Multiple vCPU support for FT is coming...

Just concluded a VMware partner briefing now and it was announced an  update to new vSphere 5.1 is due in a week or two.

It's going to bring the multiple vCPU support or FT while addressing known issues with the vSphere 5.1.

As anticipated it will support 4 vCPU's.

VMware has announced that vSphere 5.1 does not support any of the View versions as of yet.

VMware announces on the kb article 2035268 to hold on to the upgrade if your enterprise is using View.

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=2035268

vSphere 5.1 is not supported with any versions of VMware View

Symptoms

• VMware vSphere 5.1 is not currently supported with any versions of VMware View.

Resolution

Do not upgrade vSphere above the supported versions listed in the VMware View 5.1 Release Notes.

vSphere 5.1 is in the process of being certified against VMware View. To be alerted when this article is updated, click Subscribe to Document in the Actions box.

vSphere 5.1 Auto Deploy: Stateless caching and Stateful Install elucidated....

Ever since the vSphere 5.1 was released it was mentioned that a new feature was added for Auto Deploy feature. I was curious to know what this feature was and how it could help to ease installation.

Following post describes the feature in details and in which way you should setup the BIOS for using this feature in Auto Deploy. Its worth a read...

http://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2012/09/vsphere-5-1-auto-deploy-stateless-caching-and-stateful-installs.html

Stateless Caching Mode
The Auto Deploy stateless caching mode was implemented to help address availability concerns with the PXE boot infrastructure and Auto Deploy server.  With stateless hosts, if the PXE boot failed, or if the Auto Deploy server was unavailable, the host would not be able to boot until the outage was corrected.  However, with stateless caching, if a host cannot boot due to a problem with the PXE environment or Auto Deploy server, it is able to fall back to booting off a cached image saved to a dedicated boot device.  After booting from the cached image, the administrator is able to use the host to help troubleshoot and identify why the PXE boot might have failed.
The stateless caching mode is very similar to the stateless mode, in that during normal operation the host PXE boots from the Auto Deploy server.  However, the difference is that with stateless caching, an additional step is taken where the software image running in memory is cached (saved) to a dedicated boot device (local disk, SAN, USB).  This cached image then acts as a backup from which the host can boot in the event there is a problem with the PXE boot or Auto Deploy infrastructure.
Unlike the stateless mode, stateless caching requires a dedicated boot device for each vSphere host.  In addition, users must configure the host’s BIOS settings to first attempt to boot over the network and, if that fails, to fall back to booting from disk.
With stateless caching, if there is a localized outage that affects the PXE boot infrastructure (DHCP or TFTP server) or the Auto Deploy server but does not affect the vCenter Server instance, by using the cached image the host will be able to boot and the administrator able to manually reconnect to the vCenter Server.
Note: Stateless caching does not protect against a vCenter Server failure. Always protect a vCenter Server by running it in a vSphere cluster protected by VMware vSphere High Availability (VMware HA) or VMware vCenter server Heartbeat (vCenter Server Heartbeat).
Stateful Install Mode
Auto Deploy stateful install mode enables administrators to leverage the Auto Deploy infrastructure to provision new vSphere hosts.  With stateful install, users perform a one-time PXE boot of a new host from the Auto Deploy server.  Following the one-time PXE boot, all subsequent reboots will take place from the dedicated boot disk.
Setting up stateful installs is similar to configuring stateless caching.  The difference is the BIOS boot order configured on the server.  Where stateless caching is set to boot from the network first and fall back to the local disk only when the PXE boot fails, with stateful installs the host is configured to always try to boot from the local disk first and boot from the network only when no boot image can be found on the disk.  With Auto Deploy stateful install mode, a new host will perform an initial one-time PXE boot using the Auto Deploy infrastructure to configure the host.  After the initial boot, all subsequent reboots take place using the boot device.
With stateful installs, the Auto Deploy infrastructure is being leveraged as a provisioning tool similarly to how scripted installations or kickstart might be used. The advantage to Auto Deploy stateful install is that users are able to rapidly deploy hosts without having the need to create and maintain custom scripts.  The software to be installed is determined using the Auto Deploy rules engine, and the host is configured using the vCenter host profiles and therefore doesn’t rely on external scripts.
With stateful installs, users leverage the Auto Deploy infrastructure to provision new hosts but forgo most of the benefits of stateless or stateless caching because after the vSphere hosts have been deployed, they must be maintained, patched and updated individually.

SRM 5.1 vSphere Replication supports fail and reprotect

VMware confirms that the new vCenter Site Recovery manager has added Reprotect and Failback feature with vSphere Replication. Previously it was only possible with Storage Array based Replication


What's New

VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager 5.1 adds the following new features and improvements.

• SRM 5.1 supports reprotect and failback with vSphere Replication. Previously, you could only perform reprotect and failback on array-based protection groups. In SRM 5.1 you can perform reprotect and failback on vSphere Replication protection groups.

• The SRM Server in SRM 5.1 is now a fully 64-bit application.

• Improved handling of datastores in the all paths down (APD) state. If SRM detects that a datastore on the protected site is in the all paths down (APD) state and is preventing a virtual machine from shutting down, SRM waits for a period before attempting to shut down the virtual machine again. The APD state is usually transient, so by waiting for a datastore in the APD state to come back online, SRM can gracefully shut down the protected virtual machines on that datastore.

• Improved disk resignaturing for VFMS disks.

For more refer: http://www.vmware.com/support/srm/srm-releasenotes-5-1-0.html

Enhanced vMotion is only possible through vSphere Web Client

Enhanced vMotion is only possible when you access the Virtual Infrastructure through New vSphere Web Client. The C# based vSphere client does not cater this feature.

VMware 4.0 to 5.0 Upgrade

Concluded a successful project in one of our prominent customers.

This was a practical scenario which involved following steps. The vSphere 4 was setup by a previous employee and it had to be upgraded to vSphere 5.

Pre assessment tasks involved.

• Taking an inventory of the vm's
• Taking an inventory of datastores.
• Taking an inventory of the vswitches, network adapters and their MAC addresses. There were VLAN's involved.
• IP details and DNS and netbios names.

Project Plan in a high level involved:

• Powering off non critical vm's
• vMotion vitual machines to single host.
• Installing ESXi 5on a host on two new HDD's.
• Configure ESXi host.
• Install vCenter Server 5 on a vm.
• Configure vCenter Server.
• Unregister vm's from old hypervisor and register new hypervisor.
• Upgrade the hardware version on vm's.
• Testing vm settings.
• Install ESXi 5 on the other host.
• Configure ESXi 5.
• Format and install vCenter Server 5 on the physical machine.
• Configure vCenter Server 5 and HA/DRS cluster.

The downtime was a 4 hour window. We achieved it within the given time.

vSphere 5.1 Whats New Official PPT Slides

The follwoing slides are the official slides for whats new in vSphere 5.1.

http://www.4shared.com/file/SlCj6L6b/vSphere_51_Whats_New_Presentat.html

My Study Material List for VCAP-DCD

I thought of listing out what materials I would use to prepare for my VCAP-DCD exams.

I will be updating this list quite often, so make sure to come back and check for the list.


1. VCAP-DCD 5 Blueprint
2. Trainsignal - Designing Virtual Infrastructure Design Video's
3. vSphere 5 Design Workshop - Student Manual and lab guides
4. vSphere Design e-book - (I believe it's Scott Lowe's)
5. vSphere 5 Clustering Technical Deep Dive e-book

Additional Reading:
6. Mastering vSphere 5
7. vSphere 5.1 Clustering Technical Deep Dive

VMworld 2012 Session NET2207: VMware vSphere Distributed Switch Technical Deep Dive:

While the VMware vSphere Distributed Switch has been around since vSphere 4, vSphere 4.1 and 5.0 have added a number of enhancements. This session will provide a technical deep dive into the vSphere Distributed Switch, including design and deployment considerations, configuration, migration steps, tuning and troubleshooting. Special attention will be paid to migrating an existing production environment from the standard vSwitch to the vSphere Distributed Switch with little or no disruption. Extended features such as network I/O control, network resource pools, and load-based teaming will be discussed in depth, with use cases and recommendations given. Finally, methods and tools for troubleshooting network connectivity and performance problems will also be highlighted. A live lab environment will be included, making for a very interactive session.

VMware vSphere 5.1 known issues...

VMware vSphere 5.1 Known Issues

VMWARE VSPHERE 5.1 KNOWN ISSUES : UPDATED 9/14

VMware released vSphere 5.1 at VMworld 2012 in San Francisco and with any new product release there are usually bumps on the road, compatibility issues and things that just don’t work. VMware vSphere 5.1 is no exception.

I have been part of many beta tests for other companies as well as several vSphere editions going back to 3.x. Not every configuration and product can be tested. The beta process does catch a lot of issues. The day software goes live without any issues every time, a lot of people will be without work..

I have decided to catalog a few of the known issues with the vSphere 5.1 release.

Perhaps the larges issue is that VMware View and vSphere 5.1 are not compatible yet.

vSphere 5.1 and VMware View (all versions of View)  

VMware vSphere 5.1 is not currently supported with any versions of VMware View.

Do not upgrade vSphere above the supported versions listed in the VMware View 5.1Release Notes.

vSphere 5.1 is in the process of being certified against VMware View. To be alerted when this article is updated, click Subscribe to Document on the link above in the actions box

VMware vSphere 5.1 KB articles

VMware complied several of the 5.1 KB articles in a recent blog post on VMware Support Insider blog

Increased Restart time with vCenter Server 5.1

This issue only impacts the start/re-start time for vCenter Server. It does not affect the ongoing operations after vCenter Server has started. In fact, due to improvements to the vCenter Server database, the use of vSphere Web Client, the Inventory Service cache, customers will notice significant performance improvements in vCenter Server 5.1. 

VMware vSphere 5.1 and EMC VMAX arrays.

Sphere 5.1 changes the behavior of VAAI Hardware Accelerated Locking (aka ATS) to no longer work with transient (sometimes on/sometimes off) ATS behavior, and older (i.e. non-current) versions of Enginuity will fail to create VMFS-5.

VMware vSphere 5.1 and EMC PowerPath V/E 

PowerPath/VE customers, hold off vSphere 5.1 upgrades (GA was yesterday).   Hotfix P02 from EMC is in days, and so is the expected VMware fix, follow the above link for more details on Chad Sakac’s blog post

VMware vSphere 5.1 and Synology DSM 4.1   

Stephen Foskett found an issue with the most recent release of DSM 4.1 and vSphere 5.1

It’s possible to mount both NFS and iSCSI datastores, but when you try to build or power on a VM, everything begins to halt when it needs to write to disk. If everything runs in memory (like mounting an ISO and beginning an OS installation), but when it comes to install the OS to disk, it begins to crawl. I checked the vmkernel log and here is what is shown. You can see that after I power on the VM, it gets binded to a port but when it tries to read from disk, there are all sorts of errors 

Update Manager 5.1 reports the compliance status as Incompatible when scanning or remediating ESXi 5.x hosts that belong to an HA cluster 

I personally ran into this issue when upgrading my lab - see Update Manager 5.1 Release Notes

CA Signed SSL Certificates may cause trouble with the upgrade process of vCenter.

From Michael Webster’s blog at http://longwhiteclouds.com/

I have heard unconfirmed reports of difficulties with the upgrade process of vCenter particularly with registering Inventory Service and SSO with vCenter when using CA Signed SSL Certificates. As I’m using CA Signed Certificates in my lab environment I will update this article when I have completed my upgrade.

Troubleshooting SSL certificate updates and Single Sign On (2033240)
vCenter Single Sign On installer reports: Error 29155. Identity source discovery error (2034374)

ESXi cannot distinguish between EagerZeroedThick & LazyZeroedThick
From Cormac Hogan’s Blog

ESXi cannot distinguish between thick provision lazy zeroed and thick provision eager zeroed virtual disks on NFS datastores with Hardware Acceleration support

 When you use NFS datastores that support Hardware Acceleration, the vSphere Client allows you to create virtual disks in Thick Provision Lazy Zeroed (zeroedthick) or Thick Provision Eager Zeroed (eagerzeroedthick) format. However, when you check the disk type on the Virtual Machine Properties dialog box, the Disk Provisioning section always shows Thick Provision Eager Zeroed as the disk format no matter which format you selected during the disk creation. ESXi does not distinguish between lazy zeroed and eager zeroed virtual disks on NFS datastores.

Links for more informations
vSphere 5.1 Important Upgrade Considerations by Michael Webster VCDX #66

Extracted from: www.varrow.com

vSphere 5.1 poster

Now you can pause and resume a task in the vSphere Web Client

Pause and Resume a Task in Progress in the vSphere Web Client You can pause many tasks in the vSphere Web Client and later resume them from the Work in Progress pane.

Procedure

1. In a dialog box or wizard, click the minimize button. The task is paused and minimized to the Work in Progress pane. Any changes that you have made in the dialog box or wizard are saved, but not yet applied to the object you are working with.

2. When you are ready to resume the task, click it in the Work in Progress pane. The dialog box or wizard opens and you can resume the task from where you left off.

VMworld 2012 goes hip-hop... FUNNY :D

Installing vSphere Web Client 5.1

vSphere Client Vs. vSphere Web Client

vSphere Client and vSphere Web Client

All administrative functions are available through the vSphere Web Client. A subset of those functions is available through the vSphere Client.

Comparing the Two Clients

vSphere Client	vSphere Web Client
■ Locally installed application. ■ Windows operating system only. ■ Can connect to vCenter Server or directly to hosts. ■ Full range of administrative functionality except new features introduced in vSphere 5.1.	■ Web application. ■ Cross platform. ■ Can connect to vCenter Server only. ■ Full range of administrative functionality. ■ Extensible plug-in-based architecture.
Users: Virtual infrastructure administrators for specialized functions.	Users: Virtual infrastructure administrators, help desk, network operations center operators, virtual machine owners.

The vSphere Client uses the VMware API to access vCenter Server. After the user is authenticated, a session starts in vCenter Server, and the user sees the resources and virtual machines that are assigned to the user. For virtual machine console access, the vSphere Client first uses the VMware API to obtain the virtual machine location from vCenter Server. The vSphere Client then connects to the appropriate host and provides access to the virtual machine console.

Users can use the vSphere Web Client to access vCenter Server through a Web browser. The vSphere Web Client uses the VMware API to mediate the communication between the browser and the vCenter Server.

Courtesy of: www.vmware.com

vSphere Enterprise Plus customers gets to upgrade to New vSphere Cloud for FREE!

I was able to meetup with the VMware principals today.

We were advised that the customers who are using vSphere Enterprise Plus license gets to upgrade VMware vCloud Suite free of charge.

VMware vCloud Suite Components

vSphere	Virtualized infrastructure with policy-based automation	Learn More
vCloud Director	Virtualized datacenters with multi-tenancy and public cloud extensibility	Learn More
vCloud Connector	Integrated viewing and dynamic transfer of workloads between private and public clouds.	Learn More
vCloud Networking and Security	Software defined networking, security, and ecosystem integration	Learn More
vCenter Site Recovery Manager	Automated disaster recovery planning, testing, and execution	Learn More
vCenter Operations Management Suite	Integrated, proactive performance, capacity, and configuration management for dynamic cloud environments.	Learn More
vFabric Application Director	Multi-tier application service catalog publishing and provisioning	Learn More

Courtesy of - www.vmware.com

It comes with 3 flavors viz Standard, Advanced and Enterprise.

Courtesy of - www.vmware.com

vSphere Web Client - The way forward...

Its pretty evident that the vSphere 5.1 is replacing the C# client with the new Adobe Air based vSphere web client.

Some of the tasks can only be achieved with the vSphere Web Client.

It seems they will be phasing out the vSphere client with the next release.

The linux users and Mac users dont have anything to complaint about the vSphere client anymore.

How to restart management agents in ESXi 5

I was troubleshooting an issue where I had to restart the management agents on an ESXi 5 environment.

I enabled the SSH services from the security profiles. I managed to connect through a putty session.

Then I issued the following command

# service mgmt-vmware start 

But it returned saying unknown command browsing through the kb articles I found that the command  has to be  replaced with

# /sbin/services.sh restart

Following are some useful kb articles for troubleshooting purposes.

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1003490

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1005566

VCAP - DCD BrownBag sessions

As the first step of my VCAP Preparation series, I thought of sharing the BrownBag sessions on VCAP - DCD.



http://professionalvmware.com/2012/05/apac-vbrownbag-follow-up-vcap-dcd-performance/

http://professionalvmware.com/2012/04/apac-vbrownbag-follow-up-vm-design/

http://professionalvmware.com/2012/05/apac-vbrownbag-follow-up-vcap-dcd-vm-design/

http://professionalvmware.com/2012/04/apac-vbrownbag-follow-up-management-design/

http://professionalvmware.com/2012/04/apac-vbrownbag-follow-up-vcap-dcd-implementation-design/

http://professionalvmware.com/2012/03/apac-vbrownbag-follow-up-vcap-dcd-cluster-design/

http://professionalvmware.com/2012/03/apac-vbrownbag-follow-up-vcap-dcd-host-design/

http://professionalvmware.com/2012/03/apac-vbrownbag-follow-up-vcap-dcd-cluster-design/

http://professionalvmware.com/2012/03/apac-brownbag-follow-up-network-design/

http://professionalvmware.com/2012/02/apac-brownbag-follow-up-vcap-dcd-networking-design/

http://professionalvmware.com/2012/02/apac-brownbag-vcap-dcd-storage-follow-up/

http://professionalvmware.com/2012/02/apac-brownbag-follow-up-vcap-dcd-study-group/

http://professionalvmware.com/2011/11/brownbag-follow-up-vcloud-architecture/

http://professionalvmware.com/2011/10/brownbag-follow-up-vsphere-design-with-harley-stagner/

http://professionalvmware.com/2011/09/brownbag-follow-up-vcap-dcd-objective-1-jason-boche/

vSphere 5.1 Essentials kits and Feature comparison

vSphere 5.1 license and feature list

vSphere 5.1 has been released...

I know I am touting this a bit too late, but I have been touting the latest features on other forums.

But with this post I will be going through the main features that's been added to strengthen the vSphere product suite.

• The vRAM based entitlement for licensing has been taken off. It is going to be per processor based licensing.

• Virtual machine hardware version has been upgraded to version 9 with the new release.

• Like some bloggers out there I would like to call the new distributed virtual switch as "vDistributed Switch 2.0" - 

Enhancements such as Network Health Check, Configuration Backup and Restore,
Roll Back and Recovery, and Link Aggregation Control Protocol support and deliver more enterprise-class networking functionality and a more robust foundation for cloud computing.

•  SR-IOV - Single Root - IO Virtualization

Support for SR-IOV has been included for greater Network handling for virtual machines.

Below is a great explanation of how SR-IOV works.

For indepth detail check out the link http://blog.scottlowe.org/2009/12/02/what-is-sr-iov/
Where Scott Lowe goes in depth to explain the internals of SR-IOV.

• vSphere Enhanced vMotion - "Unified vMotion"

The new vMotion feature does not need a shared storage anymore, the vMotion can happen on local storages too now.

However before using this feature it is better to consult the best practices guide at http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/techpaper/VMware-vSphere51-vMotion-Perf.pdf

I skimmed through the pages and came across these vital information in order how to implement this successfully.

vSphere 5.1 vMotion Best Practices

Following are several best practices that were derived from the previously described tests:

·         vSphere 5.1 vMotion has performance optimizations that depend on the unified 1MB file system block size found in VMFS-5. Although 1MB has been the default VMFS block size since the early VMFS versions, certain VMFS versions (VMFS-3, for example) allowed users to choose a different block size. VMFS file systems that don’t use 1MB block sizes cannot take advantage of these performance optimizations. A significant reduction in migration time can be achieved by switching to VMFS-5 with a 1MB block size.

·         vSphere 5.1 vMotion typically transfers disk content over the vMotion network. However, if the source host has access to the destination datastore, vSphere 5.1 vMotion will use the source host’s storage interface to transfer the disk content, thus reducing vMotion network utilization and host CPU utilization.

·         If both the source and destination datastores are on the same VAAI-capable array, and the source host has access to the destination datastore, vSphere 5.1 vMotion will offload the task of copying the disk content to the array using VAAI.

·         When using vSphere 5.1 vMotion to migrate a virtual machine with snapshots, plan to provision at least a 1Gbps management network. This is advised because vSphere 5.1 vMotion uses the Network File Copy (NFC) service to transmit the virtual machine's base disk and inactive snapshot points to the destination datastore. Because NFC traffic traverses the management network, the performance of your management network will determine the speed at which such snapshot content can be moved during migration.

·         If there are no snapshots, and if the source host has access to the destination datastore, vSphere 5.1 vMotion will preferentially use the source host’s storage interface to make the file copies, rather than using the management network.

·         Consider using a 10GbE vMotion network. Using a 10GbE network in place of a 1GbE network for vMotion will result in significant improvements in vSphere 5.1 vMotion performance. When using very large virtual machines, consider using multiple 10GbE network adaptors for vMotion to further improve performance.

·         When using the multiple–network adaptor feature, configure all the vMotion vmnics under one vSwitch and create one vMotion vmknic for each vmnic. In the vmknic properties, configure each vmknic to leverage a different vmnic as its active vmnic, with the rest marked as standby. This way, if any of the vMotion vmnics become disconnected or fail, vSphere 5.1 vMotion will transparently switch over to one of the standby vmnics. However, when all your vmnics are functional, each vmknic will route traffic over its assigned, dedicated vmnic.


·        VDP replacing the VDR Backup applicance. Based on EMC's Avamar backup appliance the new Backup appliance will replace the VDR appliance which has been a tool to take disk backup of VM's.


·    vSphere Replication is included in all versions of licenses. 15 minute RPO based vSphere replication is added as an additional feature in all licenses. SRM will be still continued as a fully blowned product for BCR/DR.


·    This is something that was long pending anticipated. VMware tool upgrades and installation does not need a reboot of the guest OS anymore.


·    vShield Endpoint is being added for AV vendors to take advantage of offloaded agentless AV solutions.


• vSphere Storage DRS™ and Profile-Driven Storage – New integration with VMware vCloud® Director™ enables further storage efficiencies and automation in a private cloud environment.

• vSphere Auto Deploy™ – Two new methods for deploying new vSphere hosts to an environment make the Auto Deploy process more highly available then ever before. Management (with vCenter Server)

• vSphere Web Client – The vSphere Web Client is now the core administrative interface for vSphere. This new flexible, robust interface simplifies vSphere control through shortcut navigation, custom tagging, enhanced scalability, and the ability to manage from anywhere with Internet Explorer or Firefox-enabled devices.

      There are MANY new options and features that are ONLY available in the web-client, which are NOT available in the old C# vSphere Client.

• vCenter Single Sign-On – Dramatically simplify vSphere administration by allowing users to log in once to access all instances or layers of vCenter without the need for further authentication.

• vCenter Orchestrator – Orchestrator simplifies installation and configuration of the powerful workflow engine in vCenter Server. Newly designed workflows enhance ease of use, and can also be launched directly from the new vSphere Web Client.


The other feature we have been waiting for was the multiple vCPU support for Fault Tolerance but 
have not seen any claim from VMware that they have increased vCPU support for Fault Tolerance.
As VMware lover that was the only thing I am disappointed with.


The other feature we have been waiting for was the multiple vCPU support for Fault Tolerance but 
have not seen any claim from VMware that they have increased vCPU support for Fault Tolerance.
As VMware lover that was the only thing I am disappointed with.

My VCAP-DCD Preparation

Now that I have achieved my VCP, I am trying to aim at VCAP-DCD to achieve my ultimate goal a VCDX certification.

I will start this as my own reference material, which I hope will benefit others too.