VMware released the following new product updates:

·        VMware ESX(i) 4.0 Update 2

·        VMware vCenter Server 4.0 Update 2

·        VMware vCenter Update Manager 4.0 Update 2

·        VMware Data Recovery 1.2

Always test these updates before deploying in production and make sure that other products (for example VMware View and VMware SRM) are supported with the new updates! Here are the highlights per product update:

VMware ESX(i) 4.0 Update 2

ESX 4.0 Update 2 | 10 Jun 2010 | Build 261974
VMware Tools | 10 Jun 2010 | Build 261974

What’s New

The following information provides highlights of some of the enhancements available in this release of VMware ESX:

• Enablement of Fault Tolerance Functionality for Intel Xeon 56xx Series processors— vSphere 4.0 Update 1 supports the Intel Xeon 56xx Series processors without Fault Tolerance. vSphere 4.0 Update 2 enables Fault Tolerance functionality for the Intel Xeon 56xx Series processors.

• Enablement of Fault Tolerance Functionality for Intel i3/i5 Clarkdale Series and Intel Xeon 34xx Clarkdale Series processors— vSphere 4.0 Update 1 supports the Intel i3/i5 Clarkdale Series and Intel Xeon 34xx Clarkdale Series processors without Fault Tolerance. vSphere 4.0 Update 2 enables Fault Tolerance functionality for the Intel i3/i5 Clarkdale Series and Intel Xeon 34xx Clarkdale Series processors.

• Enablement of IOMMU Functionality for AMD Opteron 61xx and 41xx Series processors— vSphere 4.0 Update 1 supports the AMD Opteron 61xx and 41xx Series processors without input/output memory management unit (IOMMU). vSphere 4.0 Update 2 enables IOMMU functionality for the AMD Opteron 61xx and 41xx Series processors.

• Enhancement of the esxtop/resxtop utility— vSphere 4.0 Update 2 includes an enhancement of the performance monitoring utilities, esxtop and resxtop. The esxtop/resxtop utilities now provide visibility into the performance of NFS datastores in that they display the following statistics for NFS datastores: Reads/s, writes/s, MBreads/s, MBwrtn/s, cmds/s, GAVG/s(guest latency).

• Additional Guest Operating System Support— ESX/ESXi 4.0 Update 2 adds support for Ubuntu 10.04. For a complete list of supported guest operating systems with this release, see the VMware Compatibility Guide.

Resolved Issues – In addition, this release delivers a number of bug fixes that have been documented in the Resolved Issues section.

The following bug is solved in this release:

For devices using the roundrobin PSP the value configured for the –iops option changes after ESX host reboot. If a device that is controlled by the roundrobin PSP is configured to use the --iops option, the value set for the --iops option is not retained if the ESX Server is rebooted.

VMware vCenter Server 4.0 Update 2

ESX 4.0 Update 2 | 10 Jun 2010 | Build 261974
VMware Tools | 10 Jun 2010 | Build 261974

What’s New

  Guest Operating System Customization Improvements: vCenter Server now supports customization of the following guest operating systems:

• Windows XP Professional SP2 (x64) serviced by Windows Server 2003 SP2

• SLES 11 (x32 and x64)

• SLES 10 SP3 (x32 and x64)

• RHEL 5.5 Server Platform (x32 and x64)

• RHEL 5.4 Server Platform (x32 and x64)

• RHEL 4.8 Server Platform (x32 and 64)

• Debian 5.0 (x32 and x64)

• Debian 5.0 R1 (x32 and x64)

• Debian 5.0 R2 (x32 and x64)

  Resolved Issues:In addition, this release delivers a number of bug fixes that have been documented in the Resolved Issues section.

 

VMware vCenter Update Manager 4.0 Update 2

VMware vCenter Update Manager 4.0 Update 2 | 10 Jun 2010 | Build 264019

What’s New

• Improved reliability of operations on hosts in low bandwidth, high latency, or lossy networks – Update Manager 4.0 Update 2 performs operations on hosts reliably when working in slow networks, networks where packet loss occurs, or WAN environments. In earlier Update Manager releases, if host operations took more than two hours to complete, the tasks might timeout and fail. See Extend the default timeout periods for vCenter Server, ESX/ESXi hosts, and vCenter Update Manager (KB 1017253) for more information about the problem. In Update Manager 4.0 Update 2 such tasks complete successfully.

VMware vCenter Update Manager 4.0 Update 2 adds enhancements and bug fixes, which are described in the Resolved Issues section. This release contains known issues described in Known Issues.

 

VMware Data Recovery 1.2

Data Recovery | 18 MAY 2010 | Build 260251

What’s New

The following enhancements have been made for this release of Data Recovery.

• File Level Restore (FLR) is now available for use with Linux.

• Each vCenter Server instance supports up to ten Data Recovery backup appliances.

• The vSphere Client plug-in supports fast switching among Data Recovery backup appliances.

• Miscellaneous vSphere Client Plug-In user interface enhancements including:
  • The means to name backup jobs during their creation.

  • Additional information about the current status of destination disks including the disk’s health and the degree of space savings provided by the deduplication store’s optimizations.

  • Information about the datastore from which virtual disks are backed up.

Here’s a handy comparison table between VDR 1.1 and VDR 1.2:

All the product updates can be found on the VMware download page.

 

 

When designing a VMware View environment one important step is to look at the Anti-Virus solution going to be used. Not well designed Anti-Virus solutions can cause a lot of extra I/O and system spikes in virtual environments. This can result in a negatively user experience.

VMware has made an Anti-Virus deployment best practices whitepaper for Virtual Machines.  Topics as  ThinApp, linked clones, VMsafe and file exclusions etc. are all listed in the whitepaper.

The Anti-Virus deployment for VMware View whitepaper can be found here.

 

TrainSignal has released  a new video training called “VMware vSphere Pro Series Vol .1”. Three vExperts covers topics about VMware View and ThinApp, VMware PowerCLI and the Cisco Nexus 1000V.

VMware View & ThinApp Presented by David Davis covers the following topics:

• View Overview and introduction
• Installing VMware View 4
• Deploying Virtual Desktops with View
• Automated Virtual Desktop Deployment with View Pools
• Adding a Terminal Services Pool in View
• Understanding View Composer Linked Clones
• Introduction to ThinApp 4
• Installing ThinApp
• Virtualizing Applications with ThinApp

Managing VMware vSphere with PowerCLI presented by Hal Rottenberg covers the following topics:

• Introduction to PowerCLI,
• Powershell Basic
• PowerCLI Concepts
• PowerCLI in the Real World
• PowerCLI Cmdlet Deep dives

Cisco Nexus 1000V – VMware vSphere Third-Party Virtual Distributed Switch presented by Rick Scherer covers the following topics:

• Getting Started with Nexus 1000V
• Integrating the Cisco Nexus 1000V with vCenter server
• High Availability Options for the Cisco Nexus 1000V
• Configuring Port Profiles on the Cisco Nexus 1000V

The VMware vSphere Pro Series Vol .1 video package contains:

• 20 Videos (10 hrs: 39mins: 50secs) will be provided in High-Quality AVI and WMV format. In other words, you get perfect quality and replication of your instructors’ screens. An easy-to-use table of contents allows you to navigate to key areas you wish to focus on
• Instant Access to all 20 Videos (10 hrs: 39mins: 50secs) in Train Signal’s My Online Training section. These high resolution videos allow you to access any and all of this award winning training in just moments. No need to wait for the DVDs to arrive to get started learning. You can be watching video in just moments and it’s all included for free.
• 20 iPod video files to watch Train Signal on the go! A popular request amongst our students who wish to study while they commute (i.e. train, plane, bus). These 320×240 M4V files are compressed versions of the original course, and play on any iPod that supports video. Also great for reviewing and refreshing your mind "on the job."
• 20 MP3 audio files to listen to Train Signal anytime, anywhere. Some of our students have requested this option. Now, you can listen in the car or while working out. Our MP3 files can be burnt to a CD or copied to a portable device
• Instructor Notes – These PDF documents, which can be printed out, contain the slides used by the instructors throughout the videos. These documents allow the user a quick easy reference to the instructors’ notes on the slides, and provides a place to make additional notes.

The content presented by the VMware vExperts in  the video’s is very good. If you want to know more about VMware View and ThinApp, PowerCLI or the Cisco Nexus 1000V this is a must see video package!   For more information about this training video and watch a demo go to the TrainSignal website by clicking here.

 

 

When you install VMware ESX 4 by using the default installation method from for example the DVD, the NIC speed  and duplex setting are set to fixed for each NIC. This means that the network switch port must be set to fixed too. In VMware ESX 3 the default NIC mode was Auto Negotiate In the vCenter clients this looks like:

 

You can easily change the NIC speed and duplex settings to auto Negotiate for all NICs in the ESX host by using PowerCLI. This can be done by using the  following one-liner: 

Get-VMHostNetworkAdapter | Set-VMHostNetworkAdapter –AutoNegotiate

Be sure when you execute this command in production environment, that the VMware ESX hosts is in maintenance mode!

 

There are different ways to patch your VMware ESX(i) 4 hosts. The most common utilities are VMware Update Manager (VUM), vSphere Host Update Utility and the esxupdate command line utility (run from the Service Console) to patch your VMware environment. Here’s explained the differences between them.

VUM can be used to automated patch your complete environment without user intervention. ESX(i) host are automatically placed in maintenance mode and VM’s are migrated to other VMware ESX(i) host using VMotion and DRS techniques, the host is patched, rebooted and exiting maintenance mode.  VUM is used on enterprise environments.

vSphere Host Update Utility can be used to patch only VMware ESXi (not ESX) hosts. Normally this utility is used in small ESXi environments without VUM, VMotion and DRS.

VUM utility	vSphere Host Update Utility

ESXupdate command, this command line utility (in the service console) can be used to patch your standalone VMware ESX host, for example the vSphere Essentials edition. This small business version comes with for example VMware ESX, vCenter and VMware Update Manager. But when your vCenter server is installed virtually as VM you are not able to transfer the VM to another host because there is no VMotion in the license. All the VMs must be shutdown including the vCenter VM to put the host in maintenance mode. So you can’t use VMware Update Manager. Now you need the esxupdate command.  Here are the steps for using the ESXupdate command:

• The first thing is to download the patch bundles. A bundle contains a metadata zip which defines the bulletins available for installation. This is a great improvement to earlier versions of VMware ESX. It’s possible to select all patch bundles and download them at once. The patch bundles can be found here.

• Upload the patch bundles on the VMware ESX VMFS  or NFS partition (other options such as HTTP repository are also possible). This can be done by using the datastore browser in the vCenter client.

 

• Shutdown all VMs on the VMware ESX host to patch using the .vSphere client or the vmware-cmd command.
• Put the host in maintenance mode using the vSphere client or the following command:

vimsh -n -e /hostsvc/maintenance_mode_enter

• Check the integrity of the patch bundle with the esxupdate –check –bundle command. Do this for all patch bundles.
• Install the patch using the esxupdate update –bundle command. Install all patch bundles beginning with the oldest patch bundle.
• Exit maintenance mode by using the vSphere client of the following command:

vimsh -n -e /hostsvc/maintenance_mode_exit

• Reboot the hosts vSphere client of the following command:

shutdown –r now

Here’s a sample script:

vimsh -n -e /hostsvc/maintenance_mode_enter
esxupdate check --bundle ESX400-200906001.zip
esxupdate update --bundle ESX400-200906001.zip
esxupdate check --bundle ESX400-200907001.zip
esxupdate update --bundle ESX400-200907001.zip
esxupdate check --bundle ESX400-200909001.zip
esxupdate update --bundle ESX400-200909001.zip
esxupdate check --bundle ESX-4.0.0-update01a.zip
esxupdate update --bundle ESX-4.0.0-update01a.zip
esxupdate check --bundle ESX400-200912001.zip
esxupdate update --bundle ESX400-200912001.zip
esxupdate check --bundle ESX400-201002001.zip
esxupdate update --bundle ESX400-201002001.zip
vimsh -n -e /hostsvc/maintenance_mode_exit
shutdown -r now