Yellow Bricks

by Duncan Epping

Archives for 2009

Here’s your chance to pick the top VMware blogs

· ·

Eric Siebert just added a poll to his website. This time it’s not Eric who picks the top 5 VMware blogs but it is you, the reader!

I have a hard time picking the top blogs from the many great ones that are out there. I initially started with a top 10 and recently expanded it to the top 20 as more and more blogs have started. In this post I outline my blog selection criteria for the top 20 and it’s no easy task for me to pick them and rate them in order….

Now head over to Eric’s blog and pick the top 5. I’ve already voted! Results will be published at the end of the month.

Cluster sizes and SRM

· ·

A couple of weeks ago I published an article on the maximum amount of VMs one could run on a ESX host. In short; if you enabled HA on your cluster it restricts the amount of VMs you can run on a host depending on the total amount of hosts in the cluster. This means that depending on your consolidation ratio you would need to limit the amount of hosts in a cluster.

Now, there might be another argument to take a good look at your cluster size. Site Recovery Manager. Currently vCenter 2.5 does not allow to simultaneously boot more than 16 VMs.

I’ve always been under the impression that the limit for SRM was 8 simultaneous boots but one of my colleagues notified me that the limit is actually 16. If all you care about is a low RTO, 16 would be a good cluster size wouldn’t it? There’s no point in having more than 16 hosts in a SRM enabled cluster if you don’t need the resources. However, don’t forget to take the HA “limitation” in account when designing your environment for availability.

ESX 4.0 Web Access

· ·

I just wanted to access my ESX 4.0 server via https. Unfortunately I received a “503 Service unavailable” error. First I checked if the service was running:

service vmware-webAccess status

It wasn’t running so I started it:

service vmware-webAccess start

But why did this happen? Well page 7 of the vSphere Web Access Guide revealed it. As of ESX 4.0 this service has been disabled by default. If you do however need it on a regular base it might be a smart thing to enable it:

chkconfig --level 345 vmware-webAccess on

ESX Deployment Appliance v0.90

· ·

For those who don’t own vSphere Enteprise Plus licenses it’s a bit more difficult to set up a consistent virtual environment. I’m glad Herco van Brug aka Brugh put a lot of time and effort in developing the ESX Deployment Appliance.

Herco just released a brand new version, v0.90. Here are the release notes:

  • ESX 4 support
  • ESXi 4 support (installable and stateless!)
  • ESX 4 script parts (post any good scriptparts on this forum or PM me and I’ll integrated it into the appliance)
  • new first config screen
  • some bugs removed (patch system, backups, host input routine, apache tweaks)

Download it now!

VMworld 2009 – TA2259 Ask the Experts Panel Session

· ·

We are proud to officially announce the VMworld 2009 – Ask the Experts Panel Session.  This session will feature virtualization experts Rick Scherer, Scott Lowe, Duncan Epping, Chad Sakac and Tom Howarth answering your questions on virtual infrastructure design.  In the next week or so we will be posting sections on our blog sites for you to submit questions for review during the session, so stay tuned!

Session ID: TA2259
Session Title: Ask the Experts – Virtualization Design
Track: Technology and Architecture
Abstract: Are you running a virtual environment and experiencing some problems?  Are you planning an upgrade from VI3 to vSphere 4 and have some questions about the infrastructure architecture changes required?  Do you have a virtual infrastructure design and want it blessed by the experts?  Come join us for a one hour panel session where your questions are the topic of discussion!  Join the Virtualization Experts; Rick Scherer from VMwareTips.com, Scott Lowe author of Mastering vSphere 4, Duncan Epping from VMware, Chad Sakac from EMC and Tom Howarth from planetVM.net as they answer your questions on virtualization design.

I shamelessly copied this from vmwaretips.com… But I don’t think Rick will mind the extra promotion for this session!