As some of you know I did a health check in Saudi Arabia a couple of weeks ago. A health check is a relatively short engagement. A couple of days on-site and a day off-site for a report. When vSphere went GA I started thinking about all the things I discovered during this particular health check. Now some might say that the things I discovered were low hanging fruit. The truth is that during health checks the things discovered are usually low hanging fruit. Usually it is not because the Sys Admins don’t have enough knowledge, but because they either don’t get any time to manage their environment properly or they’ve been doing it for so long they don’t see the obvious anymore… Don’t get me wrong, there is more to a health check than just the obvious stuff, but I merely want to point out the improvements vSphere brought us in terms of consistent installation / configuration and alarms / actions.
Here’s a short list of the obvious things I usually discover during a health check:
- Snapshots
- Lack of redundancy on Service Console or VMkernel
- Inconsistent naming schemes(Port groups)
- Inconsistent configuration
- DNS configuration issues
- Missing advanced HA settings
- Faulty hardware
- Free space on VMFS volumes
Unfortunately for me vSphere will catch most of these issues.
- Snapshots
Storage view - Lack of redundancy on Service Console or VMkernel
HA will not configure correctly - Inconsistent naming schemes(Port groups)
Host Profiles or Distributed vSwitch - Inconsistent configuration
Host Profiles - DNS configuration issues
Host Profiles (partly) - Missing advance HA settings
currently not addressed - Faulty hardware
Alarms - Free space on VMFS volumes
Storage view & Alarms
Thanks vSphere, you will cost me my job… Only thing left is “DNS configuration issues” and “missing advanced HA settings”.
Losing your job at VMware doesn’t matter. Microsoft is paying $50,000US to migrate their virtual machines. Get a job there.
http://blogs.technet.com/virtualization/archive/2008/10/06/For-_2400_50_2C00_000_2C00_-I-could-pay-someone-to-move-my-virtual-machines-for-me.aspx
I am sure they will find something for you to do. Maybe pick out the VMworld soundtrack?
As long as we check the concepts, storage and network design and other things you will not lose your job 😉
You need the enterprise plus version for Host Profiles and Distributed vSwitch. That will cost extra $, so i think a lot of companies stay with there current enterprise version and use the PowerCLI to do that sort of things.
Just yesterday my boss was telling me that we have a PSO credit expiring in a few months, and that we need to use them for a health check. I told him why not, but let’s wait until we upgrade to the vSphere. I mentioned to him also that there is a brilliant VMware guy in Holland that we may want to get him for this because I don’t trust the horrible VMware local partners in the region, and he was even excited.
Imagine now you, the VMware legend I’m talking about, coming over and giving a report saying: “Your design and environment is a kick-ass one, and I have no further comments”. Dude, you may or may not lose your job, but I am DEFINITELY getting a raise from your health check report soon.
Just make sure to bring lots of underwear, it’s 50 degrees in the shade over here.
…but now rather than mucking about with low value configuration issues, we can focus on high-value strategy issues like capacity management.
Configuration is easy to fix and should be automated/repeatable. The valueable stuff is in the consulting on stuff they can’t even wrap their minds around without help.
Dave
Well, I do these VMware healthcheck’s too in my region. However I tend to investigate further than the VMware environment, including storage setup and configuration and networking setup as well.
I think there will still be a need to do these healthschecks also new features has been introduced that requires a solid configuration 🙂
Duncan, I think you will still have a job 🙂
I know there’s more to a healthcheck than the stuff I mentioned above. But I can’t give away all my magic 😉
After reading the last two replies, I decided to blow away all the health check plans. I’ll probably use the PSO credits in something not relative to anything in my environment.
You guys are dangerous as I see, and I’m better off having you as far away as possible from my territory.
http://www.vmware.com (click) .. Hmm, let’s see what we’ve got here…..Ah ha, “ACE 2 days Jumpstart”, sounds awesome!
Unlike most professions, IT seems to be the only one where IT engineers develop systems to make things work easier which may cost them their own jobs…
@Kayser Soze: not entirely true, the process industry has been moving towards automated production lines with robots replacing humans for all but monitoring and it’s been going on for decades now. Optimization is key for any successful business, labour is the most expensive component.
If I recall correctly, ISCSI settings don’t come over with host profiles.