28 Aug 2012
By Yendis

What’s new in 5.1?

VMware,
At VMworld came the release of vSphere / vCloud 5.1  Here are the links to all the excellent papers my for the new release. What’s New in VMware vSphere 5.1 What’s new in VMware vCenter 5.1 What’s New in VMware vSphere 5.1 – Networking What’s New in VMware vSphere 5.1 – Platform What’s New in VMware vSphere 5.1 – Storage What’s New in VMware vSphere 5.1 – Performance Introduction to VMware vSphere Replication Introduction to VMware vSphere Data Protection What’s new in VMware vSphere Storage Appliance What’s new in vCloud Director 5.1
Read More
27 Aug 2012
By Yendis

The end of the vRAM entitlement in VMware vSphere 5 and 5.1

VMware,
About a year ago VMware introduced the vRAM entitlement (see post VMware vSphere 5 Licensing explained). Today at VMworld 2012, VMware announced the end of the vRAM entitlement in VMware vSphere 5 and 5.1! In vSphere 5 and 5.1 the licensing will be per physical processor. Each physical processor needs to have at least one vSphere 5 license key assigned. The vSphere licensing removes restrictions on: physical cores RAM number of VMs Removing the vRAM entitlement makes it possible to scale up VMware vSphere hosts without buying extra vSphere licenses! With the end of the vRAM entitlement, VMware can easily competes against Hyper-V 3.0!
Read More
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…
Read More
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…
Read More
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…
Read More
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…
Read More
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…
Read More
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):…
Read More
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…
Read More