Entries from Eric Sloof

VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM) 5.0 provides business continuity and disaster recovery protection for VMware virtual environments. Protection can range from virtual machines (VMs) residing on a single, replicated datastore to all the VMs in a datacenter and includes protection for the operating systems and applications running in the VM. The goal of this white paper is to provide you with SRM performance data and recommendations so that you can architect an efficient recovery plan that minimizes the recovery time for your environment. This white paper addresses various dimensions on which the recovery time depends: • Number of virtual machines and protection groups associated with a recovery plan • Leveraging DPM and DRS for a better recovery • Configuration of various recovery plan parameters • Priority assignment of virtual machines in the recovery plan • Improvements to the performance of recovering multiple protection groups within a single recovery plan Furthermore, VMware suggest best practices in applicable areas so that you can optimize the recovery time using SRM.

http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/techpaper/srm5-perf.pdf

The goal of this 3 day course is to equip consulting professionals with the knowledge, skills, and abilities to achieve competence in designing a VMware vSphere 5 virtual infrastructure. Given an organization’s constraints and requirements, the infrastructure should be available, scalable, manageable, and secure while meeting the organization’s business objectives. The course is based on VMware ESXi and VMware vCenter Server 5. This course discusses the benefits and risks of available design alternatives and provides information to support making sound design decisions. This course also provides an opportunity to practice your design skills by working with peers on a design project. Objectives: • Understand and apply a framework to a design. • Design a storage solution to use vSphere in an enterprise. • Design a network to use vSphere in an enterprise. • Design compute resources for an enterprise. • Design virtual machines to run applications in a virtual infrastructure. • Design a virtual datacenter for an enterprise. • Incorporate management and monitoring features in the design. • Identify design goals, requirements, constraints, and risks. • Identify useful information for making design decisions. • Recognize and analyze best-practice recommendations. • Analyze alternative design choices. Course Datasheet

This 4 days hands-on training course builds your skills in the VMware View™ suite of products: VMware View™ Manager, View Composer, and VMware ThinApp®. This course is based on the View 5.0 and ThinApp 4.6 releases. Before attending this course, you must be able to perform the following tasks:
• Create a template in VMware vCenter Server™ and deploy a virtual machine from the template. • Modify a template customization file. • Open a virtual machine console in vCenter Server and access the guest operating system. • Configure Active Directory services.
Objectives:
• Install and configure View components. • Create and manage dedicated and floating desktop pools. • Deploy and manage linked-clone virtual desktops. • Configure and manage desktops that run in local mode. • Configure user profiles with View Persona Management. • Configure secure access to desktops through a public network. • Use ThinApp to package applications.

Continue reading "New Book: Administering VMware Site Recovery..." »

VMware supports in-place upgrades on 64-bit systems from vCenter Server 4.x to vCenter Server 5.0. You can upgrade VirtualCenter 2.5 Update 6 or later and vCenter Server 4.0.x to vCenter Server 5.0 by installing vCenter Server 5.0 on a new machine and migrating the existing database.

This upgrade method makes it possible to upgrade from a 32-bit system to a 64-bit system. Alternatively, if the VirtualCenter or vCenter Server database is on a remote machine, you can upgrade the database. vCenter Server 5.0 can manage ESX 3.5.x/ESXi 3.5.x hosts in the same cluster with ESX 4.x/ESXi 4.x hosts.

You cannot upgrade a vCenter Server 4.x instance that is running on Windows XP Professional x64 Edition to vCenter Server 5.0, because vCenter Server 5.0 does not support Windows XP Professional x64. This article provides information about upgrading to vCenter Server 5.0.

VMware KB: Upgrading to vCenter Server 5.0 best practices

The past year has been great. I’ve posted 269 articles at ntpro.nl which have been read by many visitors, got certified for both VCAP-DCA and DCD and VCP5. I’ve also received the vExpert and the VMware Certified Instructor Certificate of Achievement Award. Together with Mattias Sundling, I’ve presented well received sessions at the VMworld in Las Vegas and Copenhagen and also at the Dutch VMUG event. Besides that, I’ve recorded a lot of videos. These videos are available via ITunes and YouTube. This is a list of the 10  most popular videos. 

1.   Configure SNMP for ESX
2.   Using Private VLANs prevent VLAN exhaustion
3.   How to run Android in a VMware Virtual Machine
4.   Migrating from ESX 4.1 to ESXi 5.0
5.   How to deploy the Arista vEOS
6.   vSphere 5 Video - iSCSI User Interface
7.   VKernel Performance Analyzer
8.   The vSphere 5 Web Client
9.   vSphere 5 Video - ESXi Firewall Configuration
10. vSphere 5 Video - Storage DRS

I want to thank all of you, the readers and viewers of my articles and videos for their support and wish everyone a great 2012.

- Tuning ESX/ESXi for better storage performance by modifying the maximum I/O block size
- ESX has performance issues due to IRQ sharing
- Enabling IOAT and Jumbo frames
- Troubleshooting network performance issues
- Analyzing SCSI Reservation conflicts on VMware Infrastructure 3.x and vSphere 4.x
- Determining if multiple virtual CPUs are causing performance issues
- Slow performance caused by misconfigured local storage or SAN array
- Slow performance caused by out of date firmware on a RAID controller or HBA
- Testing virtual machine storage I/O performance
- iSCSI and Jumbo Frames configuration on ESX 3.x, ESX 4.x and ESXi 5.x
- Using esxtop to identify storage performance issues
- Configuring Jumbo Frames on a vNetwork Distributed Switch
- Verifying correct storage settings on ESX 4.x and ESXi 4.x
- Network I/O Resource Management in vSphere 4.1 with vDS
- Impact of virtual machine memory and CPU resource limits
- Checking your firmware and BIOS levels to ensure compatibility with ESX/ESXi
- Enabling Jumbo Frames for VMkernel ports in a virtual distributed switch
- Changing the Queue Depth for QLogic and Emulex HBAs
- High co-stop (%CSTP) values seen during virtual machine snapshot activities
- Balloon driver retains hold on memory causing virtual machine guest operating system performance issues

Source KB 2001003

HD_Speed measures both sustained and burst data transfer rates of your virtual disks, cd/dvd-roms, flash cards/sticks, floppys, etc, and offers a realtime graphical display.

Download

I just wanted to send everyone a bit of Christmas Cheer!

Dutch: Vrolijk Kerstfeest en een Gelukkig Nieuwjaar! or Zalig Kerstfeest
English: Merry Christmas
German: Fröhliche Weihnachten
French: Joyeux Noel
Flemish: Zalig Kerstfeest en Gelukkig nieuw jaar
Greek: Kala Christouyenna!
Russian: Pozdrevlyayu s prazdnikom Rozhdestva is Novim Godom
Spanish: Feliz Navidad
Thai: Sawadee Pee Mai or souksan wan Christmas
Turkish: Noeliniz Ve Yeni Yiliniz Kutlu Olsun
Farsi: Cristmas-e-shoma mobarak bashad