VMware VCB – Dead as a Doornail. Veeam to the Rescue.

March 8, 2010 in VMware, VMware Backups, Veeam, vDR by admin | No comments

If you haven’t heard, the “legacy” backup method of using VMware VCB will be removed from the next release of vSphere, and the “modern” method will be to use the VMware Storage APIs for Data Protection (VADP). From the letter:

The purpose of this letter is to inform you of our vSphere backup product strategy, ongoing enhancements, and end of availability plans for VMware Consolidated Backup.

VMware Backup Product Strategy
VMware released vStorage APIs for Data Protection (VADP) with the vSphere 4.0 release in May, 2009. VADP is the next generation of VMware’s backup framework. We have also been working with several backup partners to integrate VADP into their solutions to make backup of vSphere Virtual Machines fast, efficient and easy to deploy compared to VCB and other backup solutions. Several of our major backup partners have already released VADP integrated backup products and we expect most of the major backup partners to have VADP integrated backup software by the upcoming feature release of the vSphere platform in 2010.

Future Product Licensing
Given the strong interest and adoption of VADP by our backup eco-system and the benefits offered by VADP compared to VMware Consolidated Backup (VCB), we are announcing the End of Availability for VCB starting with next vSphere feature release in 2010. Starting with the next vSphere platform feature release, VCB will be removed from vSphere platform. VADP integrated backup products (including VMware Data Recovery) will be the recommended option for efficient backup and restoration of vSphere Virtual Machines. This will allow us to focus new value added feature development on VADP instead of two backup frameworks (VCB and VADP).”

This means if you plan on upgrading to vSphere and use VCB, you will want to have in your planning and budgeting a way to migrate to a backup vendor that supports VADP. Contact your preferred backup vendor today to see what their plans are for VADP support.

I personally recommend Veeam Backup and Replication ( HiperLogic is a Veeam Gold Partner, so maybe I am a bit biased) for the simple matter of fact that ESX 3.5 users can use it today with their 3.5 installation, and migrate seamlessly to current and future vSphere releases. There is some peace of mind that the mechanism you back up with today will let you restore tomorrow.

VMware has a backup appliance bundled with vSphere that uses VADP known as vDR (VMware Data Recovery), but as of the current vSphere release I typically don’t recommend it, see the post on this subject vDR vs Veeam Backup. It is quite possible that VMware’s vDR product will get some more development pumped into it once VCB is removed from vSphere this year, by then though Veeam SureBackup will be out.

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5 Tips for Speeding up VMware Clone from Template

March 8, 2010 in VMware by admin | No comments

There are variety of factors that influence the speed of cloning from a template, this post is to highlight some of the big wins if you are having issues:

Read the VMware kb article 1004002 and 1004028

First, you should start with this VMware kb article 1004002 which addresses some of the basics, if you have only one template that is creating a problem see kb article 1004028

Templates should be in their own datastore. – A Best Practice

By storing templates in their own datastore the  read intensive I/O ( reading template ) is separated from the write intensive I/O ( writing new VM from template ). With NFS in particular, ESX only uses one TCP stream per datastore, so by using different datastores ( a best practice) the time to create a VM from a template may be reduced.

Thick and eager zero – The slow boat to China

Don’t deploy your VM to be thick and eager zero, deploying thick and eager zero will be MUCH slower than thin or zero thick.

Simply not enough spindles. – The immutable laws of Physics

Creating a VM from template is intense, you are reading the template and writing a new VM both of which are single large block sequential I/O stream operations. If you simply don’t have enough spindles, the amount of I/O you can push will be limited. Going forward Solid State Drives (SSD’s) may eliminate the issue of “spindle count”.

Tune Your Storage

There are multiple ways to tune your storage assuming you have sufficient spindles, like write caching, stripe size, RAID choice, and so on. This is vendor specific to some degree and beyond a 5 tips article. :-) If you are on ESX 3.5 ( not vSphere) see VMware kb article 1003469 for a I/O tunable that can help speed up large block disk I/O.

Configuring syslog on ESXi

February 4, 2010 in ESXi, PowerShell, Scripting by admin | No comments

To configure syslog on ESXi to forward to a central logger, you can just use the VIC and go to Configuration->Advanced Setting->Syslog ->Remote.

To do this on a bunch of ESXi servers, you will want to do this programatically using either the vSphere vCLI (Perl) or PowerCLI (Power Shell). Get these tools free at http://www.vmware.com/go/sysadmintools.

In the vCLI :

vicfg-syslog.pl –p 514 –s < IP of your syslog server > –server < IP of your ESXi host>

Then enter root username, and root password of your ESXi host.

In Power Shell:

Set-VMHostSysLogServer -SysLogServerPort 514 –SysLogServer < IP of your syslog sever > -VMHost < IP of your ESXi host >

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Eve Online uses HPC Server 2008

January 9, 2010 in HPC Server 2008 by admin | No comments

Interesting video showing how the massive online game EVE is using HPC Server 2008, part of the game is written in MPI according to the video:

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VMware VCP Extension Until the End of January 2010.

December 29, 2009 in VMware by admin | No comments

VMware has extended the deadline for VCP3 holders to qualify for VCP4 certification without having to attend an official vSphere training course, you now have until January 31st 2010.

The free 2nd chance re-take exam offer is also extended until the end of the month, note that January 22nd 2010 would be the last day for 1st attempt at VCP4 exam if the free re-take is required since there is a cooling off period before you can take the 2nd exam. See this VMware Blog for information on how to register for the free re-take.

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vSphere Update One – Avoid the Purple Screen of Death And Other Issues During Upgrade.

November 30, 2009 in VMware by admin | No comments

If you  have not yet updated to vSphere Update One, this post is for you to avoid the purple diagnostic screen of death with the error “COS Panic: Int3 @ mp_register_ioapic ” when upgrading from ESX 4.0 to 4.0 U1 after a reboot. ( Specifically if you are using HP’s insight management agents in the COS. )

 See KB Article 1016070 for the latest.

Basically SHUT DOWN all HP COS agents before upgrading. This is only for ESX and not ESXi since there is no COS in ESXi. You should also examine 3rd party agents and plugins for compatibility in the lab before upgrading in production. For example, EMC storage viewer is broken with vSphere Update One, slated to be fixed in the EMC 2.1 release.

Make sure to read all the release notes and manual before attempting the upgrade, and have backups of course:

The vSphere Update One release notes:
http://www.vmware.com/support/vsphere4/doc/vsp_vc40_u1_rel_notes.html

The vSphere Upgrade Checklist here:
http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/vsphere-migration-prerequisites-checklist.pdf

The vSphere Upgrade guide here:
http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vsphere4/r40/vsp_40_upgrade_guide.pdf

As any new items pop up, we will update this post.

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vSphere Update 1 is Available

November 20, 2009 in Uncategorized by admin | No comments

The following information provides highlights of some of the enhancements available in this release of VMware ESX:

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 OS platforms. In addition, the vSphere Client is now supported and can be installed on a Windows 7 platform. For a complete list of supported guest operating systems with this release, see the VMware Compatibility Guide.

Enhanced Clustering Support for Microsoft Windows – Microsoft Cluster Server (MSCS) for Windows 2000 and 2003 and Windows Server 2008 Failover Clustering is now supported on an VMware High Availability (HA) and Dynamic Resource Scheduler (DRS) cluster in a limited configuration. HA and DRS functionality can be effectively disabled for individual MSCS virtual machines as opposed to disabling HA and DRS on the entire ESX/ESXi host. Refer to the Setup for Failover Clustering and Microsoft Cluster Service guide for additional configuration guidelines.

Enhanced VMware Paravirtualized SCSI Support – Support for boot disk devices attached to a Paravirtualized SCSI ( PVSCSI) adapter has been added for Windows 2003 and 2008 guest operating systems. Floppy disk images are also available containing the driver for use during the Windows installation by selecting F6 to install additional drivers during setup. Floppy images can be found in the /vmimages/floppies/ folder.

Improved vNetwork Distributed Switch Performance – Several performance and usability issues have been resolved resulting in the following:

•Improved performance when making configuration changes to a vNetwork Distributed Switch (vDS) instance when the ESX/ESXi host is under a heavy load
•Improved performance when adding or removing an ESX/ESXi host to or from a vDS instance

Increase in vCPU per Core Limit – The limit on vCPUs per core has been increased from 20 to 25. This change raises the supported limit only. It does not include any additional performance optimizations. Raising the limit allows users more flexibility to configure systems based on specific workloads and to get the most advantage from increasingly faster processors. The achievable number of vCPUs per core depends on the workload and specifics of the hardware. For more information see the Performance Best Practices for VMware vSphere 4.0 guide.

Enablement of Intel Xeon Processor 3400 Series – Support for the Xeon processor 3400 series has been added. For a complete list of supported third party hardware and devices, see the VMware Compatibility Guide.

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Thick vs Thin Disks with VMware

November 15, 2009 in Uncategorized by admin | No comments

VMware has a great new performance whitepaper on thin vs thick disk performance: 

http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vsp_4_thinprov_perf.pdf 

The summary is there is no performance impact when using thin provisioned disks compared to thick disks with VMware.

NetApp has a great resource for Thin vs Thick Basics:

http://blogs.netapp.com/virtualstorageguy/2009/10/vce-101-thin-provisioning-part-1-the-basics.html )

and a followup article looking at the advantages of de-dup and thin provisioning at the array level: 

 http://blogs.netapp.com/virtualstorageguy/2009/10/vce-101-thin-provisioning-part-2-going-beyond.html )

NetApp and VMware Guest Timeout

November 10, 2009 in NetApp by admin | No comments

During a recent customer VMware healthcheck, we noted a customer did perform the VMware NFS timeout tunings as recommended by NetApp TR-3749. However none of the guests had the correct guest level timeout tuning.

TR-3749 doesn’t explicitely spell out that you should make sure and update your guest level disk timeouts to match the NFS timeout tunings, because the TR assumes you would use the NetApp ESX host utility ( now superseded by the NetApp Virtual Storage Console ) to handle that.

Also note that these disk timeout settings if done once in the guest, may be reset through a VMware Tools upgrade. (See http://communities.vmware.com/thread/212235) so watch out.

See NetApp article kb41511 “VMware ESX Guest OS I/O Timeout Settings for NetApp Storage Systems”  for more details.

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VMware Swap- Rules of Thumb with NetApp?

November 10, 2009 in NetApp by admin | No comments

We frequently get questions from customers with NetApp if they should store the swap with the VM or on a separate datastore, and how big should they make their swap datastore.

NetApp recommends in NetApp TR-3749 to use a separate datastore, as to avoid storing “transient” data like swap when using array based snapshots or disk-to-disk replication with SnapMirror and/or SnapVault. (Also See TR-3428).

For sizing, you can thin provision and use autogrow on the NetApp side to avoid having to worry about an “exact” space figure as this space is dynamic in nature depending on the number of VM’s, the memory in those VM’s, and memory reservations, and is used only when there is memory pressure.

If you want an absolute worse case add up all the VM’s you would create with the memory you anticipate allocating to them, and use that result if you need an absolute worse case number.

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