Peter_Grant's Posts

I got this same error. Tried disabling HA and now it works! Simon - you're amazing! Thank you so so much
Thanks both for your reply - that aligns with my thinking too
I'm designing vRops for an environment that has a production environment and a DR environment. The customer has a general rule to provide DR between Prod -> DR and I'm considering the best way to... See more...
I'm designing vRops for an environment that has a production environment and a DR environment. The customer has a general rule to provide DR between Prod -> DR and I'm considering the best way to do this from a vROps perspective. Key Points: 1. Prod and DR is similar hardware (Vblocks) 2. SRM is deployed and available Options: Opt 1. Use SRM to failover the nodes and bring up the same vROps instance on DC2 (Is it possible or supported to rename the nodes and/or re-ip if we needed to using SRM? I know some VMware appliances don't like this. ) Considerations: Does it make sense to try and seamlessly failover vRops to the DR datacenter, because even though the hardware, software components will be almost identical it is still physically separate kit. So for instance, an historical hardware alert from DC1 wont be applicable to DC2. There are a number of adapters including one for UCS, vCM, vCD, Hyperic, vCNS Opt 2. Deploy two separate and independent instances of vROps, one monitoring DC1 an one monitoring DC2 - don't fail anything over if DC1 goes down. Considerations: We'll have no historical alerts or performance baselines, but are they valid as its different hardware? Admittedly, the software services will be failed over and they will be the same but does it makes sense to monitor them as if they were still running on DC1 Opt 3?? I'm interested in the community thoughts as to ways to deploy vROps across this Active / Passive DC configuration Thanks
I've never been a fan of using VMs / Core. 2 VMs can be completely different hence this is a very rough calc. I'd suggest profiling the workloads that you want to run on the cluster using some... See more...
I've never been a fan of using VMs / Core. 2 VMs can be completely different hence this is a very rough calc. I'd suggest profiling the workloads that you want to run on the cluster using something like VMware Capacity Planner, Platespin Recon etc to measure the max cumulative peak MHzs. You’re not looking for avg CPU or the sum of the peak values for each worked (as they may peak at different times) but the cumulative highest value seen. Then use this as your upper limit plus say 10% as you're requirement. Then look at your hardware and work out how much CPH MHz is available then size on that. Much better than x vms/core. Still allow for N+1 As for values to measure I’d look at CPU Ready value on the VMs. This shows how long VMs have to wait to get CPU time and indicates CPU contention. Also if you’re using hyper threading on an Intel server then I’d considering increasing the following values, especially if you’re getting close to max and running a lot of VMs. http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1020233 I’d look to increase the HaltingIdleMsecPenaltyMax  To 8000 and HaltingIdleMsecPenalty to 2000 Both are advanced settings on the host. Pete
Hi, I'm designing a vCenter for a multi-site / multi-datacenter VI of approx 50 Hosts. I've decided to make the vCenter database virtual and run SQL 2008 on the local vCenter server (I didn... See more...
Hi, I'm designing a vCenter for a multi-site / multi-datacenter VI of approx 50 Hosts. I've decided to make the vCenter database virtual and run SQL 2008 on the local vCenter server (I didn't see any advantage of creating a separate virtual machine just for the DB) Best practices are to put DB logs and transaction files on different drives for performance benefits but if this is virtual then is there any point? The datastore consists of 15k FC disks so the question is do I create 3 vmdk files (C:, & E:) for OS/vCenter , Transaction & Logs or just create a C: for OS/vCenter and a for the SQL side? Thanks Pete
Linjo, Thanks for your help. I've managed to get it working now. It was to do with the Video Memory as you mentioned in a previous post. It didn't seem to work when I set a very large video ra... See more...
Linjo, Thanks for your help. I've managed to get it working now. It was to do with the Video Memory as you mentioned in a previous post. It didn't seem to work when I set a very large video ram value but if I use the Edit Settings in the VI Client of the VM to calculate and set this manually it did. I spoke to VMware and I believe this is a design flaw as I think the Video Ram should get updated when you updated the View Pool (like the other display settings do). Anyway, I've documented the issue here as I think most people using Multi-monitors with high resolution settings will see this problem. Regards Peter
I'm trying using PCoIP using the View Client and selecting multi monitor. I've checked the vmx file and when I change the pool "Max Monitor" setting it updates the file. I've tried rebooting etc ... See more...
I'm trying using PCoIP using the View Client and selecting multi monitor. I've checked the vmx file and when I change the pool "Max Monitor" setting it updates the file. I've tried rebooting etc but still just get one screen in the middle not 2. I assume the Windows XP 32-bit client is supported for PCoIP dual displays??
Thanks Linjo, I've checked my VMX files for the View 4 desktops and they show as svga.numDisplays = "2" however when I login there is only one desktop which is in the middle of the 2 screens. I'm... See more...
Thanks Linjo, I've checked my VMX files for the View 4 desktops and they show as svga.numDisplays = "2" however when I login there is only one desktop which is in the middle of the 2 screens. I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong??
I'm having the same problem but let's clear a couple of things up first. There is a difference between 'spanning' which simply stretches your screen across two monitors and 'multi-monitor' where ... See more...
I'm having the same problem but let's clear a couple of things up first. There is a difference between 'spanning' which simply stretches your screen across two monitors and 'multi-monitor' where you can maximise your applications into one screen only. In ESX4 there is this new 'multi-display' option in the 'edit settings' part of the VI Client however this doesn't stick and keeps reverting back to 1 monitor. I want to use multi-monitor via VMware View and PCoIP (RDP doesn't support it) however it won't work. I can't help but think the fact this setting won't stick may be part of it. Could some other people try and change this 'multi-monitor' setting and let me know if it sticks? Thanks ---- Peter Grant Virtualization Consultant Xtravirt.com Please award points if you found this helpful
I'm having the same problem...any ideas??
I'm stating this from memory so could be wrong but I think u can span a volume. With LH u creat a cluster with one or more nodes in it. When u create a volume it's a volume within the cluster so ... See more...
I'm stating this from memory so could be wrong but I think u can span a volume. With LH u creat a cluster with one or more nodes in it. When u create a volume it's a volume within the cluster so it should be spread amount the nodes. Could be wrong but pretty sure that's how it works. Choosing no replication , 2-way etc only specifys the network RAID level hence redundancy ---- Peter Grant Virtualization Consultant Xtravirt.com Please award points if you found this helpful
Spanning volumes in LH is never recommended unless 2-way replication is enabled. They sell the appliances in pairs for just this reason. If u use replication then the nodes form a cluster and vol... See more...
Spanning volumes in LH is never recommended unless 2-way replication is enabled. They sell the appliances in pairs for just this reason. If u use replication then the nodes form a cluster and volumes are spread over them. I assumed EQ would offer the one node failure option if not then that's a big difference. Never contacted LH post sales support but my pre sales tech support has been good. ---- Peter Grant Virtualization Consultant Xtravirt.com Please award points if you found this helpful
Here's one option based on 5TB requirement. Default 2-way configuration (you can lose one node and SAN stays online) P4300 SATA Starter SAN, Qty 1 (2-nodes), Usable Storage 4.58 TB, 800 IOPS,... See more...
Here's one option based on 5TB requirement. Default 2-way configuration (you can lose one node and SAN stays online) P4300 SATA Starter SAN, Qty 1 (2-nodes), Usable Storage 4.58 TB, 800 IOPS, SATA Disks If you buy just one expansion SATA SAN node then you'll get the same capacity (half the price) with less IOPs and no failover. You'll need to speak to LeftHand tech sales but maybe this would do for a small environment. as an alternative to VSAs. We have put VSAs in before for small VDI environments of about 20 users and works ok. As a ROUGH rule of thumb if you don't know your IOPS requirement you could use 50 IOPS per server VM as a very general rule of thumb to see if you're in the ball park. I'm not trying to say EL isn't a better solution for you. It may be better to pay slightly more and get a hardware EQ solution rather than VSAs. Remember with VSAs you still need to provide the physical storage. Peter ---- Peter Grant Virtualization Consultant Xtravirt.com Please award points if you found this helpful
Price is always a big factor and Id be interested to know if its a big difference between the two. Make sure when you're buying to find out how much USEABLE storage you actually get. With Left... See more...
Price is always a big factor and Id be interested to know if its a big difference between the two. Make sure when you're buying to find out how much USEABLE storage you actually get. With Leftand when you enable 2-way replication you can lose one node and stay online but you also lose 50% of your raw storage. This is the best case scenario. You can enable 3 or 4 way replication but then you only get 33% or 25% usable storage. Most people use 2-way for one node lose and 50% storage lose. Be aware that buying '1' LeftHand SAN actually consists of 2-nodes so you have the failover option straight off. Replication is real time and requires Gigabit and something like 2ms or 5ms latency...basically a Gigabit LAN. There is also Remote copy which is async replication which can be across a remote WAN link and supports SRM. Also one good thing about lefthand is that the snapshots are thin, so if you're snapshoting or doing remote copy on a 1TB volume only using 100GB the snapshot will also reflect this 100GB. Again key point is to work out usable storage. I've got some LeftHand sizing spreadsheets, if you tell me the number of GB / TB usable you have and your IOPS requirement if you have it then I can tell you what I think you should use. I'm not a LeftHand rep, I've just done a bit of sizing on my last project so it's fresh in my mind. ---- Peter Grant Virtualization Consultant Xtravirt.com Please award points if you found this helpful
Hi, We're in the process of writing a utility / application which can bulk deploy VMs from a template which should meet your needs. The Windows customisations you'll need to do but using the r... See more...
Hi, We're in the process of writing a utility / application which can bulk deploy VMs from a template which should meet your needs. The Windows customisations you'll need to do but using the run-once etc tricks and Sysprep which is included of course in a template deployment you should be sorted. You can specify in a csv file the name of VMs etc and then just kick it off and leave it. Loosely speaking its a cut down version of Lab Manager but we'll release it for free. It's in Beta at the moment but if you're interested in it drop me a private e-mail and I'll see if I can get it to you. Pete peter.grant@xtravirt.com ---- Peter Grant Virtualization Consultant Xtravirt.com Please award points if you found this helpful
Are you templates and VM destination on the same datastore? If not try cloning to the same one to see if that works. Check you have plenty of free space. What is your block size? Does the d... See more...
Are you templates and VM destination on the same datastore? If not try cloning to the same one to see if that works. Check you have plenty of free space. What is your block size? Does the destination datastore have a block size, which doesn't support the VM vmdk file size? ie block size of 1mb gives max vmdk file size of 256GB. ---- Peter Grant Virtualization Consultant Xtravirt.com Please award points if you found this helpful
I'll start by saying I haven't used Equallogic so I may be biased however LeftHand is a good solid solution and suitable for Enterprise deployments, it has all the big SAN features. Replication g... See more...
I'll start by saying I haven't used Equallogic so I may be biased however LeftHand is a good solid solution and suitable for Enterprise deployments, it has all the big SAN features. Replication gives the ability to lose 1 or more nodes but you lose half the storage space. However the more nodes you have the more IOps you get. I guess my point is LeftHand works fine and is very easy to manage in house.. Not sure if that's much help! ---- Peter Grant Virtualization Consultant Xtravirt.com Please award points if you found this helpful
An alternative way is to use 3rd party VMware backup products. Check out the following, esXpress, Veeam, vRanger. These 3 products provide dedicated solutions for backing up and restoring VMs, th... See more...
An alternative way is to use 3rd party VMware backup products. Check out the following, esXpress, Veeam, vRanger. These 3 products provide dedicated solutions for backing up and restoring VMs, they are provide file level back ability. Of course you need to pay for them.....just another option. They all have free trial versions you can use to test. ---- Peter Grant Virtualization Consultant Xtravirt.com Please award points if you found this helpful
Yes your exactly right. You need to restore the backup repository from tape first then I recommend running an integrity check..basically as detailed at the end of the doc. You cannot restore dire... See more...
Yes your exactly right. You need to restore the backup repository from tape first then I recommend running an integrity check..basically as detailed at the end of the doc. You cannot restore directly from tape, it must be done by the VDR appliance. ---- Peter Grant Virtualization Consultant Xtravirt.com Please award points if you found this helpful