Yellow Bricks

by Duncan Epping

Undocumented VCB config.js feature

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One of my customers wanted to use the default VCB framework but did not want to quiesce the VM for several reasons. (Databases, Active Directory etc.) I could not find an option in the config.js file but noticed the following in the file glue.js:

// A fallback to be able to switch to non-quiesced snapshots
if (typeof(NO_QUIESCE) != "undefined") {
cmd +="-Q 0 ";
}

In other words, setting the option “NO_QUIESCE” with no value in config.js results in the VM not being quiesced, default it will quiesce the VM! I added the following line to the  config.js file to accomplish this:

NO_QUIESCE="";

P2V’ing a Suse Linux server

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I just P2V’ed a Suse Linux Server with the cold boot iso. When booting I was confronted with a kernel panic. This is caused by the fact that the modules for the LSI Logic or Bus Logic SCSI card aren’t available, which causes the root volume to be unmountable. I tried to boot from the installation CD with the “rescue” option but this did not provide me with a fast solution for the problem. But the following was a quick fix:

  1. Boot from Suse CD
  2. Select to setup a new system
  3. Select to boot from the currently installed OS
  4. Run Yast and configure the correct SCSI controller
  5. Remove all the NICS and configure a new NIC
  6. Install VMware tools

Swap files in 3.5 and the EMC Celerra PDF

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The PDF I blogged about yesterday included info about 3.0.x and 3.5 features. One of the things that was missing was the option to have the swapfiles created locally. In 3.0.x this done by setting the option “sched.swap.dir” in the .vmx file. The only problem is that this prohibits you from using VMotion for these VM’s. In 3.5 VMware resolved this issue. It’s now possible to set the swap file location to local storage and keep VMotion at the same time. This can be done very easily the following way:

  1. Edit setting on cluster, click “Swapfile location” and select “Store the swapfile in the datastore specified by the host”

  2. Click on the ESX Host, click on the “Configuration” tab, click on “Virtual Machine Swapfile Location” and “edit”
    Select “Store the swapfile in a swapfile datastore selected below”
    Select the local attached storage: [hostname:storage1]

Installing the Converter plugin crashes the VirtualCenter client – PART II

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For those who did not have any luck with the deleting of the dll(ssleay32.dll) described in this blog, there’s another possibility to enable the VMware Converter plugin without crashing your VirtualCenter client:

Go to the following registry key:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\VMware\VMware Infrastructure Client\Preferences\UI]

And set the following key to “Enabled”

“C:\\Program Files\\VMware\\Infrastructure\\Virtual Infrastructure Client\\Plugins\\Converter Enterprise\\plugin.dll”

Nice iSCSI EMC/VMware PDF online

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VMware just uploaded a cool PDF about configuring an iSCSI SAN. This particular PDF is created by EMC and deals about an EMC Celerra iSCSI SAN but there’s more than enough useful info in there for those who don’t own an EMC iSCSI SAN.

The cool thing about the Celerra is the possibility to use “network load balancing”. Where most iSCSI SAN’s work with a group address, which forces ESX to always walk the same path, the Celerra SAN’s use multiple interfaces with multiple ip-adresses. Would like to see this in real life…