Yellow Bricks

by Duncan Epping

esxi

255GB Memory Limit for VMs with vSphere

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This afternoon @Stevie_chambers published something on twitter on memory limits of vSphere VMs. This was a recap of a question asked on a VMware internal mailinglist, here’s what Steve posted:

Why has a vSphere VM max mem 255GB? VMFS block size of 1MB = 256GB max – 0.4MB VM state = 255.6MB rounded down to 255GB – from Ole@VMware

In other words, the maximum memory size for a vSphere VM is 255 GB. This is the maximum memory size because a swap file needs to be created as well. This swap file cannot exceed the maximum file size of a 1MB blocksized VMFS volume. Max file size = 256GB – VM state(roughly 400MB)=255.6GB. For safety this has been rounded down to 255GB. Which at first sounds like a weird amount but actually makes sense when you read the explanation.

By the way, Steve has recently started a blog: View Yonder. Welcome to the blogosphere!

New ESX(i) 3.5 patches available

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Normally I would give you guys a nice overview of the patches + KB articles but I’m on a holiday this week with limited access to wifi. Because I’m typing this on my blackberry this post will lack the details, feel a bit like Rev. Run ;-), but you guys know the drill anyway.

In total 11 new patches (9 for ESX and two for ESXi) are up for download. Make sure to read the accompanied KB articles first and of course test the patches before implementing!

Have fun,

Export and import DRS affinity rules

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I just noticed this awesome work by LucD. He developed two scripts which can import and export DRS affinity rules. Especially in large environments or environments that have multiple affinity rules this is an excellent solution. Take a look at the link above for more details. Luc posted the script half way down the topic in text but also added a modified version at the bottom. The VI Toolkit at it’s best… or should we call it PowerCLI these days?

Bluebear Kodiak, what’s up?

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I still receive a lot of beta invitation requests while it has been really quiet around Bluebear Kodiak over the last couple of months. (I did a (p)review a while back) I just received an email that a brand new version of the Kodiak beta is about to be released. I already received the Air file but haven’t been able to test it yet. But Matt Miller of Bluebear uploaded a demo video just which shows some of the new features and I must say it really looks slick.

If you are still looking for an invite, I received another 50 and it’s on a first come first serves base. Just click here for an invitation.

(update: the invites don’t seem to be working, I will ask Bluebear to fix it asap.)

VMware vSphere Health Check Report v1.0

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I already blogged about this awesome healthcheck script by William Lam a couple of times and it just has been updated to version 1.0. The following details have been added to the already extensive list:

  • New New licensing format/summary
  • New EVC Enabled information
  • New Cluster VM monitoring
  • New Cluster Host monitoring
  • New # of VMotions within a cluster
  • New Datastore uncommitted info
  • New CPU power management info
  • New VM info (FT, Record/Replay, Clean Poweroff)
  • New Host IPv6, FT, SSL Thumbprint
  • New Host Profiles
  • New vApp information
  • New Distributed vSwitch information

Check the detailed output example William uploaded recently.