Atlantis USX 2.2 Released

Atlantis USX is a software solution that accelerates performance and consolidates storage, increasing effective storage capacity to support running server workloads such as business-critical applications. USX builds on proven Atlantis compression, caching, deduplication, and tiering capabilities to provide a dramatically reduced storage footprint and improved performance, including built-in high availability. USX satisfies the storage requirements demanded by server workloads, removing the constraints of traditional storage.
With the new release the following new features came available.

• XenServer – USX now supports Citrix XenServer. XenServer can use any of the USX volume types. USX configuration, deployment, and management is the same for all platforms.
• New volume types:
  • The Hyper-Converged volume type supports server or VDI workloads and consumes only
    local resources. Hyper-Converged volumes are associated with an Infrastructure volume that
    provides shared storage so that the Hyper-Converged volume can migrate before entering
    maintenance mode even though the Hyper-Converged volume uses only local resources.
  • The Simple All Flash volume type supports persistent VDI deployments and enables you to
    use flash for both performance and capacity.
• Maintenance mode – A host can be placed into maintenance mode from the new Hypervisors Management screen in the USX GUI.
• Volume power operations and reboots can be performed from the Manage Volumes screen.
• LDAP authentication – Use the new LDAP Authentication screen to bind to an LDAP server so that members of a specified LDAP group can log into USX.
• Tree hierarchies are implemented for the display of datacenters, clusters, and hypervisors.
• SNMP configuration – A new document, Atlantis USX SNMP Configuration, provides a listing of the USX MIB and information about configuring USX to communicate with an SNMP trap host.

Atlantis USX 2.2 is now available in the download portal

ESX3: Scripted Install is disabled

When you click the Log In To Script Installer link, you are presented with the following error

To fix this problem you will need to login as ‘root’ to the console of your ESX host and edit a file. By default the scripted installer applet is disabled - to enable it follow the process below:

1. Log in to the console using your root account

2. Using VI or NANO open the following file /usr/lib/vmware/webAccess/tomcat/apache-tomcat-5.5.17/webapps/ui/WEB-INF/struts-config.xml

3. We need to comment out and un-comment some lines. Luckily they are in the same section. You need to find the scripted install handler section.

4. I have marked in red the line of code we need to comment out and the section to un-comment in blue, in the picture below.

To comment out the line, we use the to start the comment and close the comment using –>

5. In the screenshot below you can see the changes we have made to the section. Save the changes and exit the editor.

6. To have our changes take effect the configuration file needs to be re-read by the web server so we will need to restart the webAccess service.

Enter service vmware-webAccess restart to restart the webAccess service

Bron: xtravirt

Watching your ESX server performance in real time with ESXTOP

Very few people understand the power of the VMware Console. Even fewer know the power of esxtop, a command-line real-time monitor for the vmkernel. You can get more information here.

One of the most awesome things about esxtop is that it’s minimally intensive on resources and can be run interactively, as a batch mode or as replay worlds.

However the practice of logging in and running it with root logged in on every ESX host is a little annoying and exposes anyone with basic knowledge to the Ctrl-C kill command, and then the root prompt. Which is bad.

What I do on some of my sites is similar to what VMware does on tty11 (Ctrl+Alt+F11) - the VMware ESX Service Console Welcome Screen. Essentially, I output a dynamic interactive esxtop to one of the available tty’s (tty7-12 are disabled in ESX 3.x, so you have to use 1-5, 6 is the emergency console)

Here’s what you need to do edit in the/etc/inittab file:

Edit out the mingetty tty5 terminal by making this line:

5:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty5

…look like this:

#5:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty5

Then, insert the following bolded lines after the non-bolded line which should already exist in your /etc/inittab:

6:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty -f /etc/issue.emergency -l /bin/login.emergency tty6

# Output ESXTOP to Console/tty5
esxtop:2345:respawn:/usr/bin/esxtop -d 2 -s > /dev/tty5 < /dev/tty5

After this, reboot your ESX server and watch console 5 (Ctrl+Alt+F5) - you will see all your vmkernel performance stats, and you can control them interactively as per the instructions for esxtop which you can find by running man esxtop in the service console. Or you can read the documentation here.

Bron: http://lraikhman.blogsite.org

Hyper-V for the ESX Engineer

Aaron Delp over at BladeVault.info recently published a good article on Hyper-V for the ESX Engineer.

Read it below.

I just attended a great session on Microsoft Hyper-V. Before I go into my notes, let me give you my background to better frame this post. I used to be an MCSE (NT4!) but I really haven’t touched Microsoft products in a number of years. My focus has been on hardware architecture and eventually this has led me into the virtual architecture as it has gained acceptance into the market place. If some of my highlights seem a little different than most posts out there, it is because I am making the ESX to Hyper-V mapping in my head. I know ESX, I don’t know Windows Server 2008 (or 2003 for that matter).

With that out of the way, here are my points of interest in no particular order.

• Hyper-V is paravirtualized - paravirtualized means the virtual machine is “aware” (Microsoft uses the term enlightened) that it is virtualized. If the machine isn’t enlightened, it will run in emulation mode. Emulation mode requires a lot of context switching between user mode and kernel mode. This will understandably slow down performance.
• The Hyper-V “Service Console” is referred to as the Management Partition. This is a Windows VM with privileges into the kernel that other VMs do not have. This (at least on the surface) is similar to ESX’s Service Console.
• It is recommended to run Hyper-V on Windows Core (stripped down version with no GUI). The core version will consume less resources, require less patches, etc.
• Server 2008 has “roles” that determine the functions on the server. Hyper-V is recommended to be the only role on the server for production
• Hyper-V does not share memory pages
• Hyper-V has quick migration instead of VMotion. Instead of a live migration, the machine is suspend and resumed on another host. The amount of memory will have a direct impact on the amount of time required because the memory contents will written to the disk and then read from the disk on the new host.
• Hyper-V relies on Microsoft Clustering Services right now to provide multiple host functionality for SAN connected virtual machines. This means that Enterprise Edition is the minimum required OS level for the host to perform Quick Migrations
• It is recommended that each LUN contain only one VM. Space needed will be disk space required + virtual RAM assigned to the machine (for quick migrations) + room for snapshots of the virtual machine
• Live Backups of a VM are supported through VSS if the guest OS is VSS aware
• Virtual Hard Disk files are .vhd files instead .vmdk files for ESX
• Raw Device Mapping (RDM) in ESX is called Pass Through Disks in Hyper-V

At the end of the session we briefly covered the Microsoft Enterprise Management Product (think Virtual Center). It is part of Microsoft System Center and is called SCVMM (System Center Virtual Machine Manager). Here are some points for this product.

• Since Distributed Resource Scheduling doesn’t exist today for Hyper-V, they support the idea of Intelligent Placement of a VM onto the farm. This data is configurable but the SCVMM basically tracks performance of the hosts over a recent time period in an attempt to recommend the best placement of the new virtual machine on a host.
• The entire product is driven by Windows Power Shell and is completely customizable, exportable, etc.
• Upcoming version of the product will support ESX and well as Hyper-V. In order to support ESX, an existing Virtual Center will be required for SCVMM to interface. (Think single pane of glass for management). I have my doubts on this one but I’m curious.
• Self Service Portal - End Users will be able to provision their own machines. Again, I’d have to see this one.

bron: http://www.bladevault.info

Whitepaper: VMware ESX Security Technical Implementation Guide

The need for security the virtualization hosts is growing.
In the last year several key entities released a series of guides and tools to help the customers in hardening the virtual infrastructures. Here some examples:

• In February 2007 VMware released a 19-pages security guide for VI 3.x
• In October 2007 the Center for Information Security (CIS) released a 70-pages security guide for ESX 3.x hosts
• In June 2008 Tripwire released a free configuration manager tool for ESX hosts, developed in collaboration with VMware

Since April 2008 the US Department of Defense can be added to this list, with a new 100-pages security guide which covers almost every aspect of VI 3.5 implementation.

Upgrading to ESX 3.5 and VirtualCenter 2.5 Best Practices

The following are best practice procedures when upgrading to VirtualCenter 2.5 and ESX Server 3.5:

To be done on VirtualCenter:

1. Backup your VirtualCenter database. VMware recommends detaching the database and copying it to somewhere safe.
2. Grant the System DSN user of the VirtualCenter Database db_owner privileges on the MSDB database as well as the VirtualCenter database.
3. Ensure that your ODBC System DSN is using the proper driver. You must have a SQL Server driver if your database is SQL 2000, and SQL Native Client driver if using SQL 2005.
4. Log in to your VirtualCenter server with a local Administrator account on your Windows system to run the installation, do not use a domain administrator or a domain account.
5. Perform the upgrade to VirtualCenter to 2.5 and ensure all your data is visible in VirtualCenter 2.5 after the upgrade.
6. Ensure no processes are running that conflict with the ports that VirtualCenter uses, such as IIS.
   

To be done on ESX Server host:

1. If there is a SAN connected to your ESX Server host detach the SAN before continuing with the upgrade.
2. Confirm that all the virtual machines are now migrated from the ESX Server host or powered down, and that ESX Server host is no longer part of an VMware High Availability or DRS cluster.
3. Download the newest version of the ESX operating system ISO image and burn it to CD.
4. Place the CD in the CD-ROM drive of the host and boot from the CD.
5. Install ESX Server 3.5 with a fresh install or upgrade.
   

Note: A fresh install wipes out all previous network configuration.

VMware Workstation 6.5 Beta 2 released

Latest Version: Beta 2 | 6/23/08 | Build 99530

Can I start a VM in ESX 3.5 on WS 6.5 ? Yes we can
The beta 2 of VMware Workstation contains a permanent fix for this problem......

New Features in VMware Workstation 6.5:

-Seamless integration of guest & host applications with Unity
-Advanced VM Record and Replay with Visual Studio integration
-Support for Smart Cards & Smart Card Readers
-Link state propagation networking
-Enhanced ACE authoring capabilities
-Easy Install Option's support for Linux
-Improved 3D graphics Support
-Virtual Machine Streaming

BRON: NTpro

Sanbarrow's VMware-liveCD

Ulli Hankeln over at Sanbarrow created a new version of the VMware-liveCD this version contains:

-Workstation 6.0.2 ripped
-Converter 3.0.3 cold clone mode
-ViClient for ESX 3.5.0 u1
-RemoteCli
-Virtual Disk Developement Kit
-ViToolkit for Powershell

The complete build is about 450 MB - it requires a box with at least 512 MB RAM to load the dotnet2 apps. Latest MOA 2.3.-011 now allows to run ESX 35i in WS 6.5. beta 91182. In this case the ESX 35i is running from the LiveCD - you can of course mount any local VMFS-volumes and assign them to the ESX 35i. Obviously you need a fat machine to run this LiveCD Of course it still works as a simple Cold Clone CD .