VMware Resources

There are plenty of resources on how to architect a virtual infrastructure and do it correctly. These resources will help you gain knowledge and experience with VMware so you can make sure your virtualization project is successful.

• Documentation – VMware has excellent documentation and many individual documents for specific areas. You may not read all of them, but at least review the release notes, configuration maximums and installation guides before installing VMware. Then read the Server Configuration and Resource Management Guides.
  
• Classes – A great way to kick-start your learning is to spend a week in a class on how to implement virtualization. You will learn from the material, can ask questions of the instructor and will have hands-on labs to practice what you learn. While classes can be a useful tool, they are expensive. But classes are a requirement if you want VMware Certified Professional (VCP) certification.
  
• Books – VMware experts have written several books that share these experts' knowledge and experience. Search your favorite book website on VMware and you will have plenty to choose from.
  Websites – There are lots of great websites full of VMware information, news, tips, webcasts, videos and much more like TechTarget's SearchVMware.com and SearchServerVirtualization.com.
  
• Blogs – Dozens of VMware- and virtualization-specific blogs provide a wealth of information from experienced VMware veterans. For a complete listing, including TechTarget's own Virtualization Pro blog, check out vLaunchpad.
  
• VMworld – VMworld is the greatest annual virtualization show on the planet. So if you're serious about using VMware, you should attend. Besides more than 200 great technical sessions, there are hundreds of third-party vendors and partners at the show and thousands of customers, industry experts, VMware employees and more.
  Webcasts/Podcasts – VMware has regular technical webcasts and podcasts that are a great way to learn about specific topics. TechTarget also has a large library of webcasts on both SearchVMware.com and SearchServerVirtualization.com websites. If you miss a live one, you can access them in the archives.
  
• VMware User Groups – VMware user groups, or VMUGs, are a great way to meet your local VMware crew, watch technical presentations from VMware, customers, partners and vendors and to meet other local users. It's a great way to share information and to get answers to questions. Most large cities have a VMware users group, and groups typically meet every few months. You can view the upcoming schedule of VMUG meetings and sign up to attend at VMware's website.
  
• Knowledgebase – When you think of a knowledgebase, you usually think of a repository of documents that cover problem causes and solutions. VMware's knowledgebase is a lot more than that, though; it is full of how-to and informational documents that go well beyond how to solve specific problems. If you have a question on any VMware-related subject, this is a good place to start looking for answers.
  
• Virtual Infrastructure Operations – Virtual Infrastructure Operations, or VI:OPS, is a VMware community portal that contains great information from VMware employees, customers and partners. It includes information such as proven practices, how-tos and other great information focused in specific areas such as strategy, security, management and more.
  
• Forums – Support forums such as VMware's VMTN forums and TechTarget's IT Knowledge Exchange are a fabulous way to get answers to questions, share ideas and experiences and learn from other experienced users. Even if you don't have a specific question, you can browse through the many thousands of posts or answer a fellow IT pro's question.
  
• Social Networking – When you think of social networks tools like Twitter, you might think of users posting what they had for dinner or the weather. You might be surprised to learn that many users using Twitter post questions, comments and experiences about virtualization-specific topics. And you'd be surprised what you can learn in 140 characters. So sign up for an account, and if you're looking for virtualization-related people to follow, try following the followers for people like John Troyer, Hannah Drake or Eric Siebert.

Practice makes perfect

Gaining knowledge is a great way to become educated, but gaining experience is what will really help you improve your virtualization skills. Knowledge and experience go hand in hand. You can learn only so much by reading. To become truly knowledgeable, however, you need to take it to the next level by actually doing the things you read about, and to do that you'll need software and hardware.

Getting the software:

• Free products – Products like VMware ESXi and VMware Server are great free products that you can install to start gaining experience with virtualization. While VMware Server installs on Windows/Linux systems and is more of a desktop product, ESXi installs on bare-metal and is a true data center virtualization product. Both products will install on a variety of server hardware (including older hardware) and are a way to gain experience before you invest in the more expensive editions of ESX and ESXi.
  
• Evaluations – VMware offers 60-day evaluation copies of its full-featured VMware ESX and ESXi editions as well as its vCenter Server management application. This is a great way to experience higher-end products and gain experience configuring enhancement products, such as Distributed Resource Scheduler and Fault Tolerance.

Getting the hardware:

• White-box and older hardware – Bare-metal products such as ESX and ESXi are officially supported only on specific hardware listed on VMware's Hardware Compatibility List (HCL) but fortunately ESX and ESXi will run on a lot of hardware that isn't listed on the HCL. Not everyone has spare server hardware to use to learn virtualization but you can use white-box (generic) hardware and older name-brand server models (i.e. Hewlett-Packard G2 and G3 models) for this.

You can find many cheap older servers on auction sites like eBay, but be aware that they may not support some of the newer features such as Fault Tolerance, which require the latest CPUs. Also, vSphere requires 64-bit hardware. Using new white-box hardware is a cheap alternative to buying new brand-name servers will often support features such as Fault Tolerance. Additionally you can find many cheap iSCSI/Network File System (NFS) network-based storage devices such as the Iomega 1X2 so you can use some of the advanced features that require shared storage.

• VMware ESX in Workstation/Fusion – An alternative to using server hardware to learn ESX and ESXi is to run them on a desktop using VMware's Workstation or Fusion products. There are several documented methods for successfully installing both ESX and ESXi inside a virtual machine on Workstation or Fusion. While desktop environments may be somewhat resource-limited they still offer hands-on experience inexpensively without buying server-class hardware.

Smarter Microsoft licensing can reduce VMware environment costs

If you consolidated physical servers with virtualization, you probably did so to reduce the costs of maintaining many physical servers -- namely power and cooling, rack space, support contracts, physical hardware and so on.

As a consultant, I often work with clients who have embarked on large server consolidation projects, migrated many physical hosts to virtual machines (VMs), and have almost all their former physical servers running as VMs.

Many companies think the cost savings associated with virtualization stops here. Those projects could, however, save more money if IT managers reviewed Microsoft licensing for their Windows servers and took advantage of virtualization-focused products and licensing. If a company uses Microsoft systems monitoring products, the same rule applies.

Windows 2008 Server Enterprise: Don't forget the included virtual licenses
Many people forget that Windows licensing is dependent not only on how many instances are installed but also on where these instances are installed. For example, when you buy a Windows Server 2008 Enterprise license, you can run four virtual Windows Server instances for free (NT4, Windows 2000 Server, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2008 Standard, Windows Server 2008 Enterprise). But these four instances must run on the same host (for more information, see Windows Server 2008 Licensing FAQs).

In other words, when buying Windows 2008 Server Enterprise you get one license for the hardware that will act as the host server and four licenses for the guest OSes. It doesn't matter whether your hardware host runs VMware ESX, XenServer or Hyper-V. This means that, for example, running eight VMs on one VMware ESX host requires two Windows 2008 Server Enterprise licenses; running 10 VMs requires three Windows 2008 Server Enterprise licenses; and so on.

If you were to organize your virtual environment to take advantage of the four free Windows 2008 licenses per physical host, the cost savings could be significant. A Windows 2008 Server Enterprise license costs $3,999 (list price). If you were to consolidate 200 physical hosts into virtual machines, those free virtual Enterprise licenses could save you up to 75% of your license cost.

If you weren't aware of or didn't fully exploit the free virtual licenses per physical host included in each license, you would end up purchasing 200 Windows 2008 Server Enterprise licenses at $3,999 each, for a grand total of $799,800. If you accounted for the four free virtual Enterprise licenses and planned accordingly, however, you would only purchase 50 Windows 2008 Server Enterprise licenses at $3,999 each, for a total of $199,950. Cost savings: $599,850.

More savings: Windows 2008 Datacenter Edition
Even more savings can be obtained with Windows 2008 Datacenter edition. The Datacenter Edition is licensed per CPU, per host and independent of the number of VMs running on a host. When calculating with a virtualization ratio of four VMs per core and dual quad-core CPUs per host, it is possible to run 32 VMs per host.

To virtualize 200 VMs, you would need seven hosts with dual quad-core CPUs. In this scenario, you would need a total of 14 Datacenter CPU licenses. At $2,999 each, you'd spend $41,986, which is significantly less -- $157,964 less, to be exact – than if you virtualized with Windows 2008 Server Enterprise, including the four free virtual licenses per host.

Note: Windows Datacenter Edition does not include Windows Server Client Access Licenses (CALs); Enterprise edition includes 25 CALs.

Using the most cost-effective Microsoft monitoring product
When virtualizing an environment, it becomes increasingly important to monitor your environment, because when one host server goes down, it can affect a large number of virtual machines. Many companies already use Microsoft System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) to monitor the health of their physical Windows hosts and Windows OSes. SCOM also works in a virtual environment, so it can be a natural candidate for monitoring your virtual environment as well -- but be aware of the difference in licensing.

In a physical environment, you need a license for the host that runs the SCOM service and a separate agent license for each Windows OS that you want to monitor. For virtual infrastructure -- whether it's Microsoft, Citrix or VMware -- Microsoft has released System Center Server Management Suite Enterprise (SMSE). With SMSE, you need only one license per hypervisor host, which allows you to monitor an unlimited number of VMs on that host. The SMSE package includes the following:

• Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 for managing your virtual infrastructure
• Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007 for flexible configuration and deployment of Server, workstations and software
• Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 for end-to-end service management
• Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager 2007 for continuous data protection

Looking at the previous example of 200 Windows instances that will be virtualized onto seven hosts, we again see a major licensing cost savings for monitoring. In the table below, the first three rows indicate how much each product would cost separately for 200 simple client licenses. The last three rows show this for 200 enterprise client licenses.

	Operations Manager	Configuration Manager	Data Protection Manager
Client	$32	$41	$27
Server	$579	$579	$579
Total	$6,979	$8779	$5,979
Enterprise Client	$431	$431	$431
Server	$579	$579	$579
Total	$86,779	$86,779	$86,779

With Server Management Suite Enterprise (SMSE) you need to license only the hosts. In our case, that would be seven hosts at a price of $1,497 for a grand total of $10,479. In other words, buying two of these products using standard client licenses would already be more expensive than buying an SMSE license.

Recommended next steps
You made a smart move by visiting my blog and reading this article. Now make the next smart move: Check your current licenses, talk with your Microsoft representative about reviewing your current licenses and see what can be changed and where savings can be made. After that, show your boss what you came up with. Then, bring home flowers for your spouse, and call it a day.

Accessing the VMware ESXi Hidden Console

I have lately installed the free version of the VMware ESX server, namely VMware ESXi Server. I was taken a back seat when I was told that the ESXi edition does not have a service console, which is good, but there are times when you need to perform some troubleshooting. There are many benefits not having the service console – less overhead, fewer patches, and greater security. With ESXi, the “console” is a simple yellow and black menu driven text interface with only the most basic options. However, lately I found out that ESXi actually has an extremely thin linux-based console that can be accessed.

With the full version of VMware ESX Server, that has been available for years, there is a special “virtual machine” that runs a modified version of Red Hat Linux Enterprise. That special VM is called the service console and is used to administer the ESX host system.

Officially, VMware says that you should administer your ESXi server using either the VI Client or the CLI VMware RCLI. Thus, if you want to perform commands and scripting on your ESXi server, you need to install the remote command line interface on your Windows PC.

However, there is another CLI interface for ESXi that can be used to run commands directly on the server. This is in contrast to RCLI where the command is run on your local management PC and connects to the ESXi host over the network. The difference is that with RCLI, you cannot, say, edit a remote file as you could do if you were using the traditional ESX Server service console.

Thus, the only way to edit a file like /etc/hosts or /etc/inetd.conf is to access this hidden & unsupported thin linux interface and edit these files with vi. Also, with the ESXi hidden console, you can run commands like esxtop, esxcfg-route, and vmkfstools. Isn't this great!

How do I access the VMware ESXi hidden Console?

Accessing the hidden & unsupported ESXi console is not difficult if you know how to do it. However, if you do not know how to do it, there is no menu option or easily accessed help file that tells you how to access it.

To access the hidden & unsupported ESXi console, you must go to the console of the server. You cannot access this console via RCLI, RDP, the VI client, or other method. The only way to access the ESXi console is to go to the console of the server.

Once you are on the server’s console, press Alt-F1.

At that point you will see a console log of what has happened on the server but there is no prompt and no help file available. If you type something, it will not appear on the screen.

What you need to do is to type the command unsupported and press enter. his will not appear on the screen. When you do this, here is what you will see:

This activates what VMware called “Tech Support Mode”. As the warning says, this is unsupported unless you are using it with help from VMware Tech Support. Because of this, neither VMware nor I can make any warranties if, by using this interface, something unexpected happens to your ESXi Server. Because of that, you should only do this on a TEST system.

Now, type your ESXi Server root password.

At this point, you are successfully logged into the hidden ESXi console. So what can do you once you are in here? Let’s find out…

What can I do inside the VMware ESXi hidden console?

The ESXi hidden / unsupported console is a “Linux-like” interface but extremely light when compared to a real Linux installation, which I believe is the proprietary VMware OS. For example, some of the most basic Linux commands work like ls (to list files), cd (to change directories), rm (to remove files), cp (to copy files), vi (to edit files), and reboot.

However, other common Linux commands do not work, such as more, pg, nano, or man.

The most interesting configuration files are located in /etc, just like in Linux. The most useful commands that you can execute are located in /sbin.

In this article, I am offering a quick overview of the ESXi command line but for a more complete reference you should read chapter 2 of the VMware Remote Command-Line Interface Installation and Reference Guide because that covers the vicfg-xxxx commands in detail. However, inside the ESXi console, you run most of those same vicfg-xxxx commands but they start with esxcfg-xxxx instead (the deprecated version). In fact, the RCLI Reference Guide (link above) has a chart that shows the esxcfg-xxxx to vicfg-xxxx equivalent command syntax.

In my opinion, the most important thing that I have used the hidden/unsupported ESXi console for is to edit text configuration files on the ESXi Server. This is important because, as I said, this cannot be done using the RCLI. For example, here are a few of the text files I have edited:

1. /etc/hosts – due to issues related to ESXi servers coming and going randomly from my VMHA resource pool, a VMware Tech had me edit the /etc/hosts file to statically make host entries for the other ESXi hosts in the RP. This was done to rule out any DNS issues.
2. /etc/inetd.conf – this file can be used to enable services that, otherwise could not be enabled. For example, by removing the hash (#) mark before the ssh or the ftp, I can enable these services on my ESXi server.

Here is an example of editing the inetd.conf file to enable SSH:

Of course, there are other files that can be edited or viewed, like the passwd file or inittab.

Again, I offer the warning that all of this is unsupported by VMware unless you are performing these steps under their direction.

Conclusion

In this article, I covered the "hidden" & unsupported VMware ESXi Server console. Almost everyone knows that ESXi doesn't have a service console but it does have a hidden console. In this article, I also demonstrated the benefit of using this hidden console. Primarily, that benefit is that you can edit text files directly on the server to allow you to enable services like SSH. However, as you have access to the server’s console, and can do much more than you could in the simple console menu interface, the possibilities of tweaking and configuration are only limited by the limited command set on the server.

"Power Supply Failure Brings Down HP BladeSystem c7000" HP admits

A power supply failure in HP BladeSystem c7000 enclosures can cause the whole BladeSystem to fail, the firm has admitted.

According to an HP advisory note: "HP has identified a potential, yet extremely rare issue with HP BladeSystem c7000 Enclosure 2250W Hot-Plug Power Supplies manufactured prior to March 20, 2008. This issue is extremely rare; however, if it does occur, the power supply may fail and this may result in the unplanned shutdown of the enclosure, despite redundancy, and the enclosure may become inoperable."

So, the issue is extremely rare, says HP. But it applies to any HP BladeSystem c7000 Enclosure configured with an HP c7000 Power Supply, if the power supply was manufactured before March 20, 2008. Each enclosure can have up to a total of six power supplies.

My understanding is that all the power supplies in the enclosure are connected together, forming a single power domain. The blades in the system connect to a single power bus. If the power supply fails then all the blades may stop working meaning that all their applications, including any virtual machines, go offline. Effectively, there is a single point of failure and redundancy limitation in the HP’s BladeSystem c7000 design.

HP's advisory goes on to say that: "BladeSystem c7000 Enclosure Power Supplies manufactured on or after March 20, 2008, and DC-powered enclosures (typically utilized in an Integrity blade environment) are not affected. To ensure stability of your computing environment, HP is providing a power supply identification utility to enable customers to identify potentially affected power supplies. Supplies identified by the utility will be replaced by HP."

Defective power supplies will be replaced free of charge. HP provided a statement about the issue: "HP has been made aware of a very small number of incidents involving power supply failures in the BladeSystem c7000 enclosure. Because customer service and product quality are top priorities for HP, the company is working with HP BladeSystem customers to replace all potentially affected c7000 power supplies purchased by customers."

The All New Polished Vista, Introducing "The Windows Mista"

What's the excitement behind Windows 7, do you remember this:

Ballmer: Windows 7 is Vista, just 'a lot better' [link]

"Windows Vista is good, Windows 7 is Windows Vista with clean-up in user interface [and] improvements in performance," Ballmer said. [link]

The event helped me to crystallize my thoughts. So to crystalline it... is it an UPGRADE or an UPDATE??  Microsoft prefers to call it an MAJOR UPGRADE to SELL MORE and ofcourse to get people move on from the Windows XP to Vista. For Vista users its can be called a MINOR UPGRADE or even better it should be an UPDATE or to put it more accurately a service pack. 

For Microsoft its a fairly significant upgrade, but for Vista users its not an overhaul of the operating system rather a signaficant update. But lets put a question to Mr. Ballmer, are they planning to sell Windows 7 to UPGRADERS and allow it for download as a service pack for UPDATERS??

If you dont understand, I cant explain it to you any better....the OS was not built for the user, it was built for Microsoft to make more $$ at your expense.....get used to paying for the true definition of "slack" ware... should be called Microsoft Mista. They Missed-another chance to do the right thing and make it secure.

Its just the same chocolate with a new packaging and a new brand name? 

"Polish doesn't change quartz into a diamond"

VMware Consolidated Backup Design Preparation and Understanding for Backup Administrators

While I am working on designing a Virtual Infrastructure Solution, I thought of penning down a few lessons learned for my future reference as well for consultants who are planning to design a similar solution. Backup is one important area to be considered. One of the advantages of purchasing VMware Infrastructure Enterprise (VI 3.5) is that along with the flagship ESX hypervisor there are additional licensed features and products included that are necessary to create business continuity for virtual machines (VMs). VMware Consolidated Backup (VCB) is one of these products. Often misunderstood as the complete answer for a virtual data center, VCB requires some preparation and understanding for backup administrators currently used to the traditional physical enterprise backup solution.

VCB is not the entire backup solution for virtual infrastructure
It is very rare that VCB allows administrators to completely remove all backup agents from virtualized servers. This is because VMware Consolidated Backup does not:

• Perform specialized application backups (like Microsoft Exchange Information Store or Windows Server System State)
• Perform file-level backups of non-Windows VMs
• Provide management, cataloging or archiving of backup files
• Provide direct file restores to virtual machines
• VCB is a framework of scripts that needs to be integrated with a third-party backup application to provide these features.

VCB should be installed on a dedicated Windows Server
It is recommended VCB be installed on its own server. Also known as the VCB Proxy Server, this system has the following requirements:

• Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 (32‐bit or 64‐bit) or higher
• Media repository managed by the third-party backup application's management server
• The same storage protocol access as the ESX hosts to the VMFS LUNs where the VMs are stored. (i.e., host bus adapters (HBAs) for access to Fiber Channel storage or initiator configuration for iSCSI storage). Depending on the version of Windows Server used, automatic partition mounting will have to be disabled before attaching the VCB server to the VMFS LUNs
• Dedicated disk storage for the VCB Holding Tank where backup and restore files are written
• Third-party backup agent

VCB needs a large disk volume for a Holding Tank
Along with the shared access to the ESX LUNs, VCB also needs a large disk volume formatted as NTFS, which will become the Holding Tank for backup images. This volume can be on the SAN or the local VCB server's disks. The Holding Tank volume is where full VM images are placed both during backups and restores.

Therefore, the size of the Holding Tank is critical in the design. For example, if a virtual infrastructure consists of VMs that take up 1 TB of disk space and the expectation is that a full VM backup is to be taken nightly, then the Holding Tank volume needs to be large enough to support 1 TB of backups. Another scenario would be to alternate groups of full VM backups in order to decrease the required size of the volume. In this case, administrators still need to make sure the Holding Tank is large enough to hold the VM using the most disk space.


The role of the third-party backup agent
The third-party backup application does the actual backing up and management of the files. Once VCB copies a VM image to the Holding Tank it is then up to the third-party backup application to move those files to whatever media repository is in use. It is also the function of the agent to clear out the Holding Tank so that the next scheduled job has available disk space to complete.

In the case of file-level backups, VCB also mounts the copied VM image (in thumb drive style as previously mentioned) so that the backup agent can see the VM's file system. The backup agent can then perform full, incremental or differential file-level backups to the media repository. In some scenarios, the single agent on the VCB server can replace the multiple agents on the VMs.
VMware maintains a compatibility guide for supported third-party backup applications. Many of these supported applications have VCB integration modules that coordinate the scheduling of the VCB scripts and the agent backup from within the application's GUI.


Understanding VCB restore jobs
Restoring files leverages the third-party backup agent's ability to move files from the media repository back to the Holding Tank. Once the VM image is back, it can be copied in full to a VMFS volume or mounted like a thumb drive again so that individual files can be restored. An administrator must manually copy files to the restore location in both scenarios.
VMware Converter, most often used to migrate physical servers to virtual machines, can also create VMs from VCB images. Therefore, VMware Converter can be a more effective full VM restore tool in some cases. Check out VMware's Virtual Machine Backup Guide for more detailed information on implementing VCB.