Yellow Bricks

by Duncan Epping

VMware

The Compatibility Guides are now updated with VSAN and vFlash info!

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For those wanting to play with Virtual SAN (VSAN) and vSphere Flash Read Cache (vFRC / vFlash), the compatibility guides are being updated at the moment. Hit the following URL to find out what is currently supported and what not:

  • vmware.com/resources/compatibility/
  • For vSphere Flash Read Cache:
    • Select “VMware Flash Read Cache” from the drop down list titled “What are you looking for”.
    • Hit “update and view results”
  • For Virtual SAN:
    • Select “Virtual SAN (beta)” from the drop down list titled “What are you looking for”
    • Select “ESXi 5.5” and click “Next”
    • Select a category (server, i/o controller, hdd, ssd), at the time of writing only server was available
    • Select the type of Server and click next
    • Now a list is presented of supported servers

I know both lists are short today, this is an on-going efforts and I know many vendors are now wrapping up and submitting their test reports, more to be added over the course of the next couple of weeks so keep on coming back to the compatibility guide.

vSphere 5.5 nuggets: Change Disk.SchedNumReqOutstanding per device!

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Always wanted to change Disk.SchedNumReqOutstanding per device instead of per host? Well now with vSphere 5.5 you can! I didn’t know about this either, but my colleague Paudie pointed this out. Useful feature when you have several storage arrays and you need to tweak these values, now lets be clear… I do not recommend tweaking this, but in the case you need to you can now do it per device using esxcli.

Get the current configured value for a specific device:
esxcli storage core device list --device <device>

Set the value for a specific device::
esxcli storage core device set -d <device> -O <value between 1-256>.

vSphere 5.5 nuggets: changes to disk.terminateVMOnPDLDefault

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Those who were in the vSphere 5.5 beta program might have noticed it but I am suspecting many did not. With vSphere 5.5 there is finally an advanced setting to enable Disk.terminateVMOnPDLDefault. This advanced setting was introduced with vSphere 5.0 and unfortunately needed to be enabled in a file (/etc/vmware/settings); which was inconvenient to say the least. I asked the engineering team what the plans were to improve this but there were no direct plans. It took a bit longer then expected, but nevertheless the feature request I created made it in to the product. So if you are using a vSphere Metro Storage Cluster (what a coincidence, I am presenting on this topic in an hour at VMworld) please note that the following method should now be used to allow vSphere HA to respond to a Permanent Device Loss aka PDL:

  1. Browse to the host in the vSphere Web Client navigator
  2. Click the Manage tab and click Settings
  3. Under System, click Advanced System Settings
  4. In Advanced System Settings, select “VMkernel.Boot.terminateVMOnPDL”
  5. Click the Edit button (pencil) to edit the value and set it to “Yes”
  6. Click OK

Note the change in setting name from Disk.terminateVMOnPDLDefault to VMkernel.Boot.terminateVMOnPDL!

vSphere 5.5 nuggets: vCenter Server Appliance limitations lifted!

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For those who haven’t seen it… the vCenter Server Appliance limitations that there were around the number of virtual machines and hosts are lifted. Where the vCenter Server Appliance with the embedded ternal database used to be limited to a maximum of 5 hosts and 50 virtual machines this has been increased with vSphere 5.5 to 100 hosts and 3000 virtual machines when you use the embedded database, with an external Oracle database the limits are similar to that of the Windows version of vCenter Server! If you ask me, this means that the vCenter Server Appliance with the embedded database can be used in almost every scenario! That makes life easier indeed.

Couple of other awesome enhancements when it comes to vCenter Server:

  • Drag and drop functionality added! So you can simply drag and drop a VM on to a host again, or a host in to a cluster
  • OS X support, I know many of you have been waiting for this one.
  • Support for Database Clustering solutions, finally!

By itself they appear to be minor things, but if you ask me… this is a huge step forward for the vCenter Server Appliance! Some more details to be found in the what’s new whitepaper in vSphere 5.5 for Platform.

 

2013 VMware Fling Contest – Join in on the fun!

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Last year VMware organized the very first VMware Open Innovation Contest and it was a very successful contest which resulted in an awesome fling called “pro-active DRS“. The Open Innovation Contest is back again in 2013 but now called the 2013 VMware Fling Contest.

Now lets get those creative juices flowing again, think about the challenges / problems you are facing everyday and how these could potentially solved and head over to the 2013 VMware Fling Contest website and submit: https://flingcontest.vmware.com/. Do note there is no need to rush to get your idea in, take your time – think about – but make sure to submit it before Nov 15th.

Of course there is an awesome price again, the winner gets a free pass to VMworld 2014, on top of that the VMware engineering team will execute on your idea and a fling will be released. How cool is that? If you need more info, stop by at the VMworld Innovation Booth at the solutions exchange.