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Virtualization Short Take #31

Wednesday, November 18, 2009 in Virtualization by slowe | 12 comments

Welcome back to yet another Virtualization Short Take! Here is a collection of virtualization-related items—some recent, some not, but hopefully all interesting and/or useful.

  • Matt Hensley posted a link to this VIOPS document on how to setup VMware SRM 4.0 with an EMC Celerra storage array. I haven’t had the chance to read through it yet.
  • Jason Boche informs us that both Lab Manager 3 and Lab Manager 4 have problems with the VMXNET3 virtual NIC. In this blog post, Jason describes how his attempts to install Lab Manager server into a VM with the VMXNET3 NIC was failing. Fortunately, Jason provides a workaround as well, but you’ll have to read his article to get that information.
  • Bruce Hoard over at Virtualization Review (disclaimer: I write a regular column for the print edition of Virtualization Review) stirred up a bit of controversy with his post about Hyper-V’s three problems. The first problem is indeed a problem, but not an architectural or technological problem; VMware is indeed the market leader and has a quite solid user base. The second two “problems” stem from Microsoft’s architectural decision to embed the hypervisor into Windows Server. Like any other technology decision, this decisions has its advantages and disadvantages (these technology decisions are a real double-edged sword). Based on historical data, it would seem that the need to patch Windows Server will impact the uptime of the Windows virtualization solution; however, this is not to say that VMware ESX/ESXi are not without their patches and associated downtime as well. I guess the key takeaway here is that VMware seems to be doing a much better job of lessening (or even removing) the impact of the downtime through things like VMotion, DRS, HA, maintenance mode, and the like.
  • Apparently there is a problem with the GA release of the Host Update utility that is installed along with the vSphere Client, as outlined here by Barry Coombs. Downloading the latest version and reinstalling seems to fix the issue.
  • And while we are on the subject of ESX upgrades, here’s another one: if the /boot partition is too small, the upgrade to ESX 4.0.0 will fail. This isn’t really anything too new and, as Joep points out, is documented in the vSphere Upgrade Guide. I prefer clean installations of VMware ESX/ESXi anyway.
  • Dave Mishchenko details his adventures (part 1, part 2, and part 3) in managing ESXi without the VI Client or the vCLI. While it’s interesting and contains some useful information, I’m not so sure that the exercise is useful in any way other than academically. First of all, Dave enables SSH access to ESXi, which is unsupported. Second, while he shows that it’s possible to manage ESXi without the VI Client or the vCLI, it don’t seem to be very efficient. Still, there is some useful information to be gleaned for those who want to know more about ESXi and its inner workings.
  • I think Simon Seagrave and Jason Boche were collaborating in secret, since they both wrote posts about using vSphere’s power savings/frequency scaling functionality. Simon’s post is dated October 27; Jason’s post is dated November 11. Coincidence? I don’t think so. C’mon, guys, go ahead and admit it.
  • Thinking of using the Shared Recovery Site feature in VMware SRM 4.0? This VMware KB article might come in handy.
  • I’m of the opinion that every blogger has a few “masterpiece” posts. These are posts that are just so good, so relevant, so useful, that they almost transcend the other content on the blogger’s site. Based on traffic patterns, one of my “masterpiece” posts is the one on ESX Server, NIC teaming, and VLAN trunking. It’s not the most well-written post I’ve ever published, but it seems to have a lasting impact. Why do I mention this? Because I believe that Chad Sakac’s post on VMware I/O queues, microbursting, and multipathing is one of his “masterpiece” posts. Like Scott Drummonds, I’ve read that post multiple times, and every time I read it I get something else out of it, and I’m reminded of just how much I have yet to learn. Time to get back out of that comfort zone!
  • Oh, and speaking of Chad’s blog…this post is handy, too.

That’s all for now, folks. Stay tuned for the next installation, where I’ll once again share a collection of links about virtualization. Until then, feel free to share your own links in the comments.

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Thinking Out Loud: Is VMware Legitimizing the Competition?

Monday, November 16, 2009 in Microsoft, Virtualization by slowe | 14 comments

I was reading a completely unrelated post on Alessandro’s site this morning about how VKernel is reacting to VMware’s release of CapacityIQ when a thought occurred to me: is VMware legitimizing the competition?

Here’s the excerpt from Alessandro’s post that started me thinking:

And of course VKernel now is also in hurry to clarify that support for Microsoft Hyper-V and Citrix XenServer is coming.

Now, let me ask you this question: what is one of the largest complaints about products like Microsoft Hyper-V and Citrix XenServer? It’s the size of the partner ecosystem. Customers are a bit more hesitant to deploy these other solutions in part because there aren’t as many partner solutions out there to complement the virtualization solutions.

So, as VMware expands into new markets like capacity management and monitoring, backups, etc., former VMware-only partners are forced to adapt their products to work with Hyper-V and XenServer in order to protect themselves. This causes the size of the partner ecosystem for VMware’s competitors to grow, eliminating that complaint and removing one of VMware’s competitive advantages. In effect, VMware’s own actions are building out the partner ecosystem for their competitors and thus legitimizing the competition.

Am I crazy? Am I wrong? What is a company like VMware to do, if anything? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

UPDATE: Some readers have pointed out, rightfully so, that “legitimizing” isn’t really the best word to use here. Perhaps “assisting” or “helping” is a better word?

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VM Hardware Version 7 and Windows Server 2008

Saturday, October 31, 2009 in Microsoft, Virtualization by slowe | 2 comments

Stu over at vInternals posted an article a couple of days ago about a problem he encountered with VMware vSphere and Windows Server 2008. Apparently, there is an unexpected behavior with Windows Server 2008 and VM hardware version 7 that is described in this VMware KB article. Stu, however, was seeing the behavior not on upgrading VMs from VM hardware version 4 to VM hardware version 7, but on new virtual machines created from the beginning with VM hardware version 7.

According to an update on Stu’s article, VMware has acknowledged this as a bug and will be investigating a fix to the problem. Until then, follow Stu’s advice and speak to your VMware account team if you are experiencing this problem. If you are getting ready to proceed with a VMware vSphere upgrade and have Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Edition VMs in place, keep this behavior in mind and plan accordingly.

Thanks to Stu for bringing this matter to light!

UPDATE: Stu posted an update with more information and an explanation for the unexpected behavior, so be sure to check it out.

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VMware HA, VMware FT, and OS Clustering

Friday, October 30, 2009 in Microsoft, Virtualization by slowe | 15 comments

With the release of VMware vSphere 4 earlier this year, VMware officially introduced VMware Fault Tolerance (VMware FT), a new mechanism for providing extremely high levels of availability to virtual machine workloads. As I’ve talked with customers, I’ve noticed a growing number of customers who are unaware of the differences between the types of high availability that VMware provides (in the form of VMware HA and VMware FT) and operating system-level clustering (such as Microsoft Windows Failover Clustering). Although both types of technology are intended to increase availability and reduce downtime, they are very different and offer different types of functionality.

Consider these points:

  • While using VMware HA will protect you against the failure of an ESX/ESXi host, VMware HA won’t—by default—protect you against the failure of the guest operating system. An OS-level cluster, on the other hand, does protect against the failure of the guest operating system. +1 for OS-level clustering.
  • VMware clusters that are using VMware HA can choose to use VM Failure Monitoring and gain some level of protection against the failure of the guest operating system, but you still won’t get protection of the specific application within the guest operating system, unlike an OS-level cluster. +1 for OS-level clustering.
  • These same arguments also apply to VMware FT. VMware FT won’t protect you against guest operating system failure—a crash of the OS in the primary VM generally means a crash of the OS in the secondary VM at the same time—and it won’t protect you against application failure. +1 for OS-level clustering.
  • You can’t failover between systems using VMware HA or VMware FT in order to perform OS upgrades or apply OS patches. +1 for OS-level clustering.
  • Similarly, you can’t failover between systems using VMware HA or VMware FT in order to do a rolling upgrade of the application itself. +1 for OS-level clustering.
  • Of course, the VMware technologies do have some advantages. Both VMware HA and VMware FT are far, far simpler to enable and configure than an OS-level cluster. +1 for VMware.
  • Both VMware HA and VMware FT don’t require any application support in order to protect the VM and its workloads. +1 for VMware.
  • Neither VMware HA nor VMware FT require that you license specific editions of the guest operating system or application in order to be able to use their benefits. +1 for VMware.
  • VMware HA can produce higher levels of utilization within a host cluster than using OS-level clustering. +1 for VMware.
  • VMware FT can provide higher levels of availability than what is available in most OS-level clustering solutions today. +1 for VMware.

This is not a knock against any of technologies listed—VMware HA, VMware FT, or OS-level clustering—but rather an exploration of their advantages, disadvantages, similarities, and differences. Hopefully, this will help readers who might not be as familiar with these products make a more informed decision about which technologies to deploy in their data center. (Hint: You’ll probably need all of them.)

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Virtualization Short Take #29

Thursday, August 27, 2009 in Networking, PASS, Storage, Virtualization by slowe | 2 comments

I wanted to go ahead and get another issue of Virtualization Short Takes out the door before VMworld, as I suspect that I’ll be covered up both during and for some time after VMworld. So, here’s my latest collection of links and articles about virtualization, storage, and anything else I find interesting.

  • Chad Sakac brings up an important issue for EMC CLARiiON users also using vSphere and iSCSI; be sure to read the full post for all the details. Basically, this bug in the FLARE code puts us back to using multiple IP subnets to scale iSCSI traffic. Bummer. I imagine they’ll get it fixed up pretty quick, but until then it’s back to the old way of scaling IP-based storage traffic. Chad’s posts on VMware-storage integration (Part 1 and Part 2) are good reads as well.
  • Nick Triantos weighs in with a good post on how to configure ALUA support and Round Robin I/O in vSphere. This looks useful; too bad the old NetApp gear I have in the lab won’t run the latest Data ONTAP version so I can test this myself. Oh, and you should also check out Nick’s post on the NetApp Collector and Analyzer for Virtual Environments, which looks like it might be a handy tool for sizing NetApp storage environments.
  • Duncan Epping points out a couple of issues related to VMFS block size in this post on snapshots and block size. Good find!
  • Ben Armstrong puts up a great post about competitive arguments. I have to say that I have a new respect for Ben after reading this post. He’d always presented himself very professionally, but his open approach to comparing virtualization products is very refreshing, and one that I wish more people would adopt. I’m particularly impressed that Ben quoted Proverbs 27:17 in his post.
  • Aaron Sweemer posted a newsletter from a co-worker on his site that has some great information. You should definitely have a look, I think you’ll find something useful there.
  • Rick Scherer posted the steps necessary to remove a rogue vCenter Chargeback plug-in. Useful, but I wish all plug-ins provided a mechanism like this.
  • Jason Nash brings to light a bug in Cisco Nexus 1000V when used in conjunction with CNAs. Be sure to have a look if this has any similarity to your environment. Like Jason, I have some Gen 1 Emulex CNAs so I may run into the same issue myself as I build out the Nexus hardware in the lab.
  • The Systems Engineer (no name provided) gives a handy one-line command to map ESX datastores to EMC CLARiiON LUNs. I’ll have to give this one a try once I get my CLARiiON up and running.
  • Somewhere along the way I picked up the URL to this VMware KB article about problems with iSCSI or NFS over an EtherChannel link. Hmmm, that looks interesting, but when you read the article it points out that the issue exists when you are using EtherChannel but the vSwitch is configured as “Route based on originating virtual port ID.” That’s a configuration mismatch—of course you’re going to have problems! Simply change the vSwitch to “Route based on ip hash” (the strongly recommended setting when using EtherChannel) and the problems go away.
  • Stevie Chambers (formerly of VMware, now with Cisco) posts about 10 technology advances since 2005. The article is mostly about the Intel Xeon 5500 CPUs and a couple other features specific to Cisco’s Unified Computing System (UCS); namely, the Palo adapter and the Catalina ASIC. While he wanders a bit, I think Stevie’s point is about how virtualization architects and operations staff need to understand the impact of these technologies and how they affect the virtualization solution—a useful point, indeed.
  • Paul Fazzone has a couple of great posts on the Cisco Nexus 1000V: first an article with an overview of VM network security with the Nexus 1000V, then a second article describing how the Nexus 1000V compares to multiple vSwitches. Both are good reads for people seeking a bit more information on deployment scenarios for the Nexus 1000V.
  • Computerworld posted this article about the 7 half-truths of virtualization. The underlying point behind all of these “half-truths” is that in order for an organization to really reap the benefits of virtualization, that organization needs to change, to adapt, and to grow with the virtualization initiative. If you just virtualize and don’t change anything else, your ROI will be limited at best. I particularly agree with #5: if you’re investigating VDI for short-term cost savings, you’re barking up the wrong tree.
  • This is kind of cool. I might put this on my home network.
  • I haven’t had my chance to talk with Arista yet, but I’m surprised that there hasn’t been more buzz around their announcement of vEOS. In fact, I had to hear about it (other than a very brief e-mail from Doug Gourlay) from a Cisco contact! How crazy is that? I suppose, as I mentioned on Twitter, that Arista is going to make a big push next week during VMworld 2009 in San Francisco.

That wraps up this edition of Virtualization Short Takes. Next week will be a busy week; look for lots of coverage from the conference in San Francisco as well as summaries of my vendor meetings (and there are lots of them!). Until then, take care!

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SVVP Certifications for VMware vSphere

Wednesday, June 24, 2009 in Microsoft, Virtualization by slowe | No comments

VMware has completed Microsoft Server Virtualization Validation Program (SVVP) certifications for both VMware vSphere 4.0 as well as ESX/ESXi 3.5 Update 4. This brings the list of SVVP-certified products to include:

  • VMware vSphere 4.0 (ESX 4.0 and ESXi 4.0)
  • VMware ESX 3.5 Update 4
  • VMware ESXi 3.5 Update 4
  • VMware ESX 3.5 Update 3
  • VMware ESXi 3.5 Update 3
  • VMware ESX 3.5 Update 2

According to my contacts within VMware—and many of you have probably heard the same—the company is seeking to achieve SVVP certification for every ESX and ESXi release from 3.5 Update 2 onward for the maximum supported configuration of both CPUs and RAM on both Intel and AMD platforms. That includes both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows Server.

You can view the full list of SVVP-certified platforms here.

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vSphere Virtual Machine Upgrade Process

Monday, June 1, 2009 in Gestalt, Microsoft, Virtualization by slowe | 25 comments

Upgrading a VMware Infrastructure 3.x environment to VMware vSphere 4 involves more than just upgrading vCenter Server and upgrading your ESX/ESXi hosts (as if that wasn’t enough). You should also plan on upgrading your virtual machines. VMware vSphere introduces a new hardware version (version 7), and vSphere also introduces a new paravirtualized network driver (VMXNET3) as well as a new paravirtualized SCSI driver (PVSCSI). To take advantage of these new drivers as well as other new features, you’ll need to upgrade your virtual machines. This process I describe below works really well.

I’d like to thank Erik Bussink, whose posts on Twitter got me started down this path.

Please note that this process will require some downtime. I personally tested this process with both Windows Server 2003 R2 as well as Windows Server 2008; it worked flawlessly with both versions of Windows. (I’ll post a separate article on doing something similar with other operating systems, if it’s even possible.)

  1. Record the current IP configuration of the guest operating system. You’ll end up needing to recreate it.
  2. Upgrade VMware Tools in the guest operating system. You can do this by right-clicking on the virtual machine and selecting Guest > Install/Upgrade VMware Tools. When prompted, choose to perform an automatic tools upgrade. When the VMware Tools upgrade is complete, the virtual machine will reboot.
  3. After the guest operating system reboots and is back up again, shutdown the guest operating system. You can do this by right-clicking on the virtual machine and selecting Power > Shutdown Guest.
  4. Upgrade the virtual machine hardware by right-clicking the virtual machine and selecting Upgrade Virtual Hardware.
  5. In the virtual machine properties, add a new network adapter of the type VMXNET3 and attach it to the same port group/dvPort group as the first network adapter.
  6. Remove the first/original network adapter.
  7. Add a new virtual hard disk to the virtual machine. Be sure to attach it to SCSI node 1:x; this will add a second SCSI adapter to the virtual machine. The size of the virtual hard disk is irrelevant.
  8. Change the type of the newly-added second SCSI adapter to VMware Paravirtual.
  9. Click OK to commit the changes you’ve made to the virtual machine.
  10. Power on the virtual machine. When the guest operating system is fully booted, log in and recreate the network configuration you recorded for the guest back in step 1. Windows may report an error that the network configuration is already used by a different adapter, but proceed anyway. Once you’ve finished, shut down the guest operating system again.
  11. Edit the virtual machine to remove the second hard disk you just added.
  12. While still in the virtual machine properties, change the type of the original SCSI controller to VMware Paravirtual (NOTE: See update below.)
  13. Power on the virtual machine. When the guest operating system is fully booted up, log in.
  14. Create a new system environment variable named DEVMGR_SHOW_NONPRESENT_DEVICES and set the value to 1.
  15. Launch Device Manager and from the View menu select Show Hidden Devices.
  16. Remove the drivers for the old network adapter and old SCSI adapter. Close Device Manager and you’re done!

If you perform these steps on a template, then you can be assured that all future virtual machines cloned from this template also have the latest paravirtualized drivers installed for maximum performance.

Post any questions or clarifications in the comments. Thanks!

UPDATE: Per this VMware KB article, VMware doesn’t support using the PVSCSI adapter for boot devices. That is not to say that it doesn’t work (it does work), but that it is not supported. Thanks to Eddy for pointing that out in the comments!

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This VMworld Thing is Like Watching a Train Wreck

Saturday, May 30, 2009 in Microsoft, Virtualization by slowe | 23 comments

Watching VMware destroy their public image over this VMworld exhibitor agreement is like watching a train wreck: you want to take your eyes off of it, but it’s just so awful and so terrible that you’re mesmerized.

In case you don’t have any idea what’s going on, jump over and give this post a quick read. Done? OK, let’s continue.

In the update to that post, I said that VMware had clarified their position and that competition would be allowed at VMworld. Being the person that I am—I tend to take people at their word and trust that they are as honest and straightforward as I am—I left it at that. I was a bit curious to know why the exhibitors’ agreement contained language that was specifically targeted at their competition if all they wanted was a way to prevent exhibitors from behaving in an unseemly fashion, but rather than stirring up waters that had already been muddied I would just let things settle and see what happened.

Well, what happened was that Brian Madden—whom I have no reason not to trust, but at the same time I don’t know him personally—reports here that VMware is restricting the size of the booth that both Microsoft and Citrix are allowed to use. According to Brian, only VMware TAP Partners are allowed larger booths.

Alessandro Perilli—whom I do know personally, and I whom I know wouldn’t publish anything unless he was quite certain of his sources—also refers to Brian’s post in his own post here, lending further credibility to the claims of VMware’s actions.

So, let’s sum it up:

  • VMware adds language to their exhibitors’ agreement that is specifically targeted at their competitors in an effort to prevent unseemly behavior at VMworld.
  • VMware claims that competition will be allowed and they want to encourage a rich ecosystem of partners and competitors.
  • VMware limits their two key competitors, Microsoft and Citrix, to a 10 foot-by-10 foot booth, and further states that exhibitor employees must remain in the boundaries of their booth. (To be fair, VMware is also refusing to take their money for a larger booth.)

I tell my kids all the time, “Actions speak louder than words.” What would you derive from VMware’s actions?

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VMware, This is Wrong

Thursday, May 28, 2009 in Microsoft, Virtualization by slowe | 11 comments

UPDATE: VMware has clarified their position; they will allow competitors to exhibit at VMworld. The text in the exhibitors agreement was legalese—supposedly consistent with other major vendor-sponsored conferences—meant to give them an out in the event an exhibitor behaves inappropriately.

I sincerely hope that Brian Madden is wrong about the recent change to vendor policies for VMworld.

This is exactly the wrong thing to do in this sort of competitive landscape. You know, earlier this week on the Virtual Thoughts podcast, I was defending VMworld’s move into the territory of their former ISVs with products like vCenter Data Recovery, vCenter Chargeback, and vCenter ConfigControl. After all, VMware is a publicly owned company, and they have to show value to their shareholders. But this? This doesn’t have anything to do with showing value to the shareholders. This is like a spoiled little kid saying, “This is my sandbox, and you can’t play in it.”

What are you going to do, VMware? Let’s see, you’re expanding into the territory formerly handled by many of your ISVs, and now you’re blocking access to competing products at VMworld. So who will be at VMworld? Let’s see…

  • Vizioncore can’t come, because vRanger Pro overlaps functionality VMware will provide in vCenter Data Recovery. And vFoglight overlaps with CapacityIQ.
  • VKernel can’t come; again, they overlap with CapacityIQ.
  • As Brian Madden mentioned, Quest won’t be there due to a conflict with VMware View.
  • Microsoft won’t be there, because they won’t be able to talk about Hyper-V. True, they could come and not talk about Hyper-V, but I suspect they’ll also act like a spoiled child by saying, “If we can’t play by our rules, we won’t play at all.” Hmm…considering 90-95% of all the workloads running on VMware are Microsoft Windows, that’s an interesting situation to create. Oh, and VMware: are you prepared to be excluded from Tech-Ed too?
  • Ditto for Citrix. And probably ditto for being allowed to exhibit at Synergy. So much for VMware vSphere being the best platform on which to run XenApp—you won’t get the chance to make that claim!
  • Leostream? Nope—conflicts/overlaps with VMware View.
  • What about Hyper9? Not sure, vCenter Server 4.0 does provide a Search feature now, so that could potentially preclude Hyper9 from coming, too.
  • Surely Veeam could come, but they can’t talk about Veeam Backup (conflicts with vCenter Data Recovery).
  • esXpress? Nope.
  • Hardware vendors—IBM, HP, Dell—will be there.
  • Storage vendors—EMC, NetApp, HP, Compellent, Dell—will be there.
  • Networking vendors like Cisco and HP will be there. Unless VMware thinks that HP’s networking functionality isn’t complementary enough to its own virtual networking functionality…

I’m sure that I’ve overlooked some companies, but it sounds to me like the vast majority of the third-party ISVs now find themselves precluded from exhibiting at VMworld, in addition to finding themselves competing head-to-head with VMware in their own markets. Looks like the exhibit hall is going to be a lot less crowded this year!

Is VMware the new Microsoft? I’ll let you answer that one on your own.

Disclaimer: Before anyone jumps the gun and says otherwise, note that these opinions are mine, and are not endorsed by my employer or any vendor or other organization.

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Sanbolic Brings Snapshots to Melio FS

Tuesday, May 5, 2009 in Microsoft, Storage by slowe | 9 comments

Sanbolic is continuing to differentiate its clustered file system, Melio FS, in advance of the rudimentary clustered file system Microsoft plans on introducing in Windows Server 2008 R2. In an announcement last week, Sanbolic announced support for fully journaled snapshots. This functionality allows any server accessing the clustered file system to invoke a snapshot. The new snapshot functionality provides support for VSS and “full industry standard APIs,” although I’m not really sure what those “full industry standard APIs” are exactly.

You can download the full press release describing the new functionality here.

Separately, Sanbolic also announced that Melio FS fully supports Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008; more information on that is also available.

Now, if only Sanbolic would port Melio FS to VMware ESX/ESXi, then we could have some really interesting discussions. Snapshot functionality built into the shared file system, anyone?

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