Yellow Bricks

by Duncan Epping

VMware

VMware just acquired Trango

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VMware just acquired Trango:

VMware, Inc. (NYSE: VMW), the global leader in virtualization solutions from the desktop to the datacenter, today announced plans to bring virtualization and its many proven benefits to mobile phones through the new VMware Mobile Virtualization Platform (MVP). Built on innovative technology acquired from Trango Virtual Processors in October 2008, VMware MVP will help handset vendors reduce development time and get mobile phones with value-added services to market faster. In addition, end users will benefit by being able to run multiple profiles – for example, one for personal use and one for work use – on the same phone.

So what is it these guy actually do, or better said what will VMware be doing?

VMware MVP is a thin layer of software that will be embedded on a mobile phone that decouples the applications and data from the underlying hardware. It will be optimized to run efficiently on low-power-consuming and memory-constrained mobile phones. The MVP is planned to enable handset vendors to bring phones to market faster and make them easier to manage.

Scripted installs and nic teaming

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As of ESX 3.5 it was impossible to add an additional NIC to a team as active without resorting to editing the esx.conf file:

# Active and standby setup and maxActive from 1 to 2
mv /etc/vmware/esx.conf /tmp/esx.conf.bak
/bin/sed -e ’s/net\/vswitch\/child\[0001\]\/teamPolicy\/maxActive = \”1\”/net\/vswitch\/child\[0001\]\/teamPolicy\/maxActive = \”2\”/g’ /tmp/esx.conf.bak >> /etc/vmware/esx.conf

So as you can see, a “sed” command changed the maxActive from 1 to 2. But I rather not use these kinds of solutions, editing the esx.conf that is. As of ESX 3.5 U3 that’s not necessary anymore, VMware fixed this issue:

Network adapters lose bonding during scripted installation
The esxcfg-vswitch -L command now works as expected and with the same functionality as in 3.0.x.

During a scripted installation, the following two commands did not result in a bonded pair of active network adapters on virtual switch VS_VM1. Instead, vmnic3 became the active adapter and vmnic4 became the standby adapter.
esxcfg-vswitch -L vmnic3 VS_VM1
esxcfg-vswitch -L vmnic4 VS_VM1

So just use esxcfg-vswitch again and don’t edit the esx.conf anymore!

Installing VMware Workstation 6.5 in Ubuntu…

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I just downloaded the .bundle file for my Ubuntu 8.10 Workstation at home. So what to do next? I’ve been using Debian and Ubuntu off and on for a while so I’m used to “apt-get install”. But this is a .bundle file, so no apt-get for this application. Well the answer was really simple just run the bundle file:

  • sudo sh VMware-Workstation-6.5.0-118166.i386.bundle
So far I really like Ubuntu 8.10! It seems to do everything it needs to do straight out ot the box! By the way, Sven Warren wrote an extensive howto for installing WS6.5 on Ubuntu. It would be nice if VMware would create a debian repository for this download so we can update it with apt-get…

Deploying the VMware Infrastructure

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Two months ago I blogged about an upcoming book! This book was written by John Arrasjid(VMware), Daniel Conde(VMware), Karthik Balachandran(VMware), Gary Lamb(INX) and Steve Kaplan(INX) and released during VMworld.

It was up for sale during VMworld and they did a great job cause they ranked 4th on the top selling books list at VMworld. John was so kind so send me a copy of the book and I managed to read it completely today. The fact that I read it completely today says something about the size of the book. Deploying the VMware Infrastucture holds 86 pages and is number 18 in the “Short Topics in System Administration” series by Usenix/SAGE.

This book isn’t like most VMware books out today. Most books are heavily technical and don’t talk about when to use which feature or product. This book is for those relativately new to virtualization and are in need of a guideline to write or come up with deployment strategies and use cases. Although I don’t consider myself a “newbie” I thought it was still useful to read cause it gives a nice clear overview in layman’s terms. I can imagine managers and architects also use this book to fresh up on their virtualization knowledge.

The structure of the book is good, starting out with an Intro on Virtualization and going from the benefits in terms of Capital Expense, ROI and TCO to Advanced Capabilities like HA and DRS. I can’t think of a single thing that’s left out that should have been in these 86 pages. So if you’re looking for a general guideline or writing a deployment plan than this book should be on your “must have” list.

You can find more info on the website of SAGE about the book and purchase it over there or here.

Update: HA Advanced Options

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A while back I wrote down all the HA advanced options. With VirtualCenter 2.5 Update 3(and the ESX patch that came with it) VMware added another extra advanced options, this is the complete list:

  • das.failuredetectiontime – Amount of milliseconds, timeout time for isolation response action(with a default of 15000 milliseconds).
  • das.isolationaddress[x] – IP adres the ESX hosts uses for it’s heartbeat, where [x] = 0-9. It will use the default gateway by default.
  • das.usedefaultisolationaddress – Value can be true or false and needs to be set in case the default gateway, which is the default isolation address shouldn’t be used for this purpose.
  • das.poweroffonisolation – Values are False or True, this is for setting the isolation response. Default a VM will be powered off.
  • das.vmMemoryMinMB – Higher values will reserve more space for failovers.
  • das.vmCpuMinMHz – Higher values will reserve more space for failovers.
  • das.defaultfailoverhost – Value is a hostname, this host will be the primary failover host.
  • das.failuredetectioninterval – Changes the heartbeat interval among HA hosts. By default, this occurs every second (1000 milliseconds).
  • das.allowVmotionNetworks – Allows a NIC that is used for VMotion networks to be
  • considered for VMware HA usage. This permits a host to have only one NIC configured for management and VMotion combined.
  • das.allowNetwork[x] – Enables the use of port group names to control the networks used for VMware HA, where [x] = 0 – ?. You can set the value to be ʺService Console 2ʺ or ʺManagement Networkʺ to use (only) the networks associated with those port group names in the networking configuration.
  • das.isolationShutdownTimeout – Shutdown time out for the isolation response “Shutdown VM”, default is 300 seconds. In other words, if a VM isn’t shutdown clean when isolation response occured it’s being powered off after 300 seconds.
  • das.bypassNetCompatCheck – Disable the “compatible network” check for HA that was introducedwith Update 2. Default value is “false”, setting it to “true” disables the check.Virtual Machine Monitoring HA advanced options
  • das.failureInterval = The polling interval for failures. Default value is 30.
  • das.maxFailureWindows = Minimum amount of seconds between failure. Default value is 3600 seconds, if VM fails within 3600 seconds VM HA doesn’t restart the machine.
  • das.maxFailures = Maximum amount of VM failures, if the amount is reached VM HA doesn’t restart the machine automatically. Default value is 3.
  • das.minUptime = The minimum uptime in seconds before VM HA starts polling. The default value is 120 seconds.