Just did the upgrade exam to Windows Server 2008 and passed it. It was by far the easiest exam I did over the last couple of years… 55 questions divided in three sections, mainly about IIS, Active Directory and Terminal Services. If you are an MCSE on Windows 2003 look into this exam.
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.
FastSCP not working with ESX 3.5
Default FastSCP isn’t working with ESX 3.5. I just noticed this download: http://www.veeam.com/download/fastscp/FastSCP.xml
It’s indeed a firewall related problem, copy this file into /etc/vmware/firewall.
Run the following command “service mgmt-vmware restart” and open up the Portrange with VirtualCenter. Opening it up can also be done from the commandline with “esxcfg-firewall -e FastSCP”. Veeam still has to fix the “edit function” which doesn’t work with 3.5 anymore, expect a new release in Januari / Februari 2008.
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.