started with the HealthCheck Appliance, which is a tool
available to partners. Its running Ubuntu 7.10 Server JEOS. Great! It
is an unsupported, deprecated OS. If you know anything about Ubuntu,
you know that the “Long Term Support” (LTS) versions are released every
other year. So, the latest LTS version is 8.04 and the previous is
6.06. No big deal, right?

Read more…
[
|http://www.dailyhypervisor.com/#|Click me to see the sites.]

Storage Protocol Differences and FCoE Diagrams

dconvery — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 19:14:49 GMT

Just thought I would share these diagrams that I used in a recent training session. I used them to explain the differences in the storage protocols that may be used for a vStorage Cloud and how FCoE works.

VMware ESX Configuration Maximums Comparison Matrix

dconvery — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 13:52:12 GMT

Have you ever needed an easy to reference way to see what the
configuration maximums are for different versions of VMware ESX. I
know I seem to need this all the time. I find it a huge pain to keep
referring to each of the individual VMware documents to get the
answers. Sometimes I also want to see what the changes are between
versions and I can’t seem to memorize this information in my tiny
little brain. So I went ahead and created a “Configuration Maximums
Comparison Matrix” based on the VMware Configuration Maximums for each
version.

You’ll notice some settings don’t have values for each version.
This is because they were not published in the VMware documents. As I
go through some additional documents and extract these values I will
update the document to reflect. For no the document does include
everything from the VMware Configuration maximums published for each of
these Versions:

Running VMware ESX 4 RC in a VMware 6.5.2 VM.

dconvery — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 16:11:31 GMT

I just set up another quick VI4 lab on my laptop for the purposes of
capturing screen shots and testing some things out. I was worried
because I was not able to start VMs in this lab using ESX 4 Beta 2, but
everything is fine again! Here is a screen shot of a Winders 2003 VM
running inside an ESX 4 RC VM which is running inside of Workstation
6.5.2 on an Ubuntu machine.

Installing VMware ESX 4 in Text Mode

dconvery — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 16:10:37 GMT

There are many reasons to install VMware ESX in text mode. The main
reasons I use text mode are that it seems quicker for me and text mode
responds better when using remote console connections, such as iLo,
DRAC or console over IP. Previous versions of VMware used a text mode
that incorporated Anaconda and was very similar to the text mode for
RPM based Linux distributions. The new text mode in ESX 4 is VERY
rudimentary when compared to the earlier versions. Hoever, it performs
very well and is fairly straight forward to use.

The text mode installer uses simple lists of choices. Usually, 1 is
for continue or to answer yes. Some items will have more than one
choice. Here is a screenshot:

SPLUNK! Goes the Syslog Server…

dconvery — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 16:09:29 GMT

The use of a “syslog” server is important in today’s data center.
Most network and SAN switches, along with Unix and Linux servers are
capable of sending logging information to a syslog server. The obvious
reason for a syslog server is to centralize all of your logs. This
enables you to troubleshoot issues more efficiently. Most syslog
servers allow you to do a time-line based analysis of log data so that
you have an enterprise – wide view of all activity. This allows you to
see how different devices interact.

An less obvious reason for a syslog server is for security purposes.
The theory is that an attacker will attempt to elevate to root
privileges and then try to delete or alter logs to hide evidence of the
attack. If all log information is relayed to a syslog server, the hope
is that this data is secured for forensic study, if needed.

vSphere Install and Upgrade Best Practices KB Articles and Links

dconvery — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 16:08:47 GMT

So, I use NewsGator
to aggregate a BAZILLION feeds from several sources, blogs, like this
one, actual news feeds and a bunch of VMware feeds. The VMware feeds
are from the VI:OPS and VMTN
forums. The VMTN forums allow you to create a custom feed by selecting
the RSS link at the bottom right of each page or you can get a feed
from a specific section of the forum by clicking the link on the bottom
left of a list. On of the custom feed options is to get a feed of the
new KB articles.

VMware has released quite a lot of new KB articles surrounding vSphere. They just released nice best practice guidelines for installing or upgrading to ESX 4 and vCenter 4. They are short and to the point. There is also a nice article covering best practices for upgrading an ESX 3.x virtual machine to ESX 4.0. One thing I noticed, but never thought about is this : Read more…

Differences between vSwitches and dvSwitches

dconvery — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 16:08:04 GMT

There are not huge differences between a vNetwork
Standard Switch (vSwitch, vSS) and a vNetwork Distributed Switch
(dvSwitch, vDS). The big thing is the concept of dvSwitches being
centralized in vCenter and using the concept of compliance to assign a
dvSwitch to a host.

Both types of switches provide the following: Read more…

VMTN: I/O Performance in vSphere, Block Sizes and Disk Alignment

dconvery — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 16:07:06 GMT

Yes folks, it rears its ugly head again…Disk Alignment… If you have not read it yet, check out the whitepaper on disk alignment from VMware.

First, chethan from VMware posted a great thread on VMTN
about I/O performance in vSphere. The start of the thread talks about
I/O, then leads into anice discussion about block size. A couple of
weeks ago, Duncan Epping posted a very informative article about block sizes. It convinced me to use 8MB blocks in VMFS designs.

VMware Capacity Planner 2.7 - Lipstick on a Pig

dconvery — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 16:05:52 GMT

Last week’s upgrade / outage of the VMware Capacity Planner Dashboard was a COMPLETE surprise to me. I was trying to access data on Friday with no success. Why? Because I just don’t pay attention to the notices on the front page of the dashboard. Low and behold, the Capacity Planner Dashboard is now available! It has been upgraded to version 2.7 with perty colors and everything!

Capacity Planner 2.7 Dashboard

Read more…

Read more…

VMware Tools status shows as not running after running VMware Consolidated Backup

dconvery — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 01:17:06 GMT

Yesterday, VMware posted a Knowledgebase Article about VMware Tools appearing to go off line after a VCB snapshot is taken. This issue occurs after applying the {font:Arial}{size:10pt}ESX350-200901401-SG {font}{size}hotfix.
The KB Article also says it can occur “for some time after the initial
snapshot” on unpatched hosts, but I have never seen it.

The work-arounds are simple:

restart the mgmt-vmware service (Make sure you don’t have VMs set to auto start)
Log In and log out of the VM, this will cause VMware Tools to kick itself in the pants.
Use the name or UUID lookup method instead of the ipaddr method.

vExpert

dconvery — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 11:13:16 GMT

vExpert