Yellow Bricks

by Duncan Epping

Archives for 2009

Bluebear Kodiak 0.0.3 has been released

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If I can find the time I will test it today and add some screenshots to this post. You can get it here. Here are the release notes:

This version of Kodiak represents a significant change in our server-communication architecture.

  1. We’ve added a schema-compliant request/argument builder engine that populates requests based on known information. This makes building requests much easier.
  2. A lua scripting engine. Each server connection gets its own independent Lua script.
  3. Independent object pools.
  4. Improved mapping response and control.
  5. Map connection node & link display control.
  6. We’ve created a “plugin api” where a user may build a plugin to communicate with any kind
    of data service. We’ll be publishing information on this on our wiki.
  7. We’ve added a number of “boilerplate” features that will become more apparent in the next
    few releases as we push Kodiak towards our goal of creating an “IT IDE”.
  8. Access for users to create their own scripts. Kodiak’s UI/inspector controls are driven by a “global schema” that allows a user to create their own customized scripts for management. Please visit the bluebear wiki for further information regarding customizing the script engine. As yet, we don’t have a full UI for managing user scripts, but we will shortly.
  9. The remote event log has been removed for this release.
  10. For Windows users who experience the dreaded “SSL certificate bug”, we’ve added a preferences option to bypass the windows SSL stack. This option is accessible from the Preferences menu.
  11. Password vault & credentials storage. Kodiak now has the ability to save username/password pairs in an encrypted password vault, locked with a master password.
  12. Server object creation is disabled while we migrate the control components into the VMWare plugin, we will re-enable these in a couple of days.

Updating an ESXi server with Vendor agents…

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I just received a very useful email on a VMware internal mailing list and thought I would share it with you guys.

Here’s the question:

I want to update ESXi U3 to U4. My ESXi contains specific vendor modules for monitoring. (HP for instance) When I do the updates will these modules be removed or will they be upgraded?

And the answer:

Source article, page 10 : http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/ESXi_management.pdf

The core hypervisor code also can contain custom code provided by server vendors (OEMs) that provides additional functionality, such as hardware monitoring and support information. These customizations would be present, for example, if ESXi had been obtained in embedded form from the server manufacturer or if a custom version of ESXi was installed onto the hard drive. Any update to an existing ESXi installation automatically incorporates the proper update to this custom code. The process is described in greater detail in the following section.

In a doc that HP provides to its customers on updating ESXi, it states that the HP CIM providers are updated as well, provided they are installed before the Update. Does that mean that the Update that VUM pulls from our site includes newest versions of all CIM providers and the installer just upgrades any existing?

This is correct. VUM pulls a bundle with the latest customizations from all OEMs and will deploy that customization based on what is already on the user’s machine. As HP has stated, if the customer has a standard, VMware image, he will continue to get that image. However, if a customer has deployed a customized (by Dell, HP, IBM, etc.) image, then the update will also include any customization updates from the OEM. There is no additional dependence from the OEM.

Thanks Mr. Tom Vandenbosch. (My fav. inside SE – Benelux ;-))

Block sizes and growing your VMFS

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I had a discussion on block sizes after the post on thin-provisioned disks with some of my colleagues. For those that did not read this post here’s a short recap:

If you create a thin provisioned disk on a datastore with a 1MB blocksize the thin provisioned disk will grow with increments of 1MB. Hopefully you can see where I’m going. A thin provisioned disk on a datastore with an 8MB blocksize will grow in 8MB increments. Each time the thin-provisioned disk grows a SCSI reservation takes place because of meta data changes. As you can imagine an 8MB blocksize will decrease the amount of meta data changes needed, which means less SCSI reservations. Less SCSI reservations equals better performance in my book.

As some of you know the locking mechanism has been improved with vSphere, yes there’s a good reason why they call it “optimistic locking”. In other words why bother increasing your block size if the locking mechanism has improved?

Although the mechanism behaves differently it does not mean that locking does not need to occur. In my opinion it’s still better to have 1 lock vs 8 locks if a VMDK need to grow. But there’s another good reason, with vSphere comes growable VMFS volumes. You might start with a 500GB VMFS volume and a 1MB block size, but when you expand the disk this block size might not be sufficient when you create new VMs. Keep in mind that you can’t modify the block size, while you just might have given people the option to create disks beyond the limit of the block size. (Mind: you will receive an error, it’s not possible.)

So what about overhead? Will my 1KB log files all be created in 8MB blocks? Cause this would mean a large overhead and might be a valid reason to use 1MB block sizes!

No it will not. VMFS-3 solves this issue by offering a sub-block allocator. Small files use a sub block to reduced overhead. A sub block of a 1MB block size volume is 1/16th the size of the block. For an 8MB block size volume it’s 1/128th. In other words, the sub-blocks are 64KB large in both cases and thus the overhead is the same in both cases as well.

Now my question to you guys, what do you think? Would it make sense to always use an 8MB blocksize… I think it would

Hyper9 VMM Beta Invites

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Hyper9 gave me 15 Special Beta invites for VMM for the first 15 people that comment on this post. (Please use a valid email address!) If you comment you will get a Hyper9 t-Shirt (in exchange for VMM beta feedback), a 50% discount should you choose to purchase and have a chance of winning a mobile device in a contest in June. Who wouldn’t want that? Indeed, comment now and sign up to the Hyper9 community and download the beta here.

Monitor and Manage Your VMs on the Go

VMM offers administrators remote monitoring and support – browser-based management that works on a wide variety of mobile devices.  Developed by virtualization infrastructure expert Andrew Kutz, VMM offers:

Features

  • Monitor and manage on the go
  • Monitor multiple host and VM performance stats (CPU, Memory)
  • Understand datacenter health

Mobile

  • Monitor Host and VM Performance Statistics (CPU, Memory)
  • Control VMs and Take Action on the Go (start, stop, pause, reset, disable network)
  • Optimized for Mobile Devices (Apple iPhone, Blackberry, Google Android and Windows Mobile Devices)

Supported Hypervisors

  • VMware Server 2
  • VMware Infrastructure 3.5 Hosts (VMware ESX 3.5, ESXi 3.5, VirtualCenter 2.5)
  • Microsoft Hyper-V
  • Citrix XenServer 5

Supported Platforms

  • VMM is hosted as an Apache Tomcat Web application
  • Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X

Oracle buys Virtual Iron

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The rumor had been floating around for a while, but after Oracle acquired SUN no one really expected them to still buy Virtual Iron. But they just did…

  • Oracle has agreed to acquire Virtual Iron Software, Inc. (Virtual Iron), a provider of server virtualization management software that enables dynamic resource and capacity management in virtualized data centers.
  • The combination of Virtual Iron’s technology and Oracle VM’s scalable, high performance and highly available server virtualization product is expected to provide more comprehensive and dynamic resource management across the full software stack.
  • Customers are expected to benefit from better capacity utilization, streamlined virtual server configuration, and improved visibility and control of their enterprise software.
  • The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions and is expected to close this summer.
  • Until the deal closes, each company will continue to operate independently.
  • Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed.

They seem to amaze me every single time. I’m just wondering what will happen with the SUN virtualization solutions… Will they try to integrate it all in to one single solution? Oracle seems to be heading for the Clouds with the Virtual Iron PXE Boot Hypervisor.