Yellow Bricks

by Duncan Epping

Archives for August 2009

Upcoming two weeks…

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I will be really busy the upcoming two weeks so I don’t know if and when I will be blogging. Tomorrow I will be flying to San Francisco. Wednesday, Thursday and Friday I will be in VMware HQ – Palo Alto. Some of you reading this probably know why, VCDX Defense Panels. So if you’re scheduled for this week maybe we will run into each other. Of course the week after I’ve got VMworld on my schedule, two “Ask the experts sessions”, booth duty and the VMworld Run the Golden Gate Bridge event.

For those who don’t know me, it’s probably time to reveal my “secret identity”. Although my avatar might have gotten you confused I really don’t look like  “yellow bricks”, or at least I hope I don’t. If you see me walking around don’t forget to say hi! Or come over to the Community / Bloggers booth as that will most likely be my home base during VMworld.

vSphere VM Snapshots and block size

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As some already noticed; when creating a snapshot on a VM with two disks the block size of the VMFS volume which hold the working directory is checked before the snapshot is taken. As reported by VMTN User Pizang this was not the case in ESX 3.x. You can imagine that this can cause issues when the second disk of a VM is larger than the maximum file size dictated by the block size of the VMFS file system which holds the working directory of the VM. What? Yeah I had to read that sentence at least 3 times before I understood what I said… This might make it easier:

virtualmachine001
Disk01 – 10GB stored on VMFS001 with a 1MB Block size
Disk02 – 350GB stored on VMFS002 with a 4MB Block size

VMFS001 contains the working directory of the vm “virtualmachine001”. Snapshots are stored in the working directory. In the case of Disk02 this could mean that the delta file grows beyond the maximum file limit of 256GB of VMFS001 where it will be stored.

Another example of where the block size could limit you is outlined in this KB article: http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1012384.

The proof is in! (vSphere Quick Start Guide)

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As most of you hopefully know by now we are working on a vSphere Quick Start Guide. We’ve been very busy the last couple of weeks getting it finalized. As you can imagine with VMworld coming up we are working against a very tight deadline. Thomas Bryant has been doing most of the formatting for the book and ordered a proof copy which has just arrived:

Source: The proof is in!


The first copy of our new book, vSphere 4.0 Quick Start Guide, has arrived! I’m very excited about the work everyone has done. It’s been a pretty rough ride at times, but it’s worth it in the end to see your name in print. I’m looking forward to getting a few copies for VMworld 2009!

Great work Duncan, Dave, Stu, Alan & Bernie!

vCenter Server 4.0 Patch 1

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Don’t think many people have noticed this KB article yet or even experienced this issue with HA but nevertheless it’s worth mentioning. Apparently there’s an issue with HA in vCenter 4.0 when a class A network is being used. When a node fails this will not be detected and thus the fail-over of VMs will not occur. Although not many customers are using these class A ranges it is something I think you all should be aware of. This issue has been resolved and VMware released the following KB article which contains a link to the patch:

http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1013013
A vSphere 4.0 VMware High Availability cluster may not failover virtual machines when ESX is configured with certain IP addresses

You experience these symptoms:

  • In vCenter 4.0, VMware HA might not failover virtual machines when a host failure occurs.
  • When the ESX host’s IP address in a VMware HA enabled cluster is configured with certain IP addresses, the node failure detection algorithm fails.
  • You are susceptible to this issue when all of your Service Console Port(s) or Management Network IP address(s) on your ESX host fall within the following range:
    3.x.x.x – 9.x.x.x
    26.x.x.x – 99.x.x.x

Note: You are not affected if one of Service Console Port(s) or Management Network IP address(s) on your ESX host falls outside of this range.

New VMware vSphere Training by Train Signal

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David Davis just released a brand new computer based training, VMware vSphere. The CBT is nearly 18 Hours on 3 Jam Packed DVDs! I haven’t seen the CBT yet, but if it’s anywhere near the quality of the previous CBT it’s definitely worth it. David gave me a coupon code(VSPHERE25) which gives you guys a $ 25,- reduction so be sure to use it. Check the preview and head over to Train Signal and pick it up, definitely one of the easiest and most relaxed ways to get familiar with VMware vSphere!

Here’s a preview:

For those who are going to VMworld, Train Signal are sponsoring the VMworld 2009 Sunday night extravaganza, and also the VMworld 2009 Run. David Davis will be doing a “signing” / meet the author session on Wednesday at the VMworld bookstore from 12:00 till 13:00. If you want to have your copy signed be sure to get there on time.