Archives for August 2012

Official VCP5 Certification Guide & Building a Virtual Datacenter Books Now Available

August 24, 2012 by Josh Townsend Leave a Comment

VMware Press this week released two new books. The first is The Official VCP5 Certification Guide by Bill Ferguson. The book is designed to help professionals prepare for the VMware VCP510 exam, covering all of the topics on the VMware VCP510 exam blueprint, including:

Understanding how virtualization can best be integrated into today’s real-world IT environments
Recognizing what to change, and what to leave alone
Planning, installing, configuring, and upgrading vCenter Server and VMware ESXi Planning and configuring vSphere networking and storage
Deploying and Administering Virtual Machines and vApps
Establishing and Maintaining Service Levels
Performing basic troubleshooting
Monitoring vSphere implementations
Managing vCenter Server alarms
Preparing for the future of VMware virtualization

Beyond simple reading materials on the subjects above, The Official VCP5 Certification Guide provides the common staples of an industry certification book, namely:

Assess your knowledge with chapter-opening quizzes
Review key concepts with exam preparation tasks
Practice with realistic exam questions on the DVD

I probably won’t add this one to my bookshelf as I am already VCP3, 4 and 5, but I think it would be a very valuable resource for anyone not already certified.

The second book just released by VMware Press is VMware vSphere 5® Building a Virtual Datacenter by Eric Maillé and René-François Mennecier. With the increased talk lately of the ‘Software Defined Datacenter’, this title is very time-appropriate. According to the book’s description, “VMware vSphere® 5: Building a Virtual Datacenter brings together all the practical knowledge you need to evaluate, plan, implement, and manage vSphere 5 in your datacenter environment.”

The book covers the following topics:

Assessing the potential benefits of datacenter virtualization in your environment
Organizing and managing a smooth migration to the virtualized datacenter
Anticipating specific challenges and risks associated with datacenter virtualization
Making tradeoffs to optimize stability, elasticity, scalability, and cost
Choosing the best installation/configuration options for your environment
Effectively linking vSphere 5 virtualization to existing datacenter elements
Driving more value from vSphere 5’s powerful new datacenter features
Providing storage to efficiently support your hosted VMs, now and in the future
Managing limited memory and other server constraints
Leveraging new options for service continuity and high availability
Using backup architecture as a lever to reduce costs

This is a good book for anyone starting on a vSphere 5 project, as it covers details on budgeting, scheduling, and planning; choosing the right architecture; and integrating vSphere with existing datacenter elements, including servers, storage, clusters, network infrastructure, and business continuity plans. I’ll most likely add this one to my bookshelf once I clear my current backlog of reading.

Grab both books from Amazon now, or pick them up at VMworld next week!
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VMware Releases Workstation 9 and Fusion 5

August 23, 2012 by Josh Townsend Leave a Comment

Today, VMware released the latest version of their VMware Workstation product – version 9. VMware Workstation was the first VMware product that I used (some 13 years ago) and has continued to be a product I rely on to do my work. I’ve been using the Technology Preview versions of Workstation 9 for months and am impressed with its speed, stability, and features. Using VMware Workstation Tech Preview 9 on my laptop, I run a full VMware View environment, complete with firewall, load balancer, OpenFiler storage appliance, vCenter, a couple nested vSphere 5 ESXi servers, View Composer and View Connection server; as well as a few other VM’s for ThinApp packaging, Orchestrator, and Windows 8. Workstation has allowed me to have a fairly complex networking configuration, with storage, network, management, and guest networks all isolated.

The new version of workstation adds the following new features:

Windows 8 Support (I got a Windows 8 VM up and running using Workstation’s Easy Install feature in less than 5 minutes)
Web-based interface that allows access to running VM’s from any web browser. This opens up some options for co-op training, demos, etc.
Restricted Virtual Machines – Create a runtime password and an administrative password to control who can run and modify settings on a VM.
Drop & Drag VM’s to and from VMware vSphere. Think of this as your own little hybrid cloud connector. Develop images on Workstation, ship them to vSphere when ready for production.
Enhanced 3D Graphics to support Windows Metro, and other graphically intensive apps like AutoCAD.
USB 3.0 Support for attaching USB devices to virtual machines.
Nested Virtualization, making better use of Intel VT-x/EPT and AMD-V/RVI to support 64-bit guest OS’s in nested ESXi VM’s.
Hyper-V is supported as a guest operating system (with nested VM’s)
Disk Cleanup to reclaim wasted disk space (important if you are running short of SSD space like I am).

Check out the release notes for more info: https://www.vmware.com/support/ws90/doc/workstation-90-release-notes.html

VMware also released VMware Fusion 5 for you Mac OSX users. See here for more info: https://www.vmware.com/products/desktop_virtualization/fusion/professional.html. Fusion 5 includes a new ‘Professional’ business edition that includes some pretty cool options for pushing Windows VM’s out to all your Fusion enabled Mac users. This helps to ensure a consistent user experience and up-to-date Windows image for your multi-platform end users.

The upgrades to Workstation 9 and Fusion 5 are definitely worth the money! Buy the upgrade here, or reach out to me at Clearpath if you need to place a bulk order or renew your Support and Subscription (SNS) on existing VMware Workstation or VMware Fusion licenses for your business.

Home Lab ESXi Install Problem on HP xw8600 with LSI1068

August 21, 2012 by Josh Townsend 3 Comments

I recently finished a big basement remodel project (gutted it and started from scratch!), leaving me with a new, bigger office space. The Townsend Family Director of Standards and Practices (a.k.a. She Who Must Be Obeyed, a.k.a. my wife) thinks she’s got a nice new space to do some work in, but I’ve got better plans! My VMware Home Lab reborn! I started the rebuild tonight with a pair of HP xw8600 workstations. They are a nice system for a home lab – dual-socket CPU (Intel Xeon 5400 quad-core series), up to 128GB RAM, 14 channels of on-board LSI 1068 SATA/SAS RAID Controller, PCIe x16, Dual Broadcom Gigabit networks adapters. Oh yeah, and a Fusion-IO ioDrive 320GB card 😉

But…. when I went to install VMware ESXi 5.x I ran into problems. The install went fine, or so I thought (when you do enough of them you stop paying attention and just start banging on the Enter and F11 keys until it’s done ;-)). First step was to put the Fusion-IO VIB into ESXi so I could start taking advantage of all that crazy fast, nano-second latent, IOP screaming goodness. A little SCP action to copy the VIB to /tmp on the first host failed with an out-of-space type error. Odd. Last I knew I had 700GB of SATA at my command, and ‘df -h’ agreed with me. A bad install? I didn’t check the MD5 of the ISO before I burned it…

I reinstalled, and this time was met with a Purple Screen of Death (PSOD). Bad hardware? I installed Windows 7 on the same box and had no issues at all – all storage seen, no crashes, stable as stable as Windows can be. I’ll take this to mean that all the hardware is functional, SATA disks correctly presented off of the SAS controllers a single RAID5 array. I’m thinking a driver issue at this point.

Re-install ESXi (and just maybe pour myself a bourbon). Another PSOD. This time I actually paused to read the PSOD details before kicking the box. A few lines caught my eye:

Logs are stored on non-persistent storage. Consult product documentation to configure a syslog server or a scratch partition.

No place on disk to dump data.

Interesting. No scratch partition. I thought those were included in the base options on this hot rod called ESXi.

Install, again. This time, pay attention to the install routine. I found that in my rush to get through the install, I ignored this screen:

On the ‘Select a Disk to Install or Upgrade’ screen of the VMware ESXi 5.0 installer, there were no (none) Local disks detected, and my internal RAID volume on the LSILOGIC controller was detected as a Remote disk. A little LMGTFY action led me to this page in VMware’s vSphere 5.0 Install documentation:

For Serial ATA (SATA), a disk connected through supported SAS controllers or supported on-board SATA controllers. SATA disks will be considered remote, not local. These disks will not be used as a scratch partition by default because they are seen as remote.

So even through the LSI1068E controller is supported by ESXi, the SAS port attached SATA disks showed up as Remote, leaving my installation without a scratch partition and seemingly a bit unstable as a result.

My work-around is simple. Install ESXi on a USB drive, then use the SATA and Fusion-IO for my VMFS datastores. I’ve had good luck with the Verbatim TUFF ‘N’ TINY USB 2.0 Flash Drive – it is fast, good capacity, and tiny. The small form factor makes it all but flush with the back of the server, keeping it from getting knocked out or broken off by the kids.

Hope this helps you if you are planning to install your VMware ESXi on an xw8600 or another system with an LSI1068E controller with SATA disks on a SAS controller!

And, as a bonus tip, PC2 5300F 555MHz RAM for the xw8600. I was trying to cheap out and eBay some memory and got the wrong PC2-5300P DIMM’s. Apparently there is a difference…. I now have some extra PC2-5300P 2GB DIMM’s for the highest bidder!

VMware View 5.1.1 Update Released – Addresses Persona Management Problem

August 17, 2012 by Josh Townsend Leave a Comment

VMware released VMware View 5.1.1 yesterday (8/16/2012). The update addresses a few different issues , and applies only to VMware View Connection Servers, not View Security Servers, View Transfer Servers, View Composer, or View Clients.

The first issue resolved in the VMware View 5.1.1 update is a scalability fix for View deployments over 10,000 desktops managed by one group of View Connection Servers. If you are following standard View reference architectures as pictured below, your View Pod should extend beyond 10,000 desktop. If you did scale to near or beyond 10,000 managed entities (desktops, pools, and users/groups combined), View Administrator might intermittently have problems displaying objects. This fix resolves the display issues, but you should still follow good architecture design practices when scaling out your View environment.

The second set of issues resolved by this update pertain to View Persona Management. Persona Management, as well as VMware ThinApp and Horizon Application Manager, are key to achieving a stateless desktop computing environment. The closer to stateless you move, the lower your end user computing operating and capital costs will be.

View 5.1.1 fixes problems with Persona Management that could lead to data loss for your user’s Persona profile data. Persona generally works very well, but if a user were to commit a large file to their View profile and log off their desktop before the file could replicate to the network View profile repository, the file could become corrupt or lost. This problem would be seen most in environments where the ‘Delete or Refresh Desktop at Logoff’ Pool policy was set to ‘Refresh Immediately’ or ’Delete immediately’ options. This would cause View to revert the VM to the pool clean snapshot state or delete and recreate the VM before the profile data had synchronized. View 5.1.1 now waits for the profile replication to complete before allowing Composer to refresh or delete the used desktop.

View 5.1.1 also fixes an issue where a user logged off of one View Desktop and immediately logged into another. Prior to the update this set of actions could result in inconsistent Persona profile data, including loss of data from the first, logged-off desktop.

The release notes for View 5.1.1 detail the fixes included, and also include a slew of Known Issues for View (there are a bunch!). Give it a read and start planning your update.

Amazon Kindle DX Price Cut – Great for VMware Technical Document Reading!

August 10, 2012 by Josh Townsend Leave a Comment

I just saw that the Amazon Kindle DX 9.7″ eReader (Kindle DX, Free 3G, 9.7″ E Ink Display, 3G Works Globally) got a pretty deep price cut, down to $269. The eReader doesn’t have the full-blown color screen or Android experience of the Kindle Fire, but I’ve found that it is awesome for reading technical documentation. The large, no glare, black & white screen is distraction free, helping me to focus on the (let’s be honest, sometimes boring) technical documentation and publications I’m reading. I carry my DX in my backpack, loaded with technical books, formal documentation, and the occasional bit of pleasure reading. The battery life is great and 3G access on the DX guarantees that I have my documents ready to go when I’m on a flight, subway, or at a client site. The large screen easily displays diagrams, charts, and graphs without scrolling or funky resizing like you see on a smaller screen. I also like being able to highlight and notate sections of text for later reference – the full keyboard on the DX model makes this easy.

Here’s a pic of my Kindle DX (on top of my VMworld 2011 backpack) with the VMware View 5.1 Administration document open with a big chart of View GPO policies displayed. Not too shabby!

The price drop probably indicates some newer Kindle and or Kindle Fire models are soon to be released, but for the price and abuse the thing can take in the old backpack I don’t mind having a slightly older piece of technology for this use case.

VMware makes much of their documentation available in .mobi and .epub format, as well as PDF. Head over to https://www.vmware.com/support/pubs/ and grab the .mobi file. Connect your Kindle DX to your computer and drop & drag the files to the Kindle’s storage. If you are getting technical docs from another vendor in .epub format, grab a free copy of Calibre (available for PC, Mac, or Linux) and convert the files from .epub to .mobi. You can also load PDF documents in the same way, although formatting can sometimes get a bit funny. If formatting is off, email the PDF to your @kindle.com address and Amazon will convert it for you and deliver it over 3G or WiFi to your Kindle within minutes.

Beyond the complete sets of VMware vSphere, VMware View, and VMware Site Recovery Manager (SRM) documentation loaded on my DX, I current have some other VMware titles handy, including: VMware vSphere 5 Clustering Technical Deepdive, Mastering VMware vSphere 5, and VMware View 5 Desktop Virtualization Solutions. These come in handy as I studied for my VMware VCP5 upgrade exam, as well as my current preparations for the VMware VCP5-DT, VCAP-DCD, and VCP-IaaS exams.

Grab your Kindle DX today while the git’n is good: Kindle DX, Free 3G, 9.7″ E Ink Display, 3G Works Globally.