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Posts Tagged ‘VMware’

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.

 

 

On vSphere-land the yearly voting for the top VMware and virtualization blog(s) is open.  

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”.

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:

Hardware version	Features	Products
8	- Up to 32 vCPUs per VM - Maximum 1 TB RAM per VM - 3-D graphics and high-definition audio - Smart-card reader support - USB 3.0 devices are supported - Improved network driver for the E1000e network adapter, provided by VMware tools - Greater resources are available with vCloud Director 1.5	Hardware version 8 is the default for new VM in: - ESX 5.x - Fusion 4.x - Workstation 8.x - Player 4.x
7	- Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) virtual device for Microsoft Cluster Service — Provides support for running Windows Server 2008 in a Microsoft Cluster Service configuration. - IDE virtual device — Ideal for supporting older operating systems that lack SCSI drivers. - VMXNET Generation 3. VMXNET is optimized for performance in a virtual machine  - Virtual Machine Hot Plug Support— Provides support for adding and removing virtual devices, adding virtual CPUs, and adding memory to a virtual machine without having to power off the virtual machine. - Change Block Tracking (CBT) support. Incease VADP backups	Hardware version 7 is the default for new VM in: - ESX 4.x - Fusion 3.x - Fusion 2.x - Workstation 7.x & 6.5 - Player 3.x - Server 2.x
4		Hardware version 4 is the default for new VM in: - ESX 3.x - ACE 2.x - Fusion 1.x - Player 2.x
3		Hardware version 3 is the default for new VM in: - ESX 2.x - GSX Server 3.x

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.

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

- VMware VCP5 exam blueprint

 

More information on VMware vSphere 5 are covered in future blog post!