man is that awful!!

Cuando estan realizando un upgrade de ESX 4.0 hacia la version 4.0 update 1, y tienen agentes de terceros instalados (como agentes de HP, Dell, IBM, etc), el upgrade generalmente fallara o se suspendera, y al reiniciar el host resultara que obtendran lo que no quieren obtener cuando estan lidiando con VMware ESX, la no tan famosa pantalla purpura!!!

para ver los detalles de este bug ir aqui: http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1016070

que esta pasando con el QA del area de R&D de VMware???   algo asi deberia haber sido probado antes de liberarlo al publico!  (alguien recuerda la bomba de licenciamiento ?)

En fin, la solucion a este problema es deshabilitar cualquier agente de terceros que este corriendo en ESX, realizar el upgrade y reiniciar.  (ojo con los Warnings en el KB anterior)

saludos

ב- ESXi 4 הכניסו VMWARE את הדרישה לססמת root חזקה (מינימום 8 תווים, אותיות גדולות, קטנות ותווים אחרים). בסביבת בדיקות כמו זאת שהקמתי, ססמא כזאת היא גזירה לא הכרחית…
כדי לעקוף את המגבלה הזאת, יש להכנס ל- Tech Support Mode (כפי שרשמתי בפוסט הזה) ולערוך את הקובץ ./etc/pam.d/common-password
בהנחה שעוד לא שיניתם את הקובץ הוא אמור להראות כך:

#%PAM-1.0
password requisite /lib/security/$ISA/pam_passwdqc.so retry=3 min=8,8,8,7,6
password sufficient /lib/security/$ISA/pam_unix.so use_authtok md5 shadow
password required /lib/security/$ISA/pam_deny.so

בסוף השורה השניה (שמסתיימת ב-min=8,8,8,7,6) יש להוסיף את המילים .enforce=none
הקובץ הסופי ייראה כך:

#%PAM-1.0
password requisite /lib/security/$ISA/pam_passwdqc.so retry=3 min=8,8,8,7,6 enforce=none
password sufficient /lib/security/$ISA/pam_unix.so use_authtok md5 shadow
password required /lib/security/$ISA/pam_deny.so

שמרו את הקובץ ואפסו את הססמא לססמא הרצויה.

1. גשו לקונסול של ה- .ESX
2. לחצו על ALT+F1. תקבלו מסך שחור עם קצת טקסט וסמן מהבהב.
3. הקלידו את המילה “unsupported”. לא תוכלו לראות את מה שאתם מקלידים, אבל אחרי שתקישו Enter, תקבלו בקשה לסיסמא.
4. הכניסו את ססמת הקונסול כדי להיכנס ל- .Tech Support Mode
5. חפשו את השורה הבאה בקובץ :/etc/inetd.conf

# ssh stream tcp nowait root /sbin/dropbearmulti dropbear ++min=0,swap,group=shell -i -K60

6. הסירו את סימן ההערה (#) ואתחלו את המכונה.

El script funciona sin vCenter, de modo que para aquellos clientes que no hayan comprado vCenter por problemas de coste de licencias esta podría ser una solución alternativa.

Como sabes si un servidor ESX se “cae” y HA está habilitado, las maquinas virtuales serán restauradas en “frio” en el otro host ESX. También es importante que conozcas las diferencias entre VMware HA y el HA de Leo vía script:

• La utilidad de leo solo funciona con 2 servidores ESX mientras que VMware HA puede ser configurado en un cluster HA con hasta 32 Servidores
• VMware HA funciona con ESX y ESXI, mientras que el script de Leo tiene que ser portado a la consola RCLI (Remote Console Line Interface) para que funcione con ESXi
• VMware HA ofrece una GUI desde la que puedes chequear el estado del cluster HA

No obstante, si tienes solo dos servidores ESX, no tienes licencia para vCenter y tienes la necesidad de tener una solución más barata y “similar” a la de VMWare HA, esta alternativa puede que sea tu opción. Eso sí, no esperes que VMware soporte esta configuración de HA!!!

SCRIPT:

/usr/bin/esx_ha.sh

#!/bin/bash
if ! ping -c 14 10.8.0.1 > /dev/null; then
for $i in `cat /etc/other_host` ; do vmware-cmd -s register $i && vmware-cmd $i start ; done
fi
sleep 16
if ! ping -c 14 10.8.0.1 > /dev/null; then
for $i in `cat /etc/other_host` ; do vmware-cmd -s register $i && vmware-cmd $i start ; done
fi

chmod a+x /usr/bin/esx_ha.sh

vmware-cmd -l | sed ’s/\ /\\ /g’ > /root/other_host

 scp /root/other_host al otro ESX en el directorio /etc.

En el fichero /etc/other_host , re-organiza el orden de VM

Creas una entrada en el cron de root ( crontab -e).

MAILTO=”youremail@yourcomapny.com”
* * * * * /usr/bin/esx_ha.sh

La virtualización al servicio de las empresas

Reducción de costes en tiempos de crisis

Title: Unable to create a bridge on a VLAN interface bad header length 18

#tail -f /var/log/debug
Nov 25 01:09:11 ubuntu kernel: [ 1404.323217] /dev/vmnet: open called by PID 2461 (vmnet-bridge)
Nov 25 01:09:11 ubuntu kernel: [ 1404.323229] /dev/vmnet: hub 2 does not exist, allocating memory.
Nov 25 01:09:11 ubuntu kernel: [ 1404.323244] /dev/vmnet: port on hub 2 successfully opened
Nov 25 01:09:11 ubuntu kernel: [ 1404.323255] bridge-vlan2: can’t bridge with vlan2, bad header length 18
Nov 25 01:09:11 ubuntu kernel: [ 1404.323260] bridge-vlan2: enabling the bridge
Nov 25 01:09:11 ubuntu kernel: [ 1404.323263] bridge-vlan2: can’t bridge with vlan2, bad header length 18
Nov 25 01:09:11 ubuntu kernel: [ 1404.323270] bridge-vlan2: attached
Nov 25 01:09:21 ubuntu kernel: [ 1414.830009] vlan2: no IPv6 routers present

#tail -f /var/log/messages
Nov 25 01:09:11 ubuntu kernel: [ 1404.323267] bridge-vlan2: interface vlan2 is not a valid Ethernet interface

#mv /usr/lib/vmware/modules/source/vmnet.tar /tmp
#cd tmp
#tar xvf vmnet.tar
#vim /tmp/vmnet-only/bridge.c
if (bridge->dev->hard_header_len != ETH_HLEN) {

to:

if (bridge->dev->hard_header_len != ETH_HLEN && bridge->dev->hard_header_len != ETH_HLEN +4) {

#tar cvf  vmnet.tar vmnet-only
#mv vmnet.tar /usr/lib/vmware/modules/source/vmnet.tar

re-run vmware-config.pl to rebuild the kernel modules

Reference: http://communities.vmware.com/thread/112709?tstart=449

Got this from our TAM today:

Not sure if you’ve downloaded Update 1 yet, there’s an issue that was discovered last night, please see below.

Please postpone deployment of Update 1 until further notice.

Who is affected:
Customers who are using VMware vSphere ESX 4.0 and are wanting to install update 1, via VMware Update Manager (VUM).

Problem description:
Upgrading ESX 4.0 to 4.0 U1 using VUM fails or times out. Rebooting host results in a PSOD and the host has to be re-installed.

Workaround:
Please disable any 3rd party hardware monitoring agents running on the ESX 4.0 server before applying the update.

For customers that have already run into this issue and have installed the update but have not rebooted, they must contact Support.

The 3rd party agents can be enabled again after the upgrade is completed.

ESX 4.0 U1 is no longer available for download.

VMware is investigating this issue.

For additional details, see Upgrading ESX 4.0 to 4.0 U1 using Update Manager fails or times out and rebooting the host results in a purple diagnostics screen (1016070).

For all of you eager to become VCP4, today I’ve stumbled upon a nice practice exam which you can try before actually going to the actual VCP410 test. There you’ll find a couple of tests with both general questions and configuration maximum values (the latest can be found in the Configuration Maximums PDF). The most useful thing about that tests is that in the end you are given the chance to see where are your mistakes and which answers are the correct ones.

With that said – wish you all success with your VCP4 exam

For all early adopters of the latest update of the VMware hypervisor – please be aware that yesterday VMware identified a problem that could lead to a Purple Screen of Death. For more information read the full KB article

Buzzword or not, Cloud Computing has been the subject of many discussions in the current IT industry that struggle to reduce costs. Vendors have been working tightly with their partners in a race to find out who gets first to the market and with the winning platform.

Service Providers are hopeful that organisations will start transferring their workloads to the public cloud and even Telecom operators are embracing the optimized datacenter hosting solutions, and are creating new arms and divisions to compete in this new segment. Other market engagements such as the VCE coalition reinforces how important and lucrative this market is.

The Australian market is relatively small; however Australia is the most virtualised country in the world, per capita, according to Paul Maritz, VMware CEO, during his keynote for the vForum’08 and reinforced by Dr. Steve Herrod, VMware CTO, during vForum’09.

This large adoption has ignited the local competition and as I write this article I am aware of at least 4 different organisations working towards some sort of Cloud Computing offering.

Despite all discussions and controversy of what exactly Cloud Computing is; self-nominated Cloud Computing providers started to offload to the market their offerings. For the purpose of this article I have decided to use IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) as the nomenclature moving forwards as it provides better clarification of what is being offered and compared.

For the last week or so I have tested two IaaS offerings: Melbourne IT (beta) and Rejila. Both providers offered me with free evaluation period. Despite both providers run their IaaS in a VMware platform they have a complete different set of features, configurations and tools available.

IaaS or Utility Computing

Rejila uses a combination of VMware, Cisco HA network with multiple upstream, and has developed their own set of tools to integrate with vCenter. Yet, according to Rejila they are working with VMware in terms of their APIs and the vCloud program. Their DC is located in Sydney Global Switch with a DR facility in Melbourne.
Update/Correction: Rejila’s parent company is established managed host UltraServe, and their 2nd facility is in Brisbane.

I was not able to get any information from Melbourne IT so I can only say that they also use VMware and are making use of the new vCloud Express API’s.

Templates and Provisioning

Both services require the creation of a VDC (Virtual DataCenter) and in the Melbourne IT platform an additional vAPP container creation is compulsory. Only then a virtual server can be created.

The first noticeable difference is the number of templates provided for creation of virtual servers, however while Melbourne IT provides a pre-defined set of templates with single CPU and up to 4GB RAM, Rejila allows you to customise your server. The Rejila offering currently allows you to customise servers with up to 8 GB RAM and 4 CPUs.

Rejila

MelbourneIT

For Rejila, during the provisioning I was able to select the following options: number of valid Internet IP’s (6, 14 or 62), domain name, CPUs, RAM, reverse DNS and the Administrator password. Additionally a full subnet with 254 internal addresses was assigned to the virtual datacenter.

Rejila also provided me with 4 different server configuration options: LB, WEB, SQL, APP and the administrator is able to select the zone where the server is hosted: internal or external.

The provisioning process provided by Melbourne IT is simplistic and the external and internal IP addresses are automatically assigned to the VM. The Administrator password is not configurable at the provisioning time creating a possible breach of security but it is also possible to select the zone where the server is hosted: internal or external.

One thing that really bothered me on both services was the lack of information and/or configuration on the number of disks, sizes, CPU GHz and number of NICs.

The videos below demonstrate the login process, the creation of a VDC, vAPP and the provision a VM on both providers.

Melbourne IT

Rejila

Virtual Servers

After the provisioning process I was able to connect to the virtual servers.

Both CPU were using the Intel Nehalem 5520 but there was a tiny little difference that I actually had to research at Intel website. Melbourne IT uses processors (E) with memory specification DDR3 1066/800 and Rejila uses (L) DDR3-800/1066. http://ark.intel.com/Compare.aspx?ids=40201,40200,

Both providers use standard OS implementation, however despite there is not much to say about OSs some facts caught my eyes on both providers.

Rejila

• The Windows 2003 32b server provisioned by Rejila was not R2. Unless there is a compatibility concern I don’t see a reason not to deploy the R2 version.
• I could not identify a method to access the console for my virtual server and RDP was enabled by default. This could potentially be a security breach for some organisations, especially if the server has an external interface.
• Windows setup files were missing and I was not to install additional components.
• The template deployed already had some application and utilities installed such as JAVA and Windows Search 4. These applications would have to be removed if the intention is to streamline the OS.
• CDROM was connected to VMware ISO

Melbourne IT

• The template is deployed with a default Administrator password.
• Windows Update Manager downloaded, installed, updated and rebooted the server without my request or authorisation. This action would eventually cause an outage to the server and applications.

Just as observation, none of the providers is offering Antivirus as part of the solution. I suppose they are both currently investigating options to utilise the VMware vSafe APIs but so far nothing has been published.

Both Rejila and Melbourne IT have outstanding bits and pieces to be solved; however when the subject is security the story changes.

Security

When performing IP scan (ICMP) on B Class subnet range I was able to expose some security concerns on Melbourne IT IaaS implementation. Whilst for Rejila the IP scanner did not detect any devices alive on the subnet, for Melbourne IT several devices and servers alive were discovered.

Rejila has done a superior job allocating a full C Class subnet to any given virtual datacenter and protecting them from other customer’s VDCs. Unfortunately this does not mean that VMs at Rejila are more protected than at Melbourne IT, however they are less exposed.

The objective of this article is not the security of the environment, so no additional method was carried out to determine additional potential security breaches.

Bandwidth

In the next step of the test I investigated the internet bandwidth provided to each virtual machine. During the configuration process none of the providers give details of how bandwidth is allocated and charged so I assume it is somehow capped and monitored. How about charged? Will I get a surprise at the end of the month?

For my surprise Rejila is blocking the use of Verizon Speed Test so I had to find an alternative speed test.

The test was executed on a week day at 10PM using speedtest.net as the results are:

Melbourne IT – Down 12.49Mb/s Up 33.51Mb/s
Rejila – Down 24.41Mb/s Up 47.09Mb/s

Both providers have a good amount of bandwidth available to my VM. I only hope that when their datacenters start to get loaded they will be able to maintain a good VM ratio.

Billing & Reporting

On billing and reporting Rejila takes the lead, offering a better billing summary with option to see the transaction history and configure how and when the account should be recharged.

Rejila Billing Page

Melbourne IT provides only the start and end dates with the total of charge for the period; and there is option to configure how I want to be charged.

None of the providers is currently providing VM performance reports. I can’t see how organisations will be able to monitor the performance of their virtual machines and decide on hardware changes without access to vCenter reports. Am I missing something?

Another problem for some organisation will be the payment options. Currently through the website only creditcards are accepted. Most organisations will ask for the invoice payment as preferred method.

Extras

Rejila is currently offering  access to their RESTful API providing provision/get/mod/del functions four any services eg. for app integration or auto-scale. The API gives control for VMs, Load Balancing, Network, Server Templates, Billing etc.

I haven’t had the opportunity to test the application integration so I’m planning another post with some additional information on this subject.

I suppose Melbourne IT also have these capabilities but there is nothing mentioned on their website, so probably not available to the public yet.

Conclusion

Despite few hiccups with OS templates and the lack of Remote Console, Rejila is offering a more mature and consistent service than Melbourne IT. Rejila has developed an intuitive and detailed web interface that allows you to customise your servers to a higher degree. The ability to easily select and configure internal and external IP addresses, reverse DNS, billing & reporting and Domain certainly adds up value to the service provided by Rejila.

A very important point is still an open; how to manage CPU and RAM. None of the providers allows you to modify the configuration of t the server through the GUI once it has been provisioned (I am yet to confirm via API). This is a big drawback and perishes the whole purpose of IaaS, where organisations should be able to manage the environment by themselves.

Unfortunately, I have no visibility of their datacenter and infrastructure design so I can’t write about their high availability, uptime, redundancies, disaster recovery process, distributed resource scheduling etc. Perhaps Rejila and/or Melbourne IT would like to provide a insight on this subject?

For the next service update I would like to see some applications on-demand in offer and the ability to specify required limits for bandwidth.

Would I move my servers to the Cloud?

That is a tricky question that I’m constantly asked. My answer is, find a provider that you trust and start slowly moving less critical server. Once you start to feel more comfortable you may start to think about critical mass.

The idea to liberate your infrastructure and convert your CAPEX into OPEX is very interesting; and certainly facilitate life for burst demands and start-ups that otherwise would have to invest heavily in infrastructure.

As the title says, this is a birds-eye; I am planning to go deeper and write an additional post about the API integration, performance evaluation and maybe include additional providers to build a IaaS matrix of services.

Lastly, I would like to open the channel for both Rejila and Melbourne IT to express their ideas or correct me in any part of this article.

Thanks & Have Fun

Links

http://www.melbourneit.com.au/

http://www.rejila.com/

Myself and colleague Preston de Guise recently performed beta testing for the latest build of EMC NetWorker, I can only speak for my self but I was quite surprised by the  lack of regressed bugs I found and overall it’s looking very good.

I was also hoping  NetWorker 7.6 was going to show that product development teams were still expanding on NetWorker’s already existing support for virtualization and also listening to what partners and customers were asking for….Im glad to say that 7.6 has a couple of new features which I think have shown exactly that.

Hypervisor Support

This was first introduced in 7.5 (I wanted to cover this as there have been changes). NetWorker now allows an administrator to configure a single or multiple virtual center servers which allows NetWorker to display a map or table view of the VMware Infrastructure.

7.6 has added a nice feature which now incorporates the VCB Proxy server into the map, below is an example of this from my test lab.

from left to right we have vSphere host, Virtual Machine, NetWorker group showing Virtual Machines within and then to the far right we have the vcb proxy server.

The great thing about this feature is it gives you a detailed map showing which virtual machines are configured in NetWorker groups.

One of the greatest things about virtualization is we no longer talk about days and weeks to provision a new system, now we talk about minutes, especially when deploying from a template. While this has made life a tone easier for us, Ive seen many times situations where people would  create virtual machines willy nilly, put them into production and forget to notify the backup administrator of A. The existence of the virtual machine and B. The backup requirements.

This NetWorker feature makes it very easy for the backup administrator to report on virtual machines not configured in NetWorker groups.

New 7.6 VCB Functionality

Only VCB Image backup required to perform Image based or file based recovery: Now with 7.6 NetWorker can perform file level recoveries of the file system inside the VMDK file from the FULLVM backup (Windows Only) This means we no longer need to have additional groups or client instances with VCB file system savesets configured.

Directive: There is a  new VCB Directive, this when configured against a VCB client instructs networker to skip the backup of the following windows system folders, Windows\System and Windows\System32

VCB Framework Settings: Traditionally all VCB framework settings were configured in the config.js file on the proxy server, now in 7.6 this information is now stored in the proxy servers ”Application Information” client resource field. This helps to make as much of the proxy configuration visable within NetWorker as possible.

The following example displays all the possible attribute values used for VCB configuration

VCB_HOST=any.vc-or-esx.com
VCB_BACKUPROOT=G:\mnt
VCB_TRANSPORT_MODE=hotadd
VCB_VM_LOOKUP_METHOD=ipaddr
VCB_PREEXISTING_MOUNTPOINT=delete
VCB_PREEXISTING_SNAPSHOT=delete
VCB_MAX_RETRIES=2
VCB_MAX_BACKOFF_TIME=15

Single Step Recovery: Although not new to 7.6, this was introduced in NetWorker 7.5 and greatly simplifies the process of recoverying a virtual machine. Tradidtionally in prior versions, you would need to recover the FULLVM saveset back to the proxy server and then use VMware Convertor to import the machine back into virtual center. With single step recovery you just populate the fileds as shown in the screenshot below and let NetWorker do all the work. The only prerequaite for this to fuction correctly is VMware Convertor 3.0 or above must be installed on the backup server.

Notifications

Ive already mentioned NetWorkers ability to display map and table view’s of your virtual infrastucture to help identify unprotected virtual machines, but as of 7.5 and also included in 7.6 is a new notification which alerts when new virtual machines are created in your environment, but not configured in an active NetWorker group.

Ill be posting some additional information and screenshots from 7.6 testing over the next couple of days so be sure to check back.

I virtualized my domain controllers and ran across this error:

The File Replication Service has detected that the replica root path has changed from “c:\windows\sysvol\domain” to “c:\windows\sysvol\domain”. If this is an intentional move then a file with the name NTFRS_CMD_FILE_MOVE_ROOT needs to be created under the new root path.
This was detected for the following replica set:
“DOMAIN SYSTEM VOLUME (SYSVOL SHARE)”

A pretty random error and really not very informitive. What it is telling you is that the s/n of the drive has changed as far as the OS is concerned and NTFRS is not happy with it. Here is what I did to resolve the problem based on what I found on the Microsoft site:

1. Create a blank file named NTFRS_CMD_FILE_MOVE_ROOT
2. open a dos prompt and run “net stop NTFRS”
3. once complete run “net start NTFRS”
4. Wait 15 minutes and the problem resolves itself

Imagen Nuevo Rumbo

La virtualización al servicio de las empresas

Reducción de costes en tiempos de crisis

Si seguimos reduciendo espacio, vamos a vivir en espacios muy reducidos. De la misma manera, ocurre en las empresas con el almacenamiento de datos, porque la tendencia a corto plazo es ajustar las necesidades de un mundo virtual a un modelo productivo en el que se van a ahorrar numerosos costes, cuidar el consumo de energía y sensibilizar a las empresas de la importancia de optimizar el espacio como un valor en el cambio de concepto. El teletrabajo, que fue tan enunciado en los primeros compases del siglo XXI, fue un reto, sobre todo en enseñar a la sociedad las posibilidades de un trabajo responsable desde los hogares primero, luego viveros y, como sigamos con la tendencia, en centros virtuales, pero con las aplicaciones de gestión que te proporcionan las empresas para cuidar los datos de los colaboradores, trabajadores y delegaciones territoriales, que son el apoyo a la matriz o sede social. ¿Por qué decimos esto? Una de las compañías que más se ha preocupado en los últimos años de esta corriente, como es el caso de VMware, ha lanzado un conjunto de servicios en un sector que lo requiere. Las Tecnologías de la Información y la Comunicación (TIC) han introducido un esquema en el que la palabra reducción se ha quedado como de las escogidas para el análisis de las modificaciones que se realizarán en un mercado globalizado. Parece ser la clave en los tiempos que corren.

Hace tiempo veíamos películas de cine como Yakuza o Black Rain, donde se describía en escenas la forma de vida de la sociedad nipona, aunque no de forma pormenorizada, pero sí en cuanto a algunos detalles. La cuestión era el espacio, que a día de hoy tan importante es en las empresas, sobre todo cuando analizamos las arquitecturas de red y sus componentes. El ahorro de éste, la reducción de hardware, el consumo de energía, el cableado y la mejora de los sistemas de almacenamiento son las claves de un nuevo orden, el cual poco a poco demanda una virtualización real de los sistemas de información.

VMware, el fabricante más importante de soluciones de virtualización para centro de datos y escritorio, ha anunciado que su estrategia para llevar los beneficios de la virtualización a las empresas medianas ha permitido a la compañía incrementar el número de clientes en todo el mundo, incluyendo nuevos sectores, como educación, servicios financieros, sanidad, consultoría y manufacturas.

“Las soluciones VMware permiten ahorrar un tiempo valiosísimo al personal del departamento tecnológico de compañías como la nuestra, aumentando la productividad y mejorando la respuesta frente a los cambios en tiempo real. Además de la gran relación coste-efectividad de las soluciones VMware y su facilidad de despliegue, VMware ofrece un nivel de seguridad óptimo para el centro de datos que garantiza en todo momento la continuidad de todas las aplicaciones”, afirma Pedro de la Iglesia, Jefe de Organización y Sistemas de la Información en El Correo Gallego. “VMware ofrece medidas que facilitan la adquisición de sus soluciones por parte de empresas de nuestro segmento y todas ellas con el menor coste por aplicación, la verdadera manera de cuantificar el coste de las soluciones virtualizadas”.

Las soluciones de VMware permiten a las empresas que cuentan con hasta 100 servidores reducir de forma importante el tiempo que emplean los profesionales técnicos en automatizar tareas rutinarias, de forma que la productividad crezca a nuevos niveles que ayuden a responder a los desafíos de la actual coyuntura económica. Las soluciones de VMware para empresas medianas son efectivas en coste y fáciles de desplegar e incluyen protección de datos y seguridad para garantizar la continuidad y la actualización permanente de las aplicaciones. Además, las funciones específicas incluidas en la plataforma VMware vSphere, como Tolerancia a Fallos, Recuperación de datos, VMotion y vShield, ofrecen a las empresas medianas un nivel de resistencia hasta ahora sólo disfrutado por las grandes corporaciones. VMware ha creado paquetes específicos para este segmento del mercado con un coste por aplicación mucho menor.

VMware vSphere Essentials Plus Edition es ideal para empresas con 20 servidores físicos o menos y ofrece un paquete integrado que incorpora Alta Disponibilidad, Recuperación de Datos y gestión centralizada. VMware vSphere Advanced Edition es la solución ideal para garantizar la continuidad de negocio en empresas con entre 20 y 50 servidores en incluye Tolerancia a Fallos, VMware vShield Zones, VMware VMotion además de Alta Disponibilidad y Recuperación de Datos.

Durante el último año, la preferencia de las empresas medianas por VMware es más notable gracias a que este tipo de empresas entiende cada vez mejor el valor que le aporta la plataforma de VMware. VMware es el líder en la industria de la virtualización en el mercado de empresas medianas con su cuarta generación de productos específicos.

La escalabilidad y la eficiencia de la arquitectura de virtualización de VMware dejan atrás a cualquier competidor ya que permiten disminuir en un 50% la infraestructura de hardware de la empresa. Los clientes también reducen el consumo de energía, cableado, espacio físico, requisitos de enfriamiento y sistemas de almacenamiento. Además, las herramientas de automatización y gestión de VMware permiten a las empresas utilizar los recursos técnicos para tareas más estratégicas en la empresa.

“No ha existido hasta ahora un mejor momento para que las empresas medianas se aprovechen de las ventajas de la virtualización”, asegura Joe Andrews, director de marketing para Pymes en VMware. “Hasta ahora, las Pymes estaban forzadas a gastar hasta un 70% del tiempo de su personal técnico y de sus recursos en tareas repetitivas solo para mantener la situación. Sólo el 30% del trabajo técnico que se realizaba en las Pymes tenía como objetivo mejorar el crecimiento del negocio. Con las soluciones específicas para empresas medianas, hemos incrementado la adopción de virtualización hasta dar la vuelta a ese 70%/30% automatizando y simplificando la gestión de infraestructuras. Con este tipo de soluciones las Pymes pueden acceder ahora a una plataforma de clase empresarial a precios muy reducidos”.

Fuente: Departamento de Prensa de VMware.

Fecha: 24 de noviembre de 2009.

Imagen: Virtualización – http://nuevorumbo.files.wordpress.com/2008/06/la-virtualizacion-cambios-en-la-red-dia-a-dia1.jpg (JPG).

Jorge Hierro Álvarez

Consultor de Nuevas Tecnologías e Internet

http://www.jorgehierro.es

http://www.jorgehierro.com

http://www.jorgehierro.wordpress.com

http://www.jorgehierro.blogspot.com

Over at VMGuy.com, Dave has put together a great list of VMware “Administrator” type of bookmarks, and I thought I’d post a link to it here. There are several useful links on there and I’d recommend checking it out/bookmarking it!

http://vmguy.com/wordpress/index.php/admin-bookmarks

Although at first delayed for a few days, VMware View 4.0 is now out!

Thanks to VMGuy.com for the detailed info below!

View 4.0 was release for download tonight.  It can be downloaded here.  Here’s the what’s new section from the release notes:

• VMware View with PCoIP – PCoIP provides an optimized desktop experience for the delivery of the entire desktop environment including applications, images, audio, and video content for a wide range of users on the LAN or across the WAN. PCoIP can compensate for an increase in latency or a reduction in bandwidth, to ensure that end users can remain productive regardless of network conditions.
• PCoIP includes VMware View Display with support for up to four monitors and the ability to deliver the optimal resolution and pivot orientation to each monitor independently.
• VMware vSphere Support – VMware vSphere 4 support enables improved virtual machine scalability, performance, and management, with continued support for VMware Infrastructure 3.x.
• Enhanced single sign-on – The Log in as current user feature is integrated with Active Directory and smart cards to help simplify the process of logging in to a VMware View desktop.
• Restricted entitlements – Administrators can control user access to virtual desktops based on the View Connection Server being used for authentication.
• Smart card policies – Administrators can set group policies to force desktop disconnection and require reconnection when users remove smart cards.
• Domain filtering – You can use vdmadmin.exe to control the accessibility of domains and traverse trust relationships more quickly.
• You can cleanly delete View desktops using scripts.
• You can log in to View desktops using user principal names (UPN).
• You can explicitly configure IP addresses to override those supplied by the View Agent when accessing a desktop.
• Mixed Active Directory and Kerberos authentication is supported.

Thanks to VMGuy.com for the detailed info below.

The maximum uptime solution for vCenter has been upgraded to 5.5 Update 2 and can be downloaded here.  Here’s the what’s new section from the release notes:

Support for Windows Server 2008 SP1 and SP2 (x86/x64) — VMware vCenter Server Heartbeat now supports running on Windows Server 2008 SP1 and SP2 (including x86 and x64 versions) operating systems.
Support for Windows Server 2003 Enterprise SP2 (x64) — VMware vCenter Server Heartbeat now supports running on the Windows Server 2003 Enterprise SP2 (x64) operating system.
Protection of VMware vCenter Management Web Services — This release of VMware vCenter Server Heartbeat adds the vCenter Management Web Server to its list of protected vCenter Server components.
Introduction of the WinZip Self-Extracting executable file for Setup — Installation and setup of VMware vCenter Server Heartbeat is initiated through the use of a WinZip Self-Extracting executable file.
60-day evaluation mode — This release of VMware vCenter Server Heartbeat provides a built-in 60-day evaluation mode that is triggered from the date of installation. Either prior to or upon expiration of the 60-day evaluation period, administrators will need to provide a valid license key to continue to leverage VMware vCenter Server Heartbeat functionality.
Tomcat Monitoring Rule — A new rule has been added for vCenter 4.0 Tomcat Web Server availability.
Note: The term vSphere Client is applicable to both vSphere Client and VI Client except where VI Client is specifically stated.

Thanks to VMGuy.com for the detailed info below.

The little backup application that could just got better and upgraded to v1.1 and can be downloaded here.  Here’s the Enhancements section from the release notes:

File Level Restore Functionality is Officially Supported
File Level Restore (FLR) provides a way to access individual files within restore points for Windows virtual machines. In previous versions of Data Recovery, FLR was provided as an experimental feature. File Level Restore feature is now officially supported.

Integrity Check Stability and Performance Improved
The integrity check process is faster and more stable. Note that integrity checks are computationally intensive processes and can take significant periods of time. The exact amount of time integrity checks take varies based on of the size of the deduplication store. Even with these enhancements, integrity checks that take several hours are not unexpected.

Integrity Checks Provides Improved Progress Information
When an integrity check is running, a progress indicator is displayed. This progress indicator has been improved, although it does not provide the optimal level of detail.

Enhanced CIFS Shares Support

Thanks to VMGuy.com for the detailed info below.

vCenter was also updated tonight with update 1 and can be downloaded here.  Here’s the What’s new section from the release notes:
IBM DB2 Database Support for vCenter Server — This release adds support for IBM DB2 9.5 as the backend database platform for VMware vCenter Server 4.0. The following editions of IBM DB2 are supported:
IBM DB2 Enterprise 9.5
IBM DB2 Workgroup 9.5
IBM DB2 Express 9.5
IBM DB2 Express-C 9.5
VMware View 4.0 support — This release adds support for VMware View 4.0, a solution built specifically for delivering desktops as a managed service from the protocol to the platform.
Windows 7 and Windows 2008 R2 support — This release adds support for 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows 7 as well as 64-bit Windows 2008 R2 as guest operating system platforms. In addition, the vSphere Client is now supported and can be installed on a Windows 7 platform.
Pre-Upgrade Checker Tool — A standalone pre-upgrade checker tool is now available as part of the vCenter Server installation media that proactively checks ESX hosts for any potential issues that you might encounter while upgrading vCenter agents on these hosts as part of the vCenter Server upgrade process. You can run this tool independently prior to upgrading an existing vCenter Server instance. The tool can help identify any configuration, networking, disk space or other ESX host-related issues that could prevent ESX hosts from being managed by vCenter Server after a successful vCenter Server upgrade.
HA Cluster Configuration Maximum — HA clusters can now support 160 virtual machines per host in HA Cluster of 8 hosts or less. The maximum number of virtual machines per host in cluster sizes of 9 hosts and above is still 40, allowing a maximum of 1280 Virtual Machines per HA cluster.
Bug fixes described in Resolved Issues.

I have been frustrated in my Terminal Services environment because every time I seem go get my problems put to bed, they wake up again and meaner than ever. I have approximately 250 TS users with 50 users logged on at any given time. We are running Server 2003 R2 Enterprise and when I initially arrived on the scene we were running two TS machines on a Microsoft Virtual Server platform and a third on a standalone physical machine. They were load-balanced via Microsoft NLB Cluster services and would stop functioning sporadically. The only solution at the time was to tear down the NLB Cluster and rebuild it. Soon thereafter we left the Microsoft virtual environment in lieu of VMWare. We went that route specifically for Site Recovery Manager and the ability to get VM’s restored to our DR facility in fairly short order. So with that I had 3 very beefy servers geared up as ESX 4.0 Hosts. Placed them in my Virtual Center, and installed 2 VERY beefy TS machines (first mistake). I created two 4 core 8 GB servers with 100 GB of storage each. I set up a default Microsoft NLB (second mistake) to load balance both of my TS Servers.

Well, as some of you may have already experienced, it doesn’t quite work that easily. The symptom was that I could not reach the second server. In fact the second server had issues reaching the network consistently as well. After some research I found out that it was due to the way that the NLB handles mac-addresses and the NLB Cluster IP and the way that VMWare handle RARP flood requests. I am not going to deep dive right now but you can find out more about it here. . The short of it was that I needed to configure the NLB in Multicast Mode. So I did, and that too didn’t work. So I took it to the next level and disabled RARP transmission as outlined here, and all seemed good… for a while. V-Motion was acting up after that, mainly because VMWare did not notify the host that the virtual server moved. This ruined my plans for dynamic VM resource management for the entire vswitch. There had to be a better way

I dug down deeper and really began honing in on the ARP/MAC and Cluster IP issue. I started looking at my Cisco switch for ways to solve my problem. I found it. I needed to create static ARP and MAC entries in my switches directly connected to the VM Host. The following commands worked for me (edited of course)

Config t

arp 10.0.100.10 03bf.0a00.640a ARPA

mac-address-table static 03bf.0a00.640a vlan 1 int Fa0/1 Fa0/15 Fa0/16

wr mem

• Where 10.0.100.10 is the NLB Cluster IP address
  
• 03bf.0a00.640a is the virtual MAC address of the NLB Cluster itself
  
• vlan 1 is the vlan that the vswitch the VM is on
  
• Fa0/1 Fa0/15 Fa0/16 are the interfaces connecting to the VM Hosts
  

And I had stability at layer 2/3… but of course that was not good enough.

Shortly thereafter I started getting complaints that the performance was just too slow. I looked at the summary of the VM and I saw that the Consumed Host CPU was minimal and that the memory was also minimal. It was then that I started thinking virtually, not physically. VMWare has an evil habit of waiting until all the assigned cores are available before putting through a process. When I have a 4 core requirement, on a relatively busy VM Host, it takes a long time to get all 4 core’s free to get anything done. So I began to employ the Zerg Rush strategy for TS boxes (hey it worked in Starcraft). I created a small 2 core 4 GB ram TS template and deployed many of them. We have licenses for Server 2003 Enterprise and therefore had a 1 to 3 exchange rate of Physical to Virtual. I also kept most of them on the same VM Host since similar applications would be competing for 2 cores in a similar way, thus giving preference to none. My performance woes seemed to disappear, but as you can guess… seeming is believing.

There are some shortcomings of Server 2003 NLB that make this tool a bit inadequate. All the servers must be on the same network, the Affinity is configurable however restrictions based on connection number are not. If a member of NLB cluster goes down, the NLB will still attempt to route users to it. There is no reporting to speak of, and finally there is a 32 server limit. It is because of these reasons (and because of the goofy way NLB handles arp) that I decided to go with a 3^rd party NLB solution. I ended up choosing loadbalancer.org’s virtual appliance and couldn’t be happier. It uses a loopback adapter on each server with a high metric and the cluster IP to overcome the arp issue. I can choose various weighted approaches to load balancing. I get reporting, health checks, and can use the NLB for a myriad of load balancing scenarios. It was quick to set up and the servers are good to go; now I can party… I wish.

While I have a solid layer 2/3 foundation with a robust NLB setup bringing redundancy and availability to my environment, I am hamstrung at layer 7 itself. The Terminal Servers themselves were just not performing adequately for more than a couple days. I was receiving the following errors every couple days:

“Windows – Low on Registry Space – The system
has reached the maximum size allowed for the system part of the registry.
Additional storage requests will be ignored.”

“Windows was unable to load the profile but has
logged on with the default profile system. Default – Insufficient system
resources exist to complete the requested service.”

I would reset some lingering disconnected sessions as well as eventually reboot the system. All would be well for a while until the message came back. Additionally I noticed that the temporary Profiles in C:\Documents and Settings was eating up all my space. So I figured, “Hey! I have a SAN with plenty of space; I’ll just mount an iSCSI drive and put the Documents and Settings there.” I know, I’m brilliant right!

“Documents and Settings is a Windows system folder and is required for Windows to run properly. It cannot be moved or renamed.”

The problem then was that all the articles I read were really focused on an unattended install with a unattend.txt file. I already had machines in production, I didn’t want to have to build a new machine and create a new template to experiment with this plan. So I took the following article and read to the registry path edit . When I went to the registry path I found the setting to change. I changed the ProfilesDirectory entry to reflect the new iSCSI drive I had mounted. I then deleted all the non stock GUID’s (kept All users, Administrator, Default User).

I was not worried because we have roaming profiles for our users; all the profiles on that machine were temporary. I then navigated to the c:\Documents and Settings folder and deleted all the non stock profiles. I copied over the All Users, Administrator, and Default User folder to the new location and after a reboot I was done with that. Testing showed the new users getting profile creation on the new drive.

As for the registry issue, I dug up this article which made sense. The legacy printers were dragging down my user profiles and creating relics and hogging space. I added the PrinterMasKey to the HKEY_USERS\.default\printers
registry subkey and rebooted the server. That made quick work of the registry error. I made sure I was on the latest service pack then rebooted. The step-by-step is below.

To enable this hotfix, you must create the PrinterMaskKey registry subkey. To do this, follow these steps:

• Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.
• Locate the following registry subkey:
• HKEY_USERS\.default\printers
• Right-click the registry subkey that you located in step 2, point to New, click Key, type PrinterMaskKey, and then press ENTER.
• Exit Registry

When all was said and done, I then wanted to reclaim my space. I ran a defrag, emptied the recycle bin. I then downloaded sdelete , extracted the sdelete.exe file and saved it to the root of my C:\ . I then ran sdelete –c on the server to zero out all the space on my vhd. Finally I shut down the TS VM and migrated it to another store, since the drive is thin provisioned I was able to get my space back and move on from there. Now I hope I can rest… we will see.

Apenas ayer escribía sobre Chrome, el Sistema Operativo de Google y al final puse dos opciones para virtualizar este SO, una con Virtual Box y la otra con VMware.

En el especial de virtualización que traje desde Genbeta, al final hay un post en el que a manera de resumen ponían los “puntos sobre las ies” y se ponía a Virtual Box como el mejor programa para virtualizar para el usuario común que no se quiere complicar la vida y que además no tiene $$$ suficiente para comprar otras opciones.

Sin embargo hace tiempo que leí este post y no había encontrado un buen momento para ponerlo, pero creo que ya es tiempo. Hace como 2 semanas salió la nueva versión de VMware, la versión 3.

Recordemos que VMware Player es una de las herramientas gratuitas que nos ofrece VMware para probar la virtualización en nuestros ordenadores, nada que ver con virtualización a nivel profesional. La principal novedad de esta nueva versión es que incluye la posibilidad de crear máquinas virtuales, no sólo de visualizarlas, con lo cual se pone en funcionalidad al nivel de Virtual Box.

Otra de las opciones muy interesantes que incorpora VMware Player 3 es el modo fluido que incorpora, tanto para Windows como para Linux, haciendo las transiciones entre el sistema anfitrión e invitado de una forma perfecta, permitiéndonos redimensionar la ventana del invitado de forma ágil y sencilla. Soporte para la aceleración gráfica, mayor facilidad para compartir carpetas son algunas de las mejoras que incluye esta versión.

Otra de las mejoras que me ha gustado especialmente respecto a su antecesora es el soporte para dispositivos USB que ha mejorado sensiblemente, con un mejor reconocimiento de los dispositivos al igual que una mejora en la forma de gestionar los dispositivos que conectamos vía USB, que nos permite de forma sencilla elegir a qué sistema lo incorporamos si al invitado o al anfitrión.

Con esta opción de crear y administrar máquinas virtuales VMware hace una apuesta muy interesante a la hora de posicionarse en el mercado de la virtualización en el hogar y como entorno de pruebas. Simplifica en una herramienta todo lo que nos puede ofrecer la virtualización a nivel doméstico de forma más que satisfactoria, todo ello con un gran rendimiento en la aplicación que funciona de forma fluida tanto en el sistema operativo anfitrión como en el invitado. Sin duda un gran acierto de VMware.

Saludos.

Vía| Genbeta

Más información| VMware