Yellow Bricks

by Duncan Epping

Various

New session added for PEX

· ·

A couple of weeks back I posted my session details for PEX. I just had a session added to my schedule which I wanted to inform you about. This session was originally hosted by no one less than Mike DiPetrillo. Chris Colotti and I have been asked to take over the session.

Session 1262 (Wednesday 2/12 @ 12:30pm): DR of the Cloud and to the Cloud

This session will look at DR and the cloud. Two different DR scenarios will be presented in depth – DR of the cloud and DR to the cloud. DR to the cloud is how end consumers fail over resources to a cloud provider. DR of the cloud is how you fail over cloud resources from one site to another. This session will go in depth on the consumer and provider side of the architecture. We’ll look at how to replicate the data, what applications are primary targets, how to size environments, how to maintain multi-tenancy, and what to avoid when architecting these solutions. This session is a must for anyone considering tier 1 applications for the cloud.

Presenters: Chris Colotti and Duncan Epping

Don’t forget to add it to your schedule, it is going to be a really cool session!

Why selecting the correct OS when creating/upgrading a VM is important

· ·

I had a discussion yesterday about why one would care about changing the “OS” type for a VM when it is upgraded, or even during the provisioning of a VM. I guess the obvious one is that a VM is “customized / optimized” based on this information from a hardware perspective. Another one that many people don’t realize is that when you initiate a VMware Tools install or Upgrade the information provided in the “Guest Operating System” (VM properties, Options, General Options) is used to mount the correct file. As you can see in the screenshot below, I selected “Windows 2008” but actually installed Ubuntu, when I wanted to install VMware Tools the Windows binaries popped up. So make sure you update this info correctly,

vSphere 4.1 HA/DRS Deepdive available in the Kindle Lending Library!

· ·

For those who hadn’t seen it yet, the “vSphere 4.1 HA/DRS Deepdive” is available in the Kindle Lending Library! The Kindle Owners’ Lending Library is a collection of books that Amazon Prime members who own a kindle can borrow once a month, with no due dates. (Yes you will need a Kindle Prime subscription!) If you have a Kindle or are using the Kindle App check it out:

Check it out, and let me know if you like it by leaving a comment… this is a trial for us as well, we might end up enabling it on all books in the future.

The winners are…

· ·

The four randomly picked winners of the free book are:

  • Greg Hetrick – comment 30876
  • Kalle Lund – comment 30929
  • Fernando – comment 31170
  • Adam Eckerle – comment 31230

Each of you will receive an email from me shortly asking for your address. I will still need to get Frank to sign them but promise I will ship them asap!

Once again, thanks everyone for the kind word! Much appreciated and keep coming back and don’t forget to comment. Bloggers love feedback / interaction!

Multi NIC vMotion, how does it work?

· ·

I had a question last week about multi NIC vMotion. The question was if multi NIC vMotion was a multi initiator / multi target solution. Meaning that, if available, on both the source and the destination multiple NICs are used for the vMotion / migration of a VM. Yes it is!

It is complex process as we need vMotion to able to handle mixes of 10GbE and 1GbE NICs.

When we start the process we will check, from the vCenter side, each host and determine the total combined pool of bandwidth available for vMotion. In other words, if you have 2x1GbE NICs and 1x10GbE NIC, then that host has a pool of 12GbE worth of bandwidth. We will do the same for the source and the destination host. Then, we will walk down each host’s list of vMotion vmknics, pairing off NICs until we’ve exhausted the bandwidth pool.

There are many combinations possible, but lets discuss a few just to provide a better idea of how this works:

  • If the source host has 1x1GbE NIC and the dest 1x1GbE NIC, we’ll open one connection between the these two hosts.
  • If the source has 3x1GbE NICs and the destination 1x10GbE NIC, then we’ll open one connection from each source-side 1GbE NIC to the destination’s 10GbE NIC – so a total of three socket connections all to the dest’s single 10GbE NIC.
  • If the source has 15x1GbE NICs and the destination 1x10GbE NIC and 5x1GbE NICs, then we’ll direct the first 10 source-side 1GbE NICs to connect to the dest’s 10GbE NIC, then the remaining pair of 5 1GbE vmknics will connect to each other – 15 connections in all.

Keep in mind that if the hosts are mismatched, we will create connections between vmknics until one of the sides is “depleted”. In other words if the source has 2 x 1GbE and the destination 1 x 1GbE only 1 connection would be opened.