Yellow Bricks

by Duncan Epping

deepdive

What is that poweron file in my .vSphere-HA folder?

· ·

When answering some questions in the vSphere HA section of the VMTN forum the “poweron” file was mentioned. I have gotten some other questions as well about this file so a public blog post makes most sense.

Each hosts in a vSphere HA cluster keeps track of the power state of the virtual machines it is hosting. This set of powered on virtual machines is stored the “poweron” file. Note that this applies to both the master and the slave hosts in your cluster. This file is located on your vmfs volumes in the hidden directory “.vSphere-HA/<FDM cluster ID>“.

The naming scheme for this file is as follows:
host-<id>-poweron

Tracking virtual machine power-on state is not the only thing the “poweron” file is used for. This file is also used by the slaves to inform the master that it is isolated from the management network: the top line of the file will either contain a “0” (zero) or a “1”. A “0” means not-isolated and a “1” means isolated. The master will inform vCenter about the isolation of the host.

This also means that if a host is not sending out any heartbeats to the master, the master will validate if that host has been isolated by reading the “poweron” file. This could be considered as an extra check on top of the “datastore heartbeating” mechanism.

vSphere 5.1 Clustering Deepdive only $17.95, limited time!

· ·

Frank and I decided to put the vSphere 5.1 Clustering Deepdive (paper copy) up for sale for only $ 17.95. This is a limited time offer (21st of December), so if you want to get yourself, your friend-husband-father-kids or even grandmother a nice present be quick.

How’s that for a black-friday, cyber-monday, christmas / sinterklaas special? Yes indeed, the paper copy is cheaper than all e-books on vSphere 5.x out there on Amazon and with 5 stars (11 reviews) you know you can’t go wrong.

Happy holidays,

Frank and Duncan
(ps: the kindle copy is only 7.49, so even combined it is cheaper than most e-books out there :-))

Can I get your book for free?

· ·

Well not from me, but CloudPhysics has a nice book give-away going on at the moment for the VMworld Barcelona attendees! So what do you need to do?

How To Win

  • Email us at info@cloudphysics.com with a subject of “Book”. No message is needed.
  • Register at http://www.cloudphysics.com/ by clicking “SIGN UP”.
  • Install the CloudPhysics Observer vApp to activate your dashboard.

Eligibility

  • You are attending VMworld Barcelona.
  • You are a new CloudPhysics user.
  • You fully install the CloudPhysics ‘Observer’ vApp in your vSphere environment.

That is an easy way of getting the book for free right? So I suggest you head over and sign up to make sure you are part of the first 150 users that gets a free book!

vSphere 4.1 HA/DRS Deepdive promo was a huge hit!

· ·

Thanks to each and everyone of you who took the time to download the vSphere 4.1 HA/DRS Deepdive kindle copy during our promo days. Over 6000 downloads in just 2 days is nothing short of amazing. Frank and I were talking about this promo opportunity a week ago for the 4.1 book and never anticipated on these kind of numbers. We expected a couple of hundred copies to be given away, maybe close to a 1000, but definitely not 6000+. Just some facts about this promo:

  • 175+ retweets of my tweets
  • 600+ tweets
  • 30.000+ people reached
  • 6000+ Kindle copies

We were shocked, we anticipated on a couple of hundred copies, maybe close to a 1000, but never did we anticipate on 6000 kindle copies being downloaded. Thanks to everyone who helped driving this. All the tweets / facebook and G+ mentions helped with this huge success.