When I added an extra SCSI card to my ESX 3.5 test system I could not get it to reconnect again with VirtualCenter. After a close inspection I noticed that vmnic0 did not exist anymore(esxcfg-nics -l), it got renamed to vmnic1. Because of that my vSwitch0 did not have a NIC linked to it anymore. I linked the new vmnic1 to my vSwitch0(esxcfg-vswitch vSwitch0 -L vmnic1) and everything was up and running again. I’m glad this didn’t happen in a production environment with several vSwitches and portgroups, than again it is possible to rename them again by manually editing the /etc/vmware/esx.conf file. There’s a knowledge base article on this behavior on the VMware support site, I noticed it a couple of weeks ago an now I witnessed it. Definitely not the first place I would normally look. I hope VMware can fix this glitch, although I can fully understand why this happens.
Xenserver patchmanagement
One of the things that Xenserver, still lacks is decent patch management. VMware solved this in ESX3.5/VC2.5 with the “update manager” which is an awesome tool for updating your ESX Hosts. (Yes it can be used for Windows/Linux and applications, but it needs to be refined in my opinion.) Patching Xenserver is a manual job, but not for long. Citrix just announced a new feature for the upcoming Xenserver release, pool-wide patchmanagement.
Pool-wide patch management has been integrated into the product, and, in conjunction with a wizard in XenCenter, will allow you to:
- Check the Citrix XenServer website for updates
- Download any pending updates to your XenCenter system
- Choose which servers in your managed pools you wish to apply the patches to
- Put each server in maintenance mode (with their VMs kept online on another server via XenMotion)
- Apply the patches
- Bring the server back online and move VMs back to it automatically
All in a single guided process.
There should be a beta available soon. It’s good to see Citrix is bringing Xenserver up to speed. This competition/rivalry will eventually make all products better! Read it at the source.
New ESX 3i download
I just noticed that VMware released a new version of ESX 3i on the 10th of January. The current build number is “70348” and the previous was “67921”. It’s just a minor update:
EULA Update—The reissued version of ESX Server 3i Installable incorporates an updated, corrected version of the EULA.
Licensing Fix—The reissued version of ESX Server 3i Installable lets you apply appropriate host-based licenses to servers that have more than two CPUs.
Support on ESX 3i and HA
I never noticed this, but during the configuration of HA in my testlab I received some weird errors. I just could not enable it on the ESX Server that ran ESX 3i, and I’m pretty sure DNS works fine. Today I received an email about 3i and support on HA, which states:
Support for VMware High Availability (HA) is experimental and expected to be fully supported in an upcoming patch or update.
You can read more about it in this PDF about 3i and HA. But is it me or is almost every single interesting new feature experimental. I hope that VMware will support all the new features when the patches/updates are released
Sun to aquire MySQL
I don’t know what’s going on these days but Sun just bought MySQL AB for approximately $1 billion. After Xensource another open source related company that gets picked up by a market leader. Read it at the source!