5.1

Back to Basics: Using the vSphere 5.1 Web Client to create a Cluster object

Duncan Epping · Sep 12, 2012 ·

We’ve shown you how to create a vSphere Datacenter object, next we are going to create a cluster object. Again, this is fairly straight forward:

Click on “Create a Cluster” in your “Getting Started” tab.
Provide a name for your cluster and tick “Turn On” for both “DRS” and “vSphere HA”.
Click “OK”.

We will not tweak any settings around HA and DRS, the defaults should work for most, although I would prefer to use the “Percentage Based” admission control policy. For more details I would like to recommend reading the vSphere 5.1 Clustering Deepdive. [Read more…] about Back to Basics: Using the vSphere 5.1 Web Client to create a Cluster object

What’s new in vSphere 5.1 for High Availability

Duncan Epping · Sep 12, 2012 ·

As vSphere High Availability was completely revamped in 5.0 not a lot of changes have been introduced in 5.1. There are some noteworthy changes though that I figured I would share with you. So what’s cool?

Ability to set slot size for “Host failures tolerated” through the vSphere Web Client
Ability to retrieve a list of the virtual machines that span multiple slots
Support for Guest OS Sleep mode
Including the Application Monitoring SDK in the Guest SDK (VMware Tools SDK)
vSphere HA (FDM) VIB is automatically added to Auto-Deploy image profile
Ability to delay isolation response throught the use of “das.config.fdm.isolationPolicyDelaySec”

Although many of these speak for itself, I will elaborate on why these enhancements are useful and when to use them.

The ability to set slot size for “Host failures tolerated” allows you to manually dictate how many virtual machines you can power-on in your cluster. Many have used advanced settings to achieve more or less the same, but through the UI things are a lot easier I guess.

Now if you do this, it could happen that a virtual machine needs multiple slots in order to successfully power-on. That is where the second bullet point comes in to play. In the vSphere Web Client you can now see a list of all the virtual machines that currently span multiple slots.

Support for Guest OS “Sleep Mode” in environments where VM Monitoring is used was added. This was reported by Sudharsan a while back and I addressed it with the HA engineering team. As a result they added in the logic that recognizes the “state” of the virtual machine to avoid unneeded restarts. Thanks Sudharsan for reporting! (I can’t find this in the release notes however)

With 5.0 the Application Monitoring SDK was opened up to the broader audience. It was still a separate installer though. As of vSphere 5.1 the App Monitoring SDK is part of the VMware Tools SDK. This will make your life easier when you use Application Monitoring.

Those running stateless will be happy about the fact that the FDM VIB is now part of the Auto-Deploy image profile. This will avoid the need to manually add it every time you create a new image.

Last but not least, in 5.1 we re-introduce “das.failuredetectiontime”… well not exactly but a similar concept with a different name. This new advanced setting named “das.config.fdm.isolationPolicyDelaySec” will allow you to extend the time it takes before the isolation response is triggered. By default the isolation response is triggered after ~30 seconds with vSphere 5.x. If you have a requirement to increase this then this new advanced setting can be used.

Back to Basics: Using the vSphere 5.1 Web Client to create a Datacenter object

Duncan Epping · Sep 11, 2012 ·

I am going to assume you already have vCenter 5.1 up and running, if you don’t read this article. Once again, this is a “Back to Basics” series, so don’t expect deepdive info here.

First point your browser to the vSphere Web Client. The vSphere Web Client can be found at: https://<IP address or DNS name of your vCenter instance>:9443/vsphere-client/. Now you will see is a question if it is okay to install the “VMware Remote Console Plugin” as shown in the following screenshot.

vCloud Suite 5.1 available

Duncan Epping · Sep 11, 2012 ·

No I didn’t set my alarm clock like Eric Sloof, just to be one of the first to post it… hence the reason this is “late”. But I got some more lined up for you though in the upcoming days. Now that the vCloud Suite 5.1 is available. Make sure to start your download engines and prep to upgrade. Before you start downloading, make sure to hit the launch page. I created a nice short URL for it

VMware NOW – Get the Latest Info on VMware Product Launches:
http://vmwa.re/vcloudnow

Download links:

What’s new docs:

vSphere 5.1 All Paths Down (APD) enhancements

Duncan Epping · Sep 10, 2012 ·

I’ve written about Permanent Device Loss multiple times but another scenario that some of you might have encountered is All Paths Down. All Paths Down already describes the scenario, but an example would be when for whatever reason the network between the host and the array fails. This would be result in an APD condition, meaning that the LUNs are unreachable due to the fact that all paths to the LUN are gone.

Some of you who have been in this scenario probably also have seen hosts being disconnected. In some cases, I’ve seen this happening at one point, a host might even freeze up. This would typically happen when a lot of I/O was sent to the datastore. This is of course something that everyone would want to avoid and hence a new advanced setting has been introduced, a new mechanism to handle APD conditions.

This brand new setting is called Misc.APDHandlingEnable. It can be set to 0 or 1. A value of zero means that ESXi will stick to the “old” method which is to always retry failed I/O’s. A value of 1 enables the new behavior. The behavior will allow ESXi to “fast-fail” I/Os. This will happen after 140 seconds by default. Fast-failing I/Os is what will prevent the host to be disconnected or frozen up. This is configurable though through Misc.APDTimeout. Note you can set a filter in the Web Client to find the right advanced setting as shown in the screenshot below. Note that the minimum value for Misc.APDTimeout is 20 seconds.

Cormac Hogan has a great article about APD with a lot more technical details, make sure to read it.