Eric Sloof - NTPRO.NL

Wake-on-LAN (WOL) for the VMware DPM feature is fully supported but what if all your ESX hosts are powered off and there’s no vCenter server available to send the WOL packet to exit the standby or powered off mode. In my case I’m using two Asus barebones for my home lab, most of the time they are powered off but when I want to do some magic and power on my home lab I have to go to my “server room” and hit the power switch manually because the barebones aren’t supporting ILO or IPMI.


So is there a possibility to power on your ESX host with WOL? Yes there is! I’ve used the Free Wake-On-LAN from Solarwinds, it magically powers up your ESX host. When the remote network adapter hears a "Magic Packet" created for its unique Kernel Port MAC and IP address, the network adapter alerts the ESX host to power up.

If Wake-On-LAN is enabled in the computer's BIOS settings, then the system will start up just as if the power button has been pressed. When the ESX host is shut down, its network interface card is still receiving power and keeps listening on the network for a magic packet to arrive – enabling Wake-On-LAN to do its magic!

Packet recieved from 192.168.178.19 on port 61877 at 14:17:46 packet length : 102

00000000 : FF FF FF FF FF FF 00 15 17 98 BD 3C 00 15 17 98
00000010 : BD 3C 00 15 17 98 BD 3C 00 15 17 98 BD 3C 00 15
00000020 : 17 98 BD 3C 00 15 17 98 BD 3C 00 15 17 98 BD 3C
00000030 : 00 15 17 98 BD 3C 00 15 17 98 BD 3C 00 15 17 98
00000040 : BD 3C 00 15 17 98 BD 3C 00 15 17 98 BD 3C 00 15
00000050 : 17 98 BD 3C 00 15 17 98 BD 3C 00 15 17 98 BD 3C
00000060 : 00 15 17 98 BD 3C

Total Network Monitor is a software for the continuous control over the efficiency of your network, separate computers, network and system utilities that make the essence of your network place and need to be thoroughly monitored. Total Network Monitor will alert you in case of failures and unpredictable errors by many ways before situation becomes threatening to your work. It will build a detailed report on the type and time of the error or failure. You always have an opportunity to check any aspect of this or that utility, server or file system: HTTP, FTP, SMTP/POP3, IMAP, Event Log, Service State, Registry and many other. To all these benefits network map and user-friendly interface make your work with the software the most demonstrable.

Map allows to build a demonstrative diagram of your network, to group the computers not only into groups but also to arrange them topographically, to show all the variety of interconnections between network devices. To go to network map display choose option Map view in the main menu View.

I've just discovered a new VMware corporate blog with the name “The Rain Makers”. The contributing author; Joao Crespo is working on a real cool document which provides a first insight to vCSD look and feel and assists on how to perform some basic administration tasks.

 

vCloud Network Isolation Backed - Create a network pool backed by vCloud isolated networks.  A vCloud isolated network spans hosts and provides traffic isolation from other networks.  The system provisions vCloud isolated networks automatically.

Update: The vCSD - Step by Step Guide was posted at http://communities.vmware.com/blogs/therainmakers/ but was made mistakenly available to the general community. It should have been availlable for registered Beta users only. It has been removed now.

Register for VMworld 2010 before July 23rd and take advantage of your €200 early bird discount.
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The VIX API allows you to write programs and scripts that automate virtual machine operations, and run programs or manipulate files within guest operating systems. This API is high-level, easy to use, and practical for both script writers and application programmers. It runs on either Windows or Linux and supports management of VMware Workstation, VMware Server, and VMware vSphere including ESX/ESXi through vCenter Server. Bindings are provided for C, Perl, and COM (Visual Basic, VBscript, C#).

The API 1.10 Beta was released last February; this is the preliminary standalone VIX release that runs with VMware vSphere 4.x. This release also bundles earlier VIX libraries, including the libraries delivered for Workstation and VMware Server. 

I’ve created a new tool called the vmFilemanager; this tool is completely built on the VIX API 1.10 Beta. It’s not available for download yet, but I’ve recorded a demo which show how to copy files into a virtual machine. The awesome part is that I’ll also show you how easy it is to create such a tool in the free version of Microsoft Visual Basic 2008, AKA the Express Edition.

You can watch the HD version of this online training at this link. But it’s also available on Vimeo.

More VIX awesomeness can be found at professionalvmware.com powered by @cody_bunch

William Lam --> @cody_bunch @esloof I knew VIX had great potential when it supported VI+vSphere back in 08 - Some of early docs http://bit.ly/dAm5NW

This soon to be released VMware Training Course will equip application-oriented administrators with the knowledge and skills to virtualize Windows applications with VMware ThinApp 4.5, to modify the Package.ini parameters to handle special circumstances, and to choose the best deployment and updating strategy for their environment. The (beta) goals of this course are:

• To teach you how to use the parameters that are available in the Package.ini file to tailor ThinApp packages for your environment
• To teach you how to use the Application Link and Application Sync utilities in ThinApp
• To teach you basic troubleshooting methodology and expose you to commonly available tools to assist in troubleshooting

The VMware Support Toolbar gives you Quick Access to Support News and Resources.
Download the VMware Support toolbar and get:

• The Best of VMware's Site - Get their freshest content delivered directly to your browser, no matter where you are on the Web.  
• Hand-Picked Links - Check out all of their favourite places on the Web.  
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• Alerts to Your Desktop - Receive VMware’s most important news and announcements instantly.  
• Toolbar Group - By installing the community toolbar, you'll get a whole group of related community toolbars that they have picked for you. You can instantly swap among the toolbar without using any extra space on your browser. 
  
  http://www.vmwaretoolbar.com

YouTube Video --> VMware Support Toolbar tip

The names are out:

• VMware Certified Advanced Professional - Enterprise Admin
• VMware Certified Advanced Professional - Design

Fellow VCI and virtualization friend Scott Vessey has attended the latest VCP Brown Bag webinar where VMware’s Jon Hall has announced the new advanced certification titles. Scott is running a weblog at VMware Training and Certification where you can find the latest vCAP info.

Update: If you want to listen to the full audio transcript, Cody Bunch over at Professionalvmware has uploaded the video. Here's the link.

Please keep in mind that VMware Education Services hasn’t officially released the new titles yet. They will be making an announcement soon regarding the new certification plans, and of course provide more detail around the program and its implications. 

Question for VMware: What about the people who already passed the enterprise administrator exam and the design exam, are we left out in the cold? Some of us even participated in the beta’s and in fact helped with developing the current version....... What should we call ourselves, a vCAP3 Enterprise Admin and Design?

VMware would like to announce the availability of the final release of the vSphere 4.0 Security Hardening Guide.  This version incorporates the extensive feedback from the VMware community on the previous draft release, which was published in January.  We would like to thank all the people who took the time to go through the draft release and provide their comments.

vSphere Hardening Guide provides guidance on how to securely deploy vSphere 4.0 in a production environment. The focus is on initial configuration of the virtualization infrastructure layer, which covers the following:

• The virtualization hosts (both ESX and ESXi)
• Configuration of the virtual machine container (NOT hardening of the guest OS or any applications running within)
• Configuration of the virtual networking infrastructure, including the management and storage networks as well as the virtual switch (but NOT security of the virtual machine’s network)
• vCenter Server, its database, and client components
• VMware Update Manager (included because the regular update and patching of the ESX/ESXi hosts and the virtual machine containers is essential to maintaining the security of the environment)

http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-12306

PerformanceTest is a fast, easy to use software benchmarking tool which allows everybody to quickly assess the performance of their PC and compare it to a number of standard 'baseline' computer systems. But what if we are going to use PassMark’s PerformanceTest in a virtual machine and try to find out if it is performing at its best. This way it’s easy to compare the performance of one virtual machine to other virtual machines hosted on the same or a different ESX server. You can use it to identify and measure the effect of virtual hardware configuration changes and upgrades.

I’ve installed the PerformanceTest in two Windows 2003 (32) virtual machines located on the different ESX4 hosts, besides some basic memory and CPU testing I was really interested in the performance difference between the E1000 and the VMXNET Generation 3 virtual network adapter.

The virtual machines are both connected to a virtual distributed switch configured with a community PVLAN, the servers are using dedicated physical Intel Pro PT-1000 adapters and are connected to a Cisco 2960 Catalyst switch. After running the test for 200 seconds you can see a performance benefit of 10% when using the VMXNET3 virtual adaptor compared to the E1000.

When both virtual machines are hosted on the same ESX server and only using the “left side” of the distributed virtual switch the network performance is 300% faster. I know these network graphs show details of the TCP/IP network transfer speed (in kilobits / sec) over short period of time and are not really representative, the average network speed may be limited by the LAN card, the CPU or network infrastructure such as firewalls and switches. But I’ve learned two lessons, the VMXNET3 is faster and local ESX traffic outperforms external traffic by 300%.

This week I’ve delivered another smashing VMware vSphere Design Workshop :-) During the last day there was a great discussion about IP storage. Hans Booms who attended the workshop pulled out an overview of performance measurements he did on an EqualLogic PS6000XV iSCSI SAN. It’s configured as RAID 10 with 12*15K SAS disks, the ESX 4.01 host is configured with Round Robin and uses 4 NICs and IOmeter is running in a Windows 2008 virtual machine.

Blocksize: 64 K
100 % Random access
80% write / 20% read

Blocksize: 64 K
100 % Random access
20% write / 80% read

Blocksize: 64 K
100 % sequential access
100% read / 0% write

Recently I’ve added a few new features to the vmClient which enables you to customize the visibility of menus. Because all those new settings could only be changed be editing the registry, I’ve decided to add a configuration dialog. When the vmClient is running, there’s a notification icon visible near your Windows clock in the right lower corner. You have to double click the icon in order to change te vmClient configuration settings. Within the config dialog, there’s an option to enable or disable auto logon and the preferred virtual machine setting. There’s also a tab for configuring your favourites and show or hide individual menu items. The cool feature in this release is... hide all menus, use auto logon and configure a preselected VM and voila there’s you lightweight VDI client.

The download is available at http://vmClient.nl

This soon to be released training course is completely based on PowerCLI. It equips VMware professionals with the knowledge, skills, and abilities to automate tasks that are performed in a VMware vSphere virtual infrastructure.

•        Identify VMware vSphere PowerCLI cmdlets
•        Identify how to obtain help with vSphere PowerCLI cmdlets
•        Automate ESX/ESXi host storage and network configuration
•        Automate virtual machine provisioning
•        Automate virtual machine migration
•        Automate cluster configuration
•        Create reports with vSphere PowerCLI

I've taken a quick look at the beta material and it’s awesome! You’ll never become a PowerCLI expert by just looking at some slides, so this training is equipped with great laboratory exercises like:

vSphere PowerCLI Cmdlet Help, Configuring Virtual Switches, Configuring Storage, Provisioning Virtual Machines, Managing Virtual Machine Configuration, Virtual Machine Migration, Configuring Clustering, Virtual Machine Reporting, Virtual Machine Host Reporting and Cluster Reporting.

Stuck using our vSphere SDKs / APIs ?....Help is on the way.

Our good friends in the VMware Professional Training Organization are putting together a 2 day instructor led course. The course title is “vSphere Automation” The course is about using PowerCLI to manage vSphere. This hands-on training course introduces the use of VMware vSphere™ PowerCLI to automate VMware vSphere 4. This course demonstrates ways to automate tasks that can reduce your IT costs while improving efficiency, availability, flexibility, and manageability. The course is still in limited private beta and hope to see its release in 1H2010.

http://blogs.vmware.com/files/vmware-vsphere-4-0-automation-course-beta-datasheet.pdf

Arnim van Lieshout over at van-lieshout.com has created a great blog post with all the steps involved in completing the setup of the PowerCLI/The VESI environment:

1.Installation of Windows PowerShell
2.Installation of VMware PowerCLI
3.Installation of The Virtualization EcoShell

On April 8th we had a very good DutchVMUG meeting, which was totally dedicated to using PowerCLI and The VESI (Virtualization EcoShell Initiative). Although setting up the environment is straightforward, I wanted to do a small write-up which leads you through the install process and includes all download links needed.

http://www.van-lieshout.com/2010/04/the-vesi-getting-it-up-and-running/