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:
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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.
Unable to delete a VMDK because it’s locked
When trying to delete an “old” VMDK file, I’ve got the following message “device or resource is busy”. I was pretty sure that the VMDK was not connected to any VM(s) anymore. I tried to delete the VMDK by command line and by using the datastore browser.
I found the VMware KB article “Virtual machine does not power on because of locked files”
This KB article describes how to find the VMware ESX host that holds the lock.
To identify the VMware ESX server that holds the lock, used the following command:
vmkfstools -D /vmfs/volumes/<LUN/<name server.VMDK>
This command reports in the vmkernel.log the MAC address of the ESX server that holds the lock. Look in the vmkernel.log by using the following command:
tail /var/log/vmkernel log
The vmkernel.log output:
Mar 29 15:43:07 server vmkernel: 7:03:34:25.713 cpu9:4223)FS3: 142: <START server-flat.vmdk>
Mar 29 15:43:07 server vmkernel: 7:03:34:25.713 cpu9:4223)Lock [type 10c00 001 offset 31932416 v 142, hb offset 3272704
Mar 29 15:43:07 server vmkernel: gen 99305, mode 1, owner 4d39b32d-ef56720 9-7754-0025b3e1a4c8 mtime 3227617]
The bold text is the MAC address of the VMware ESX server that holds the lock. Now we need to find the VMware ESX server that matches the MAC address. The following PowerCLI script displays all MAC address of all VMware ESX servers and displays this in a gridview.
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001
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Connect-viserver vCenterserver
Get-vmhostnetworkadapter | Select vmhost,mac | Out-GridView
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With a gridview it is possible to filter easily. Add the last part of the MAC address (including the : ) and the corresponding VMware ESX server is displayed:
On the VMware server that holds the lock restart the Management agents by using the following command:
service mgmt-vmware restart
The lock disappeared and I was able to remove the VMDK file.
VMware, Microsoft and Starwind software updates
Last weeks a lots of software updates and new releases are published. Here’s an overview of some of them:
VMware
VMware vSphere 4.1 Update 1
A new update for vSphere 4.1 is released. Here are the ESX(i) and vCenter improvements:
VMware ESX(i) 4.1 Update 1 improvements:
- Enablement of Trusted Execution Technology (TXT) — ESXi 4.1 Update 1 can be configured to boot with Intel Trusted Execution Technology (TXT). This boot option can protect ESXi in some cases where system binaries are corrupted or have been tampered with. TXT is currently available on Intel Xeon processor 5600 series servers. For more information, see KB 1033811.
- Improvement in scalability — ESXi 4.1 Update 1 supports up to 160 logical processors.
- Support for additional guest operating systems — ESXi 4.1 Update 1 provides support for RHEL 6, RHEL 5.6, SLES 11 SP1 for VMware, Ubuntu 10.10, and Solaris 10 Update 9 guest operating systems. For a complete list of guest operating systems supported in this release, see the VMware Compatibility Guide.
- Inclusion of additional drivers — ESXi 4.1 Update 1 includes the 3ware SCSI 2.26.08.036vm40 and Neterion vxge 2.0.28.21239-p3.0.1.2 drivers. For earlier releases, these drivers are only available as separate downloads
The release notes can be found here.
VMware vCenter Server 4.1 Update 1 improvements:
- Additional Guest Operating System Customization Support: vCenter Server now supports customization of the following guest operating systems:
- Windows 7 SP1 (x32 and x64)
- Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 (x32 and x64)
- RHEL 6.0 (x32 and x64)
- RHEL5.5 (x32 and x64)
- Additional vCenter Server Database Support: vCenter Server now supports the following databases:
- Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2
- Microsoft SQL Server 2005 SP3
- Oracle 11g Standard/Enterprise Release 2, 11.2.0.1.0 or later, (x32 and x64)
- IBM DB2 9.7.2 Express C (x32 and x64)
- IBM DB2 9.7.2 Enterprise (x32 and x64)
For more information about using IBM DB2 – 9.7.2 database with vCenter Server 4.1 Update 1, see KB 1033201.
The release notes can be found here.
vSphere 4.1 Update 1 can be downloaded here.
VMware Data Recovery (vDR)
There is NO new version of vDR but it is now included in the standard edition of vSphere since vSphere 4.1 Update 1. You can compare the vSphere versions here. For people who have who already bought vSphere standard and have a current subscription are able to download the vDR.
VMware ESX 3.0.3 patches
A new VMware ESX 3.0.3 patches are released . More information on these patches can be found in the following links:
The ESX 3.0.3 patches can be downloaded here.
VMware vCloud Director 1.0.1
New features are support for vSphere 4.1 Update 1, complies with Internationalization I18N Level 1 and IP Translation for Organization Networks support. The release notes can be found here.
vCenter Server Heartbeat 6.3 Update 1
The following enhancements (Note: The features available depend on the version of vCenter Server installed) are available in this release:
- Enhanced passive server management capabilities — A new deployment option allows the passive server to be managed and monitored remotely, this includes receiving file level antivirus updates. This option is only available for:
- vCenter 4.0 U1 and its updates, 4.1 and its updates
- Remote SQL Server 2005, 2008 onl
Please refer to install documentation for detailed requirements and install procedure specifically around DNS and changes required to Active Directory during installation.
- Secure Client Server Communications — vCenter Server Heartbeat now provides secure client server communications with SSL Encryption using a 2048-bit key.
- Support for View Composer — This release of VMware vCenter Server Heartbeat now provides support for View Composer v2.5
The vCenter Server Heartbeat 6.3 Update 1 release notes can be found here and downloaded here.
VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager 4.1.1
VMware SRM 4.1.1 in a maintenance release. It has bugfixes and supports VMware vSphere 4.1 Update 1. Before installing VMware SRM 4.1.1 you need to update the vCenter server to 4.1 Update 1. The release notes can be found here an be downloaded here.
Microsoft
System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 (SCVMM)
Microsoft has published a KB with the recommend hotfixes when performing P2V conversions by using SCVMM R2.
Windows Server 2008 R2 / Windows 7 SP1
On Technet and MSDN SP1 for Windows 2008 R2 and Windows 7 is released. SP1 has a lot of patches and bug fixes. Two new features are memory compression (Hyper-V) and Remote FX (Remote Desktop Services).
Starwind
Starwind iSCSI SAN 5.6
A new version of the Starwind iSCSI SAN 5.6 is released. The Starwind iSCSI SAN software converts a Windows bases server into a fail-safe, highly available iSCSI SAN. This release has the following improvements:
- Event Log – Improve your storage management and tracking of system state with new event viewer
- Event notifications – Be aware of every single event by e-mail, records to Windows Event Log, records to text files
- Experimental version of inline block level Deduplication plugin
- Management Console multilevel improvements
Starwind offers a free NFR license valid for 6 months for MCP, MVP and VCP certified people. Request the NFR here. The installation and configuration is very simple. Within a couple of minutes you have an working iSCSI SAN. it support Microsoft Hyper-V R2 Live migration (SCP-3 persistent reservations) and VMware vSphere clustering with DRS, HA and VMotion.
Post checks after upgrading to VMware vSphere 4.1
Memory limits
When adding existing VMware ESX servers (for example 3.5) to the VMware vCenter 4.1 server, all the VMs got a memory limit.
To reset the memory limits to unlimited for all VMs, use the following PowerCLI script:
Connect-VIServer servername Get-VM | Get-VMResourceConfiguration | Where-Object {$_.MemLimitMB -ne ‘-1‘} | Set-VMResourceConfiguration -MemLimitMB $null
VMware ESX NICs as fixed
Already mentioned earlier in the “Change NIC speed and duplex setting to AUTO in ESX4 using PowerCLI” blogpost. The VMware ESX installation set by default each NIC in the VMware hosts to fixed. To change every NIC from fixed to auto negotiate use the following PowerCLI script
Connect-VIServer servername Get-VMHostNetworkAdapter | Set-VMHostNetworkAdapter –AutoNegotiate
Active Directory Web Services warnings in the vCenter server event log
The following warning is flooding the vCenter event log:
Active Directory Web Services encountered an error while reading the settings for the specified Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services instance. Active Directory Web Services will retry this operation periodically. In the mean time, this instance will be ignored.
Instance name: ADAM_VMwareVCMSDS
EventID: 1209
The Port SSL value is created as a REG_SZ instead of a REG_DWORD. To solve this warning open the Windows registry editor (regedt32) and browse to:
- HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\VMwareVCMSDS\Parameter
- Delete the “Port SSL” value
- Create a new ““Port SSL” value as REG_DWORD and give it the data 636.
- Restart the ADM instance
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