31 Aug 2013
By Yendis

VMware vSphere 5.5 what’s new

VMware,
Now that VMworld 2013 is now over and a number of key product updates announced I thought it was worth highlighting some of enhancements and improvements that stretch across the entire stack with vSphere 5.5. As you can see from the summary below this release is a major step forward to VMware's strategic move toward the fully software defined data center. Flash Read Cache This completely new feature in vSphere 5.5 provides a mechanism for utilizing fast SSD as a Linux host swap cache or to provide improved read speed for a host virtual disk. To make use of this feature, you first have…
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10 Aug 2013
By Yendis

Installing vSphere Client 5.1 fails

VMware, , ,
When installing the vSphere 5.1 client you may encounter the following error message "Failed to install hcmon", if you look at the vminst.log file (which is normally located in the %TEMP% area) you will notice the following:- After troubleshooting this issue I found that I required Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5.1 Service Pack 1 installed (or the feature wasn't turned on) before installing the client. Install Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5.1 Service Pack 1 Install the vSphere 5.1 client  
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19 Mar 2013
By Yendis

Change root password on all (or some) vSphere hosts

VMware, , , , ,
As part of a security audit I needed a quick way to change the ESXi root passwords without having to go on to each server. I was looking for a script that would automate at least some of the work for me and I came across a script called Change-ESXiPassword.ps1 that was created by Jesse Gardner which I thought I would give a try. After running the script and knowing it works fine I will be personally be running this every quarter. This script: prompts you for the old password prompts you for the new password prompts you for the vCenter…
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05 Feb 2013
By Yendis

VMware Release & Build Info

VMware, ,
Whilst doing some research today based around release/build numbers for several VMware products I discovered a site with all the necessary information in one place.  Great news so I thought I would share it with you all click HERE to direct to the information.
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27 Jan 2013
By Yendis

vCenter and Memory metrics

VMware, , ,
I have received an email today asking if I could explain the memory details that are in vCenter under the summary tab on each VM.  Rather than reinvent the wheel I have taken a blog post from Duncan Epping over at www.yellow-bricks.com which I find explains it very well. It appears that there is a lot of confusion around this topic and that probably comes from the fact that some of the Performance Metrics are named similarly but don’t always refer to the same. Let’s start with “General”: (more…)
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31 Dec 2012
By Yendis

vSphere 5.1 Performance History issue

VMware,
There is currently an issue with the vSphere 5.1 performance history charts. The symptoms are straight forward: You see only the last 30 days of performance history in the ‘past year’ view Only one month of performance history appears when trying to see the past year VMware is working on a solution for the problem currently. It appears that the problem has been identified (stored procedure purging data) and hopefully a fix will be released soon. Please subscribe to the following KB to be kept up to date: http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2042164
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24 Dec 2012
By Yendis

Update VMware tools without reboot

VMware, ,
Whilst having some spare time over the Christmas period I decided to upgrade by VMware home lab to vSphere 5.1, and I found out that one of the new features is you can update the VMware tools without the requirement  to reboot each Virtual Machine (VM).  Now to some people this may be a small change but to me and everyone else that has hundreds of servers in their data centres this is a BIG plus because now we haven't got to worry about doing the update out-of-hours. Thanks VMware  and Merry Christmas  
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08 Dec 2012
By Yendis

Creating snapshots in a different location than default virtual machine directory

VMware, ,
In ESX/ESXi 3.x and 4.x, all files comprising snapshots are created in the virtual machine's working directory. By default, the working directory is the same directory as the virtual machine's (.vmx) configuration file. Thus, if the virtual disk (.vmdk) file is located on different datastore than the virtual machine itself, virtual disk redolog (-delta.vmdk) files are created alongside the virtual machine's (.vmx) configuration file instead of beside the virtual disk (.vmdk) file. You may want to change the location (new directory on the same or alternative datastore) where virtual disk redolog (-delta.vmdk) files are created, in order to: Create snapshots but…
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28 Nov 2012
By Yendis

VMware VMFS: Technical Overview and Best Practices

VMware, , ,
The VMware Virtual Machine File System (VMFS) is a high performance cluster file system that allows virtualization to scale beyond the boundaries of a single system. This paper gives a technology overview of VMFS, including a discussion of features and their benefits. The paper highlights how VMFS capabilities enable greater scalability and decreased management overhead. It also provides best practices and architectural considerations for deployment of VMFS. Download http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/vmfs-best-practices-wp.pdf Source: VMware
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24 Oct 2012
By Yendis

Broadcom 5719/5720 NICs using tg3 driver becomes unresponsive and stops traffic in vSphere

VMware, , ,
I have been experiencing on a number of occastions a loss of network connectivity on my VM server network.  After much analysis I have found in the errors logs excessive NetQueue messages similar to:- 2012-06-14T19:45:09.053Z cpu6:2092)<6>tg3 : vmnic3: RX NetQ allocated on 1 2012-06-14T19:45:09.053Z cpu6:2092)<6>tg3 : vmnic3: NetQ set RX Filter: 1 [00:50:56:6F:95:16 0] 2012-06-14T19:45:44.054Z cpu7:2092)<6>tg3 : vmnic3: NetQ remove RX filter: 1 2012-06-14T19:45:44.054Z cpu7:2092)<6>tg3 : vmnic3: Free NetQ RX Queue: 1 The performance enhancement from NetQueue does not benefit 1 Gb NICs.  This feature spreads the network load across multiple CPUs, and a single CPU can handle around 3 Gb of network load. (more…)
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