jawadqazi Tracker

Re: View Clients limitations for CPU

jawadqazi — Sun, 11 Nov 2012 10:32:49 GMT

I second Tom, an overcommit ratio of 5 VMs per core is an ideal solution for infrastructures of these days, as the graphics of OS and applications running on them has increased extensively. The minimum requirement of a normal Win7 OS with standard office apps use 2 GB memory, so if the physical memory on the host suffices your requirement then 5 VMs per core is perfect.

By this calculation your host can run 20-22 VMs with standard apps.

Re: Restoring a Windows 7 image backup? (VM blue screens)

jawadqazi — Sun, 11 Nov 2012 10:20:18 GMT

If your objective is just to P2V the laptop image, the best suitable solution is to use VMware Converter 5.0. Follow the attached document for more details.

Re: Business Reasons to get VCAP-DCA

jawadqazi — Sun, 11 Nov 2012 10:05:18 GMT

You know what, if you are VCAP-DCA you can optimally design your solution and escape from the traps of excessive product purchase showcaused by the vendors utilizing their marketing strategies. This will help in reduction of cost for your project.

You can also optimize your existing infrastructure and redesign it to cater more requirements on the same infrastructure.

Second Level Address Translation (SLAT)

jawadqazi — Fri, 09 Nov 2012 10:08:07 GMT

What is SLAT?

SLAT stands for "Second Level Address Translation".

Intel calls their SLAT technology EPT (Extended Page Table) . This technology was introduced in the Nehalem microarchitecture found in certain Core i7, Core i5, and Core i3 processors.

AMD, beginning with their third generation Opteron processors (code name Barcelona) support SLAT through their Rapid Virtualization Indexing (RVI) technology.

With respect to memory management, Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V supports a new feature named Second Level Address Translation (SLAT). SLAT leverages AMD-V Rapid Virtualization Indexing (RVI) and Intel VT Extended Page Tables (NPT) technology to reduce the overhead incurred during virtual to physical address mapping performed for virtual machines. Through RVI or EPT respectively, AMD-V and Intel VT processors maintain address mappings and perform (in hardware) the two levels of address space translations required for each virtual machine, reducing the complexity of the Windows hypervisor and the context switches needed to manage virtual machine page faults. With SLAT, the Windows hypervisor does not need to shadow the guest operating system page mappings. The reduction in processor and memory overhead associated with SLAT improves scalability with respect to the number of virtual machines that can be concurrently executed on a single Hyper-V server. As an example, the Microsoft Remote Desktop Services (RDS) team recently blogged about performance tests conducted using an internal simulation tool on a Windows Server 2008 Terminal Services configuration running as a virtual machine on Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V. The results showed that a SLAT-enabled processor platform increased the number of supported sessions by a factor of 1.6 to 2.5 when compared with a non-SLAT processor platform. Overall, Microsoft reports that with SLAT-enabled processors, the Windows hypervisor processor overhead drops from about 10% to about 2%, and reduces memory usage by about 1 MB for each virtual machine.

Although RVI is not required to support workloads running on Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V, if you intend to run memory-intensive workloads like Remote Desktop Services, SQL Server, or web services, you should perform testing on SLAT-enabled platforms to determine whether or not you can gain significant performance improvements.

To find out if your processor supports SLAT, you will need to download a copy of CoreInfo from here

Re: Windows 8 Hyper-V

jawadqazi — Fri, 09 Nov 2012 07:51:56 GMT

To overcome this problem you might have to check something about SLAT.

What is SLAT?

SLAT stands for "Second Level Address Translation".

Intel calls their SLAT technology EPT (Extended Page Table) . This technology was introduced in the Nehalem microarchitecture found in certain Core i7, Core i5, and Core i3 processors.

AMD, beginning with their third generation Opteron processors (code name Barcelona) support SLAT through their Rapid Virtualization Indexing (RVI) technology.

To find out if your processor supports SLAT, you will need to download a copy of CoreInfo from here

Adding Serial Ports to a VM on VMware Player

jawadqazi — Tue, 06 Nov 2012 14:56:10 GMT

You can add up to four serial (COM) ports to a virtual machine. Virtual serial ports can output to physical serial ports, files, or named pipes.

You might want to add a virtual serial port to a virtual machine to make devices such as modems and printers available to the virtual machine. You can also use virtual ports to send debugging data from a virtual machine to the host system or to another virtual machine

Note
The virtual printer feature configures a serial port to make host printers available to the guest. You do not need to install additional drivers in the virtual machine.

Prerequisites

Power off the virtual machine.

Procedure

1 Select the virtual machine and select Virtual Machine > Virtual Machine Settings.

2 On the Hardware tab, click Add.

3 In the Add Hardware wizard, select Serial Port.

4 Select where the virtual serial parallel port sends output.

Option	Description
Use a physical parallel port	Send output to a physical serial port on the host system.
Use output file	Send output to a file on the host system. Either locate an existing output file or browse to a directory and type a filename to create a new output file.
Output to named pipe	Set up a direct connection between two virtual machines, or a connection between a virtual machine and an application on the host system.

5 If you selected Output to named pipe, configure the named pipe.

a (Windows host) Use the default pipe name, or type another pipe name.

The pipe name must begin with \\.\pipe\ and must be the same on both the server and the client.

For example: \\.\pipe\namedpipe

b (Linux host) Type /tmp/socket or another UNIX socket name in the first text box.

The pipe name must be the same on both the server and the client.

c To send debugging information to an application on the host system, select This end is the server from the first drop-down menu and select The other end is an application from the second dropdown menu.

d To send debugging information to another virtual machine, select This end is the server from the first drop-down menu and The other end is a virtual machine from the second drop-down menu.

6 To connect the port to the virtual machine when the virtual machine powers on, select Connect at power on.

7 Click Finish to add the virtual serial port to the virtual machine.

8 (Optional) On the Hardware tab, select the new serial port, select Yield CPU on poll, and click OK.

This option is useful if you are using debugging tools that communicate over a serial connection. If the serial port in the guest operating system is being used in polled mode rather than interrupt mode, you might notice performance issues. This option forces the virtual machine to yield processor time if the only task it is trying to do is poll the virtual serial port.

What to do next

If you set up a connection between two virtual machines, the first virtual machine is set up as the server. Repeat this procedure for the second virtual machine, but set it up as the client by selecting This end is the client when you configure the named pipe.

Re: VM Player - Host Win 7, 64-bit, vm Win XP, can't get serial port to work

jawadqazi — Tue, 06 Nov 2012 07:45:03 GMT

here you go...

You can add up to four serial (COM) ports to a virtual machine. Virtual serial ports can output to physical serial ports, files, or named pipes.

Note
The virtual printer feature configures a serial port to make host printers available to the guest. You do not need to install additional drivers in the virtual machine.

Prerequisites

Power off the virtual machine.

Procedure

1 Select the virtual machine and select Virtual Machine > Virtual Machine Settings.

2 On the Hardware tab, click Add.

3 In the Add Hardware wizard, select Serial Port.

4 Select where the virtual serial parallel port sends output.

Option	Description
Use a physical parallel port	Send output to a physical serial port on the host system.
Use output file	Send output to a file on the host system. Either locate an existing output file or browse to a directory and type a filename to create a new output file.
Output to named pipe	Set up a direct connection between two virtual machines, or a connection between a virtual machine and an application on the host system.

5 If you selected Output to named pipe, configure the named pipe.

a (Windows host) Use the default pipe name, or type another pipe name.

The pipe name must begin with \\.\pipe\ and must be the same on both the server and the client.

For example: \\.\pipe\namedpipe

b (Linux host) Type /tmp/socket or another UNIX socket name in the first text box.

The pipe name must be the same on both the server and the client.

d To send debugging information to another virtual machine, select This end is the server from the first drop-down menu and The other end is a virtual machine from the second drop-down menu.

6 To connect the port to the virtual machine when the virtual machine powers on, select Connect at power on.

7 Click Finish to add the virtual serial port to the virtual machine.

8 (Optional) On the Hardware tab, select the new serial port, select Yield CPU on poll, and click OK.

What to do next

Re: Virtualization Concept throw Network

jawadqazi — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 13:33:42 GMT

Definetely DataCenter is a part of vCenter, you will not be able to create a datacenter unless you have vCenter. Creation of Datacenter is essential for creating a cluster and adding ESX hosts to the cluster. And all this can happen only if vCenter is available. Also the obvious reason to create a cluster is to acheive the major features like vmotion, HA, DRS. Storing the VMs on a local storage of the host cannot allow you in acheiving these.

Re: VCP4 Exam What Ver of ESX4.1 will the exam be based upon?

jawadqazi — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 13:21:14 GMT

Also you can go to the education section of your login and take up mock exams. It will surely help gain your confidence. There are 100 chances given and its time driven approach. You will surely enjoy it.

You will be able to access it from here provided you have your my learn login id and password.

Re: Vmtools for Windows Server 2012 on ESXi5.1

jawadqazi — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 07:53:35 GMT

Check by performing either of these tasks:

Task 1:

- Poweroff the VM

- Change the settings of video display of VM to enable Accelerate 3D Graphics

- Restart the VM

- Repair tools.

If the above is unsuccessfull:

Try the below:

Check and download the VMTools package here: http://packages.vmware.com/tools

Re: Virtualization Concept throw Network

jawadqazi — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 07:11:14 GMT

Well in this case the major thing we are missing here is the Storage, if you need vMotion, HA, DRS features we might also need shared storage such as SAN/NAS.

Re: Do we have vLabs for practise in VMware as we have it in Microsoft?

jawadqazi — Sun, 04 Nov 2012 17:48:19 GMT

Thank you Scott!

Re: Difference Between these 2 FC HBA..

jawadqazi — Sun, 04 Nov 2012 17:44:35 GMT

Ok, below is what you can acheive:

For 1st FC Card: (This is Dual Port HBA Card)

Consider a scenario of 2 hosts with one dual port HBA card installed on each host. Two SAN switches connected to the SP1 and SP2 of storage array in redundant mode.

Now Host1-HBA Port1 will be connected to SAN Sw1 and Host1-HBA Port2 connected to SAN Sw2.

Similarly Host2-HBA Port1 will be connected to SAN Sw1 and Host2-HBA Port2 connected to SAN Sw2.

Now each LUN will be redundant and will have 4 paths associated.

For 2nd FC Card: (This is Single Port HBA Card)

Here if we need to achieve redundancy then we need 2 HBA single port cards on each host. And the results will be similar as above. If only one HBA of Single port is used per host redundancy cannot be achieved.

Hope this explains!

Do we have vLabs for practise in VMware as we have it in Microsoft?

jawadqazi — Sun, 04 Nov 2012 16:12:15 GMT

Hey Folks!

I just came across a link from Microsoft which gives me access to Microsoft Virtual Labs (Hyper-V Edition). Its so fascinating stuff that, they have designed a complete chapter by chapter guide and associated VMs running on Hyper-V to practise each of the chapter. These VMs are accessible to us and we can login into them as if on a local setup and configure each and every step as mentioned in the each chapter. Do we have a similar lab available on VMware? If yes please share the same.

Thanks in advance.

Re: Will VMware die like Novel?

jawadqazi — Sun, 04 Nov 2012 16:02:11 GMT

Well, i am not sure, how did this question arise in your mind. The might of VMware is much more strong compared to its competitors. If you think of any major virtual infrastructure existing today at any organization you will see only VMware to be the product in production. Though i love the virtualization technology as a whole, i prefer VMware at present to be the standard of all.

Re: How VCP Certification will helpful to Storage Admin or Backup-Restore Admin

jawadqazi — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 15:29:44 GMT

Hi Shrovan,

Well as you are already a VCP certified, i am sure you are aware of what all things 'pure' VMware ICM course has provided you as a knowledge. As per VMware ICM course you will only be aware of VM snapshots and very basics of VM backups. You will not be dealing with VM backup with respect to any Backup Tool such as Veritas NBU, Symantec, Tivoli, Acronis. These all again require a mastery into it to understand an appropriate backup solution for VMware infrastructure,

Also when we talk about Storage, as per VMware ICM course you will just come accross the Datastores, LUN IDs, Storage vMotion, etc only related to VMware. But its not going to talk anything about how to create partitions on the storage box, how to create LUNs with storage console, etc. These again requires a mastery into storage either with EMC or NetApp or Dell or etc.

Hope this clears your doubt.

Thanks,

Jawad Qazi.

Re: Virtual machine disks consolidation is needed

jawadqazi — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 12:51:39 GMT

Did check with backup admin, and this VM is not being backed up. How ever i went ahead with consolidate option but its throwing error insufficient disk space on the datastore. Do i need to migrate the VM to other datastore with sufficient disk space and then start the consolidation?

Re: Virtual machine disks consolidation is needed

jawadqazi — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 11:21:58 GMT

Well i did check the Snapshot Manager for that VM and i could see the VM name and You are here exactly below the VM name. Thats all present in Snapshot Manager. This confirms snapshots are not created using snapshot manager. However i did find multiple VMDKs in the datastore with file names ending with 000001, 000002 etc for the same VMDK. Checking with my backup admin if backup level snaphots are being managed for this VM.

Re: Virtual machine disks consolidation is needed

jawadqazi — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 15:47:20 GMT

Thanks for your reply Anthony!

But i have never used Snapshot manager to create any snapshots for this VM. Does consolidation still required??

Virtual machine disks consolidation is needed

jawadqazi — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 15:11:31 GMT

Consolidating snapshots in vSphere 5.x

I know this is one of the new features of vSphere 5.x which helps in consolidating the unlinked/mishandled snapshots. But i am perplexed to see an error shown below related to this feature on one of our production server which really does not have any snapshots taken at all. And the strange part here is, the VM is accessible and does not give any error or problem to the user.

As per the below VMware KB link i did see everything to be matching to this VM and also able to find the Snapshot -->Consolidate option available below Snapshot Manager. But before i could go ahead and hit consolidate just wanted to check if someone has a better option to resolve this issue with respect to my description.

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=2003638

Thanks in advance.