Author Archives: Alan

About Alan

Alan Renouf has a role of Automation Frameworks Product Manager at VMware responsible for providing the architects and operators of the cloud infrastructure with the toolkits/frameworks and command-line interfaces they require to build a fully automated software-defined datacenter. Alan is a frequent blogger at http://blogs.vmware.com/vipowershell and has a personal blog at https://virtu-al.net. You can follow Alan on twitter as @alanrenouf.

VMware ESX Server 3.5 Update 3 Released

Download it here

What’s New

The following information provides highlights of some of the enhancements available in this release of VMware Infrastructure 3:

Note: Not all combinations of VirtualCenter and ESX Server versions are supported and not all of these highlighted features are available unless you are using VirtualCenter 2.5 Update 3 with ESX Server 3.5 Update 3. See the ESX Server, VirtualCenter, and Virtual Infrastructure Client Compatibility Matrixes for more information on compatibility.

New features and supported IO devices:

  • Increase in vCPU per Core Limit — The limit on vCPUs per core has been raised from 8 (or 11 for VDI workloads) to 20. This change only raises the supported limit but does not include any additional performance optimizations. Raising the limit allows users more flexibility to configure systems based on specific workloads and to get the most advantage from increasingly faster processors. The achievable number of vCPUs per core will depend on the workload and specifics of the hardware. It is expected that most deployments will remain within the previous range of 8-11 vCPUs per core. For more information, see VI3 Performance Best Practices and Benchmarking Guidelines.
  • HP BL495c support — This release adds support for the HP Blade Server BL495c with all Virtual Connect and IO Options allowing 1 or 10Gb connection to the network (upstream) and 1Gb connections only to the servers (downstream).
  • Newly Supported NICs — This release adds support for the following NICs:
    • Broadcom 5716 1Gb
    • Broadcom 57710 10Gb Adapters
    • Broadcom 57711 10Gb Adapters at 1Gb speed only

    Note: iSCSI/TOE hardware offloads available with these adapters are not supported by VMware with ESX 3.5.

  • Newly Supported SATA Controllers— This release adds support for the following SATA controllers:
    • Broadcom HT1000 (supported in native SATA mode only with SATA hard drives and Solid State Disk devices)
    • Intel ICH-7 (supported in IDE/ATA mode only with SATA CD/DVD drives)

    Note: Storing VMFS data stores on drives connected to these controllers is not supported

  • Newly Supported Guest Operating Systems — Support for the following Guest Operating Systems have been added by VMware during the ESX 3.5 Update 3 release cycle:
    • Solaris 10 U5
    • Ubuntu 8.04.1
    • RHEL 4.7
  • Internal SAS networked storage controllers — This release adds experimental support for Intel Modular Server MFSYS25 SAS Storage Control Modules (SCMs). For known issues with this platforms and workaround see SAS Link and Port Failovers with the Intel Modular Server Running Update 3 and Later Versions of ESX 3.5 and ESXi 3.5
     (KB 1007394).
  • Interrupt Coalescing (IC) for Qlogic 4Gb FC HBAs — Introduced in this release, the feature reduces CPU utilization (and CPU cost per IO) and improves throughput of IO intensive workloads by generating a single interrupt for a burst of Fibre Channel frames, when received in a short period of time, rather than interrupting the CPU each time a frame is received. The feature is enabled by default.
  • Experimental Support for the VMDK Recovery Tool — This release adds support for the VMDK Recovery tool, a script intended to help customers to recover VMFS/vmdk data stores from accidental deletion of VMFS/vmdk data store or physical disk corruption. For more information, see VMDK Recovery Tool (ESX 3.5 Update 3) ( KB 1007243).
  • Small Footprint CIM Broker — Updated SFCB to version 1.3.0
  • IBM SAN Volume Controller — SVC is now supported with Fixed Multipathing Policy as well as MRU Multipathing Policy.

ESX4 in Workstation 6.5.1

I had tried this already as I don’t have any spare hardware at the moment but I just wanted to say a massive thanks to Eric, our test systems will live on !

A few weeks ago I filled a support request, because I couldn’t start a virtual machine on ESX4 while ESX4 was hosted on Workstation 6.5.0. ESX4 kept crashing at 95% during the VM Power On. An anonymous source just brought me up-to-date and whispered the following:

The WS 6.5 bug you noted earlier has been fixed. You will be able to run nested VMs under ESX 4.0 under WS 6.5.1, subject to the usual caveats (hardware virtualization has to be supported on your host for running the outer guest, and the inner guest is restricted to 32-bits). I can’t comment on release schedules, but it is only a dot-dot release, so it can’t be too far off.

Original post: http://www.ntpro.nl/blog/archives/737-Running-ESX4-under-Workstation-6.5.1-will-be-supported.html

Special Edition: Get-Scripting Podcast

Jonathan has been busy at TechEd 2008 in Barcelona, we managed to get him hosting a PowerShell Panel discussion with some of the the top names in powershell, I highly recommend listening to the new episode…

Welcome to Episode 4 of the Get-Scripting podcast! Tune in to listen to us talk and interview people about Powershell.

This episode was recorded live on Tuesday 4th November at TechEd EMEA, Barcelona and features only the recorded Powershell Panel Discussion.

Please bear in mind that it was recorded in a large exhibition hall full of people, so there is a lot of background noise going on during the discussion – the content was so good I decided to get this out as I guess an ‘out of band’ episode and you never know I might even beat the Teched website for which it was also videoed.

A big thank you goes to PowershellCommunity.org for helping put this discussion panel together. We were joined by:

  • Ben Pearce – Microsoft
  • Richard Siddaway – Powershell MVP
  • Dmitry Sotnikov – Powershell MVP
  • James O’Neill – Microsoft
  • Tobias Weltner – Powershell MVP
  • Jeffrey Snover – Microsoft and Powershell Creator
  • Mow – Powershell MVP

Download the episode here

Free GUI builder tool for PowerShell


SAPIEN have just announced a free forms tool for PowerShell, now you can add a GUI to the amazing powershell scripts which you have been creating and make them easier for your colleagues to use.

Looks like all the normal form type controls ere there ready for you to drag and drop so why not download it now and start building an application…. Download here

To get started they have even given you an online beginners tutorial

TechEd 2008 PowerShell Panel Discussion

Good luck to Jonathan Medd, he’s up there with the big guys now !

There’s a correction to the TechEd EMEA (IT Forum) PowerShell agenda. Tomorrow (Tuesday, Nov 4) 2-3 pm there will a PowerShell Panel Discussion on a stage adjacent to the Tech´Talk Fishbowl.

This is not in your conference agenda books so please take your pen and add it in yourself!

The invited speakers include:

  • Jeffrey Snover
  • MoW
  • Richard Siddaway
  • James O’Neill
  • Jonathan Medd
  • Dmitry Sotnikov

It’s going to be fun, so make sure you come and join us in this open panel discussion!

http://dmitrysotnikov.wordpress.com/2008/11/03/powershell-panel-it-forum/

Two great VI Plugins available

Icomasoft have released two great plugins, well worth a download….

Rescan Plugin

icomasoft® provides you a simple VMware VI Client plugin (VirtualCenter and ESX Host support) for automating the Rescan/Refresh SAN Task of VMware ESX Hosts.

Just right-click on a Host or Group object (Cluster, DataCenter) and choose rescan – done.

Don´t need to script a rescan process or even manually rescan all your hosts. That´s the best way for not getting into trouble with missing Datastore mappings because of a forgotten Rescan – and losing virtual machines because of a host downtime within a HA Cluster.

Check here for more info

Powershell Plugin

icomasoft® VI PowerScripter is the first and absolutely unique VMware VI Client plug-in for a tight integration of user-defined PowerShell scripts into the object repository of VMware Virtual Infrastructure 3.5.

This software delivers predefined functions for common admin tasks and is capable of handling hundreds of custom scripts for direct usage from a dynamically generated context menu within VI Client (for connections to VirtualCenter, ESX 3.5 or ESX 3i).

Thanks to its absolute flexibility, this powerful software is a “must” for professional users looking to administrate the virtual infrastructure in compliance with business-aligned functions in a simple and yet most effective manner.

Check here for more info

VMware London User group

Ok, so I attended my first VMware London User Group today, not strictly sure that I should have attended seeing as I’m from deepest darkest Wiltshire (I can put a fake cockney accent on pretty well govna).

Im now typing this on the train home and was left with a few questions……

  • Was it worth the £50 train ticket and £5 parking fees at the station car park ?
  • Was it worth the fact that I got to the train station in plenty of time only to find out the train had been cancelled and I had to catch the next one?
  • Was it worth the tube taking 45 minutes to get to the location meaning I was an embarrassing 45 minutes late after the train fiasco ?
  • Was it worth the tube being delayed on the way home and having to wait 1hr 10 minutes for the next one ?
  • Is it worth me sat next to the guy with the biggest snoring problem in England?

One word……

DEFINITELY !

As I got to the location where the meeting was being held I made my way into the back of the room just as I heard my name being mentioned, there were around 50ish people in the room and I wondered why the presenter was asking If I was there, I later found out that he had recently added me to his list of blogs that he reads (Hi Alaric) and he was telling the attendees to check out the scripts I had written using the VI Toolkit.

Compellent Storage

After finally sitting down and forgetting about the horrendous train journey I started to relax, as Alaric Davis finished his introductory speech (sorry I missed it) Andy Hardy from Compellent took the stage and proceeded to tell us about his company and the Storage equipment they produce, a cutting edge product that it seamed would be suited to most infrastructures looking for a quality storage solution.

All the benefits of VMware’s server virtualisation – from reduced hardware costs and simplified management to robust disaster recovery – can be amplified across the data center with Compellent’s feature-rich SAN. A unique Dynamic Block Architecture makes Compellent a perfect match for Virtualised environments, allowing you to create a virtual pool of storage and automatically manage it at the block level.

This enables the use of both high end and slow disks to produce the most optimal performance which is managed by the SAN itself. Seamed like a great product to me and I will certainly be handing out the information to the contract I am working on at the moment which is undergoing a SAN refresh.

If you’re thinking about storage then I strongly suggest you check out the Compellent products and give Andy a ring, a thoroughly nice guy.

Lifecycle Manager

Next up was Alexy Stokes, a specialist systems engineer from VMware who gave us a great insight into lifecycle manager, a product which is used to request, create, deploy, update, track, and decommission VM’s. It does this using a customisable Intranet portal based application, where users can choose and deploy VM’s which will then follow through a set of approvers, and rules to best place the VM, build the VM and present it to the users.

An interesting product that it seamed to me should be part of a bigger product that should merge Lifecycle manager, Stage Manager and Lab manager.

Lifecycle manager seamed to come in two forms, the locked version which was a set application that could fit into most companies and work along there current procedures to guide and add accountability for the full lifecycle of creating a VM, which isn’t a bad thing as most companies I have worked in or for do not update there processes to account for VM’s which means that the justification that was needed for the physical servers is no longer needed for virtual servers thus leading to sprawl.

There was also the unlocked version of Lifecycle Manager which enabled a tiered solution of deploying machines to meet customer needs and business process allowing for the locked version to be opened up and fully customised (with the help of VMware or some Javascript developers). It can be manipulated to incorporate custom asset, license key databases and other such existing systems.

Both versions can be customised to meet the style of your current intranet allowing the application to seem part of an integrated business application.

Once the VM’s have gone through the process the users are then presented with a webpage which allows them to perform common tasks on the vm such as snapshot, power on/off, reset, console access through http, and rdp to the newly created server.

He then showed us how this fit into the other similar products like Lab Manager & Stage Manager.

I spent quite a bit of time afterwards in the pub talking to Alexey who struck me as a very clever and friendly person, hopefully I will meet him again in the future.

Round Table

Following the excellent presentation on Lifecycle manager there was an interesting QA type round table in which we managed to talk about some of the areas where we had found issues, some of the finer issues in VI and other useful subjects. I found this to be a highly useful part of the meeting which allowed the attendees to pick the brains of the expert panel at the front of the stage. Hopefully there will be a repeat of this in future meetings, this really allowed us to ask the lingering questions and discuss the areas you always wanted to know.

VMworld recap

The bit I had been looking forward too, the VMworld recap, this was presented by Richard Garsthagen and took us through some of the big announcements made at VMworld, still not sure what we are allowed to blog about on this subject so I wont elaborate too much but will provide you a link for the extended presentation by the Richard and all the other slides from the VMUKUG which will be uploaded here, again, I strongly recommend you give a quick look if you are interested in the future developments of VI, he gave a great demo of some of the future enhancements due in the next version of VI (Apparently not being named VI4) Vservices, vNetwork and lots of other vWords.

Conclusion

So, all in all despite the fact that I’m a contractor and don’t get paid to take days off and attend such events, this was a very useful training exercise and highly recommendable to anyone thinking about going to the next user groups, the friendly presenters and attendees made the event a great experience and not just because there was £500 behind the bar afterwards!

If your reading this, thanks very much guys, oh yeah apple and pairs and all that geeza !

As always your comments are welcome, please leave them by clicking the comments link below.

Veeam Configurator Beta


Now this looks useful, Im forever seeing slight misconfiguration on many of the contracts I work on and as we know this can cause upset for things like HA, DRS and VMotion. Veeam Configurator should eliminate these issues applying a standard set of configuration to the servers and reducing the potential for misconfiguration issues.

Plus it saves you time configuring the hosts, which I’m all for !

Discover, manage and enforce your ESX servers’ configuration from a single interface

Setting up and properly configuring your ESX servers isn’t difficult. But over time, things can change. How do you know which ESX servers are still configured as intended, and which have “drifted”? Veeam Configurator helps to ensure that your ESX server configuration complies with corporate policies and standards across your entire VMware Virtual Infrastructure 3 (VI3).

With Veeam Configurator, you can quickly and easily discover the current settings for all your ESX hosts, review and adjust the captured configuration sets as needed, and use that information to define your baseline configuration templates. These templates can then be applied to groups of ESX servers simultaneously, allowing you to centrally manage the configuration of all the ESX servers in your environment.

You can think of Veeam Configurator as essentially a “group policy” for your ESX servers. Similarly to Windows Group Policy, Veeam configuration templates allow you to take complete control of your ESX servers, making sure that existing servers are fully compliant with your corporate standards, and simplifying the provisioning of new ESX servers.

Find more information and download a trial here