Yellow Bricks

by Duncan Epping

VMware

Repeated characters when typing in your VMs remote console?

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Today I was working on a couple of test scenarios in a remote lab. For some reason the latency was a lot higher than normal and I was very difficult to type anything in the Remote Console through the vCenter Client. Every single character I tried popped up 2 or 3 times… which makes it very difficult to type a password as you can imagine. I knew I read a KB article about this exact problem a long time ago. Considering it is KB 196 I probably wasn’t the first to bump in to this. The solution is fairly simple:

  • Power off the VM
  • Edit Settings
  • Click the Options Tab
  • Click “General”
  • Click “Configuration Parameters”
  • Click “Add Row”
  • Enter the name: keyboard.typematicMinDelay
  • Enter the value: 2000000

Although the KB article doesn’t mention it, this also applies to vSphere 5.0.

Investigating the options to bring back VMTN Subscriptions!

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** Read this update, VMTN type of program brought to you by the VMUG org **

Mike Laverick started a campaign last week on the VMware Community Forums and asked for the VMTN Subscription to be reinstated, coincidentally the same request came in through the VMUG board. For those who have never heard of the VMTN Subscription program it was similar to MSDN and enabled you to run VMware software in your lab environment for a fixed yearly fee. Ever since the program was cancelled every now and then people asked for it to be reinstated. This time it is different, it is not a few people who are backing the request but so far the community thread has over 10 pages worth of comments and there are literally multiple new blog posts about this topic every day.

During the weekend I dropped my management an email about this campaign and all the traction it had within the community. Literally within minutes I had a reply. I am happy to be able to confirm that we are investigating the option to reinstate the VMTN Subscription program. Keep in mind that starting a program like this does take time and the program will need a serious overhaul. As such I cannot make any promises on when this will happen. I do want to stress that all feedback is highly appreciated, we are listening! All blog posts voicing your opinion on why this should happen are more then welcome and all comments on the VMTN thread will be read by our team.

Head over to the community thread and post your feedback:

http://communities.vmware.com/thread/335123

vSphere 5.0 – what’s new for esxtop

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I was just playing around with esxtop in vSphere 5.0 and spotted something that changed. I figured there must be more so I started digging. I didn’t dig too deep as there is a great VMworld session (VSP1999) on this topic by Krishna Raj Raja and I figured why re-invent the wheel. Anyway, here’s the things I noticed which will definitely come in handy at some point while troubleshooting performance issues:

  • Each display type now shows the number of Worlds, VMs and vCPUs on the host on the first line. This will allow you to quickly identify why there for instance is a high %RDY.
  • %VMWAIT is a derivitive of %WAIT, however it does not include IDLE time and only %SWPWT and “blocked”. It could for instance also be blocked when the connectivity to the storage device has failed.
  • In the Power display there’s a new line which is PSTATE MHZ. This shows you the different clock frequencies per state. For instance “2395” is the clock frequency of %P0 and “1596” is the clock frequency of %P7. Please note that “%USED” is based on the base (%P0) of your CPU. %UTIL is the utilization in it’s current state (%Px), so in this case that could be 40% of %P7 (1596) which is 638.
  • In the “Device Display” there are new stats starting with “F”, for example FCMDs, these show the failed I/Os. Fairly quick way to see if there are any I/O errors.
  • These two new counters in the “Memory Display”, LLSWR/s / LLSWW/s, show the amount of memory being written to host cache or read from host cache. Useful when you have enabled this feature and want to know if it is actively being used. Of course there are also vCenter stats for this one.

I love esxtop, with 5.0 is has become even better and especially “%VMWAIT” and the PSTATE details will come in handy at some point in time!

Top 10 books sold at VMworld US

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Top 10 books sold at the VMworld Bookstore. First of all congrats to everyone who made the top-10! I guess you can say we are really happy with this result especially because we don’t have a huge publisher helping with advertizement/distribution. Go Self-Publishing! Go DIY!

  1. vSphere 5 Clustering Tech Deepdive (Self Publishing)
  2. Admin VMware SRM Pre-­Publishing (VMware Press)
  3. VMware vSphere PowerCLI Reference (Wiley)
  4. VMware vSphere Design (Wiley)
  5. Cloud Comp w VMware vCloud Director (Usenix)
  6. vSphere 5 DVD Training (TrainSignal)
  7. Cloud Virtual Data Storage Networking (Taylor & Francis)
  8. VCP VMware Certification for vSphere 4 (McGraw Hill)
  9. Managing VMware Infrastructure w Win PowerShell (Sapien)
  10. VCP4 Exam Cram (Pearson)

I want to thank DigitalGuru.com for giving us the opportunity to sell our book at VMworld.

VMworld Labs 2011….

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This morning I stopped by at the Labs and the Lab team was working full pace on getting the labs done. They were testing the labs and each and every station to guarantee a great experience. Last year I reported extensively on the Lab as I was one of the Lab Captains. This year I am not a Lap Captain as I have too many sessions scheduled but I do want to inform you about the labs as I feel it is one of the coolest things at VMworld.

First of all lets start with the hours, there’s 50 hrs of Labs this year:

  • Sunday, Aug. 28th  –  2:00pm – 8:00pm
  • Monday, Aug. 29th  –  7:00am – 3:00pm and 5:00pm – 8:00pm
  • Tuesday, Aug. 30th  –  10:00am – 10:00pm
  • Wednesday, Aug. 31st  –  7:00am – 7:00pm
  • Thursday, Sept. 1st  –  7:00am – 4:00pm

So if you are here on Sunday, get registered and get a couple of Labs done before everyone else will. For those who did the labs last year (of before) they made some changes. The labs are not around a specific feature or product anymore they are all scenario based.  That means that it is more real life and less artificial and I am certain you will enjoy it.

Last year we had impressive numbers:

  • 480 lab seat, 44 lab hours, 21,120 lab seat hours
  • 15,344 labs completed
  • 145,097 VMs deployed

This year we are aiming a lot higher:

  • 480 lab seats, 50 lab hours, 24,000 lab seat hours
  • Targets – 18,000 to 20,000 labs completed
  • Targets – 225,000 to 250,000 VMs deployed

Just read that again…. 18,000 labs and 225,000 VMs deployed is the lower-end of the target. That is massive… H u g e!

Another huge difference is that last year we had “Hybrid” Cloud setup. Basically running in the cloud with resources available locally if needed. We never used it and based on that a new direction was taken. This is what we call a geographically distributed Public Cloud model. Terramark, Colt and Switch Supernap are providing the resources required for this environment. The cool thing though about Switch Supernap is that they are based out of Las Vegas and you can actually get a free tour of their datacenter this week. I’ve seen many cool datacenters but the Switch Supernap is probably the coolest I have seen. Check the following pictures for an impression, and if you are interested in the free tour email this adress: vmworldswitchtour@switchnap.com. They will also provide transportation etc!

Make sure to stop by at the VMworld Labs and get a couple of the labs done. I guarantee you will enjoy it. It is not only a great way to discover products and features but it is just a great experience in general. Be there, and remember that just last like year there’s contest again … The person who does the most labs wins  free VMworld 2012 ticket, last year someone completed all of them and then started doing the ones he liked the most again. If you want to win you will need to start tomorrow (Sunday) and just keep going, have fun and enjoy!