VMware Communities : Thread List - Enterprise Strategy & Planning

Training Documents for ESX4 & VC4?

upg3 — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 14:16:21 GMT

I've got to give a little training session on ESX4 and Virtual Center4 for some folks who are going to manage their own little ESX4/VC4 environment. Does anyone have any powerpoints or electronic training guides they'd like to share with me?

Or any recommendations other than just going through Virtual Center on the big screen?

Thanks!

Health Check Analyzer Appliance---Where did they hide it?

corpsolv — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 23:01:37 GMT

Does anyone know where they hid the Healtcheck analyzer appliance? We are looking to get the latest version and are having a hard time finding it. We have been all over Partner central and no luck, all we found is the Partner enablement kit so far.

Thanks.

SAN Storage physical Movement Plan with out downtime.

Ravi1987 — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 21:25:25 GMT

Hi we currently using esx 3.5 with 40 TB of Cx4 storage with 60 LUNs on all esx server. We will have a physical movment of all the esx server and storage box after 5 month as our current contract with current building is over.. Currently we have 300 virtual machine running on all vmware Infrastructure.we will have a temporary storage of 50 TB on second building to host virtual infrastructure.Distance between two building is 50 meter. our prime conern is how we can move storage box on other location without downtime.our current plan is configure second storage and mount all luns required on all esx server ,then do the storage migration of all the virtual machne from one san box to other san box.after completion whole storage migration move san box .can any body have other paln for this activity so we can laid out this plan without any downtime.

Suggestions for end to end monitoring solutions

mckenzieaj — Wed, 20 May 2009 06:38:03 GMT

I am looking for suggestions for monitoring solutions for a virtualised environment - but not just for the virtual environment, but something that provides an end-to-end "single pane of glass" overview of the entire P+V infrastructure.

Primarily I want to address the need for a consolidated view showing Status, warnings and alerts of various devices and applications and windows event logs in the infrastructure, along with historical performance reporting. Root cause analysis, capacity analysis and predictive alerts are open to discussion.

Infrastructure Overview

6 ESX Hosts
50 Windows based guests including terminal services and MS infrastructure applications
20 remote sites with site to site VPN's to main office
Dell Blade servers
Dell switches
EMC SAN
predominantly Sonicwall routers, but others as well including Cisco.

Environment steadily growing. Currently using a bunch of software/hardware native products for monitoring, therefore not necessarily seeing issues as they arise.

Budget apparently not huge, but not zero

Not greatly interested in monitoring to the level of remote client PC's

Have started looking at:

Solarwinds - Not a bad product. Provides ok reporting on ESX hosts and VM. Event log monitoring a bit ordinary at first glance, and not agentless. Otherwise this product is agentless, easy to intially set up, very configurable.

SCOM+Veeam - painful (imho) to set up especially compared to Solarwinds... early days on this one in terms of understanding what I will get out of it. Veeam component a bit pricy especially as you grow.

EG Innovations - Brief look at web site is as far as I have gone. Looking for feedback.

Netuitive - appears to rely on having other monitoring tools in place for it's source data, and not necessarily be able to pull data directly from hardware/apps.

PacketTrap - appears to be a little bit like solarwinds.

Anyone have comments, suggestions experiences or recommendations they would like to share?

thanks

Andrew McKenzie

IBM DS3400, NetApp FAS2050, or Equillogic PS6000XV for Production Environment

CLS1 — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 17:37:41 GMT

We are in the early stages of virtualizing our production environment (K-12) and are evaluating our storage options. We had a Capacity Planning study done and the recommendation is for 3 servers with 3TB of useable capacity. We are looking at virtualizing about 75 Windows servers and a few NetWare servers. The NetWare servers will become Windows servers down the road, but for now will remain NetWare. Initially we were looking at Fiber Channel for performance reasons, but from the Capacity Planning results, it looks like we will be fine with iSCSI. We have received pricing for the following units.

Dell Equillogic PS6000 with 16 450GB SAS drives: 4.7TB Useable in RAID 50 config.

NetApp FAS2050 with 20 450GB SAS Drives: 5TB Useable in RAID DP Config.

IBM DS3400 with 24 450GB SAS Drives: 9.45TB Useable in RAID 6 with Hot Spare.

We are going under the assumption that any of the above solutions will satisfy our needs, however; the IBM rep did say to be aware of the FAS2050 for large Vmware environments as he has concerns with the controller being able to keep up - he recommended a FAS2040 at a minimum if we go with NetApp. Is this accurate?

If we go with iSCSI, we will need a new core switch and if we go with Fiber Channel, we will need to purchase FC switches and the HBAs for the servers. When factoring in the software, support and any hardware needed to complete the storage solution, the total cost for the NetApp solution is the most expensive with the IBM and Equillogic solutions being about the same. We are leaning toward the IBM solution currently as it yields the most useable space for about the same total cost as the Equillogic and is fiber channel. Also, if we calculate the cost per TB of useable space, the IBM comes in at half the cost of the Equillogic and is 60% less than the NetApp.

Am I missing something in my decision? Is the software available and deduplication that is available on the NetApp worth 60% more per TB than the IBM solution? It is unlikely that we would be purchasing a 2^nd^ unit soon, so replication is not a big concern - we are looking at Double-Take for replicating critical servers. Any input would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Large Disk Limitations and the 2TB barrier - What problems will I face in the future

Bill.Morton — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 21:59:20 GMT

I want to post a quick question before I go ahead and move one of our production file servers into the Virtual Environment. I want to make sure that I am considering the future limitations of a VM with large disks attached to it so I don't end up in a tight spot later and want any input as to potential limitations that large disks pose for HA, DRS, SRM, vMotion or any other VM aspect.

The file server currently has a 1.5TB 'data' drive that is close to capacity, so it is reasonable to expect that I will need to expand this out to the 2TB limit.

My Storage side is 3x Equallogic iSCSI SAN with Hardware HBA's, 2 ESX hosts. I backup using Vizioncore vRanger 4.1 DPP over the network, though am evaluating moving to VCB + vRanger to offload the backups and speed things up.

My thought would be to make a 2TB LUN on the SAN just for the data drive, then attach a virtual disk that will allow for snapshot growth during backups of 1.75 TB. If additional space is needed in the future, a second LUN with another virtual disk would be attached. The Boot drive and VM config files would live on a different LUN.

Thoughts on this configuration? Better Ideas?

Things I am trying to avoid: LUNs with extents, using iSCSI within the VM. As I understand it these would cause problems with backups.

Possible Reuse of a Cluster?

adminatater — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 21:49:08 GMT

My goal and maybe VMware products can help me with this, is I want to reuse several cluster computers to host several VMs (per node). These VMs in turn would be accessed via thin clients. Thin clients that have no hard drive, this way the data stays in the datacenter.

Does anyone know what VMware product if any could help me accomplish this not so normal task?

FYI, the number of physical computers from the old cluster farm would be 10+ (for starters).

iSCSI, Linux I/O scheduler, VMFS

jmmarton — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 18:11:45 GMT

I've built a SLES10 SP2 server running the iscsitarget package to provide storage for an ESX 3.5 server in our DR site. I'm looking at optimizing the disk that will be presented by iscsitarget to ESX to maximize performance. With SLES, and perhaps other distros as well, there are four I/O schedulers: noop, deadline, anticipatory, and cfq. The default in SLES is cfq. Is there any performance benefit in using a different I/O scheduler for the iSCSI disk which will be used as one big vmfs datastore?

Underlying system:
two dual-core AMD Opteron 2.00GHz CPUs
4GB RAM
12 x 500GB SATA disks in one big RAID10
SLES10 SP2 x86_64
2TB iSCSI disk for ESX

Thanks!

Joe

NetApp Metrocluster: "disappointed"

king@it.ibm.com — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 21:40:08 GMT

Just wanted your points of view on the matter.

I was lately looking into the subject and I found it a pretty interesting solution:

http://www.netapp.com/us/library/technical-reports/tr-3548.html

My idea was that you could create a stretched storage server that would persist even in the case of one of the two buildings in the Campus collapse. One would be led to think this way as you read the "pyramid" at pag 4: Metrocluster can be used for "Datacenter / Site disasters".

However it turns out that a complete site disaster (i.e. head + shelves) doesn't provide automatic switch over to the other head (and mirrored shelves). You can depict this from this VMware KB (http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1001783) as well as from section 2.11 of the NetApp doc above which lists the advantages of MetroCluster Vs standard Syncronous replication:

1) Low aggregate level RAID mirroring (less performance impact)
2) Automatic switchover to remote copy upon failure
3) Site failover with a single command
4) Simpler to manage than multiple replication relationships
5) No extensive scripting required to make data available after failover

I am ok with them... however #3 looks a bit simplistic. While you can failover your storage with a single button... restarting all your VMs onto the surviving site can be as problematic as restarting them in a synchronous replication scenario (where at least you have SRM to optimize the whole thing). See the VMware KB above.

I was told that this "limitation" is due to the typical potential split brain issue of clustering solutions (i.e. you don't really know whether the building has collapsed or the sites just lost communication with each other). I can understand this is not trivial.

Don't get me wrong... I think it's a wonderful solution..... but this "little thing" left me with a bad taste in the mouth.....

Comments?

Massimo.

vConvert on an EFI based I7 IBM Server not working

djtestlabs — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 03:40:54 GMT

Is it possible to vconvert an IBM 3550 M2 which has an EFI based firmware running Windows server 2008, it has an EFI boot partition, when I try create a virtual machine from this physical machine using vconvert 4.0.1 to my ESX Server or to a VMServer 2.0 file type I get the Fatal Error Occured. The most common reason is loss of connectivity......... message which I understand could mean anything.

My guess is the fact the the EFI x64 Firmware Server shows as having an UEFI partition as well as a Boot Partition under Disk Manager

Has anyone successfully P 2 V'd a latest generation EFI based server running Windows Server 2008, if so HOW!

thank in Advance for any responses

Need Help - Performance & Tuning

HALOTEQ — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 19:06:17 GMT

Hey all,
I was wondering if someone could provide any documents on Performance and Tuning standards

Thanks!

Q's on setting up new ESX infrastructure and equallogic SAN

huwy — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 16:59:53 GMT

Hi All,

I've recently setup 3 new ESX v4 servers and an equallogic ps4000x SAN. These are connected via 2 dell powerconnect 4524 switches. If you want to critique my setup I have added attachments detailing the layout. I'd be interested if anyone has comments on my setup.

Anyway I'm at the stage where I can start virtualizing servers. What I'm unsure about is the best way to setup ESX/VMs to take advantage of Equallogic's snapshot technology. We are likely to buy the symantec backupexec agent in the future so it makes sense to set them up correctly now.

I can't seem to find any documents on how to set this up so I wondered if anyone had any suggestions? I will be virtualising exchange and SQL servers amongst others.

I anyone has any suggestions or can point me in the right direction I'd be very grateful.

Cheers,

Huwy

Best Practices for Virtural Center Access?

stratolynne — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 19:37:42 GMT

Hi all,

Currently at the site I support we have 3 people with access to the Virtual Center. Last week one of the VMs was accidentally shutdown by the system owner and none of the 3 people were around to reboot. Hence, management would like more admins to have access to the Virtual Center. I'm looking for some best practices around system admin access. Should a larger core have access to the entire Virtual Center? Or are there ways to limit their access to the VMs for rebooting?

Appreciating any insights.

Lynne

Capacity Planner firewall

Rob Lisi — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 14:50:55 GMT

Do all the ports 135, 137, 138, 139, and 445 have to be opened or can it work with 3 out of the 5 between the collector and the servers being analyzed?

capacity planner - exception due to excessive paging

huwy — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 10:24:40 GMT

Hi,
I've run a couple of capacity plans and on both it has put a couple of servers in the "system exceptions" because of "excessive paging".
Presumably it's due to either a misconfigured page file or a lack of memory on the (original) server.
I just wondered how other people deal with this?
Thanks,
Huw

Experiences of ESX and IBM Bladecenter

JonRoderick — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 10:56:14 GMT

I'm looking for feedback on experience people have using ESX 3.x.x on IBM Bladecenter (specifically Bladecenter S but any will do).

Specifically, hardware configurations used, any issues, limitations - what storage virtualisation solution did you use?

Thanks

Jon

planning to upgrade to vsphere 4.0 and need help

vmwareluverz — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 18:52:33 GMT

anyone has upgraded to vphere 4 yet and any suggestions or steps need to succeed. thanks in advance.

iSCSI SAN questions & ESXi 4.0

wlentz — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 18:17:28 GMT

I know there are quite a few questions of this type out there, but I'd like to get everyone's opinion on our particular setup.

VM Servers
3 x ESXi 4.0 Dell PE2950, Dual Intel E5430s, 12-24gb ram each.
1 x ESXi 3.5 Dell PE2850, Dual Intel Xeon 3.4ghz, 5gb ram. (planning on retiring this server asap).
1 x ESXi 4.0 Dell R610, Dual Intel X5550s, 24gb ram
All using free esxi - no money for licenses, but we want to get VMotion in some fashion. I am considering XenServer mainly because of that feature (using the R610)
All have built-in Broadcom dual-port 5708 nics, using those for LAN. They also all have a separate PCI-Express QLogic 4602c dual-port iSCSI HBA.

Switches
HP Procurve 5406zl as the LAN switch
2 x HP Procurve 1800-24g as the iSCSI SAN switches.

SAN
Fujitsu Eternus 2000, model 200
12 x 300gb SAS 15k RPM
5 x 750gb SATA 7.2k RPM

Workload
2 TS servers, pretty maxed out, need to create at least another one
misc application servers
web server, mysql db (very light usage presently)
Right now, I'm using the SAS drives attached to each machine for storage, and it's worked pretty well so far, but we're running into a roadblock because we don't have any more space.

My plan was to use 10 of the 300gb SAS as VM storage, and then use 4 of the 750s for file server storage. To that end, I created a RAID10 array of 10 300gb disks, keeping the last two as hot spares. I also created a RAID5 array of 4 750s, keeping the last one as the hot spare. Is this a good plan? Should I just use all 12 disks for the RAID10 array (getting us another 300gb of space)?

For the LUNs, what is the best practice? Obviously, when we start using VMotion, multiple servers have to see the same LUN.
Should I put all of our VMs in one LUN? This is the biggest question I'm struggling with right now, and what's stopping me from making much progress.
What is the best maximum size for a LUN with VMs on it? (I saw one poster say 512gb?)
Someone suggested putting our critical VMs on one LUN, and then not-so-critical on another.

We are in the middle of a huge Sharepoint project, and are going to need to create a database VM for sharepoint. I forsee that being the biggest problem throughput-wise.

On the QLogic HBAs, do I map the lun using the hardware initiator, or do I use the software initiator through VMWare? I know this has been a big question in the past, and I've seen a lot of conflicting information about it.

Many thanks for any suggestions you all may have.

New !! Open unofficial storage performance thread

christianZ — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 14:53:13 GMT

Hello everybody,

the old thread seems to be sooooo looooong - therefore I decided (after a discussion with our moderator oreeh - thanks Oliver -) to start a new thread here.

Oliver will make a few links between the old and the new one and then he will close the old thread.

Thanks for joining in.

Reg

Christian

ESX 4.0 New features/changes list compared to 3.5?

jslarouche — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 19:10:20 GMT

Does anyone have or know where i could find a list of all the new features/changes that have been introduced into ESX 4.0 vs 3.5?

Netapp 2020 SAS vs IBM DS3400

gstarr — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 13:13:22 GMT

Hi,

We are in a process to migrate our servers to virtual infrastructure.

One of VAR recomended Netapp 2020 and bundle that Netapp created

is very nice indeed.

Then another VAr said that DS3400 is heaps faster than 2020.

Did someone compare the two?

How much faster is DS3400?

We will be runnning approx. 12 virtual servers, one of them Exchange, and we will

also have Oracle database on the storage.

Please let me know if you have some clues...

Regards,

Storage, a Cloud storm or not?

Teovmy — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 20:34:18 GMT

**In a time when everyone talks about cloud computing
everyone seems to forget why or why not we should move our data to the
cloud.* *I wrote an article and was curious about your Commentary.

Do you see some issues I forget?

vSphere, Nehalem, and Citrix Xenapp

jungblpe — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 14:19:26 GMT

I am trying to size out our future Citrix Xenapp hardware environment. We have decided to virtualize the XenApp servers using VMware. We will build these out using vSphere, running on Dell PE R710s -- the servers will have the Nehalem chipset. Based on past experiences and what I have read it is always best practice to plan 1 vproc per 1 core on the physical host to allow the scheduler to have a 1 to 1 relationship to the cores. Seems simple... take the Dell R710, a dual proc quad core system, and we have 8 cores -- means we can have 8 vprocs in use on the host. My question is does the Nehalem chip with HT enabled paired up with the different scheduling policies within vSphere change the game at all, or does the same best practice exist?

VMWare ESX Licensing + Hosting

crucialx — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 23:17:36 GMT

I've not been able to find the answer on the VMware site (probably missed it), however does anyone know what the license restrictions are with Vmware esx 3.5? Can it be used for selling Virtual Servers (monthly fee based)? This is with the once off pricing of $495

Thanks!
Aaron

Design Changes for vSphere?

lldmka — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 00:38:05 GMT

Hi,

Is anyone with an existing VI3 infrastructure planning any significant design changes for vSphere, particularly things like:

number of hosts per cluster
size of datastores (especially if introducing thin provisioning)
number of VMs per datastore
VM resource reservations
paravirtualized SCSI
enhanced VMXNET
vCenter Federation

Mark

Peak loads vs maximum observed

Rodge — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 13:57:46 GMT

Hi,

Within Capacity Planner I have some difficulties understanding the peak load value and maximum observed value. Can anyone help me.

"The peak load is determined by evaluating each metric over the most recent four weeks of collection and locating the hour of the day that has the highest average value. It is not the maximum observed value as any statistical analysis eliminates the high and low values from consideration.

Regards,
Rodge

extending vmdk over 1TB on NFS?

mlubinski — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 16:32:59 GMT

Hi,

I just run today into strange issue while trying to extend one vmdk (initially setup as 1TB vmdk with no problems). I tried to extend this disk through VIClient to 1,2TB (on storage there was 1,5TBspace in total), but I run into error like in this thread: http://communities.vmware.com/thread/218335

Problem is that, I have my storage over NFS, so while attaching NFS volumes as storage, I don't define block size in there.

What I tested so far:

1. I can't extend vmdk larger than 1TB

2. I can add new disk to VM that is larger than 1TB (but later I can't extend it)

3. I can set i.e. vmdk of 500GB space, then extend it to 800GB (or even 1TB), but nothing more.

So it looks like VMware limitation (maybe version has something to do, coz I was testing on 3.5 ESX hosts). I hope that vSphere does not have this limit.

Did anyone run into this issue before?

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Data Collector not getting Mem Inv data

kennyfranklin — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 23:13:03 GMT

I have set up the data collector in a Windows-only environment with a mixture of Windows 2003 and Windows 2008 servers. I am getting most data from most servers, however the collector seems to have a problem collecting MEM INV data from the 2008 machines. As a result, those servers show us as "not consolidatable". Has anyone run into this before? It would be nice to include these servers with the assessment.

Thanks,

Kenny

Netapp FAS2020A vs Equallogic PS6000XV : Smoke and Mirrors

simon_m — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 17:37:19 GMT

I've got a quote on Equallogic PS6000XV with 16 x 450gb SAS 15k disks, dual controller, configured as Raid 50

I asked for a comparable quote on Netapp, and the guy came up with FAS2020A, 12 x 450gb SAS disks, or 12 x 500gb disks.

B

I've done some digging, and I would appreciate comments if I'm right or way out here ..

The netapp with dual controller has to have 2 arrays, and use Raid 4 DP. So, the 12 disks in the 450gb netapp, end up being 2 x groups of 6. In each group you loose 2 disks to parity, so you get 4 disks per array. I was told I'll get about 2Tb of space, but I make it 3,6Tb in total across both arrays .. unless there is some other significant overhead I'm not aware of. If I use 500gb disks, then I believe from digging they will be SATA not SAS.

The equallogic with raid 50, I understand leaves about 4.7tb of usable space, assuming couple of spares.

The Netapp does work out a bit cheaper, including support, software packs etc. But at less than 1/2 the space. If I want to up the space then I believe a need a disk shelf etc, which is going to up the price considerably.

Questions.

If you add up the performance ( IOPs etc) from the 2 x Arrays on the netapp will it exceed the Equallogic running one array of Raid 50. I would have thought that the reduced spindle count in the Netapp would be to it's disadvantage

How much space will I actually get on the Netapp with 450gb SAS

Is the Netapp 2020 man enough for the job, I've read it has a fairly entry level controller

Will de-dupe on the Netapp make up for the smaller storage

Which will do the best async replication across a WAN - which is an important role in this design

If I have a Netapp with SATA, I was told it will be as good as a Equallogic PS4000XV with SAS

Many thanks

VMview Desktop Migration

wkdixon — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 22:10:42 GMT

We just started using VMview and now are migrating LUNs from one system to another. Any hints on moving linked clones and replicas around? Like I said we just started using them so rebuilding isn't a big deal but once up and running it would be nice to know how to migrate should we need to again.

Thanks

BladeCenter S and VI3

bsdice — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 20:20:14 GMT

Hey folks,

the latest incarnation of IBM's BladeCenter series to be released in Dec 2007 will be BladeCenter S. It is supposed to compete in the SMB market, can house up to 6 blades and can be run off of standard 110/230V mains. We are interested in this box because its price tag allows us to bring enterprise/datacenter features to much more of our SMB customers. Think VI3's HA, DRS, snapshots, etc. We recently configured a standard model with some blades, ethernet switch, two SAS switches and when contemplating a prototype VI3 scenario for this, everything seemed nice and easy except for one thing:

Its supposed to run without a SAN! Which makes sense from a price perspective because a SAN (take a DS4700/4800), two QLogic switches, FC adapters in the blades and so forth will require an investment not many SMB customers will want to make. So instead of a SAN with BladeCenter S you get two bays with a max of 6 SATA/SAS disks each, 12 disks in total. IBM's notion of "zoning" for this configuration means "mapping" 1 or more of those external disks to a blade. You can then configure a RAID volume for those disks. So in total you will have two SAS disks (2x73 GB usually) in a blade for ESX3 plus whats configured in "zoning" from the external bays.

Big question is (actually, more than one): How do you get VI3 to run efficiently on such a machine? Since there is no SAN with a VMFS volume will VI3.5's "DMotion" be the top choice? What if a blade dies and takes the VM guest with it? Will DMotion turn into "Dead Motion"? Maybe assign all 12 external disks to one blade and make it an iSCSI server? Ewww.

Of course that model is not even officially supported yet by any official VI3 release but that will be fixed I'm certain.

Req. documentation

singhpdeep0007 — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 04:54:01 GMT

Hi,

I would like to know what kinds of calls included on L3 Support...expecting Checklist

also I want the doc of Audit of VMware production environment.

Please if anyone have the docs of pl. upload it.

thx,
PS

Presenting 4TB LUN

pearlyshells — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 00:57:49 GMT

Was posed a question that I was not certain of. Can a 4TB LUN be presented to VirtualCenter 2.5? I suspected it would but would only show up as 2TB. Is that correct?

Good idea to use local Storage?

ukdaz — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 14:49:37 GMT

I would really appreciate some advice on this setup that I am thinking about.

We currently have 3 Dell 2950 hosts connected to a MD3000i via iScsi. We also have 2 file servers that have run out of space. I want to consolidate a number of boxes to reduce our Microsoft License requirement and have 6 x Datacenter License to cover the VM Hosts.

I am planning to purchase the following and use the local storage to host Windows 2008 r2 File servers and present the data via DFS thereby not having to worry should a host go down:-

3 x Dell R710 / 48GB 1333mhz Ram / Dual x5570 Proc / 2 x Quad Intel 1000vt Nics/ Perc Controller / 6 x 450gb Sas Local storage.(Mirror set and Raid 10)

My question is,......Is this OK to use the local storage for very I/O Intensive File servers?

Thanks in advance

Darren

Capacity Planner - Default reports

Singy — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 11:01:31 GMT

At some point the page/sec has been changed to a very low amount (200 page/sec) this means that any default reports that are run show a large % of system exceptions.

I have looked through the settings and cannot find anywhere to change the default report settings.

Can anyone point me in the right direction on how to change this value to affect all reports globally.

Regards
Andy

SAN on different IP Range

cstrachan — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 10:45:53 GMT

Hello Everyone

Is it possible to have a SAN connecting to a Vsphere esx host with a different IP address from the main network and if so how?
So at the moment I have the hosts directly connected to the network (10.x.x.x) and I've also connected them to a switch on a separate network (192.x.x.x)
The SAN is connected to the 192.x.x.x network but i can't get the hosts to communicate with the SAN. The reason I'm doing this is so that the virtual machines don't have to access the data on the SAN over the 10.x.x.x network and thus decrease performance of this network.

Your help is much appreciated

Craig

Best way to come up with a TEST plan to insure everything is working?

theblackknight — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 12:52:42 GMT

I've been tasked with coming up with a "TEST" plan to insure our newly installed VMware environment is functioning correctly...

I know it's difficult to do because of all the componants invloved in a VMware environment. What should I do? Has anyone ever been asked for something like this and what did you do?

HA, V-Motion, DR options

Collin09 — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 23:02:06 GMT

1.) I have been testing the ESX 4.0 and now I want to add another VM host server. Before using the HA, Vmotion or DR, does the server hardware configuration has to be the same? Does it make a difference if I am using a different type of hardware.I have 2 server availble but different configuration.

2.) I am inquiring for a SAN storage that will link to VM host server for disaster recovery. I already have 2 server I can use but trying to find a decent SAN storage. Any recommendation of SAN storage that can hold 2-3TB and a decend price range?

Your input is greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

Collin

performance wise setup for SQL?

mlubinski — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 16:14:12 GMT

Hi I would like to ask people who are/were working with SQL servers that should run with optimal performance all the time.

Let's assume, that we want to build up 6 SQL servers, each with 4vCPU+16GB of memory. I have 3 hosts (each host with 2xQuadCore+32GB) plus NFS storage on Netapp (dedicated volume for these servers)

So tell me, if I put 2 such SQL VMs on each ESX host, to make these servers run with no performance issues, should I set them any memory reservations (or maybe they shouldn't have any reservations set)?

Should they have any specific swapfile "location" for them? (in VM configuration->swapfile location). What about internal OS setup? Should it have some OS (Windows 2008 x64) tweaks inside for best performance?

I think this setup should be enough for this, but was wondering what else should I think of. These reservations make me crazy, coz I don't know what in this situation would be the best option.

I hope someone will be able to give me some tips on this.

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AMD IOMMU versus Intel VT-D

meistermn — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 11:51:55 GMT

At the moment the intel vt-d feature cannot be used with vmotion.

Is the amd iommu vmotion able?

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=11192

Any known issues when P2V'ing specific Enterprise servers?

buddybergman — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 05:56:58 GMT

We are working on a large scale virtualization project and have a list of various servers that we are researching any known issues that may happen during or after a P2V process (if they are even capable of being virtualized). If anyone would have any advice or experience working with anything in this list it would be appreciated if you could share your experience.

IBM Tivoli Gateway

IBM Site Protector

Symantec Antivirus Enterprise server

McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator (EPO) server

McAfee EPO SADR

McAfee EPO Database

McAfee SmartFilter

McAfee Hercules Remediation Manager

Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) Site Server

Microsoft SCCM Reporting Point

Microsoft SCCM Management Point

Microsoft SCCM Distribution Point

Crystal Reports Server

Adobe Connect

ArcGIS Web Mapping Server

Sun OCSP

Sun DNS server

Sun DMR Management Server

Sun MySQL Database server

Sun Spectrum

Thanks for any assistance as we do our research.

Cheers.

-Buddy

Network Outage?

rbmadison — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 01:56:23 GMT

We have a ESX 3.5 HA and DRS cluster and will be taking down our core switches for a network upgrade. This means all network connectivity to all hosts will be lost for about an hour. We are going to be leaving all the VMs running. I am planning to disable HA and DRS for the cluster as well as shutting down the VC prior to the core switch going down to prevent any HA, DRS or VC automation from occuring. Once network connectivity is restored I plan on booting the VC which is a VM and then enabling HA.

Does anyone have any recommendations for this or would be the best course of action? One concern I have is that if I take down the VC which is a VM and the license server also goes down will I be able to power on the VC since the license server isn't availble until the VC is running?

Thanks

EVA 4400 VRAID 1 or VRAID 5?

Useless1 — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 12:41:18 GMT

Hi,

I have the above and would appreciate some input to how others are creating their LUN's.

Currently I am using VRAID 1.

HP recommends VRAID 1 as best practice, but I am beginning to wonder how many other people are doing this as opposed to VRAID 5?

I am getting to the current maximum of our EVA storage, and if I ask for some more disks, the inevitable questions are going to come, such as dropping the RAID level to VRAID 5 to free up some disk space (thus saving money - which is a valid point).

iSCSI Switch Recommendations

hutchingsp — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 13:24:58 GMT

I'm looking at putting in an Equallogic PS4000E. Essentially for now we're talking a relatively low cost jump up from a "dumb" iSCSI array, using SATA disks for a specific requirement for bulk but low transaction storage.

In a year or so's time when our main SAN is replaced I'd be interested in getting a more highly specified Equallogic unit, using it as our primary box and moving our main production stuff onto it (we're nearly entirely virtualized already) and putting the PS4000 at the other end of our site as a replication/DR uni.

For now, whilst it's clearly best practise, I don't know if we actually need redundant switches, so what I'm looking for is recommendations on what may be a suitable switch to buy now, with a view to buying more from the same vendor if we standardize on Equallogic.

Dell PowerConnect are the obvious choice I guess. We already have a couple of 5424's in a rack servicing a "dumb" MD3000i at our DR site, we don't push them, they seem to do the job even if the web GUI does suck - I'm assuming they won't be sufficient should we end up utilizing EqualLogic heavily?

There seem to be lots of vendors out there from the names I know, Dell, Cisco, HP, then are lots of "niche" vendors - and I don't know what makes a good iSCSI switch.

We're currently on ESX 3.5 U4 and I would be expecting to be moving to vSphere when our main SAN and ESX boxes are replaced (essentially right now it aint broke so I'm not looking to fix it).

VM Density

lastat77 — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 14:58:34 GMT

I have a client considering a move to all virtualization. They have 12 WinXP desktops and one SQL Server on Windows 2KSMB. I would like to understand how many XP workstations can run per CPU and RAM level. Is ESXi the best route or vSphere? I am thinking each VM would be configured with 2 virtual processors and 4 Gig RAM. Will something like a Sun Fire x4140 handle this workload well - assume dual Gb load balanced NAS in RAID 5 as the storage NOT a fiber SAN.

Ideas?

why is storage not handled as a ressource?

devzero — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 14:11:10 GMT

As we know you can divide the "big cake" (i.e. hardware managed by ESX) by creating ressource pools.

You create a ressource pool and assign cpu and memory ressources to that and can limit a group of users to use only a specific amount of ressources.

So, why the heck isn`t storage being managed in a similar way ?

The idea of ressource-pools in ESX looks immature this way....

Did i miss something (i.e. is there a proper way to handle storage as a ressource pool) ?

How can i keep a specific group of users from occupying a whole lun with VM`s ?

"assign them a dedicated lun" may be your answer - but - no - this is not the way to go, because this is managed outside of ESX.

even better:

http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/Storage-with-VMware-vSphere.pdf , Page5

states:

Improved Storage Resources Control
As the scope of storage resources have increased significantly with large deployments of virtualization environments, so has
the need for greater automation and control of these resources. In the vSphere release, vCenter has been enhanced
with several new storage specific capabilities to help the virtual administrator manage these environments with a
higher degree of control. These enhancements provide administrators with proactive alerts and alarms to address issues
before they interrupt the availability of applications running on those resources. vCenter allows setting permissions and
quota limits on datastores, as well as per VM.

fine - but how ?

Static Workstaiton VM's vs. Automatic Allocation Pool's

scott_k2003 — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 17:35:22 GMT

This post might be better suited for the vmware view forums but I wanted to post here considering this is infrastructure planning related.

I am trying to understand the real benefits of software like View vs. simply publishing a static VM that the user would connect to daily. The only real advantages I see are the that VM's can be shutdown when the user logs off to conserve resources on the esx hosts and start up again when the user connects to the broker service, quicker deployment of desktop images and maybe some centralized auditing from the vm's themselves into a central vmware console.

Since we use vpshere with ha and drs im not really seeing a great deal of advantages vs. just setting up a vm and letting it run 24/7. Maybe because we looking at only publishing about 100 out of our 400 local user base to vm's it does not really make sense unless you are in a larger environment?

Im curious if others can reaffirm this or whether there is in fact some more legitimate reasons to using view that I am overlooking for a situation like ours.

contents of Capacity Planner system inventory report

InfoStewards — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 22:31:48 GMT

In the product literature, it says that Capacity Planner gathers a system inventory. Does anybody have a system inventory report they can share with me, or can type in what it gathers?

I'm specifically looking for things such a processor type, OS, patch level, NICs, applications installed, etc. on the physical server so that we would have a traditional machine inventory along with the performance metrics that Capacity Planner gathers.

Thanks!

HP Blades and MSA 60 ..

Tlachyman — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 10:54:38 GMT

Hi,

I have question .. It's possible to connect HP StorageWorks 60 Modular
Smart Array to the c3000 enclousure with HP Blades .. I have this array
and I'm thinking about Blade solution .. I'm thinking about Vmware,
it's for small company ..

Or if you have any suggestion pls write ..

thanks

Jozef

Server 2008 Clustering in ESX 3.5 Update 3

Gordon Freeman — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 16:40:21 GMT

I see from the Update 3 release notes that Server 2008 clustering is not yet supported. We have a development environment that we would like build 2008 clusters in for testing purposes (not production). Also, our dev farm is boot-from-SAN. Has anyone been able to get 2008 clustering to work?

As an alternative, would VMware server work for this? We are trying to avoid the cost of physical boxes and shared storage for testing 2008 clustering. Again, this will not be a production workload. Thanks in advance.

They're waiting for you, Gordon... in the test chamber....

invalid vlan tag error

mrose1120istar — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 22:26:02 GMT

I continuously get this error on my 2 new ESX 3.5 Update 3 servers:

Jan 21 13:01:48 myesxbox vmkernel: 0:21:54:05.872 cpu2:1026)LinNet: 2005: invalid vlan tag: 4095 dropped

any idea why i'm getting this? I have no vlan named 4095

Capacity Planner system thresholds

Rob Lisi — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 21:07:57 GMT

I'd like to know if there is a way to set the system thresholds for Capacity Planner for the reports. I know I can do it when creating optimization scenarios but when I run reports it giving me 83 systems that are not candidates for virtualization. I know these machines are good candidates because I'm already running a couple in production. The spec. that's throwing everything off is the paging (Pgs/sec). For default Vmware uses 200. People on the forums and my Capacity Planner teacher said this should be more like 10,000. Sure enough if I run these systems through a optimization scenario and make these paging changes the systems are then added to the sys out column and are removed from the exception systems column. I need to present reports on these systems however.
Any help would be appreciated. Thanks

Help on picking a new San

jlincom — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 12:08:55 GMT

Hi there,

We are going to install a SAN for the usual files etc but in a year's time want to install Oracle financials and Oracle transactions databaes on there as well. We also want to do an hourly backup to disc and every couple of monthe save that backup to tape. We are going to virtualize most of our servers obviously using VmWare.

We have been looking at Hitachi AMS2300 with ComVault for backup and also at Netapps FAS3142c. We are concerned that the Netapps would not be fast enough to cope with the Oracle side in the future. Does anyone have any recommendations as we are in a quandry as to which to recommend to the business.

Regards John

iSCSI SAN, ESX4 Datastore Sizing Best Practices

daveclaussen — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 17:05:14 GMT

Hi all. I am in the final stages of our vSphere construction and I looking for best practices in terms of sizing datastores/LUNs, on an iSCSI SAN, for multiple ESX4 hosts.

What we have:

Two HP c7000 Blade Enclosures with three BL460c's in each enclosure.

All servers will run ESX4 and use an iSCSI (software initiator) SAN.

I am not sure of the best way to configure these items. One large LUN holding one large datastore? A few smaller LUNs each holding a datastore? A LUN/datastore per ESX host? I do want to use vMotion and that might help narrow down the answer.

Any help all of you seasoned VMware folks can give this noob is much appreciated.

Dave

Looking into migrating Exchange and SQL from Physical servers to VMs...thoughts?

TommyAD — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 19:24:19 GMT

Hi all, I've been using VMs for several years now, however new to using VMWare. I am currently running ESXi 4 on 2 seperate host servers, with about 16 small resource type of apps with no issues. I have heard for years keep the intensive stuff like Exchange and SQL off a guest VM, for perofrmance reasons, but now I am seeing a ton of VMWare articles and showcases pushing this as the thing to do. I have a relatively small environment compared to what they are touting...just wondering if there is anyone out there that has any experiance/thoughts on this? If I did go this route I would likely be looking to buy some of the nicer features instead of just using the free ESXi version.

My current setup uses HP DL360G5 servers that are coming up out of warranty early next year, with the disk subsystem being provided by an Equallogic iSCSI SAN environment, built on a GB isolated network. I was thinking instead of buying the 2 replacement servers I could put the money toward the full version of vSphere with some other goodies it offers.

My Exchange environment is a relatively small number of mailboxes, but larger in size, running 2003 currently with 200 mailboxes at about 300 GB of space. I am planning to upgrade to 2007 or 2010 next year as part of the migration to VM. I know going to the next version will likely involve standing up another server so I could be looking at buying 2 servers instead of 1.

My SQL environment is small to start off with, a single SQL 2005 instance with around 20 DB about 120GB in total size.

The 2 host machines I have are both dual socket quad Xeon processors with 16GB and 24GB of RAM, with less than 50% RAM utilization each...and the processing power is hardly being touched at all.

Sorry its a lot of info, I hope it makes sense to someone...

Netapp ESX host utilities - any issues?

mlubinski — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 08:50:52 GMT

Hi,

I would like to install this tool on my ESX hosts, but I would like to ask you if you had any troubles with this tool? I will probably use it only for mbrscan/mbralign and nfs configuration, so my configuration is not described in their document (they only mention fc/iscsi), so I assume no errors should occur?

What about this SSL connection? is it needed? For what?

and these ports openen during install, can I close them down (20,21,23,80,443)? Will this cause any unexpected problems?

thanks in advance for any answer.

VSphere Capacity Planning

vmproteau — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 21:14:28 GMT

Ignoring CapacityIQ which I understand isn't yet supported in VSphere currently, I'm trying to develop a logical calculation to estimate capacity in a particular environment. We use an N+1 sizing strategy so, for 2-Quad Core, 32GB memory Hosts, we would max our N+1 memory ceiling and buy another Host before CPU would ever be a concern.

We are now looking at the same amount of cores (2-Quad Core) but increasing to 96GB of memory (HP DL380 G6) so now I'm more concerned with CPU performance. I have heard of some generic VM/Core best practices (4-6 for ESX 3.5) (8-10 for ESX 4.0) however, I'm looking for a more accurate calculation.

Can anyone tell me what metrics I would need to look at and perhaps what calculation I would make to best estimate what kind of CPU capacity I safely have in a paticular Host/Cluster. I'm not even sure if I need to be looking at average MHz over time, vCPU/Core, VM/Core, etc.?

I know there are tools for getting this information like CapacityIQ but, I am trying to "right size" our future Hosts hardware standard.

Evaluating HP, Dell, IBM Solutions for small VMware deployment

Chiper1 — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 07:18:44 GMT

Gday All,
Currently doing some research for a solution to consolidate our 6 or so servers using VMware. We are looking to implement HA, DRS and VMotion. Our budget for the hardware is about $30K AUD and we currently have 10 users.

We have the following server roles to consolidate and they are running on various ESX hosts with local storage and physical servers at present
DC (100GB data)
Exchange (9GB Mailbox Store, PF 0GB)
BES (2 Devices currently no more than 5)
SQL (2 databases, 1 MSP app)
Web (2 web applications, 1 MSP app)
TS (Max 2 simultaneous users)
VCS (To manage ESX hosts)

Based on our small user base, direct attached SAS should suffice. Moving forward we are looking at moving into virtual hosting to provide our customers with hosted application solutions and will probably role this out with VMware View so we should make provision for this.

Initially we would aim to install this hardware locally however as we convert customers to our hosted solution would require to move this to a data centre purely based on bandwidth requirements.

With this in mind we are considering a blade solution to
A - Ensure smallest footprint as possible
B - Ensure expandability

That said we have come up with the following solutions and would appreciate any feedback or advice you can offer in relation to these products.

Each host has the following specs
24GB RAM (6 x 4GB modules)
2 x 72GB SAS 15K HDD RAID 1 - For ESX install
2 x Xeon Quad Core 95W 2.66GHz/1333MHz CPU

Each storage has the following specs
Dual Controller model
5 x 450GB SAS 15K 3.5" HDD RAID 5 (1.8TB storage)

Option A - IBM ($9K More)
2 x IBM X3650 M2 Servers
1 x DS3200 SAS Storage Array Dual Controller
OR
Blade Centre S Chassis
2 x HS22 Blades

Option B - HP ($4K More)
2 x HP DL380 G6 X5550 Servers
1 x 2012SA DC Modular Smart Array

Option C - Dell (Best Price)
2 x Power Edge R710 Rack Mount Servers
1 x Power Vault MD3000 with HA solution

Would like to thank anyone that takes the time to offer advice, its all clear as mud as we slowly battle through the design phase.

Cheers,
Chiper

vMotion Porgroup & Serice Console PortGroup can have the same IP ?

shatztal — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 10:46:37 GMT

hello, in our enivroment the configuration is that the vMotion and Serviceconsole IP are the same on each esx.

the vMotion worked but somehow it didn't and now i am asking if maybe the problems can accure because of his config altough it worked before

also in the /etc/host file i insert all the IP addresses of the ESX in the Clusters.

need some help

Windows Storage Server 2008 in ESXi

wibni — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 07:19:31 GMT

Hi,

I've got my first virtualisation project coming up. It's very basic and I wanne keep it that way till I understand more about it.
We're about to implement a new engineering application which I wanne run in VMWare.

I'm about to purchase VMWare vSphere4 Standard and a DELL R710 Server.
It will just be 1 node and we don't have an external storage system so I was thinking of running Windows Storage Server 2008 in 1 VM and the apllication server and database server in 2 more VMs on W2k8 R2 Standard.
So it will be 3 VMS on this ESXi.

It appears that MS does not sell WSS 2008 as a stand alone license - only as OEM together with hardware.
Would anyone here have come accross the same problem already?
I found this article from MS explaining it for WSS 2003. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/942868

Has anyone got Windows Storage Server 2008 running on ESXi and can share whether it causes issues as described in the article from MS?
What would be the better alternative? Just run the file server on W2k8 R2 Standard as well or overthink my design?

Equallogic Feedback (and vs. Lefthand)

hutchingsp — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 21:03:45 GMT

I've been looking at solutions for putting in up to 5tb of storage for a project we have coming up, with a view that whatever we put in now may well be utilized when our main SAN/ESX platform is replaced in around a year.

Lefthand's VSA appliance is one potential option, cheap enough, flexible enough, but obviously DIY even with support on all the hardware and software.

Today I received a very good quote from Dell on an 8tb SATA Equallogic PS4000E dual controller.

At a basic level the two solutions seem similar i.e. all licenses bundled so no extras/shocks down the line, "node" expansion model i.e. need more space/resilience buy more nodes and disperse them.

What I'm unclear on is the specifics that separate the two, and what Equallogic is like from a management/admin/flexibility viewpoint (I downloaded the Lefthand VSA demo so tried for myself).

For the iminent project the thing would hold LUNs containing SQL databases assigned to a VM, most likely direct to the OS using MS iSCSI initiator rather than as VMFS/VMDK. For this project the database may get big, but transactions/throughput is very low. If and when we replaced our main SAN we're looking at around 30 VM's, low usage mainly "One VM one application" with a virtualized file server (currently serving 8tb via RDM) and a virtualized Exchange server, which by that time should be on Exchange 2010 so reduced I/O requirements.

I'd appreciate any feedback particularly on the Equallogic and what it brings to the table.

ESXi 4.0 on SuperMicro MaxServer 6015B-TB

jcunial — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 22:56:43 GMT

Hi,

I'm currently wanting to install ESXi 4.0 on a SuperMicro MaxServer 6015B-TB

Compatability guide says supported up to 3.5 but i would like 4.0

stats:

MaxServer 6015B-TB Black 1U
X7DBR-E M/B with Intel 5000P chipset,
S771,
support 2xDual/Quad-core Xeon 5100/5300
series active CPU,
2xIntel Giga LAN, ATI 16MB video,
8 DIMM slots(max 32GB
Fully-Buffered DDR-2 667/533 RAM),
Intel ESB2 SATA 3.0Gbps Controller RAID
0, 1, 5, 10 support,
4x1" Hot Swappable SATA HDD bays,
1xslim DVDROM
drive,
1x64/133PCI-X or PCI-E x 8(full height) riser, and 1x64/133PCI-X or
PCI-E x8(Low Profile riser),
560W PSU,
slide rail kit,
slim FDD
option,
WxDxH(432x650x43mm),

Whats inside:

2 x XEON 5345/2.33GHz/1333FSB/8M CACHE/PASSIVE/QUAD CORE
4
x 2GB FB-DIMM DDR2 667 RAM, Intel/Supermicro certified (8 gig in total )
4 x
Seagate 80GB SATA II (this can easily be upgraded)

I've done some research and don't think there should be any issues, but would like some second professional opinions.

Cheers,

James

ESX IP Addresses Migration

Lotus91000 — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 19:31:21 GMT

Hi There,

I have some questions before to start my ESX IP Addresses Migration.
I will appreciate if somebody tells me if I will not lose the connectivity when I will change the Service Console IP Addresses when I will start.
I have seven step to perform this IP Addresses Migration:

1-First of all, you must have physical access to the console.
2-Put your ESX host in Maintenance Mode and disconnect it from Virtual Center.
3-Now you can connect to the console of your ESX host.
4-Remove the old IP adress (by deleting the vswif interface) “esxcfg-vswif -d vswif0″ (vsfif0 is your interface to remove. Otherwise use the number you need): Will I lose the connection on this step?
5-Create a new vswif interface with the New IP adress “esxcfg-vswif -a vswif0 -p Service Console -i 192.168.0.100 -n 255.255.255.0 -b 192.168.0.255″ :
6-Update the default gateway. Open nano “nano /etc/sysconfig/network file”
7-Then you need to restart the interface. Do an “esxcfg-vswif -s vswif0″ (this will disable the vswif0 interface) and “esxcfg-vswif -e vswif0″ (this will enable the vswif0 interface)

Thanks for your feedback

VMware Data Recovery or VCB?

Maximil2000 — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 07:14:07 GMT

Which backup product is the best choice?

Max

What is the benefit in enabling CDP (Cisco Discovery Protocol)?

akash1980 — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 17:17:41 GMT

What is the benefit in enabling CDP (Cisco Discovery Protocol)?

How it is helpful in Enterprise level VMware environment?

I found following comments on VMware docs, but looking for more info if you have.

Cisco Discovery Protocol (CDP) allows ESX administrators to determine which Cisco switch port is connected

to a given vSwitch. When CDP is enabled for a particular vSwitch, you can view properties of the Cisco switch

(such as device ID, software version, and timeout) from the vSphere Client.

Thanks,

What hardware do you most wish ESX supported?

rmrobert — Sun, 18 May 2008 23:59:17 GMT

I'm interested in hearing what hardware you have that ESX doesn't support.

I'm mostly interested in NIC controllers users would like ESX support for and also SCSI/SAS controllers, but feel free to mention anything else.

The more information you can give the better, such as linux module name and/or PCI VendorID and DeviceID (output of lspci -nn on linux or ESX)

I'll go first:

04:00.0 Ethernet controller 0200: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88E8053 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet Controller 11ab:4362 (rev 22)

In Linux this is the "sky2" driver.

After we get some responses, I may put up a poll where users can vote for which devices they want support for most, but first I must establish which entries to put in the poll. Feel free to mention a device multiple times- we want get a feel for which devices to prioritize based on usage, not just a list of every possible unsupported hardware.

Win2003 Multiprocessor to Uniprocessor HAL

NYSDHCR — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 13:59:04 GMT

Is it possible to change from a Win2003 Multiprocessor to Uniprocessor HAL, if the vm was initially built with 2 VCPUs? I tried to remove one vcpu and downgrade the uniprocessor, but it was not an option.

Virtual SMP Processing

jasongegere — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 16:39:27 GMT

I have a few questions about Virtual SMP processing.

"4-Way VMware Virtual SMP follows VMware's first delivery of 2-Way VMware Virtual SMP in 2003. 4-Way VMware Virtual SMP will enable a single virtual machine to span four processors, making virtual machines
ideal for all applications, even the most resource-intensive applications like large enterprise databases, ERP applications and Microsoft Exchange. With the introduction of 4-Way VMware Virtual SMP, the powerful benefits of VMware ESX Server virtual machines will be available to every data center server, including the ones previously reserved for the largest applications."

Taken from http://www.vmware.com/company/news/releases/4way_vsmp.html

The newest version of VMware Version 4 when using the FREE license from VMware for ESXi v4.

When using the 60 day trial everything is unlocked. My only concern at this point is performance with 2 Dual Core Intel CPU. Which would be a possible 8 cores. Does that mean that with 8way Virtual SMPs the job
being processed can use all 8 cores?

If I choose to stay with the FREE trial does that mean only 4 cores can be used for a process? ie: 4000mhz to 8000mhz (max) roughly?

What is the cost of ESXi v4?

Calling VMware to find pricing is crazy. I am a small web development company and there are many large companies fighting for sales time.

iSCSI SAN Solution

greg935 — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 19:24:16 GMT

I'm looking into purchasing an iSCSI SAN solution and would like to get feedback on which vendors work best with vSphere. I've looked at EqualLogic and LeftHand and would like imput from people using these or other solutions.

Is DRS possible with no shared datastorage ?

rdelgaudio — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 19:26:12 GMT

Hi,

I have a cluster of 7 machine with VMWare ESXi 4.0.

No shared datastorage. I have 7 datastorage (e.g.HD from the single hosts)

I have configured DRS on my cluster but I am suspicous that it is not working because there is not a shared datastorage.

Is there anyone who can confirm that DRS works only if you have a shared datastorage such as SAN ?

If it is possible to have DRS even without a shared datastorage, is there anyway to configure vCenter to move VM (host + datastorage) across the cluster machines ?

If so, I would like to specify also my policy rules (e.g. move only if the destination datastorage will have XX GB left after migration,etc) to be satisfied before DRS move th VM

Thanks

Backup Virtual Machine to External Hard Drive

ShawnBerger — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 19:01:02 GMT

I'm using the VMware Infrasturcture Client vs 2.5 / VMware VirtualCenter 2.5. There are two virtual machines that I would like to export to an external hard drive. Then we would keep the hard drive off sight. We would like to insure that the image of these virtual machines would remain in tack incase of a server being destroyed. How would this be done?

Small vShere 4 san configuration

royml — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 21:53:12 GMT

Does someone have any recommendations about this small san configuration we are planning to use
according to performance issues:

dual controller low-end HP msa iSCSI san
2 1Gb switches
2 ESXi hosts with 4 NICS (2 NICS to SAN, 2 NICS to seperate network)
vShere 4
total about max 8 VM's, a few windows DC's and a few member servers.
only HA, no vMotion

1. Is it better to use 6 NICS per ESXi host?

2. Since this is vShere4 with a few servers is it wise to make the configuration as simple as possible?:

one RAID 5 + hotspare, one LUN, one VMFS volume
each VM a C: vmdk and a D: vmdk, also domain controllers

3. Is it possible to use the dual controller msa with one RAID 5 + hotspare or is it better to
have 2 RAID 5 configurations? One per controller?

Any comments are greatly appreciated.

Server 2008 x64 on ESX 3.5

jvigil — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 05:09:11 GMT

I had someone tell me the other day that Vmware recommends that users don't run 2k8 (64bit) on an installation of ESX 3.5, but upgrade to ESX 4.0. I've looked for this recommendation, but have yet to find it. What I have found is a ton of users that are running 2k8 (64bit) on ESX 3.5 without incident.

Are there known issues with this, or was the statement just not true?

Thanks,

jvigil

vCenter in VM vs HA

mechlord — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 16:24:17 GMT

Can I have the vcenter in a VM within the esx's doing HA? Does the vcenter perform the heartbeats or do the ESX's do that? I

Anyone seen this news: VMWARE saves the vSphere Enterprise Edition?

beckhamk — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 00:25:26 GMT

http://news.idg.no/cw/art.cfm?id=72A41EF3-1A64-67EA-E49C29118D9693EB

http://www.virtualization.info/2009/10/vmware-saves-vsphere-enterprise-edition.html

One ESX 4 Server connected to EQ 3TB over iSCSI, How would you do it?

NHessonSD21 — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 08:53:32 GMT

Hello all,

I have an implementation question. We have a remote site, that has one new server with ESX 4 and new 4TB Equallogic connected over iSCSI. Its only 3TB available after RAID setup. The Equallogic is setup with 3 nics, with 3 different IP addresses on the same subnet. I didn't see a way to etherChannel the interfaces on the Equallogic. But better yet, I have the Server with 3 nics as well. With each nic on its own VMkernal (only one Active Nic per VMK port group), with IP address. The hope is to have the one to one connection to the Equallogic, giving ~3gb connection to the storage. The main purpose is to replace a older Windows 2003 file server. Which has two drives a 500GB, and a 1.3TB Drives. Here is my question, how would you set up the storage (what is the best practice)?

We would like to go to 1TB drive for the 500GB Drive, and a 2TB drive for the 1.3TB drive. I know ESX likes smaller LUNs (Datastores), so I was thinking of creating 3 one TB drives, use the first TB LUN as the first Datastore, then use the other two LUN as one 2TB Datastore, 1TB + 1TB extent. OR what is the better way? BTW, The VM will have is Boot and System drive on local storage of ESX, with one VMDK file on both Datastores. Of course one being ~1TB, and the other being ~2TB. Again what way would you go?

Thanks for your time and help,

Nick

P2V Linux init level

joebabbo — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 18:08:14 GMT

Looking to use Converter Stand-alone 4 to "Hot-clone" existing Linux machines. One concern with hot clones is that the systems are still running and the potential for user access, changes exists versus cold cloning.

So my question, Is there any issue with booting to single-user mode (i.e. init S) to perform the hot clone so the majority of services aren't running?

Thx

What 10GB iSCSI SAN's are available to buy NOW

Box293 — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 12:05:27 GMT

What iSCSI SAN's are available that are 10GB or 10-gig (not sure of the exact terminology).

Preferably something available in Australia.

Deploying exchange 2007 in ESXi4 – storage spindle configuration?

cambee — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 15:45:49 GMT

I am starting you get a good understanding of VMware but had some questions on it architecturally when it comes to the design of the hardware mainly drive configuration and if it's necessary to go to this length...

I am in the process of designing a host (HP DL380G5) that will host 2 vm's both Exchange 2007 and a Blackerry Ent Server. Currently I have exchange 2003 installed with direct attached storage. The drives I have are: 4x 36GB (15k), 4x 72GB (15k) and 10 146GB (10k). Have about 100GB in total between both mailbox stores with a 3^rd^ store for sending all email to an online archive. The server is broken down to have OS, Pagefile, Logs and MTA all on their own RAID 1 drives. The datastores are on a stack of 10 drives in a RAID 10 config. The server was built for speed and reliability against drive failure. Moving forward this appears to be a little overkill for what we need for 36 users although we do have some serious outlook users with a handful or so hovering around 4GB which is the soft limit (notification). We use our public folders pretty extensively too. Also, our BES server sits on a desktop and needs to move to a server.

My question is how to configure the hdds to accommodate Exchange 2007 and BES 5. I'm thinking:

2x 36 (RAID 1) = ESXi

2x 36 (RAID 1) = Exchange 2007

2x 72 (RAID 1) = Exchange Logs

2x 72 (RAID 1) = BES

5x 146 (RAID 5) = Datastores/MTA

5x 146 (RAID 5) = free

Does this look good or does anyone have any suggestions? Any insight is greatly appreciated!

Thanks

Storage VMotion Simplified

dominic7 — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 04:31:18 GMT

Ok, So I had a need to move a considerable number of VMs from one array to another, and found that the command line svmotion ( while functional ) was lacking in the ease-of-use department. To remedy this I wrote up a wrapper script to make the process mostly painless. I've called the wrapper script 'vmpmotion.pl' and you can find it here:

http://vmprofessional.com/index.php?content=vmpmotion

Hopefully it will help someone else who might have a similar task ahead of them.

As always, I keep most things in development so if you see some room for improvement drop me a line and I'll see what I can do.

-Dominic

DHCP IP-Adress for the ESX Service Console a good plan ?

meistermn — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 09:30:28 GMT

In our ESX Server environment we use today static ip-address for the service console and the vmotion.

Now what will happen, if the service console gets a dhcp address.

Is there a risk.
What does this mean to HA isolation mode ?

new cisco 3750 network design and vSphere4

KristofPattou — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 12:17:33 GMT

Hello,

We are looking to renew our Vmware infrastructure.

Servers will be 5 x IBM X3650 (2 x intel 5540 quad core and 72gb mem)

Network on 2 x Cisco 3750

San emc CX4-240

Problem is how can best configure our 3750 swtiches.

The 2 cisco 3750 switched will be stacked as 1 logical switch.

Is it better to connect each esx host to both cisco's (active/standby nic), or will this cause troubles with the stack ?

Or can we better spread the 5 hosts over the two 3750 switches ?

Any network design ideas our considerations are very welcome.

Thanks,

Kristof

VMmark - understanding what's better - DL380G6 or DL385G6?

Shigura — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 10:16:34 GMT

Looking at the VMmarks :-

HP ProLiant DL385 G6
VMware ESX v4.0

VMmark v1.1
15.54@11 tiles
View Disclosure\

HP ProLiant DL380 G6
VMware ESX v4.0

VMmark v1.1
24.15@17tiles
View Disclosure\

How do you decide which is is more suitable to running Vsphere? I'm slightly confused on understanding the figures. From the doc's it looks like the first figure is a performance figure and the second the number of tiles the server was able to run without undue performance hits. In which case, is it that the 385 runs faster VM's but can't run as many VM's as the 380? Is it that simple?

HP DL380 G6: ESX Host Memory or CPU

vmproteau — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 00:05:50 GMT

We have a primarily HP shop where our ESX Hosts are HP DL380 G5, Quad Core, 32GB RAM. Generally memory is the deciding factor on when to consider adding Hosts. CPU isn't really considered because our VM/Core ratio is relatively small.With VSphere and lease replacements looming we are likely looking at HP DL380 G6 Quad Core, 64-72GB RAM. Those familiar with the G6 may know that memory population can greatly affect speed where 1333 MHz memory can be reduced to 800MHz speed depending on configuration.

To maximum memoy speed at the proposed capcities, we'll have to spend 10X on 8GB DIMMs. If we did that we'd probably look at less of a processor. I am concerned with the larger boxes because our VM/core number will certainly increase so my gut tells me to get the fastest processors I can afford but, I have no evidence to back that decision.

If I had to sacrafice one for the other should I go with faster CPU or Memory speeds. I do realize the VM population would factor in. We have a shared environment so server role runs the gamit but, they are generally Windows 2003/2008. Is there any guidance or evidence to help determine if the benefits of faster memory outweigh CPU speed concerns or vice versa?

On a related note, anyone know why the HP DL300 series G6 Intel offerings only Quad Core while the AMD offers Hex. Are Intel Hex in the works?

VMware P2V Converter OS license

Collin09 — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 22:57:41 GMT

I am using a P2V converter and I have a question about the operating software licensing when converted. For example, if I convert Server1 (physical) into a Server2(virtual), do I need to get another Windows Server license to activate and license the Server2 (virtual machine) eventhough it is a copy of Server1(physical)? I am planning to keep Server1 online. I am a little confuse about the licensing part and do not want to hunt be back later.

Any input or advice is greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

Collin

Moving guest OSes from a failed host to another host w/o vMotion..

shandbrus — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 15:05:11 GMT

Hey,

I'm probably not searching for the right lingo, so my searches are coming up bad... maybe someone can point me in the correct direction.

I'm wanting to test out a senario, if a host fails, how can I move and register all the vms to another host. We are in a non-clustered environment with ESX 4.0 Enterprise and connected to iSCSI storage.

So if I have VM01 and VM02 (we'll say 5 vms on each) amd VM02 fails, how do I register all 5 of the VMs that were on 02 onto 01? I'm taking into account i only lost the host and not the NAS.

Thanks!

shan

Store or not to virtual disk with VM?

BjornJohansson — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 07:38:14 GMT

Hello all,

I have a question about a VM's different disks on different data stores.

65 VM's, most of them Windows Server 2003
2 x ESX 3.5 U4 cluster with DRS/HA (one cluster at HQ, one at DR-site)
2 x HP EVA 4400 with Continous Access to our DR-site
Site Recovery Manager deployment is planned
vSphere upgrade is planned as soon as SRM is supported for it
Datastores are 250 gb and contains maximum 5-10 VM's
All VM's vmdk files are stored in the same location

Question: What are your view on adding a new virtual disk to a VM and store it on another datastore?

The problem today is that most of the data stores are pretty much filled. If I want to add a 100 gb disk to a VM I need to do storage vmotion. But if I put the the disk on a another data store I would be all set. Also, I would get the possibility to add cheap FATA disk storage to archive areas on our file server.

My fears is that administration will be more complex when VM's have their vmdk files scattered all over the SAN. Also that it possibly (?) could be problems with SRM or features in vSphere (FT for example). And possibly that performance and virtualization/storage overhead could be affected.

Please, post your pro and cons. Thank you!

/Björn

Best approach for a Windows WebFarm

alnapp — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 10:55:23 GMT

Hello all

I am going to implement a webfarm on our vmware infrastructure

This will be app'x 50 nearly identical windows machines (2008 32bit)

We are on ESX 3.5 and 4 (mid move)

What clever vmware tricks (I am thinking, consolidated disks etc) could I use in this scenario?

Would vmware VDI be suitable, or is that notapt for nearly identical servers?

Any pointers would be appreciated

Cheers

Periodic clean up of inactive VMs

crowhurst — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 12:58:49 GMT

Can someone point me in the direction of a canned report to identify VMs that are suspiciously inactive? I am thinking something along the lines of very low levels of cpu and disk activity for a prolonged period. I am trying to periodically spot those VMs that are basically just an idle OS and to ping their owners to see if they are still needed. Thanks

Vsphere - MD3000i configuration

chrisvan1969 — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 23:32:14 GMT

I'm looking for some advise from the storage guru's out there. I have 3-4 esx 4.0 hosts and am considering purchasing a Dell MD3000i for storage. I have the typical debate going. Will the MD3000i perform adequately. configured with 15 1TB 7k SAS drives? We'll have about 20VM's running dev. stuff. Some SQL but not 20 SQL at once. Probably 2-3 SQL at any one time. I'd like to have 15k SAS drives but the cost and space is a concern. I'm really looking for just a nice place to start that I can put our developer's on and it be adequate. Once they see the improvements in using Vsphere and SAN vs. free VM server and loal storage, then I can set out to expand into our production area. Any insight on how the 7k SAS performs would be helpful as well as RAID 5 vs. RAID 10 perf. for random (SQL) IO would be helpful.

Virtulization Readiness Assessment

madviz — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 14:30:41 GMT

Hi all,

I would like to know the products which i can use for Virtualization Readiness Assessment. Currently i am working with Platespin Recon. is there any other products like platespin?

Thanks in Advance
Viz

Capacity Planner

NoelDL — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 17:38:45 GMT

Hi People, I have a problem with a Capacity Planner, I did everything ok when I installed the CP and the inventory is collecting everything ok, but the problem is when I want to see the Enterprise Dashboard the

area of PROCESSOR SUMMARY!CP-URL-1.jpg!

Vmware Collector not sending performance data

artimanvmware — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 16:20:07 GMT

Hi,

I'm doing a Virtualization Assessment using Vmware Capacity Planner 2.7

The collector was able to identify the systems and I can see in the vmware optimize website dashboard the systems after I registered the Database I. I have waited 4 days and I have tried to run manually the data syncronization job to force the performance data to be uplaoded to the vmware warehouse.

Do i have to do something extra to collect performance data from the systems?

or I need to wait at less one week to see the data in the dashboard?

Thanks

Andrew

Service Console - Active/Active vs. Active/Standby

scott_k2003 — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 20:00:06 GMT

What it the proper method configuration method to have redundant paths for the service console? I have two physical nic's connected to two different physical switches and need to ensure my failover of the service console is working as designed. I see some references that the service console nic's should be configured in an active/standby configuration but nothing 100% solid. What about an active/active configuration? Will that cause problems in a scenario where one of the physical switches reboots or fails?

Dell Blade Hardware

vincedoepker — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 16:31:38 GMT

Our shop is in the process of refreshing our ESX hardware and one of the options on the table is a refresh using the Dell 1000e enclosure and a mixture of the M905 and M605 blade servers.

Just wanted to ping the community and get some feedback on this hardware - the good, the bad, and the gotchas.

After playing with hardware configurations a couple of questions came up that I didn't have ready answers for:

Are the Opteron processors that are designated as "HE" (for example, Opteron 8425HE) on the VMWare HCL? The Opteron 8425 is supported for this hardware, but no mention of the HE model.
If we mix and match blade models, the same model of Opteron processor isn't always available. Would vmotion work between an Opteron 2425 and an Opteron 8425?
Looking at the configuration options available for the chassis, what has everyone's experiences been with the PowerConnect switching? We had some PowerConnect 6k series layer 3 switches on our network before and they were easily the most unreliable/unstable switching platform I've worked with. Is the Cisco switching option worth the extra money (we'd make use of some QOS features to tag packets from certain applications.)

Thank You!

Dell/Equallogic sata drives and failure?

beckhamk — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 14:11:44 GMT

I would like to hear from people who are currently using dell/equallogic and others using sata in a san. How often are you having to replace your sata drives because of failure?

I would be looking at the 500gb, 750gb, 1000gb drive size failures?

thansk,

VMWare Config Advice

paulkc — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 03:02:46 GMT

I am currently running VMWare Server 2 on an Ubuntu Desktop host. Here is the basic configuration of my host:
Consumer grade Gigabyte motherboard
AMD Phenom quad-core processor
8gb ram
Multiple Sata drives

I am running the following VMs on this host
VM1: W2K3 running as DC for the network, also performing DNS and file sharing
VM2: W2K3 running a SQL express db and also a couple of small Access/Paradox based dbs accessed by only 2 or 3 users. Also running an Openfire chat server for roughly 12 users.
VM3: Linux Based (Red Hat) Content Filtering System for roughly 20-30 simultanous users.

I am having trouble with the host freezing up every few days. It seems that the longer it runs, the more trouble I have with the network locking down and things beginning to not respond properly. I am not sure if I am dealing more with a software issue or more of a hardware issue. I would like to move back to a Windows Host as I am not very knowledgeable in anything Linux (which is why my host is Ubuntu Desktop instead of Ubuntu Server).

I would like to actually host my VM's off of an Openfiler NAS and run them off a Windows Based host but I am having so much trouble out of the locally hosted VM's that I didn't want to make that move until I do some more planning/research.

Any thoughts/advice would be greatly appreciated at this point.

Infortrend S16F-R1840 and excessive LUN locking

erickmiller — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 08:22:18 GMT

Has anyone used Infortrend's S16F-R1840 fiber channel SAN?

We've had various problems from day one, which a recent firmware update solved many problems, but we often get SCSI I/O Reservation Conflicts that result in a locked LUN (a LUN inaccessible by all but one host).

I'm quite familiar with the problems that result in re-tried I/O reservations due to conflicts during a reservation. We have some HP and IBM DS3400 SANs that have "no" problems whatsoever, so this is a relatively new problem with a new SAN.

I've been in almost constant communication with Infortrend's support regarding this issue, and thought that it was related to a number of possible problems, but none
have panned out (firmware updates, ESX upgrades to the latest version, BIOS updates, fiber channel switch port error counter checks, etc.).

We have both ESX 3.5 and ESX 4.0 clusters attached. It appears the problem occurs at random times. We've even had it happen on a 2-node cluster by itself. I thought it was related to high I/O, but I've seen a LUN get locked with little I/O. Recently, it occurred while backups were running (using esXpress) while some Storage VMotions were running, so I can understand there will be some conflicts in this case, but nothing that would bring a whole LUN down. Since we
push our HP and IBM SANs to their limits with the same workloads, and have no problems at all, I'm confident in saying that this is an Infortrend problem.

All hardware is on the HCL (including the Infortrend), and includes mostly HP DL385 G5p's with FC2142SR (Emulex LPe1150) controllers or HP DL365 G5's with FC2242 (Emulex LPe11002) controllers (dual-port version of the LPe1150). Fiber channel switches are HP StorageWorks 4/16 switches (Brocade Silkworm 200E switches).

So, I'm looking for others that have had similar issues since this driving me nuts and we're about ready to return this unit (not going to be a great day if it comes to that).

Eric K. Miller, Genesis Hosting Solutions, LLC
http://www.genesishosting.com/ - Lease part of our ESX cluster!

EqualLogic PS6000E vs. PS6500E

Smitty0001 — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 01:15:18 GMT

My team is in the process of planning a vSphere implementation for our production environment. One of the first items on our list to look at is storage. We have been looking at EqualLogic and are debating between a pair of PS6000E arrays or a single PS6500E array. We will be using about 8-10TB of the array as file storage out of the box...but the remaining we would like to use for snapshots and to start our production vSphere implementation.

Does anybody have any experience using the PS5500E or PS6500E arrays for production VMWare? We are concerned about throughput since the controllers are limited in that series, but the space is appealing.

Thank you.

CA Spectrum for virtualization anyone?

azn2kew — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 16:14:48 GMT

Does anyone using CA Spectrum in their environment and how well does it work? Anyone know where to acquire trial demo to see how it works? I've tried google and CA site didn't find it. Please provide your feedback why you like it?

If you found this information useful, please consider awarding points for "Correct" or "Helpful". Thanks!!!

Regards,

Stefan Nguyen
VMware vExpert 2009
iGeek Systems Inc.
VMware, Citrix, Microsoft Consultant