Yellow Bricks

by Duncan Epping

update

VMware vCenter 2.5 Update 4 released today!

· ·

I just noticed that VMware vCenter 2.5 Update 4 has been released. I wanted to say: download it and install, but looking at the attendee numbers most of my readers will probably be at VMworld!

What’s new?

  • Guest Operating System Customization Improvements – VirtualCenter now supports customization of Windows Server 2008 guest operating systems.
  • Performance Overview Charts – VirtualCenter 2.5 Update 4 introduces the Performance Overview plug-in, which provides a single view of key performance metrics for CPU, memory, disk, and network without having to navigate through multiple charts. The aggregated charts show high-level summaries of resource distribution.
    To install the Performance Overview plug-in, see Installing the Performance Overview Plug-In in VirtualCenter 2.5 Update4 (KB 1008296)

And not totally unimportant Update 4 included two security updates which is why I recommend to take it for a test drive soon and start planning the implementation!

If you get the change install the Performance Overview plugin and email me a screenshot, I don’t think I will have the time today to actually test it…

VMware Update Manager and port changes

· ·

Today I’ve been troubleshooting a weird problem with a VMware Update Manager installation. VMware Update Manager was installed with a different port than usual because IIS was already running on the server.

When trying to install the plugin the following error appeared:

Unable to connect to the remote server

I would have expected that in either extension.xml or vci-integrity.xml in the VUM installation directory I would find a misconfigured option but this clearly wasn’t the case. Next stop: the vCenter database.

After clicking around in the database I wanted to run a query, but I still needed to find out which table the rows belonged to. I didn’t wanted to click every single table and start querying so I gave SQL this procedure a chance. The procedure is pretty straight forward, it gives you the option to enter a search string and search the entire database instead of doing “select * from emp” everytime.

EXEC SearchAllTables ‘vum-servername’

After running this procedure I found two entries which still contained the old port values which I updated with the following query:

update VPX_EXT_CLIENT set URL = ‘http://vumserver.yellow-bricks.com:8081/vci/downloads/VMware-UMClient.exe’ where Ext_Client_ID = ‘3’

I did some Oracle SQL courses back in the day when I still worked for Oracle, this is probably the first time I ever used it in real life though. 🙂

VMware ESX 3.5 Update 3

· ·

A lot of people have been asking for this: When will ESX 3.5 Update 3 be released? Well here’s your answer, download it now.

There are a couple of new things introduced:

  • Increase in vCPU per Core Limit — The limit on vCPUs per core has been raised from 8 (or 11 for VDI workloads) to 20. This change only raises the supported limit but does not include any additional performance optimizations. Raising the limit allows users more flexibility to configure systems based on specific workloads and to get the most advantage from increasingly faster processors. The achievable number of vCPUs per core will depend on the workload and specifics of the hardware. It is expected that most deployments will remain within the previous range of 8-11 vCPUs per core. For more information, see VI3 Performance Best Practices and Benchmarking Guidelines.
  • HP BL495c support — This release adds support for the HP Blade Server BL495c with all Virtual Connect and IO Options allowing 1 or 10Gb connection to the network (upstream) and 1Gb connections only to the servers (downstream).
  • Newly Supported NICs —  This release adds support for the following NICs: 
    • Broadcom 5716 1Gb
    • Broadcom  57710 10Gb Adapters
    • Broadcom 57711 10Gb Adapters at 1Gb speed only

    Note: iSCSI/TOE hardware offloads available with these adapters are not supported by VMware with ESX 3.5.

  • Newly Supported SATA Controllers— This release adds support for the following SATA controllers:
    • Broadcom HT1000 (supported in native SATA mode only with SATA hard drives and Solid State Disk devices)
    • Intel ICH-7 (supported in IDE/ATA mode only with SATA CD/DVD drives)

    Note: Storing VMFS data stores on drives connected to these controllers is not supported

  • Newly Supported Guest Operating Systems — Support for the following Guest Operating Systems have been added by VMware during the ESX 3.5 Update 3 release cycle:
    • Solaris 10 U5
    • Ubuntu 8.04.1
    • RHEL 4.7
  • Internal SAS networked storage controllers — This release adds experimental support for Intel Modular Server MFSYS25 SAS Storage Control Modules (SCMs). For known issues with this platforms and workaround see SAS Link and Port Failovers with the Intel Modular Server Running Update 3 and Later Versions of ESX 3.5 and ESXi 3.5 (KB 1007394).
  • Interrupt Coalescing (IC) for Qlogic 4Gb FC HBAs — Introduced in this release, the feature reduces CPU utilization (and CPU cost per IO) and improves throughput of IO intensive workloads by generating a single interrupt for a burst of Fibre Channel frames, when received in a short period of time, rather than interrupting the CPU each time a frame is received. The feature is enabled by default.
  • Experimental Support for the VMDK Recovery Tool — This release adds support for the VMDK Recovery tool, a script intended to help customers to recover VMFS/vmdk data stores from accidental deletion of VMFS/vmdk data store or physical disk corruption. For more information, see VMDK Recovery Tool (ESX 3.5 Update 3) ( KB 1007243).
  • Small Footprint CIM Broker —  Updated SFCB to version 1.3.0
  • IBM SAN Volume Controller — SVC is now supported with Fixed Multipathing Policy as well as MRU Multipathing Policy.

I think the most exciting thing is the VMDK Recovery Tool! If I can find the time I will definitely test it!

vCenter Administrator Portal! (multi VC console)

· ·

I’ve been offline for most of the day and when I just switched on my laptop I noticed a new section(including downloads) on the VMTN forums. This section is about a single console multiple vCenter servers. VMware vCenter Administrator Portal (VCAP) is a web-based console that provides a central view into the VMware Infrastructure environment across multiple vCenter Server (VirtualCenter) instances. VCAP is delivered as a virtual appliance based on Linux. If you’re not comfortable with a virtual appliance you can also download the installable version.

This is, besides a linux vCenter client/server, an ofter requested feature. Keep in mind that it’s a preview of what will be available in one of the next versions. You can find a PDF with more detail here: 

VirtualCenter Administrator Portal (VCAP) Overview (pdf).

Tech Preview – VirtualCenter Administrator Portal – Installation Guide – 2008 10 13.pdf (87.6 K)

What can you expect at this moment:

  • Single sign-on to multiple vCenter Servers
  • Monitor events and alarms across multiple vCenter Servers
  • Search and track inventory across multiple vCenter Servers
  • Launch VI Client in context to manage vCenter Servers
  • Search for virtual machines across multiple vCenter Servers
  • Launch virtual machine consoles
  • Utilizes permissions setup in vCenter Servers
  • Unified view for: vCenter Servers, Datacenters, Clusters, Hosts, Virtual Machines
  • Access summary view of inventory objects, rolled up across vCenter Servers, for comparison and monitoring purposes

Update for ESX 3.5

· ·

After the 3.0.X updates the 3.5 updates couldn’t be far away, and here you go… And if you have a close look at the KB article of the patch you can see that VirtualCenter 2.5 Update 3 is also coming soon.