The applications are now open for the vExpert 2012 title.

The annual VMware vExpert title is given to individuals who have significantly contributed to the community of VMware users over the past year. The title is awarded to individuals (not employers) for their commitment to sharing their knowledge and passion for VMware technology above and beyond their job requirements.

This year there are three different paths to becoming a vExpert. Here are the three paths:

Evangelist Path
The Evangelist Path includes book authors, bloggers, tool builders, public speakers, and other IT professionals who share their knowledge and passion with others with the leverage of a personal public platform to reach many people. Employees of VMware can also apply via the Evangelist path.

Customer Path
The Customer Path is for internal evangelists and community leaders from VMware customer organizations. They have contributed to success stories, customer references, or public interviews and talks, or were active community contributors, such as VMUG leaders.

VPN (VMware Partner Network) Path
The VPN Path is for employees of our partner companies who lead with passion and by example, who are committed to continuous learning and to making their technical knowledge and expertise available to many. This can take shape of event participation, video, IP generation, as well as public speaking engagements.

VMware vExpert Benefits:

• Public recognition of the vExpert award with a certificate, gift, permission to display a logo, and inclusion in any public vExpert listing

• Access to a private vExpert community of your peers

• Free subscription to conference session materials on VMworld.com

• Access to exclusive events, beta programs, software licenses, and other exclusive opportunities to participate in activities with VMware. vExperts do not represent VMware and are not required to participate in any activities

Applications are now open for the vExpert 2012 title. Use the vExpert 2012 form to submit your application.

In this blog post are the steps outlined on how-to create a customized VMware ESXi5 ISO with the latest patches. Adding the latest patches can be useful because it contains for example the updated HP Emulex net-be2net driver needed for HP Flex-10 ESXi5 installations.

More drivers can be found on the VMware download site:

Prerequirements

1. Download and install PowerCLI 5.x. Open PowerCLI and set the remote signing to RemoteSigned by using the following command:

Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned

2. Create a folder structure like this:

<drive letter>:\ImageBuil\ESXi

3. Download the VMware ESXi Offline bundle from the VMware download website and save the file in <driveletter>:\ImageBuil\ESXi

The ESXi offline bundle we use is named ESXi500-201111001.zip

Create a customized ESXi5 ISO

1. Add the ESXi offline bundle and latest patches to depots

Add the VMware ESXi offline bundle and the latest patches use the Add-EsxSoftwareDepot command.  First add the offline ESXi depot by using the following command:

Add-EsxSoftwareDepot F:\ImageBuil\ESXi\ESXi500-201111001.zip

Return a list of all the VMware Installation Bundle (VIB) objects, use the Get-EsxSoftwarePackage command. This example list all the software package (VIB) objects sorted on release date:

Get-EsxSoftwarePackage | select Name,Version,ReleaseDate | sort ReleaseDate

Add the URL of the patch depot (we use the VMware Update Manager URL) using the following command:

Add-EsxSoftwareDepot -DepotUrl https://hostupdate.vmware.com/software/VUM/PRODUCTION/main/vmw-depot-index.xml

List the VMware Installation Bundle (VIB) objects again and see the new VIBs added:

Get-EsxSoftwarePackage | select Name,Version,ReleaseDate | sort ReleaseDate

output using: Add-EsxSoftwareDepot F:\ImageBuil\ESXi\ESXi500-201111001.zip	output using: Add-EsxSoftwareDepot -DepotUrl https://hostupdate.vmware.com/softw are/VUM/PRODUCTION/main/vmw-depot-index.xml

2. Clone the existing image profile

Run the Get-EsxImageProfile cmdlet to find the name of the profile that you want to clone.

Get-EsxImageProfile | Select Name,CreationTime,AcceptanceLevel | Sort CreationTime | FT -AutoSize

Clone the latest image profile using this command:

New-EsxImageProfile -CloneProfile "ESXi-5.0.0-20111204001-standard" -name "VMware ESXi5 custom" -Vendor "Beerens"

3. Export the image profile to ISO

Export an image profile to an ISO image or a ZIP file of component files and folders. The following command export the image profile to an ISO:

Export-EsxImageProfile -ImageProfile "VMware ESXi5 custom" –ExportToIso -FilePath F:\ImageBuil\esxi5custom.iso

And you are ready to boot from the new installation media named esxi5custom.iso. Check the following components to see if the customization has the desired result:

- VMware ESXi 5 Boot Menu

- VMware ESXi build

- Image Profile name

To see the SAN/iQ version, installed patches and the up-time (thanks to Calvin Zito @HPStorageGuy for guiding me to the up-time counter in CMC)

Here are the steps:

1. Open the Centralized Management Console (CMC)

2. Login

3. Expand the cluster

4. Expand the Storage Systems

5.  Select Diagnostics for the first node (1)

6. Select “Hardware information” (2)

7. Select “Click to refresh” (3)

8. The Storage System Software displays the SAN/iQ version and Software Patches installed:

9. Scroll down to the Stat section and look at the Machine Uptime. The up-time is in hours, 2138/24= 89 days up-time for one node.

10. Repeat step 5 till 9 for all storage nodes

By voting you can reward the bloggers for their hard work and dedication by letting them know that you appreciate them.

You can vote till 7 February 2012, so please take a couple of minutes and vote for your favorite 10 blogs and rank them (if you want to vote for my blog it’s on the left side in the middle). You can win a copy of the Train Signal’s  new vSphere 5 and View 5 video training courses.

Please vote by clicking the button or here.

The result will be announced on a special podcast after 7 February 2012.

Last year my blog was listed as “Virtual Ief”. This year as “Ivo Beerens”.

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!

I often get the question: “What Virtual Machine hardware version do I need?”.

It depends on the features you need. If you want for example use the “Changed Blocked Tracking (CBT)” feature, you need at least hardware version 7.

In ESX 3.x hardware version 4 is introduced, in vSphere 4.x hardware version 7 is introduced and in vSphere 5 hardware version 8 is introduced. Here is an overview of the hardware version and the features they have:

Considerations before upgrading the hardware version of the VM:

- Important to know is that upgrading the hardware version of the VM requires downtime!

- Virtual machines with hardware version 7 can only run on ESX(i) 4.x and ESXi 5.x. Virtual machines with hardware version 8 can only run on ESXi 5.x

- When you upgrade from virtual hardware version 4 to version 8, the upgrade is reversible if you take a virtual machine backup or snapshot before performing the upgrade.

- To automate this process, consider using Update Manager for virtual machine upgrades

- Update Manager takes automatic snapshots before performing virtual machine upgrades

- Be sure to upgrade first the VMware tools of the VM.  I you upgrade the virtual hardware before you upgrade VMware Tools, the virtual machine might lose its network settings

- Verify that all VMs and .VMDK files are stored on VMFS3, VMFS5 or NFS volumes

Steps in the hardware version upgrade process:

- Do an inventory on the current hardware and VMware tools versions. This can be done for example by using the vCenter client, RVtools utility or PowerCLI

- Install or upgrade the VMware tools (reboot required)

- Power on the VM

- Before upgrading create a backup or snapshot of the VM

- Backup the NIC IP settings with the VMUpgradeHelper.exe command. More information can be found here

- Power off the VM

- Upgrade Virtual Hardware

- Start VM  (reboot after the new hardware is discovered)

- Check if all the IP addresses are correct

Downgrade methods:

There is no button in vCenter to revert back to an earlier Hardware version. Here are two methods to go back to an earlier version of the hardware version:

- Create before upgrading the hardware version a snapshot when the VM is powered down.

- Using VMware Converter

Upgrading issues to know about:

- Upgrading virtual hardware in ESX 4.x may cause Windows 2008 disks to go offline (more information can be found here)

- After a hardware version upgrade the configuration can be messed up on  for example Microsoft ISA, Microsoft NLB clusters and RSA servers

- After upgrading a Windows virtual machine from hardware version 4 to hardware version 7, virtual NIC settings (such as static IP configuration) are lost. Make sure you backup the VM IP settings with the VMUpgradeHelper.exe command. More information can be found here

On my home lab I tried to create a new VMFS volume on a RAID-0 disk set that was coming from another host. When creating the new VMFS volume from the vSphere client, the following  error appeared:

Call “HostDatastoreSystem.QueryVmfsDatastoreCreateOptions” for object “datastoresystem-9” on vCenter Server “VC01″ failed.

On the VMware ESXi 5 server I enabled “Local Tech Support Mode” (more information can be found here), so I was able to logging in directly on the console and used the fdisk-l command to see the partition information on the disk. I notice that the disk contains four old partitions from another system.

I deleted the four partitions by using the following commands (displayed in bold):

- fdisk /dev/disk/mpx.vmhba3:C0:T1:LO (see the above picture)

- p (for printing the partition information and verify that you choose the right disk)

- d and enter the partition numbers (1, 2, 3, and 4) for deleting the partition

- p to verify that all the partitions are deleted

- w to write the modifications to disk

After the deletion of the old partitions I was able to create the VMFS volume on the RAID-0 disk set.

I tested the following NICs in my VMware ESXi 5 whitebox server at home:

To add the Intel 82579 chipset, create a customized ESXi 5 ISO.  This is very simple because some people have already done the hard work.

Here are the steps:

1. Download ESXi-Customizer (create by Andreas Peetz) found here.

2. Download the driver (created by Chilly) found here.

3. Start the ESXi-Customizer and follow the 3 steps:

And your ready to install the customized VMware ESXi 5 ISO. The ISO supports the Intel 82579V and 82579LM NIC(s) found on many whitebox motherboards.  Possible future updated version(s) of the driver can be found in the following post.

1. Download Microsoft SQL Express 2008 R2 (can be found here) or browse the vCenter installation ZIP or ISO. The installation package can be found in the “\redist\SQLEXPR” folder.

2. Select “New Installation or add features to an existing installation”.

3. Select “New installation or add shared features”.

- Only select “Management Tools – Basic”.

When the installation is completed you see the “SQL Server Management Studio” listed under the start menu.

Important to know is that you need exactly to follow these steps. If you choose the wrong option and  use the back button the “Management Tools – Basic” isn’t listed anymore. Strange….

- Hardware compatibility with ESXi. It checks if the hardware is compatible with ESXi 4 and ESXi 5.

- VMs registered on the ESX host, as well as VMs located on the host’s local disk

- Modifications to the Service Console
        – RPMs which have been added or removed
        – Files which have been added
        – Users and cronjobs which have been added

This tool also provides summary information for the whole existing environment

- Version of VMware Tools and Virtual Hardware for all VMs

- Version of Filesystem for all datastores

By having this information, administrators can determine what tasks need to be done prior to the migration. Examples include:

- Relocate VMs from local datastores to shared datastores

- Make note of what agent software has been added to the host and obtain the equivalent agentless version

- Replace cronjobs with equivalent remote scripts written with PowerCLI or vCLI

The installation and configuration of the “ESX System Analyzer” appliance is very easy. Here are some screenshots of the appliance:

Screenshots of the Output in XLS (Excel):

Overview output:

ESX server output:

This is a very handy tool when you want to migrate from VMware ESX to ESXi. More information can be found on the VMware Flings website found here.