January 10th, 2010 |
12 Comments
One of the articles which has always been in my top 10 most read(with most hits coming from google) is “ESXi 3.5 Update 2 on a USB memory key“. I have always used win image and 7-zip to get the job done. Basically you are cloning the image to a USB drive, which is fairly easy but we could use less tools and use a fully supported method:
- Download VMware Player (it’s free and it rocks!)
Of course VMware Workstation also works.
- Download ESXi from VMware here
- Install VMware Player (next / next / finish)
- Create new VM and connect to ESXi iso
- Insert a USB flash drive
- Boot from the ESXi ISO image
- Connect the USB device to the VM and select “mass storage device”
- Select the USB drive when the “Select a Disk” screen is shown
- Next, Next, Finish
- Now your USB drive is ready to go
Keep in mind, although you install ESXi there’s no server name or IP-address assigned to the installation. This is a generic USB install which can be used in any server or easily be cloned. But then again why would you clone it when you can install it in less time.
January 9th, 2010 |
No Comments
I was just figuring something out from the command line on an ESXi 4.0 host. I needed to mount a partition but a regular “mount” did not work so it took me a couple of seconds to realize why. The solution was simple and similar to the regular mount command:
/usr/bin/busybox mount
also might come in handy:
/usr/bin/busybox fdisk -l
Busybox… indeed, that’s what is being used under the hood and that’s what needs to be used for specific commands. Just run /usr/bin/busybox and you will see which commands you will have to your disposal. Another command I often use when working on the ESXi console is “vim-cmd”. Remember these…
January 7th, 2010 |
8 Comments
I was just reading the excellent whitepaper that NetApp just published. The paper is titled “VMware vSphere multiprotocol performance comparison using FC, iSCSI and NFS“. I guess the title says enough and I don’t need to explain why it is important to read this one.
I read the paper twice so far. Something that stood out for me is the following graph:
I would have expected better performance from iSCSI+Jumbo Frames, and most certainly not less performance than iSCSI without Jumbo Frames. Although it is a minimal decrease it is something that you will need to be aware off. I do however feel that the decrease in CPU overhead is more than enough to justify the small decrease in performance.
Read the report, it is worth your time.
January 7th, 2010 |
3 Comments
VMware just released several new patches of which security and critical patches. You can find the KB articles which describe the fixes here:
ESX:
ESXi:
January 5th, 2010 |
20 Comments
I created a page which contains the latest and greatest info! Please go here.
January 4th, 2010 |
No Comments
Eric Siebert has created a new poll to update his top 20 bloggers list. As many of you know I had the honor to be on the number one spot for the last three updates. Hopefully I will be part of the top 3 again, but the competition is huge. People like Chad Sakac, Scott Lowe, Scott Drummonds, Alan Renouf and Jason Boche(just to name a few) have a great reputation and have published amazing articles over the last 6 months or longer. Looking back at the past 6 months(since the last voting) my top articles in terms of unique views were:
Let the games begin, Start the voting now!
January 1st, 2010 |
1 Comment
Just a short article for today, or should I call it a tip. Take your memory configuration into account for Nehalem processors. There’s a sweet spot in terms of performance which might just make a difference. Read this article on Scott’s blog or this article on Anandtech where they did measure the difference in performance. Again it is not a huge difference, but when combining workloads it might just be that little extra you were looking for.
vSphere 4.0 Quick Start Guide