When using vmpmotion.pl on Windows with the RCLI installed you will need to set some extra environment variables before the script will work. First besure that the Perl filetype is correctly setup. [Read more…] about Using vmpmotion.pl on Windows RCLI
Server
RTFM 3i guide
For anyone interested in implementing 3i, Mike Laverick created another great pdf and again this is a must read: The RTFM 3i Guide.
Delete all snapshots
Today I encountered an old misunderstood principle again. A customer had created several snapshots on a virtual machine. Several… well to be exact 15. All snapshots were larger than 20GB. When the VMFS volume, on which this VM was located, ran out of diskspace he decided to use the button “Delete All”, but within a couple of minutes the VMFS volume ran out of diskspace again. What happened?
Situation:
Snapshot 1 – 20GB
Snapshot 2 – 10GB
Snapshot 3 – 30GB
When you choose “delete all” the following will happen:
- Snapshot 2 will grow to 40GB at most
- Snapshot 1 will grow to 60GB at most
- Snapshot 1 will be committed to the original VMDK
- All snapshot files are deleted
In other words: Snapshot 3 is merged into Snapshot 2, Snapshot 2 is merged into Snapshot 1, Snapshot 1 is merged into the original flat.vmdk and afterwards all snapshot files are deleted. This means that if you want to delete all snapshots at once you will need around 130GB of free diskspace. So think twice when you press the “delete all” button.
Cleaning up patches
On the VMTN forum I read a cool solution for clearing your update cache when you use a web repository for patching your ESX hosts: “yum clean all”. Never thought of that cause I hardly use a web repository, always use a VMFS volume and the vmprofessional script.
Console connections and Getting Started tab
When looking for the “maximum number of allowed console connections, I stumbled upon another handy option in VirtualCenter, “Edit -> Client Settings”.
- Set the maximum number of allowed console connections (0 to 100) to all virtual machines.
- Close all “Getting Started” tabs at once.