Yellow Bricks

by Duncan Epping

ESX

VMware Studio 2.0 GA’ed

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A couple of weeks ago I wrote about VMware Studio 2.0. VMware Studio 2.0 has just officially been released.

Source:
VMware Studio 2.0 helps author, configure, deploy and customize vApps and virtual appliances. vApps support the industry standard Open Virtualization Format (OVF). vApps can be deployed on VMware vSphere 4.0 or in the cloud. vCenter Server 4.0 now supports creating and running vApps, as well as importing and exporting them in compliance with OVF 1.0 standard.

Studio 2.0 is designed to be used by ISVs, developers, IT professionals and members of the virtualization community. It is a free product and is available as a virtual appliance.

The following new features have been added:

  • Ability to create multiple-VM appliances, or vApps, to run on VMware vSphere.
  • More provisioning engines including ESX/ESXi 3.5 and 4, VMware Workstation 6.5.1, and VMware Server 2.0.
  • Build support for Windows Server 2003 and 2008 (32-bit and 64-bit) virtual appliances.
  • Build support for 64-bit Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and SUSE Enterprise Linux Server (SLES).
  • Build support new Linux distributions RHEL 5.3, CentOS 5.3, and Ubuntu 8.04.1.
  • Extensible management services allow you to customize an interface into a new tab.
  • An Eclipse™ plug-in helps you package applications and create management services.
  • Automatic dependency resolution for application packages installed on Linux-based virtual appliances.
  • Existing VM build (input-as-VM) for Linux virtual appliances.
  • DMTF standard OVF 1.0 and open virtual appliance (OVA) packaging. VMware Studio 1.0 supported OVF 0.9.
  • Eclipse usability improvements.
  • Appliance updates from CDROM.
  • Web console footer customization in the appliance VM.
  • EULA first-boot display control in the appliance VM.
  • Host name editing in the Web console of the appliance VM.
  • Security fix for VMware Studio when uploading management services. See CVE-2009-2968.

Just download it and try it out!

vSphere VM Snapshots and block size

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As some already noticed; when creating a snapshot on a VM with two disks the block size of the VMFS volume which hold the working directory is checked before the snapshot is taken. As reported by VMTN User Pizang this was not the case in ESX 3.x. You can imagine that this can cause issues when the second disk of a VM is larger than the maximum file size dictated by the block size of the VMFS file system which holds the working directory of the VM. What? Yeah I had to read that sentence at least 3 times before I understood what I said… This might make it easier:

virtualmachine001
Disk01 – 10GB stored on VMFS001 with a 1MB Block size
Disk02 – 350GB stored on VMFS002 with a 4MB Block size

VMFS001 contains the working directory of the vm “virtualmachine001”. Snapshots are stored in the working directory. In the case of Disk02 this could mean that the delta file grows beyond the maximum file limit of 256GB of VMFS001 where it will be stored.

Another example of where the block size could limit you is outlined in this KB article: http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1012384.

The proof is in! (vSphere Quick Start Guide)

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As most of you hopefully know by now we are working on a vSphere Quick Start Guide. We’ve been very busy the last couple of weeks getting it finalized. As you can imagine with VMworld coming up we are working against a very tight deadline. Thomas Bryant has been doing most of the formatting for the book and ordered a proof copy which has just arrived:

Source: The proof is in!


The first copy of our new book, vSphere 4.0 Quick Start Guide, has arrived! I’m very excited about the work everyone has done. It’s been a pretty rough ride at times, but it’s worth it in the end to see your name in print. I’m looking forward to getting a few copies for VMworld 2009!

Great work Duncan, Dave, Stu, Alan & Bernie!

vCenter Server 4.0 Patch 1

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Don’t think many people have noticed this KB article yet or even experienced this issue with HA but nevertheless it’s worth mentioning. Apparently there’s an issue with HA in vCenter 4.0 when a class A network is being used. When a node fails this will not be detected and thus the fail-over of VMs will not occur. Although not many customers are using these class A ranges it is something I think you all should be aware of. This issue has been resolved and VMware released the following KB article which contains a link to the patch:

http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1013013
A vSphere 4.0 VMware High Availability cluster may not failover virtual machines when ESX is configured with certain IP addresses

You experience these symptoms:

  • In vCenter 4.0, VMware HA might not failover virtual machines when a host failure occurs.
  • When the ESX host’s IP address in a VMware HA enabled cluster is configured with certain IP addresses, the node failure detection algorithm fails.
  • You are susceptible to this issue when all of your Service Console Port(s) or Management Network IP address(s) on your ESX host fall within the following range:
    3.x.x.x – 9.x.x.x
    26.x.x.x – 99.x.x.x

Note: You are not affected if one of Service Console Port(s) or Management Network IP address(s) on your ESX host falls outside of this range.

HA Admission Control and DPM

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A couple of days ago we had a discussion on Admission Control and DPM internally at VMware. One of our customers had enabled DPM on a HA cluster. During the evening 4 out of 5 hosts where placed into standby mode because of this.

This customer, as many of our customers have these days, had vCenter running virtual. This of course led to the question; what happens if this one host fails and our virtual vCenter server is running on it?
That’s an easy one; nothing. It might not be the answer you are looking for but when the host fails that runs vCenter there’s no host or service left to get these hosts out of maintenance mode or restart your VMs.

Now maybe even more important; what causes this behavior?
This behavior is caused by the fact that admission control is disabled. If you disable admission control DPM will put hosts into standby mode even if it violates failover requirements. This means that if you have virtualized your vCenter server this is definitely something to be aware of.

For more info/background: http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1007006