Week 3

Readings

vSphere Basic System Administration:
http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vsphere4/r40/vsp_40_admin_guide.pdf

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Week 2

Readings

ESX and vCenter Server Installation Guide:
http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vsphere4/r40/vsp_40_esx_vc_installation_guide.pdf

ESX Configuration Guide:
http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vsphere4/r40/vsp_40_esx_server_config.pdf

Follow up Information From Last Week's Club Meeting

vMA Resources
http://communities.vmware.com/thread/234641
http://www.vmware.com/support/developer/vima/index.html
http://communities.vmware.com/community/vmtn/vsphere/automationtools/vima

Paravirtualized SCSI and Direct Path Compared
http://professionalvmware.com/2009/08/vmdirectpath-paravirtual-scsi-vsphere-vm-options-and-you/

vSphere Command Line Interface
http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vsphere4/r40/vsp_40_vcli.pdf

vMotion and Change Management
http://viewyonder.com/2009/05/12/vmotion-and-change-management/

Fault Tolerance Resources
http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/perf-vsphere-fault_tolerance.pdf
http://communities.vmware.com/blogs/vmroyale/2009/05/18/vmware-fault-tolerance-requirements-and-limitations

Performance Characterization of VMFS and RDM Using a SAN / Use Cases Also Included

http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/performance_char_vmfs_rdm.pdf

Study Questions

1. Ports
   1. 80 - direct http, redirects to https,
   2. 389 LDAP for DS,
   3. 443 vSphere Client,
   4. 636 Linked mode SSL,
   5. 902 managed hosts, heartbeat,
   6. 902/903 vSphere client to display VM consoles
   7. 8080 WS HTTP
   8. 8443 WS HTTPS
2. Is IPv4 and v6 supported with PXE Boot ESX installation?
   1. No
3. Difference between standard and advanced installs
   1. Standard configures default partitions on single hd/lun, default partitions are sized based on capacity.
   2. Advanced allows you to specify console.vmdk partition settings, kernel options, bootloader location, password.
4. 3 ways to install
   1. Graphical, Text, Scripted
5. In a scripted install what does the default ks-first.cfg script do
   1. The default ks-first.cfg script reformats the /dev/sda disk and sets up default partitioning
6. Differences Between Kickstart and ESX Commands
   1. ESX scripted installation is similar to, but incompatible with Red Hat's kickstart: In general, kickstart and ESX scripts differ as follows: ESX scripts use the UUID format for specifying disks. ESX scripts use MAC addresses to specify network adapters. ESX scripts generally allow file and NFS URLs. ESX command options and their values require an equal sign (=) instead of a space.
7. Required Partitions (Page 61 and 62)
   1. /
   2. /boot
   3. Swap
   4. Vmfs3
   5. Vmkcore
8. Optional Partitions (Page 62)
   1. /home
   2. /tmp
   3. /usr
   4. /var/log
9. For remote DB's
   1. Configure Microsoft SQL Server TCP/IP for JDBC - Protocol Keepalive must be 30000 (Page 78)
10. Advantages of installing vc server in a VM: (Page 89)
    1. Rather than dedicating a separate server to the vCenter Server system, you can place it in a virtual machine running on the same ESX host where your other virtual machines run.
    2. You can provide high availability for the vCenter Server system by using VMware HA.
    3. You can migrate the virtual machine containing the vCenter Server system from one host to another, enabling maintenance and other activities. You can create snapshots of the vCenter Server virtual machine and use them for backups, archiving, and so on.

Networking

1. Name 3 types of network services in ESX
   1. Connecting virtual machines to the physical network and to each other
   2. Connecting VMkernel services (such as NFS, iSCSI, or VMotion) to the physical network.
   3. Running management services for ESX via the service console.
2. Max number of vSwitches per host
   1. 127
3. Default number of ports per vSwitch
   1. 56
4. Max number of port groups per host
   1. 512
5. What type of VLANs can you see on VLAN ID 0
   1. only see untagged (non VLAN)
6. What type of VLAN ID 4095 -
   1. See traffic on any VLAN
7. What traffic does the VMKernel TCP/IP Stack handle -
   1. iSCSI, NFS, and vMotion
8. How do you view the current CDP mode for the a vSwitch
   1. esxcfg-vswitch -b <vSwitch> command.
9. How are private VLANs used between the ESX host and the rest of the network.
   1. To use private VLANs between an ESX host and the rest of the physical network, the physical switch connected to the ESX host needs to be private VLAN-capable and configured with the VLAN IDs being used by ESX for the private VLAN functionality.
10. vSwitch networking policies
    1. Load balancing and failover / Route based on the originating port ID, Route based on ip hash, Route based on source MAC hash
    2. VLAN (vNetwork Distributed Switch only),
    3. Security,
    4. Traffic shaping,
    5. Port blocking policies (vNetwork Distributed Switch only)
11. Traffic Shaping Policy
    1. Average Bandwidth, Peak Bandwidth, Burst Size (Page 50)
12. VMDirectPAth - How many passthrough devices connected per VM?
    1. 2
13. WHat features are unavailable for VM's with VMDirectpath
    1. VMotion
    2. Hot adding and removing of virtual devices
    3. Suspend and resume
    4. Record and replay
    5. Fault tolerance
    6. High availability
    7. DRS (limited availability; the virtual machine can be part of a cluster, but cannot migrate across hosts)

Storage

1. Maximum virtual disk size
   1. 2TB with 8MB block size
2. Maximum file size:
   1. 2TB - 512 bytes with 8MB block size
3. Block size:
   1. 1MB (default), 2MB, 4MB, and 8MB
4. Number of VMFS datastores –
   1. You can have up to 256 VMFS datastores per system, with a minimum volume size of 1.2GB
5. Max Number of hosts per VMFS vol
   1. 32
6. Some of the vSphere Features Not Supported by Storage Type (see table 7-2 of Server Config Guide)
   1. vMotion – No local storage
   2. RDM or VM Cluster – No local storage or NFS
7. iSCSI initiator discovery methods –
   1. Dynamic and Static
8. Max number of extents per datastore –
   1. 32
9. What is PSA
   1. Pluggable Storage Architecture (PSA). The PSA is an open modular framework that coordinates the simultaneous operation of multiple multipathing plugins (MPPs).
10. What is SATP
    1. Storage Array Type Plugins
11. What are the 3 PSP (Path Selection Policy's)
    1. Fixed, MRU, Round Robin
12. What is NPIV
    1. N-Port ID Virtualization: Makes it possible to use the NPIV technology that allows a single Fibre Channel HBA port to register with the Fibre Channel fabric using several worldwide port names (WWPNs).
13. When can you use NPIV
    1. You can use NPIV only for virtual machines with RDM disks.
14. Limitations of RDM's
    1. Not available for block devices or certain RAID devices – RDM uses a SCSI serial number to identify the mapped device. Because block devices and some direct-attach RAID devices do not export serial numbers, they cannot be used with RDMs.
    2. Available with VMFS-2 and VMFS-3 volumes only – RDM requires the VMFS-2 or VMFS-3 format. In ESX, the VMFS-2 file system is read only. Upgrade it to VMFS-3 to use the files that VMFS-2 stores.
    3. No snapshots in physical compatibility mode – If you are using an RDM in physical compatibility mode, you cannot use a snapshot with the disk. Physical compatibility mode allows the virtual machine to manage its own snapshot or mirroring operations. Snapshots are available in virtual mode.
    4. No partition mapping – RDM requires the mapped device to be a whole LUN. Mapping to a partition is not supported.

Security

1. How can using VMware assist with a DoS attack
   1. resource limit on that machine prevents the attack from taking up so much of the hardware resources that the other virtual machines are also affected.
2. What do Default certificates created on ESX use for encryption
   1. SHA-1 with RSA encryption as the signature algorithm.
3. What are the ports for connecting to the Virtual Machine Console through a Firewall
   1. Port 443 communicates with - vmware-authd
   2. Port 902 communicates with vmkauthd
   3. Ports between hosts - 443 (server-to-server migration and provisioning traffic)
   4. 2050–2250 (for HA traffic)
   5. 8000 (for VMotion)
   6. 8042–8045 (for HA traffic)
4. Table 12-1. TCP and UDP Ports (Page 151)
5. Virtual switches and VLANs can protect against the following types of attacks.
   1. MAC Flooding, 802.1q and ISL tagging attacks, double encapsulation, multicast brute force, spanning tree, random frame attacks
6. Service console security recommendations
   1. limit user access, use vSphere client, only use vmware sources to upgrade components you run in the service console

Host Profiles

1. What are host profiles
   1. The host profiles feature creates a profile that encapsulates the host configuration and helps to manage the host configuration, especially in environments where an administrator manages more than one host or cluster in vCenter Server
2. What format is a host profile when you export it
   1. Vpf

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Week 1

Readings

http://www.vmware.com/support/vsphere4/doc/vsp_40_new_feat.html – This is the vSphere 4.0 What’s New Features Guide
http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vsphere4/r40/vsp_40_esx_get_start.pdf -- Getting Started with ESX.
http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vsphere4/r40/vsp_40_esxi_i_get_start.pdf - Getting Started with ESXi Installable
http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vsphere4/r40/vsp_40_intro_vs.pdf - Introduction to VMware vSphere (up to page 27).

Study Questions & Answers

1. What standard does vApps use - Open Virtualization Format (OVF) 1.0 standard
2. What is the requirement for the new Machine Performance Counters Integration into Perfmon - Latest VMware Tools installed in the guest OS
3. What is the new vMA - virtual machine which includes vSphere Command-Line Interface and other prepackaged software that developers and administrators can use to run agents and scripts to manage ESX and ESXi systems. Functions of vMA include noninteractive login, which allows you to use vSphere CLI without entering passwords on command lines and to collect log files from ESX and ESXi servers
4. Name a new feature of VMware Data Recovery - data deduplication
5. Name the 3 new Virtual Hardware features
6. New Virtual Hardware — ESX/ESXi 4.0 introduces a new generation of virtual hardware (virtual machine hardware version 7), which adds significant new features including
   1. New storage virtual devices
   2. Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) virtual devices — Provides support for running Windows Server 2008 Failover Clustering configurations.
   3. IDE virtual device — Ideal for supporting older operating systems that lack SCSI drivers.
   4. VMXNET Generation 3 — See the vNetwork section of this feature list.
   5. Hot plug support for virtual devices and hot add support for memory and virtual CPUs
7. Maximum amount of host memory: 1TB
8. What is VMware Paravirtualized SCSI (PVSCSI) — Paravirtualized SCSI adapters are high-performance storage adapters that offer greater throughput and lower CPU utilization for virtual machines. These adapters are best suited for environments in which guest applications are very I/O intensive.
9. Name the 3 vNetwork Distributed Switch enhancements: Private VLAN Support, Network VMotion, 3rd Party Distributed Switch Support
10. What are the 3 new guests that can be customized: * Windows Server 2008 (32-bit and 64-bit), Ubuntu 8.04, Debian 4.0
11. Name some of the new commands in the vSphere Command-Line Interface: vicfg-dns, vicfg-ntp, vicfg-user, vmware-cmd, and vicfg-iscsi
12. Describe DRS - VMware DRS helps you manage a cluster of physical hosts as a single compute resource. You can assign a
13. virtual machine to a cluster and DRS finds an appropriate host on which to run the virtual machine. DRS places
14. virtual machines in such a way as to ensure that load across the cluster is balanced, and cluster-wide resource
15. allocation policies (for example, reservations, priorities, and limits) are enforced.
16. Describe HA - VMware HA enables quick restart of virtual machines on a different physical server within a cluster
17. automatically if a host fails. All applications within the virtual machines have the high availability benefit,
18. through application clustering.
19. Describe FT - Using VMware vLockstep technology, VMware Fault Tolerance (FT) on the ESX/ESXi host platform provides
20. continuous availability by protecting a virtual machine (the Primary VM) with a shadow copy (Secondary VM)
21. that runs in virtual lockstep on a separate host.
22. Describe DPM - When DPM is enabled, the system compares cluster-level and host-level capacity to the demands of virtual
23. machines running in the cluster. If the resource demands of the running virtual machines can be met by a
24. subset of hosts in the cluster, DPM migrates the virtual machines to this subset and powers down the hosts
25. that are not needed.
26. What is the DVS - A vNetwork Distributed Switch (dvSwitch) functions as a single virtual switch across all associated hosts
27. Layer 2 security options - Enforces what vNICs attached to a port group in a virtual machine can do by controlling capabilities for a promiscuous mode, MAC address changes, or forged transmissions.
28. If a LUN fails when will all VM's fail - if the LUN that has the first extent of the spanned volume. (find blog on extents)
29. When is RDM's useful- SAN snapshot, MSCS
30. Describe vApp - A vApp has the same basic operation as a virtual machine, but can contain multiple virtual machines or appliances. With vApps, you can perform operations on multi-tier applications as separate entities (for example, clone, power on and off, and monitor). vApps package and manage those applications.
31. How does vCenter Server communicate with ESX/i host agents - Throught the vSphere API
32. ESX Hardware req: 64bit, 2GB ram, 1 or more supported net adapters (Broadcom 570xx, Intel Pro 1000), SCSI Adapter, Fibre Channel Adapter, or Internal RAID Controller
33. vSphere client req - 266mhz+, 200MB RAM, 1GB free hd for full, 400mb on temp, gb ethernet recommended
34. Minimum Requirements for vCenter Server
35. CPU – 2 CPUs
36. Processor – 2.0GHz or faster Intel or AMD processor. Processor requirements might be higher if the database runs on the same machine.
37. Memory – 3GB RAM. Memory requirements might be higher if the database runs on the same machine.
38. Disk storage – 2GB. Disk requirements might be higher if the database runs on the same machine.
39. Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express disk requirements – Up to 2GB free disk space to decompress the installation archive. Approximately 1.5GB of these files are deleted after the installation is complete.
40. Networking – Gigabit connection recommended.
41. vCenter Server domain account permissions, Member of the Administrators group, Act as part of the operating system, Log on as a service

Weekly WebEx Session

Topic: VMware VCP4 Study Club
Date: Every Thursday, from Thursday, November 12, 2009 to Thursday, December 24, 2009
Time: 3:00 pm, Eastern Standard Time (GMT -05:00, New York)
Meeting Number: 921 510 655
Meeting Password: vcp4

Please click the link below to see more information, or to join the meeting.-----
To join the online meeting (Now from iPhones too!)-----
1. Go to https://vmware.webex.com/vmware/j.php?ED=124023097&UID=0&PW=44e03d2d3e77
2. Enter your name and email address.
3. Enter the meeting password: vcp4
4. Click "Join Now".-----
To join the teleconference only-----
Provide your phone number when you join the meeting to receive a call back. Alternatively, you can call:
Call-in toll-free number (Premiere): 1-877-647-3411
Attendee access code: 104265-----
For assistance-----
1. Go to https://vmware.webex.com/vmware/mc
2. On the left navigation bar, click "Support".

You can contact me or Trevor Davis at:
dmarotta@vmware.com
1-980-722-5131
Or
tdavis@vmware.com
1- 954-854-2362

To add this meeting to your calendar program (for example Microsoft Outlook), click this link:
https://vmware.webex.com/vmware/j.php?ED=124023097&UID=0&ICS=MI&LD=1&RD=2&ST=1&SHA2=R/kLsDCOdH5642Q7-eMgm0B5FvF0u6WI9YFUl0g1-Ts=

This document is not published by VMware, but valuable none-the-less. See attached.

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Running Enterprise Applications on VMware