Entries from Eric Sloof

Finally a video explaining virtualization in a way even my mother in law can understand it. ;-)

Damin started an interesting discussion about ESX 3.5 Round Robin Load Balancing at the VMware Technology Network. He is experimenting with the Wasabi Systems iSCSI Target.

I just wanted to report back on my success using Round Robin Multipath Load Balancing for Vmware ESX 3.5. My production SAN is running on the Wasabi Systems iSCSI Target. I'm very happy w/ the results of the Wasabi Systems software. After about a month and a half of pretty intense work and testing w/ the Wasabi developers, I've got Multipath I/O w/ Round Robin Load balancing working at a production stable level. Along the way, I managed to identify a few issues w/ Wasabi that resulted in a few driver updates and some patches to their iSCSI target that solved some issues that I've had. I am currently running a specially compiled Beta (v4.0.2 **Pre-Release** BETA5-N2NET-4) that has some changes in the way that they handle SCSI reservation conflicts. With those changes, and the updated drivers I can get sustained reads and writes of 180 MB / second using two NICs.

Carter Shanklin over at the VI PowerShell Blog created another great Excel sheet with an integrated PowerShell script. If an ESX host you want to manage doesn't appear in VirtualCenter, you need to add it. This is a bit tricker than reconnecting since there's no inventory in VirtualCenter to tell you the IP addresses of all the hosts you use, and you also need to know a host's password in order to add it. This is another case where entering things in a spreadsheet can really speed things up. He made just such a spreadsheet, and here's a video of him using it.

Attaching lots of VMware ESX hosts to VMware VirtualCenter. from Carter Shanklin on Vimeo.

Is it possible to make your VMDK’s thin with the VI-Client? Just figured out how to create a thin grow able disk with the VI-Client. I created a normal virtual machine with a default disk and installed Windows 2003 as a guest. I converted the VM to a template with a thin disk. I copied both the VMDK files to another empty VM without any disk. After that I attached the thin template disks and started the VM. In the guest OS I can see the original size but the VMDK stays small. I didn’t had the time to test it any futher and haven’t seen it grow. You can also use the command line :

vmkfstools -i /vmfs/volumes/vmfs4all/Eric/Sloof_disk.vmdk -d thin /vmfs/volumes/vmfs4all/Eric/Sloof_disk.vmdk

Released 29-May-2008 | Build 93057

The VIX API allows development of scripts and programs to automate virtual machine operations. The API is high-level, easy to use, and practical for both script writers and application programmers. The VIX API includes:

 C API—This release of the API is available in the C language. API functions allow you to register, power on or off virtual machines, and run programs in the guest operating systems.

 Perl API—This release also includes a simplified API available in the Perl language.

 COM API—This release includes a COM binding, for development of C#, Visual Basic, and VBScript clients.

 Command-line Utility— Included with the installation is the vmrun command-line utility, based on the VIX API.

Rick Wininger posted some interesting information about the new VCDX certification and the number of VCP’s worldwide. He was present at the VMware Partner Xchange in San Diego and talked to a number of VMware badged employees. As for the VCDX, VMware is not planning to make money on the exam. They had to write their own test engines for both exams from scratch. As for the review board, initially the panel will consist of VMware PSO's. After that, any of us who have passed the entire track, will sit on the board where people will have to defend their design to us. There are over 20000 VCP's worldwide, however they do not expect more than 100 (one hundred) VCDX worldwide. It will be expensive due to travel costs, but that will be about it. He does know that VMware is toying with the idea of interim certification, but that is still in discussion.

Jeroen Bezemer, a former colleague of mine created a great way to monitor network traffic on virtual switches, using the NetFlow technical note provided by VMware to set it up and enabling NetFlow on virtual switches. NetFlow is a general networking tool with multiple uses, including network monitoring and profiling, billing, intrusion detection and prevention, networking forensics, and SOX compliance. NetFlow sends aggregated networking flow data to a third�?party collector (an appliance or server). The collector and analyzer report on various information such as the current top flows consuming the most bandwidth in a particular virtual switch, which IP addresses are behaving irregularly, and the number of bytes a particular virtual machine has sent and received in the past 24 hours. NetFlow is a mature technology, developed by Cisco, that is widely supported by third�?party collectors. NetFlow enables visibility into virtual machine traffic in a virtualized server farm. NetFlow support in ESX Server 3.5 is experimental and supports only a limited set of the standard NetFlow features commonly found on physical switches today. Although the activation of NetFlow should not create stability issues, overall performance of the ESX Server host may be affected.

VMware released an update of the their VDI connection broker software with some exiting improvements and features like :

  Pools spanning datastores in order to better manage resources
 Localization of VDM Web Access and Client for Windows
 Command line parameters for VDM Client
 Integrate MMR multimedia extensions DLL with VDM Client (Windows XP)
 Allow end users to change password
 Multiple sessions per user within a pool
 Improvements to logging
 Allow end users to restart their VM
 Defined process for bulk import of individual desktops
 VDM Configuration Backup (command-line only)
 Allow blocking of incoming RDP connections that are not from VDM Clients
 Allow VDM administrators to set default desktop (command line only)

When your company becomes a VMware Partner you can become a VTSP. I have completed the first couple of modules and must admit that the questions are not as easy as I thought. I think they are even harder than the VCP test. On the other hand, when you fail you can retake the exam immediately online, not that I needed that. ;-)

The VMware Technical Sales Professional (VTSP) program is an online, self-paced curriculum that is focused on pre-sales foundational technical training. To get your first VTSP accreditation you need to complete one VTSP training plan. Each training plan consists of Core Courses as well as specialty tracks. Together, this pre-sales-focused technical training curriculum prepares you to technically position and sell VMware products and VMware Solutions.

VTSP offers the following Training Plans:

 VTSP - Desktop Solution - ACE Essentials & VDI Essentials
 VTSP - Infrastructure Virtualization
 VTSP - VSLA Management - Workstation and Lab Manager

Peter Rudolf over at mightycare-solutions created a new version of his MCS StorageView tool. In this new version he fixed problems with:

Opening the config.ini that didn’t exists. Change Color of needed GB in Yellow.Change the wrong Color switch. Under Option you can change for “C:�?, “D:�?, “E:�? and all other Partition the Needed free space for your environment. The export to CSV without Error.