I was playing around in my lab with NFS datastores today. I wanted to fail-over a replicated NFS datastore without the need to re-register the virtual machines running on them. I had mounted the NFS datastore using the IP address and as that is used to create the UUID it was obvious that it wouldn’t work. I figured there should be a way around it but after a quick search on the internet I still hadn’t found anything yet.

I figured it should be possible to achieve this using a CNAME but also recalled something around vCenter screwing this up again. I tested it anyway and with success. This is what I did:

• Added both NFS servers to DNS
• Create a CNAME (DNS Alias) and pointed to the “active” NFS server
• I used the name “nasdr” to make it obvious what it is used for
• Created an NFS share (drtest) on the NFS server
• Mount the NFS export using vCenter or though the CLI
• esxcfg-nas -a -o nasdr -s /drtest drtest
• Check the UUID using vCenter or through the CLI
• ls -lah /vmfs/volumes
• example output:
  lrwxr-xr-x    1 root     root           17 Feb  6 10:56 drtest -> e9f77a89-7b01e9fd
• Created a virtual machine on the nfsdatastore
• Enabled replication to my “standby” NFS server
• I killed my “active” NFS server environment (after validating it had completed replication)
• Changed the CNAME to point to the secondary NFS server
• Unmounted the volume old volume
• esxcfg-nas -d drtest
• I did a vmkping to “nasdr” just to validate the destination IP had changed
• Rescanned my storage using “esxcfg-rescan -A”
• Mounted the new volume
• esxcfg-nas -a -o nasdr -s /drtest drtest
• Checked the UUID using the CLI
• ls -lah /vmfs/volumes
• example output:
  lrwxr-xr-x    1 root     root           17 Feb  6 13:09 drtest -> e9f77a89-7b01e9fd
• Powered on the virtual machine now running on the secondary NFS server

As you can see, both volumes had the exact same UUID. After the fail-over I could power-on the virtual machine. No need to re-register the virtual machines within vCenter first. Before I wanted to share it with the world I reached out to my friends at NetApp. Vaughn Stewart connected me with Peter Learmonth who validated my findings and actually pointed me to a blog article he wrote about this topic. I suggest to head-over to Peter’s article for more details on this.

On my blog article for yesterday “Rob M” commented that the default affinity rule for Storage DRS (SDRS), keep VM files together, did not make sense to him. One of the reasons this affinity rule is set is because customers indicated that from an operational perspective it would be easier if all files of a given VM (vmx / vmdk’s) would reside in the same folder. Especially troubleshooting was one of the main reasons, as this lowers complexity. I have to say that I fully agree with this, I’ve been in the situation where I needed to recover virtual machines and having them spread across multiple datastore really complicates things.

But, just like Rob, you might not agree with this and rather have SDRS handling balancing on a file per file basis. That is possible and we documented this procedure in our book. I was under the impression that I blogged this, but just noticed that somehow I never did. Here is how you change the affinity rule for the current provisioned VMs in a datastore cluster:

1. Go to Datastores and Datastore Clusters
2. Right click a datastore cluster and select “edit settings”
3. Click “Virtual machine settings”
4. Deselect “Keep VMDKs together”
1. For virtual machines that need to stick together you can override the default by ticking the tick box next to the VM

Also check out this article by Frank about DRS/SDRS affinity rules, useful to know!

I was just playing around in my lab and created a whole bunch of VMs when I needed to deploy to large virtual machines. Both of them had 500GB disks. The first one deployed without a hassle, but the second one was impossible to deploy, well not impossible for Storage DRS. Just imagine you had to figure this out yourself! Frank wrote a great article about the logic behind this and there is no reason for me to repeat this, just head over to Frank’s blog if you want to know more..

And the actually migrations being spawned:

Yes, this is the true value of Storage DRS… initial placement recommendations!

I was importing the VC Ops virtual appliance and during the import I got a question around IP addresses. So I figured I would enter two IP addresses and that would be it. As soon as I powered on the VM I received the following error:

Cannot initialize property ‘vami.netmask0.VM_1′ since network ‘VM Network’ has no associated IP Pools configuration.

I figured this would be simple so I jumped back to “home” and went to the network section… Nothing around IP Pools. Even on a host or cluster layer there was nothing. Luckily my colleague Cormac jumped in and said check the “Datacenter” object, there should be an IP Pool tab there. He was right. Weird place and definitely something that needs to be improved. Anyway, configuring an IP Pool itself, now that I found it, was easy:

1. Click your Datacenter object
2. Go to the “IP Pools” tab
3. Click “Add”
4. Fill out the details:
1. Subnet: which network will be used and what is the mask? (You can use a subnet calculator if you don’t know…)
2. Enter the details of the gateway
3. Specify a range, the format is “10.1.1.10#10″, this would result in a range from 10.1.1.10 until 10.1.1.19 (10 addresses counting from .10)
4. Don’t forget to tick the “Enable IP Pool” check box
5. Click on the “Associations” Tab and associate it to a network!
6. Also, fill out the DNS and proxy details if and when required.
5. This is what it should look like:
   

It is as simple as that, but indeed not easy to find hence the reason I figured a short article was in place.

PS: Creating a range and enabling the “IP Pool” is not required. “Enable IP Pool” enables the use of the Range. In this example I had to use a range as I could only use a specific range of this subnet.

I haven’t seen anyone reporting this yet, even the scoopmeister Eric Sloof has posted this. I just heard (thanks for the anonymous tip) that the date has changed for VMworld Europe!

Don’t miss VMworld 2012!
Barcelona October 9-11

Learn about the latest virtualization technologies and strategies which can help your organization realize its’ vision for a cloud computing approach to IT.

So you guys might want to update your calendar!

As most of you have noticed by now I am a heavy user of Social Media (Twitter, Google +, Facebook). VMware acquired, and is working on, some very interesting products which all have a common theme: Enterprise Collaboration. In this post I want to give an overview of products that I’m using and are available today or which have been announced.

These solutions allows me to communicate with my colleagues in a ways I have never been able to do before. They make my life easier, yes this sounds like I am exaggerating but I am not… I am sure I am not the only one who thinks long email threads are boring. On top of that they are difficult to control and knowledge gets lost (in the trash folder). Social collaboration solutions allow you to easily capture your companies most valuable asset: intellectual property. Start using it!

Socialcast
Socialcast is a true enterprise collaboration tool. It could be viewed as a social media solution for organizations, but that would be understating its value. Socialcast is something I use on a daily basis, if not on an hourly basis. I post work updates aka “worklogs”, ask questions on specific topics and mostly answer questions on any topic to which I feel I can contribute. It allows me to communicate with my team without flooding their mailboxes and it allows them to respond when they have the time and on any device. Cool thing about Socialcast is that everyone within our organization has adopted it, I can submit feedback to a KB article using Socialcast for instance. At the same time you will see communication from VP/CxO level passing by, not just generic posts but actively replying to questions as well! If you’re starting to get tired of those endless email threads floating around and you feel all valuable knowledge is being lost… sign up for Socialcast!

Sliderocket
Many of you have already seen this and probably looked at it. I’ve been so accustomed  to Powerpoint that it was difficult to use Sliderocket at first, not because it is difficult to learn but because I would click that “P” on my desktop without thinking about it. Two weeks ago I decided to remove the “P” from my desktop and to create all presentations I make from now on using Sliderocket. You might ask yourself why as Powerpoint is a great tool… If you find yourself sharing slidedecks on a daily basis or providing feedback to slidedecks I can promise you that Sliderocket opens up a whole new world for you. Sharing a Sliderocket presentation is simple. No need to sent out that 50MB PPT. Just share it using the Sliderocket and get notification when people have opened it / reviewed it. Sliderocket also provides statistics for each of your decks like unique views, views, imports etc. Start using it, I am sure you will enjoy it as much as I do.

Strides
Strides is currently in Beta and is what I would label as a “getting the job done” tool, but others may label it as a social project management tool. Either way, Strides is all about collaborating and working towards a common goal… successful completion of a project. Strides not only will keep track of objectives and associated tasks, it also allows you to attach deliverables and comment on these or even on tasks by it self. It is a simple way for teams who are not all located in the same room to work on a common project and keep track of objectives and deliverables, and keep all project communication contained. Definitely a tool worth exploring! Sign up for the Beta now!

VMware Octopus
Although VMware Octopus isn’t really similar to the above mentioned solutions it allows me to easily share documents with others. VMware Octopus was announced at VMworld and is a dropbox alternative aimed at the enterprise. I recently moved all my documents from dropbox over to VMware Octopus as a test and I must say that I am impressed. The version I am using is running in one of the VMware Datacenters and that is something which other solutions don’t offer today, on-premise, and is what I probably like the most. Especially for the people in charge of security (compliance) this is a big thing. It gives me everything dropbox provided me, but now I know my docs are safely stored within our organization and that by itself is worth a lot. I am using it on my iPad and Macbook right now… no more hassle juggling around files. I can’t wait to see what is coming up next. If you are interested, sign up for the beta.

Stop the endless boring email threads, dull unnecessary conference calls, get on-board the social collaboration train!

My post on vCloud Director Allocations Models back in September 2010 has always done fairly well in terms of view/visits. Lately I have been receiving some offline questions about how valid this article still is with vCloud Director 1.5 so I decided to go through the same exercise here. Instead of doing a full copy I will just copy and paste the characteristics section for each of the three different Allocation Models. For those who can’t be bothered the short summary is, nothing has changed… I only discovered something which I did not notice the first time around.

Allocation Pool

No changes have been introduced with vCloud Director 1.5 compared to 1.0 for the “Allocation Pool” allocation model. Below are the characteristics of this allocation model and the resource pool / vm construct used on the vSphere layer:

• Pool of resources of which a percentage will be guaranteed
  • A reservation will be set to guarantee resources on a resource pool level
  • By default the resource pool reservations on CPU is 0% and memory 100%
  • Tenant has a guaranteed set of resources and has the ability to burst to the upper limit
  • The resource pool is not expandable!
• VM Level characteristics
  • No reservations or limits set on a per VM level for CPU
  • Reservations set on a per VM level for memory. This reservation is based on the percentage of guaranteed resources.

Pay-As-You-Go

Nothing has changed for Pay-As-You-Go either. I slightly changed the wording though to make it more obvious what happens on a vSphere layer:

• Percentage of resources guaranteed on a per VM level
  • A reservation and a limit will be set on a VM level
  • By default the VM reservation on CPU is 0% and memory 100%
  • By default the vCPU speed is set to 0.26GHz, which means you vCPU will be limited to 0.26GHz
• The Org vDC resource pool is just an accumulation of all reservations set on a per VM level
• Note that this will include the memory overhead per VM!
• The resource pool is set to expandable

Reservation Pool

When looking at the vSphere layer it appears that not much has changed. The characteristics are still the same from a Resource Pool and virtual machine perspective… However I spotted something which was apparently already part of vCoud Director 1.0 but somehow I missed this. vCloud Director 1.x offers you the capability to add a reservation for CPU and memory and even allows you customize the shares! None of the other allocation models allow you to do this!

• Fully guaranteed pool of resources
  • A reservation will be set to guarantee resources on a resource pool level
• No reservations or limits set on a per VM level for CPU
• Note that is is possible to set a reservation/limit for CPU or Memory with vCloud Director 1.x on a per VM level. See screenshot below, this is configurable on a per virtual machine basis!