On N-Port ID Virtualization and VMFS datastores
Jul 27, 2009 Blogs
Today, I was preparing an environment for a physical relocation. My employer is moving to a new office building, and so the complete IT needs to be moved, too. We’re currently running all services (except a now defunct fax server and a Cisco CallManager) on four Dell PowerEdge 1950′s, attached through Fibre-Channel to a Dell/EMC CX3-10c SAN using Fibre Channel only.
Our regular backupsolution won’t allow for backup or recovery of complete VM’s, so to make sure no data gets lost, I wanted to create backups for disaster (say, the SAN hurls down a case of stairs by accident) recovery (I want my data back!) purposes. I’ve used and loved Veeam Backup and Replication for loads of other customers, so I wanted to give it a try in this scenario.
How to configure VMware vCenter Orchestrator
Jul 21, 2009 Blogs
I’ve been intrigued by VMware vCenter Orchestrator for a while now, but never found any good write-up on it, not to mention a guide on how to configure it.
While I was delivering a training course about vSphere last week, I decided to throw in some Orchestrator goodness, and configured it with the students. Unfortunately, I didn’t get around to actually using Orchestrator, so for now, I’ve limited this blog post to merely configuring it. I’m planning to dive deeper into it some time soon.
Below is the complete configuration guide for VMware vCenter Orchestrator, including database and attaching it to LDAP. I’ve included some screenshots as well.
New whitebox for ESX4
Jul 11, 2009 Blogs
My colleagues can play around with their test VM’s on our VMware Lab Manager environment (on three Dell PowerEdge 2950 III’s), but as a virtualization guy, I need my own physical environment. My employer, OGD, has been kind enough to supply me with two brand new white-boxes for me to tinker around with. They arranged two Dell PowerEdge T605′s, with 12GB of RAM, two AMD Opteron 2376′s (FT compatible) CPU’s, four 250Gb SATA2 disks (in RAID-0) and two Gbit network cards. Combined with a Dell PowerConnect 2716 16-port Gbit switch, I have a complete test environment for all my virtualization needs. A great plus of these T605′s is their compatibility with ‘home environments’. They do not give you headache’s by means of power consumption or noise level. They’re actually really quiet and easy on the power…
VMware vCenter AppSpeed, Chargeback and Lab Manager on July 13th
Jul 7, 2009 Blogs
On July 13th, VMware will announce three new VMware vCenter Management products.
General Availability
- VMware vCenter AppSpeed 1.0
- VMware vCenter Chargeback 1.0
Public Beta
- VMware vCenter Lifecycle Manager 1.1
Updated Release
- VMware vCenter Lab Manager 4.0
Veeam announces Veeam Business View
Jul 2, 2009 Blogs
Doug Hazelman, Director of the Global Systems Engineer Group, just notified me of a new Veeam product. It should be publicly available some time next week.
Veeam Business View provides IT-personnel with a new and fresh way to look at your virtual environment. Grouping VMs in any way you see fit, instead of following the standard categorization allows you to manage your VMs from a business perspective, not a technical one. Not only is it possibly to add a VM to a group or category, you can even add them to multiple! This removes the single-view method as used by many other products.
Being a cheap Dutch guy, I immediately wanted to know: what will it cost me? The best part is obviously that it’s completely free. You won’t get any stand-alone pesky little application though, but real value for money. Veeam Business view will be integrated with numerous Veeam applications. At this time, Veeam Reporter (Enterprise), the nworks Management Pack and the nwork Smart Plug-in are already supported by Business View. Veeam Monitor and Backup & Replication will be added in the near future. Speaking of product support: Business View even supports VMware vSphere out of the box!
See below for the official datasheet.
William Lam releases ftCLI.pl – VMware Fault Tolerance CLI Management
Jul 1, 2009 Blogs
William Lam, the guy who made the GettoVCB script, has releases another great script to VMware Code Central. With ftCLI.pl, the vSphere Admin can manage VMware Fault Tolerance through the Service Console or other supported CLI.
Description: Managing VMware Fault Tolerant via the command line.
Params: The following operations are supported: create|enable|disable|stop
Assumption: Your environment is FT capable and is configured properly
Requirement:
vSphere vCenter 4.0
ESX(i) 4.0
Advanced, Enterprise, Enterprise Plus or Eval licensing
With the script, you can initially configure a virtual machine for Fault Tolerance,(temporarily) enable and disable the feature and completely remove FT from a VM. As stated above, you still need to configure the VMware ESX(i) host for VMware Fault Tolerance.
To create a newly fault tolerant VM, you’ll want to use create operation and specify the VM that you would like to protect (A valid host within the cluster will be selected for you):
[vi-admin@scofield ~]$ ./ftCLI.pl --server reflex.primp-industries.com
--username primp --vmname Devastator --operation create
Enter password:
Creating FT secondary VM for "Devastator" ...
Successfully created FT protection for "Devastator"!
If you have fault tolerant enabled on a specific VM and would like to disable, you’ll want to use disable operation:
[vi-admin@scofield ~]$ ./ftCLI.pl --server reflex.primp-industries.com
--username primp --vmname Devastator --operation disable
Enter password:
Disabling FT secondary VM for "Devastator" on host
"everest.primp-industries.com" ...
Successfully disabled FT protection for "Devastator"!
If you have fault tolerant disabled on a specific VM and would like to re-enable, you’ll want to use enable operation:
[vi-admin@scofield ~]$ ./ftCLI.pl --server reflex.primp-industries.com
--username primp --vmname Devastator --operation enable
Enter password:
Enabling FT secondary VM for "Devastator" on host
"everest.primp-industries.com" ...
Successfully enabled FT protection for "Devastator"!
If you like to turn off fault tolerant completely and destroy the secondary VM, you’ll want to use stop operation:
[vi-admin@scofield ~]$ ./ftCLI.pl --server reflex.primp-industries.com
--username primp --vmname Devastator --operation stop
Enter password:
Turning off FT for secondary VM for Devastator ...
Successfully stopped FT protection for "Devastator"!
