A couple of days ago I wrote about the problems with VST and the Intel Quad-port nics. I tested the work around, using “access ports” on the physical switch(EST, external switch tagging) and it seems that the problem is “solved”. A couple of hours ago VMware posted a knowledge base article about this problem, so if you are experiencing these problems keep track of this KB article!
Server
VMware ESX healthcheck
One of the most useful scripts for ESX in my opinion is health_check.sh. This scripts generates an html file which contains a enormous amount of useful info on how the ESX host was installed. Besides that it contains 30 lines of the most important log files and for instance if there are snapshots and much much more. I just tested the script on ESX 3.5 and it still works great. The script is created by two guys of the Danish VMUG one of them is A. Mikkelsen, check his blog for more scripts! Be sure to check out this script, it’s worth it! By the way, you can schedule it and have the html emailed to you via the use of smtp_send.pl.
Intel quad-port nic and VST
This week I implemented a couple of Dell 2950 Servers which contained an Intel quad-port nic. The physical switch ports were setup as a trunk so I used VST(Virtual Switch Tagging). I combined the onboard Broadcom ports with the Intel quad-port nics to have the most redundant setup. When I started testing the HA and DRS functionality I noticed that not everything worked like expected. After some basic troubleshooting it seemed that about half of the packets going via the Intel quad-port nics got dropped. [Read more…] about Intel quad-port nic and VST
Introduction training Application Delivery: Installation, Isolation and Virtualization
For the readers of my blog in the Benelux area:
Nowadays Application Delivery is a hot item to talk about! On monday 28 january 2008 Ictivity Training starts with the first introduction training: “The facts about Application Delivery”.In this training different products like Microsoft Application Virtualization (SoftGrid), Citrix Application Streaming Feature and Thinstall VS will be compared to each other.
The subjects are:Overview Application Delivery:
- Application Installation
- Application Isolation
- Application Virtualization
Application Installation: The way we work now!
New technologies like Isolation/Virtualization
Demonstration of Microsoft SoftGrid and Thinstall
If you want to know more about this training you can look at the Ictivity Training website, Edwin Friesen of Thinstallguru.com is the instructor for this course.
Rescan all vmhba’s at once with the esxcfg-rescan command
Using the console it’s very easy to rescan a specific vmhba which can be useful when you are troubleshooting. For lazy people like me it’s disturbing that you have to type the command twice if you want to rescan both HBA’s. Well, as of version 3.5 VMware introduced a new setting in Advanced configuration section in the VirtualCenter Client:
Go to “Configuration” of the ESX Host
Click on “Advanced”
Click on “Scsi”
Set “Scsi.ScsiRescanAllHbas” to 1
This can also be done from the command line:
esxcfg-advcfg -s 1 /Scsi/ScsiRescanAllHbas
Now you don’t need to type “esxcfg-rescan vmhba1” and “esxcfg-rescan vmhba2” anymore, when rescanning an HBA all cards will be rescanned.