Category Archives: VMware

Correct HAL Installed ?

Following an inspiring blog post from Duncan Epping located here it made me think about how I could find the CPU vs HAL information, a 5 minute mess around in the VI Toolkit produced the following script:

Connect-viserver MYVISERVER

$myCol = @()

ForEach ($VM in (Get-VM)){
$MyDetails = “” | select-Object Name, HAL, NumvCPU
$MYDetails.Name = $VM.Name
$Hal = Get-WmiObject -ComputerName
$VM.Name -Query “SELECT * FROM Win32_PnPEntity where ClassGuid = ‘{4D36E966-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}'” | Select Name
$MYDetails.HAL = $Hal.Name
$MYDetails.NumvCPU = $VM.NumCPU
$myCol += $MYDetails}

$myCol

This will give you a list of your VM’s the HAL installed and the number of vCPU’s

VMWorld 2009 VCP Special Prices

Just a reminder that if you are looking to attend VMWorld 2009 and you are a VCP you are eligible for a discounted price of 650 Euros….

http://www.vmworld.com/community/conferences/europe2009/registration/cost

VMworld VCP

VMworld VCP members are eligible for a discounted Full Conference rate of € 650. This discount will automatically be applied when you provide your VCP membership number, along with a valid email address, during the registration process. If the appropriate discount is not applied please contact VMworld Europe 2009 Registration Team. VCP pricing is not subject to enrolment date and will be valid throughout the enrolment period.

Virtualising Citrix/XenApp on VMware

As part of some investigation into virtualising Citrix servers I decided to evaluate the use of Windows 2003 32 bit Standard servers running as virtual machines on VMware ESX. The reasoning behind the use of virtual machines is to try and issue more Citrix sessions to a single server therefore reducing the amount of hardware, data center space, power consumption and heat generated by the multiple physical servers.

Moving to VMware should allow for multiple machines to run on a physical server, allowing for a higher user load by adding more smaller loaded servers to the physical server.

This obviously depends on how Citrix is used in your environment, as Citrix applications that are published to users who open the application and minimise it until they need the app, using there desktop applications most of the time will have much a lower utalisation impact than users who use full Citrix desktops.

It will also depend on the kind of applications that you are using and how CPU/Memory intensive these applications are.

Test Platform

In order to test this, and other environments, I have been using Citrix Edgesight for Load Testing. Edgesight for Load Testing allows me to develop “scripts” that simulate a user load. These scripts are made up of various user interactions, such as use of the Office products, and can then be replayed with various time parameters to simulate a real world load. Each script can be run in the context of a user session (separate users for each session) and so allowing us to get somewhere near generating a “real world” load.

The generated script is run against a specified server and the times taken to perform each action can be measured along with the built in Virtual Infrastructure performance statistics and graphs.

Physical Server (ESX Host) Specification

  • DELL PowerEdge 2950 III
  • 2 x Quad Core Intel Xeon X5450, 2X6MB Cache, 3.0GHz, 1333MHz FSB
  • 32GB FB 667MHz Memory (8x4GB dual rank DIMMs)
  • 2 x Intel PRO 1000VT Quad Port Gigabit Network Card, PCI-E
  • Emulex LPe-12002-E, Dual-port 8Gbps Fibre Channel PCI-Express HBA card
  • 2 x 73GB 15.000 rpm 3.5-inch SAS Hard Drives
  • ESX 3.5 Update 1

Virtual Machine Specification

  • 1 x vCPU (Using VMware process affinity to tie the VM to a specific CPU core)
    4GB RAM
  • 1 x 20GB Hard Disk Stored on SAN
  • 1 x vNic (1GB)

Virtual Machine Software Specification

Windows 2003 R2 32 Bit Standard Edition SP1
Citrix Presentation Enterprise 4.0 Rollup pack PSE400W2K3R03 plus additional hotfixes
Office 2003 with latest Service Pack

Other Configuration

The Virtual machines, ESX Hosts and VMTools were configured specifically to adjust the virtual machines for best performance of Citrix using multiple best practice and configuration documents.

Test Script

The test script was made up of 3 core sections that invoked the use of the following software:

  • Outlook 2003
  • Word 2003
  • Excel 2003

For each of the scripts the programs would be opened, used (either opening email or opening documents), and then left open and the next program opened. Once the Excel test had finished the test closed all of the Office applications and started again with Outlook. This was repeated until the allotted test time was completed and the user was then logged off.

Test Load

These tests were carried out with a number of users per virtual machine. The virtual machine was configured with 1 x vCPU to maximise the number of virtual machines that could be hosted on each host, as the host has 8 cores each core could host a virtual machine.


Test 1 – 10 Users

Test

Time Period

Users Logged On

Details

1

20 minutes

10

· Logged 10 users on and working over 5 minutes

· Kept 10 users logged on and working for 15 minutes

· Logged 5 users off over a 5 minute period

clip_image002


Test 2 – 20 Users

Test

Time Period

Users Logged On

Details

2

25 minutes

20

· Logged 10 users on and working over 5 minutes

· Logged another 10 users on and working over 5 minutes

· Kept 20 users logged on and working for 15 minutes

· Logged all 20 users off over a 5 minute period

clip_image004


Test 3 – 25 Users

Test

Time Period

Users Logged On

Details

3

33 minutes

25

· Logged 10 users on and working over 5 minutes

· Logged another 10 users on and working over 5 minutes

· Logged another 5 users on and working over 3 minutes

· Kept 25 users logged on and working for 15 minutes

· Logged all 25 users off over a 5 minute period

clip_image006


Test 4 – 30 Users

Test

Time Period

Users Logged On

Details

4

35 minutes

30

· Logged 10 users on and working over 5 minutes

· Logged another 10 users on and working over 5 minutes

· Logged another 10 users on and working over 5 minutes

· Kept 30 users logged on and working for 15 minutes

· Logged all 30 users off over a 5 minute period

clip_image008


Test 4 – 35 Users

Test

Time Period (Minutes)

Users Logged On

Details

5

38 minutes

35

· Logged 10 users on and working over 5 minutes

· Logged another 10 users on and working over 5 minutes

· Logged another 10 users on and working over 5 minutes

· Logged another 5 users on and working over 3 minutes

· Kept 35 users logged on and working for 15 minutes

· Logged all 35 users off over a 5 minute period

clip_image010


Results

During the tests CPU/Memory/Disk and Network figures were monitored, as the users were added to the virtual machines it was clear the application set used for testing were CPU bound and although all other figures were consistently monitored these would not take as heavy an impact as CPU.

From the above graphs we can see where the users were logging into the virtual machines and where the sessions conducted there test patterns, after an initial spike in the login period the figures averaged out at the following:

  • 10 Users – Averaged at 40% CPU Usage
  • 20 Users – Averaged at 65% CPU Usage
  • 25 Users – Averaged at 73% CPU Usage
  • 30 Users – Averaged at 81% CPU Usage
  • 35 Users – Averaged at 87% CPU Usage

Conclusion

Based on this testing and the environment we used, 25 users per single vCPU guest seems feasible (possibly a few more) but my opinion 30+ users is pushing sensible extended period CPU load due to resources needing to be made available for the tasks which will use the CPU for larger and longer periods of time which may impact the other running users of that particular machine.

If we extrapolate this out, it could mean 200+ (25 * 8) sessions on 8 guest machines across the 8 processor cores of the Dell 2950.

Please note that the current version of ESX at the time of writing this document is ESX 3.5 Update 3. As VMware continue to improve memory and CPU handling techniques it is feasible that further tests on this version may provide more sessions per virtual machine.

Unfortunately I was unable to get anywhere near the numbers that VMware achieved in there scalability document.

If you have any experience in virtualising Citrix or if you have any further tweaking or tuning tips please leave a comment below.

Part 2: Citrix on VMware, 1vCPU or 2vCPU ?

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

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