Yellow Bricks

by Duncan Epping

vcenter

VMware vCenter Data Recovery

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During VMworld I quickly wrote down the steps that VMware vCenter Data Recovery takes when backing up VMs. I added one step which isn’t unimportant, changed block tracking(4):

  1. Create a snapshot of disk(s)
  2. Hot add disk(s) to Data Recovery appliance
  3. Create hashes of (hopefully variable) blocks
  4. Read data of changed blocks if previous backup exists
  5. Dedupe(using variable chunk sizes) and create SHA1 hash for index
  6. Store data (possibly encrypted)
  7. Remove hot add disk(s)
  8. Remove snapshot

Compared to the current VCB installable and current feature set VI 3.5 offers this is a huge enhancement. (VMware vCenter Data Recovery will be part of the vSphere products.) Creating deduplicated back ups of only the changed blocks based on variable chunk sizes will give every user the opportunity to have a decent backup scheme. VMware vCenter Data Recovery utilizes the new VMware Consolidated Backup API by the way. For those afraid that the dedupe datastore gets corrupted an automated short integrity check is performed once a day and a thorough integrity check once a week.

Keep in mind that not only VMware will be able to utilize these new features. Because VCB is changed to an API a much tighter integration with 3rd party backup tools can be expected in the near future!

I would love to get my hands on a beta version of the product as soon as it’s available to play around with it some more and tell you more about the rich feature set this product will have. Unfortunately it’s not available yet and you will all have to wait, but I will keep you posted.

VMware vCenter 2.5 Update 4 released today!

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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 vCenter on Linux Technology Preview

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One of my colleagues just noticed this new section at the VMTN Community Forums: VMware vCenter Server 2.5 on Linux: Technology Preview. You can find a PDF with a how-to here, here’s  a short outtake:

This document describes how to install a technical preview of the Linux version of VirtualCenter server. The intended audience is developers, system administrators, and managers interested in using VirtualCenter on a Linux operating system.

CAUTION   Do not use this version of VirtualCenter on Linux for production purposes. This release is for evaluation purposes only.

Keep in mind this is only the vCenter server for Linux, not the client! And also keep in mind that it’s for evaluation only, please don’t use this in a production environment! If I can download it I will give it a spin tonight!

vCenter and SQL service dependencies

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During several projects I noticed that for some reason the vCenter service would not start correctly. After a quick browse in “services.msc” and the eventlog I noticed that the vCenter service started before the SQL service. As you can imagine vCenter needs SQL to be up and running before it can actually start. I fixed it by creating a dependency. For some weird reason I never blogged this, but today I noticed this KB article that describes how to set up this dependency:

Adding a dependency to the VirtualCenter service so that it waits for SQL Express remedies this.

To create a service dependency:

  1. Click Start > Run.
  2. Type services.msc and press Enter.
  3. Locate the SQL Express instance for VirtualCenter. For example, SQL Server (SQLEXP_VIM).
  4. Open the SQL Express instance and note the Service Name. For example, MSSQL$SQLEXP_VIM .
  5. In the Run dialog, type Regedit.exe and press Enter. Browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\vpxd .
  6. Double-click the DependOnService key and add the Service name using the name identified in step 4.
  7. Close Regedit .
  8. Go back to the Services Panel and open the SQL Server properties.
  9. On the Dependencies tab, verify the VMware VirtualCenter service is listed as depending on the SQL service instance.

As you can see the solution is fairly easy. Keep in mind that you need to be running the SQL Server locally on the vCenter server for this to work, especially for larger environments I wouldn’t advise running both on the same box. For SMB environments this should work just fine.