Archive for the ‘vSphere’ Category
VMware vCenter 4 and MS SQL Express 2008 R2 bug
January 6th, 2012 | 
Author: When looking for performance data in vCenter 4.1 from the past week, month or year, I got the message “Performance data is currently not available for this entry”. Only real time data is visible in vSphere client.
In the vCenter Service Status the warning “Performance statistics rollup from Past Day to Past Week is not occurring in the database” appeared.
The vCenter server is installed on MS Windows 2008 R2 and uses vCenter server version 4.1 Update 2 Build 491557 with Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Express R2 64-bit.
When looking in the VMware Product Interoperability matrixes, it says is a supported configuration.
Searching on the VMTN I found more people who are experiencing this problem. The following KB article says:
To resolve this issue, migrate the SQL database to a full edition (32bit or 64bit) or a 32bit SQL Express edition. For more information on how to move the vCenter Server SQL database, see Moving the vCenter Server SQL database (7960893).
For small environments this is not an option! When installing vCenter 4.1 Update 2, the MS SQL Express 2005 database is default installed. MS SQL Express 2005 is 32-bit and you can have a maximum database size of 4GB. With MS SQL Server 2008 Express R2 64-bit you can have maximum database size of 10GB.
vCenter 5 installs by default MS SQL Server 2008 Express R2 64-bit and doesn’t have this bug.
The MS SQL Express database is only supported for test and small VMware environments (5 hosts and 50 VMs maximum).
So watch out when considering MS SQL Server 2008 Express R2 64-bit and vCenter 4!
Time for new whitebox for your VMware vSphere or MS Hyper-V home lab environment?
When using a whitebox lab environment at home and like to test for example vSphere 5, vCloud Director, VMware View and MS Hyper-V (nested in VMware vSphere 
) you need a lot of processor power and memory. In almost all whitebox lab environment the processor power is not the problem but the amount of memory is.
Till now the Sandy Bridge desktop boards support up to 32GB memory with only four DIMM slots on the motherboard. For 32GB you need 4 * 8GB DIMMs, 8GB DIMMs are very expensive on the moment when writing this post.
Intel Introduced the Sandy Bridge-E processors and motherboards with the X79 based chipset that support this processors. This gives new possibilities for building a new whitebox home lab.
Processor
Intel introduced the Sandy Bridge-E or the 2nd generation Core i7 Extreme Processors. On the moment there are two Sandy Bridge-E processors available:
- Intel Core-I7-3960X 3,3GHz,15M L3-cache, list price around €950,00
- Intel Core-I7-3930K 3,2GHz,12M L3-cache, list price around € 550,00
As you can see the processors are pretty expensive. The Sandy Bridge-E has the following features:
- Socket LGA2011;
- 6 cores (12 cores with Hyper-Threading);
- Quad channel DDR3-1600 memory controller;
- Supports Hyper-Threading, Intel VT-x, VT-d;
- PCI-Express 3.0 support;
- 40 PCI-Express lanes;
- Max TDP 130 W;
- Multiplier unlocked.
The 2nd generation Core i7 Extreme Processors can be compared here.
Begin 2012 Intel will release the Core I7 3820 Sandy Bridge-E processor. This processor will support 4 cores (8 with Hyper-Threading) and have 10MB L3-cache. The price is not announced yet but will be much lower as the Intel 3930K and 3960X processors. When you buy a Sandy Bridge-E processor there is no CPU cooler in the box.
Motherboard
The Intel X79 chipset support the Socket LGA2011. To choose a motherboard you can for example check the following things:
- How much DIMM slots it has (some X79 motherboard have 4 DIMM slots);
- How much expansion slots it has;
- Price;
- How many USB ports and what speed they have;
- Type and number of SATA controllers;
- Type of number of NIC(s).
Important for a whitebox lab configuration is that the SATA controller (if you want to use local storage) and NIC(s) are supported by VMware ESXi. When choosing a motherboard with enough expansion slots you can always add extra RAID and NIC cards that are supported.
The most X79 based motherboards have 8 DIMM slots and supports up to 64GB memory. 8GB memory modules are expensive. So you can make a configuration with 8 x 4GB = 32 GB DDR-3 memory which is much cheaper. When 8GB memory modules become cheaper you can upgrade to 64GB memory.
Asus has a nice overview of all the X79 bases series motherboards they have, found here.
Shopping list
I made a shopping without the case, storage and the power supply. The prices are taken from the Tweakers pricewatch (Dutch) an can change every day.
Shopping list:
| Component | List price (€ ) |
| Intel Core-I7-3930K | 520,00 |
| Asus P9X79 | 230,00 |
| 4 x 4 x 2GB DDR3-1600 memory (total 32GB) | 160,00 |
| Simple processor cooler | 30,00 |
| Simple graphic card PCI-E | 25,00 |
| Total | 965,00 |
Conclusion
With the Sandy Bridge-E processor and X79 based motherboard you can build a monster whitebox lab environment with the best performance on the moment.
The advantage of using one huge whitebox you can use nesting to run your VMware vSphere and MS Hyper-V environment(s) on one box. An other advantage of using a whitebox is that you can make a low noise system. It’s a lot of money for a whitebox home lab environment but if you you wait for the Intel Core I7 3820 Sandy Bridge-E processor (announced in January 2012) can save you around €270,00 (this is an assumption because the list prices are not available yet).
Storage Best Practices from different vendors on VMware vSphere
Here is a collection of storage Best Practices from different vendors on VMware vSphere.
HP
HP Enterprise Virtual Array (EVA) family with VMware vSphere 4.0, 4.1 and 5.0 Configuration Best practices
Running VMware vSphere 4 on HP LeftHand P4000 SAN Solutions
Best Practices for deploying VMware and vSphere 4 with VMware High Availability and Fault Tolerance on HP P4500 Multi-Site SAN cluster
HP P4000 LeftHand Solutions with VMware vSphere Best Practices (incl. vSphere 5)
3PAR Utility Storage with VMware vSphere
HP P2000 Software Plug-in for VMware VAAI
NetApp
NetApp Storage Best Practices for VMware vSphere TR-3749
Version 3.0, last updated: December 2011
EMC
Using EMC VNX Storage with VMware vSphere
Version 1.0
Using VMware vSphere with EMC Symmetrix Storage
EMC Powerpath/VE for VMware vSphere Best Practices planning
Dell
Configuring iSCSI Connectivity with VMware vSphere 5 and Dell Equallogic PS Series Storage TR1075 V1.0 November 2011
Disaster Recovery with Dell Equallogic PS Series SAN and VMware vSphere Site Recovery Manager 5 TR1073
V1.0 September 2011
Sizing and Best Practices for Deploying VMware View 4.5 on VMware vSphere 4.1 with Dell Equallogic Storage
Configure VMware vSphere Software ISCSI with Dell Equallogic PS Series Storage
Sizing and Best Practices for Microsoft Exchange 2010 on VMware vSphere and Equallogic storage
Hitachi
Optimizing the Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform in vSphere Environments
IBM
IBM Storage N series and VMware vSphere Storage Best Practices
Update:
22-02-2012 HP P2000 Software Plug-in for VMware VAAI
21-11-2011 Add Configuring iSCSI Connectivity with VMware vSphere 5 and Dell EqualLogic PS Series Storage
If you have other storage best practices let me know.
VMware vSphere 5 what’s new
VMware announced vSphere 5 yesterday. This is the next generation of their Cloud Infrastructure Suite.
Here’s a list of white papers and technical documents about the new products, features and licensing of VMware vSphere 5:
- What’s New in VMware vSphere 5.0 Platform
- What’s New in VMware vSphere 5.0 Storage
- What’s New in VMware vSphere 5.0 Performance
- What’s New in VMware vSphere 5.0 Networking
- What’s New in VMware vSphere 5.0 Availability
- What’s New in VMware vCloud Director 1.5 Technical Whitepaper
- What’s New in VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager 5.0 Technical Whitepaper
- What’s New in VMware Data Recovery 2.0 Technical Whitepaper
- VMware vSphere Storage Appliance Technical Whitepaper
- VMware vSphere 5.0 Licensing, Pricing and Packaging
Also the new VMware Certified Professional (VCP 5) exam details are available:
- VMware Certified Professional 5 (VCP 5) information
More information on VMware vSphere 5 are covered in future blog post!
Display or filter VMs that are restarted by VMware HA
When VMware High Availability(HA) comes in action, the VMs are restarted (depending on the HA settings) on other VMware ESX servers in the cluster. It’s handy to know what VMs are restarted.
In the vCenter client the Tasks and Events page size can be increased. Default the vCenter client displays 100 tasks and events. In a cluster with a lot of host and a HA action the 100 tasks and events can be to low. So increasing the size will display the events that list what VMs ate restarted. Increasing can be done by using the following steps:
- Open the vCenter client
- Choose Edit
- Client Settings
- Lists
- Task and Events, Page size
- Increase the value (default value 100)
To find the VMs that are restarted click on the cluster, go to events tab and search for the following message:
Virtual machine <VM> was restarted on <host> since <hostname> failed
This is a time consuming task to filter out these messages.
An easier and quicker way is to use PowerCLI and use the following one-liner:
|
001 |
Get-VIEvent -MaxSamples 500 | select FullFormattedMessage,CreatedTime | Out-GridView |
This one-liner displays the last 500 events in a gridview. Filter on the keyword “restarted” and all the VMs that are restarted are filtered in the gridview.
