14 Aug 2012
By Yendis

Cisco and VMware vlans

Cisco, VMware, ,
I have recently had a requirement whereby I needed to allow multiple vlans on a single cisco switch port (as I was running out of available switch ports) because of a business need.  Our current Cisco environment was only setup to allow one vlan per switch port as it’s configured for “switchport access vlan” instead of trunking. Note: - Before making any changes make sure you have the relevant underlining vlan’s setup on your Cisco switches. This is a typical switch port config we have setup. As you can see the switchport will only have access to vlan 10 description Server Ports  switchport access vlan 10…
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17 Jul 2012
By Yendis

vSphere 5.0 U1a was just released, vDS/SvMotion bug fixed!

VMware, ,
Many of you who hit the SvMotion / VDS / HA problem requested the hot patch that was available for it. Now that Update 1a has been released with a permanent fix how do you go about installing it? This is the recommended procedure: Backup your vCenter Database Uninstall the vCenter hot-patch Install the new version by pointing it to the database The reason for this is that the hot-patch increased the build number, and this could possibly conflict with later versions. And for those who have been waiting on it, the vCenter Appliance has also been update to Update 1 and now…
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06 Jul 2012
By Yendis

Creating a persistent scratch location for ESXi

VMware, ,
You can configure persistent scratch space for ESXi using the vSphere Client: Connect to vCenter Server or the ESXi host using the vSphere Client. Select the ESXi host in the inventory. Click the Configuration tab. Click Storage. Right-click a datastore and select Browse. Create a directory for this ESX host (eg, locker-servername) Close the Datastore Browser. Click Advanced Settings under Software. Select the ScratchConfig section. Change the ScratchConfig.ConfiguredScratchLocation configuration option, specifying the full path to the directory. eg. /vmfs/volumes/DatastoreName/locker-servername Click OK. Put the ESXi host in maintenance mode and reboot for the configuration change to take effect. You could also use vCLI or PowerCLI to…
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20 Jun 2012
By Yendis

Insufficient Video RAM

VMware, ,
I recieved a call today from a friend who was receiving an error message when he was vMotioning a server. The maximum resolution of the virtual machine will be limited to 1176 x865 at 16 bits per pixel. To use the confurable maximum resolution of 2360x1770 at 16 bits per pixel, increase the amount of video RAM allocated to this virtual machine by setting svga.vramSize="16708800" in the virtual's configuratio file The quickest way I have found to change this is to edit the VM's properties and change the video card to "Auto-detect video settings", one thing to remember is the VM must be powered off…
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19 Jun 2012
By Yendis

Enhanced vMotion Compatibility (EVC) processor support

VMware
Enhanced vMotion Compatibility (EVC) simplifies vMotion compatibility issues across CPU generations. EVC automatically configures server CPUs with Intel FlexMigration or AMD-V Extended Migration technologies to be compatible with older servers. After EVC is enabled for a cluster in the VirtualCenter inventory, all hosts in that cluster are configured to present identical CPU features and ensure CPU compatibility for vMotion. The features presented by each host are determined by selecting a predefined EVC baseline. VirtualCenter does not permit the addition of hosts that cannot be automatically configured to be compatible with the EVC baseline. See the full VMware article - http://bit.ly/Lwnd8e
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16 Jun 2012
By Yendis

Windows 2008 R2 screen and mouse sluggish!

Microsoft, VMware,
I've had a number of emails recently asking about why when accessing a Windows 2008 R2 server using the VM console the display and mouse are very sluggish. Well the answer to this is because by default a Standard VGA Graphics Adapter is installed (figure 1) when you have your video RAM set yo 8MB in your virtual machine properties. (figure1) To change this you will need to upgrade the display adapter by using the driver in C:Program FilesCommon FilesVMwareDriverswddm_video this will install the new WDDM device driver. After the upgrade and a reboot your system should be fully responsive. Look in device manager (figure2) and…
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14 Jun 2012
By Yendis

Enable Tech Support Mode Timeout

VMware,
Tech Support Mode is a great feature of ESXi that lets admins and support personnel access the command directly on a ESXi hosts. This can be done via SSH or thru the host console. The security risk is that the console does not shut down automatically by default. There is a simple fix for this however, you can set the auto-timeout so that Tech Support Mode will shutdown automatically after a certain time has passed. You can find a great article on tech support mode here. To enable the Tech Support Mode Timeout via the vSphere Client (from the KB Article):…
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13 Jun 2012
By Yendis

VMware vSphere 5.0 Hardening Guide

VMware,
Last Friday, VMware released their vSphere 5.0 Security Hardening Guide v1.0. It’s a great and extensive guide to completely secure your VMware vSphere 5 Infrastructure from ESXi host to vCenter server and from the vNetwork to virtual machine. The coincidence is that yesterday I had a discussion with a colleague on enabling root access on a customers ESXi hosts. Following this hardening guide will prevent people from adding vulnerabilities to a great product. With this new release the format of this guide has changed from previous versions. The guide is being released as a Excel spreadsheet only. The guideline metadata from earlier guides has been greatly…
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08 Jun 2012
By Yendis

Simplify your XenAppXenDesktop with DNS aliases

Citrix, VMware,
You can see this recommendation in few of our recent best practices – most recently in the excellent “XenDesktop and XenApp Best Practices document”: “The XenDesktop and XenApp servers should be configured to use DNS Aliases when accessinginfrastructure components such as the Citrix License Server and Database Server(s) rather than hostname or IP address. This helps to simplify management during certain maintenance and disaster recovery scenarios.” But what does it exactly mean and how should it be configured? I’m following this best practice for many years and I would like to share few information about how to use it and what are the…
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08 Jun 2012
By Yendis

Slight change in “restart” behavior for HA with vSphere 5.0 Update 1

VMware
Although this is a corner case scenario I did wanted to discuss it to make sure people are aware of this change. Prior to vSphere 5.0 Update 1 a virtual machine would be restarted by HA when the master had detected that the state of the virtual machine had changed compared to the “protectedlist” file. In other words, a master would filter the VMs it thinks had failed before trying to restart any. Prior to Update 1, a master used the protection state it read from the protectedlist. If the master did not know the on-disk protection state for the…
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