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Multiport Uplink Driver

Friday, December 4, 2009 in Networking, Virtualization by slowe | 2 comments

Virtual I/O is getting more attention. This press release from Chelsio crossed my desk this morning:

Virtual Multi-port Software allows for consolidation of switch ports and cabling by using 10Gb infrastructure while maintaining the existing Gigabit-based ESX setup. The software enables the consolidation by keeping the infrastructure update completely transparent to the ESX hypervisor, enabling a 10Gb adapter to appear to the hypervisor as eight virtual Gigabit adapters. By offloading the tasks performed by the hypervisor, the Chelsio adapters can deliver the best I/O performance for virtualized applications.

There’s no mention of SR-IOV (more information on SR-IOV is available in this post), so I’m guessing that this is a proprietary technology similar to what HP is using in Virtual Connect Flex-10. The key difference with HP Virtual Connect Flex-10 and the Chelsio solution is that Flex-10 doesn’t require any software support in the OS or hypervisor, whereas Chelsio’s solution does require software support (as does SR-IOV). Nevertheless, it’s clear that I/O virtualization—even relatively simple forms of I/O virtualization such as this—is gaining more and more attention.

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vSphere 4.0 Quick Start Guide

Wednesday, December 2, 2009 in Virtualization by slowe | 6 comments

It’s funny how ideas evolve. Months ago, the idea of a “super blog” came up in a series of Twitter conversations. Stephen Foskett (@sfoskett on Twitter) ran with that idea to create Gestalt IT; Duncan Epping (@DuncanYB on Twitter) ran with that idea to create vSphere 4.0 Quick Start Guide: Shortcuts down the path of Virtualization.

I didn’t, unfortunately, get a chance to actually have a look at the QSG (easier to type than “Quick Start Guide”) until this past week. Some preview copies were given away at VMworld 2009 in San Francisco, but I didn’t manage to get a copy. After having some time to review it briefly this past week—I still haven’t read the entire book cover-to-cover—I must say that I am impressed.

What I’ve seen of the book is thorough, detailed, and takes a “common sense” approach to providing how-to information on VMware vSphere. In this respect, it’s a lot like my second book, VMware vSphere 4 Administration Instant Reference, which I co-wrote with Jase McCarty and Matthew Johnson and which will be officially released later this month (pre-orders available on Amazon right now). One thing that I do like about the QSG is the integration of PowerCLI at every stage. This makes it super-easy for aspiring PowerCLI gurus to learn their way around the cmdlets and how to put them together. It’s an idea I wish I’d thought of doing! Overall, given the breadth of coverage and the detail provided, the QSG does a great job.

If you’re looking for a how-to guide on VMware vSphere, buy both my book and the QSG for the most extensive coverage. Both books—mine or the QSG—provide excellent coverage on their own; the QSG certainly excels in the practical application of PowerCLI to the administration tasks. Either would be a great choice. To Duncan, Thomas, Dave, Stuart, Alan, and Bernie: great work, guys!

Here are links to both books on Amazon.com:

vSphere 4.0 Quick Start Guide: Shortcuts down the path of Virtualization

VMware vSphere 4 Administration Instant Reference

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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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Storage Short Take #5

Tuesday, November 17, 2009 in Storage by slowe | 6 comments

I’ve decided to resurrect my Storage Short Take series, after almost a year since the last one was published. I find myself spending more and more time in the storage realm—which is completely fine with me—and so more and more information coming to me in various forms is related to storage. While I’m far from the likes of storage rockstars such as Robin Harris, Stephen Foskett, Storagebod, and others, hopefully you’ll find something interesting and useful here. Enjoy!

  • This blog post by Frank Denneman on the HP LeftHand product is outstanding. I learned more from this post than a lot of posts recently. Great work Frank!
  • Need a bit more information on FCoE? Nigel Poulton has a great post here (it’s a tad bit older, but I’ve just stumbled across it) with good details for those who might not be familiar with FCoE. It’s worth a read if you haven’t already taken the time to come up to speed on FCoE and its “related” technologies.
  • What led me to Nigel’s FCoE post was this post by Storagezilla in which he rants about “vendor flapheads” who “are intentionally obscuring it’s [FCoE's] limitations”. You’ve got that right! Wanting to present a reasonably impartial and complete view of FCoE was partially the impetus behind my end-to-end FCoE post and the subsequent clarification. Thankfully, I think that the misinformation around FCoE is starting to die down.
  • This post has a bit of useful information on HP EVA path policies and vSphere multipathing. I would have liked a bit more detail than what was provided, but the content is good nevertheless.
  • Devang Panchigar’s recoup of HP TechDay day 1, which focused on HP StorageWorks technologies, has some good information, especially if you aren’t already familiar with some of HP’s various storage platforms.
  • Chad Sakac of EMC has some very useful information on Asymmetric Logical Unit Access (ALUA), VMware vSphere, and EMC CLARiiON arrays. If you using EMC storage with your VMware vSphere 4 environment, and you have a CX4, and you’re running FLARE 28.5 or later, it might be worthwhile to switch your path policy from NMP to Round Robin (RR).
  • Speaking of RR with vSphere, somewhere I remember seeing information on changing the default number of I/Os down a path, and tweaking that for best performance. Was that in Chad’s VMworld session? Anyone remember?
  • If you’re looking for a high-level overview of SAN and NAS virtualization, this InfoWorld article can help you get started. You’ll soon want to delve deeper than this article can provide, but it’s a reasonable starting point, at least.

That’s it for this time around. Feel free to share other interesting or useful 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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A Few Quick Thoughts on the VCE Coalition Announcement

Tuesday, November 3, 2009 in Gestalt, Networking, Storage, Virtualization by slowe | 21 comments

VMware, Cisco, and EMC made their official announcement of the VCE Coalition and the joint venture Acadia this morning. You can read one of the press releases here via MarketWire.

Acadia is interesting, but it really isn’t the meat of the announcement, in my opinion. The real substance of the matter is the nature of the coalition. There are many interesting questions/thoughts circling in my head right at the moment:

  • What impact will this have on VMware’s relationship(s) with HP, IBM, and Dell? “Throwing their hat in the ring” with Cisco’s UCS, so to speak, may greatly endanger VMware’s much larger (with respect to revenue) relationships with other OEMs. What will happen to VMware if those OEMs “throw their hat in the ring” with Microsoft and Hyper-V? This is not a good place to be.
  • The acrimonious Cisco-HP relationship adds further fuel to the concerns over VMware’s close alliance with Cisco’s computing platform.
  • Does this new coalition signal a move away from the “arms-length” relationship between EMC and VMware, a move that some (competitors, notably) have been talking about for some time? If so, what danger does that put VMware in with regards to storage relationships?
  • It seems to me that VMware has the most to lose here. What does EMC lose if this doesn’t go well? Nothing, really. What about Cisco? Nothing, really. VMware, on the other hand…well, it could be ugly.
  • What does this coalition offer that the three companies couldn’t deliver without the coalition? Why risk important relationships? This is a big question in my mind. Lots of technology companies have delivered validated designs without any sort of formal coalition. Why is one necessary in this case?
  • On the other end of the spectrum—keeping Acadia out of the picture for the moment—is this “new coalition” really anything more than what the three companies have already been doing? Is this really anything more than each of the companies dedicating resources to this effort? I know from my own direct interaction with at least one of these vendors that resources had already been dedicated to the VCE technology intersection before any sort of formal announcement. So, does this formal announcement really mean anything at all?

I don’t have any answers (yet), but you can at least read my thoughts—and contribute back to them via the comments—without having to pay $499 to some analyst firm.

By the way, if you’d like some other viewpoints on this matter, here are a couple from opposing viewpoints:

NetApp - Jay’s Blog: The Importance of Being Open
Chuck’s Blog: Announcing the VCE Coalition

Feel free to speak up in the comments below (courteous comments only, please, and be sure to include full vendor disclosure where appropriate). Thanks!

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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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VMware Lab Manager Design Considerations

Sunday, October 4, 2009 in Virtualization by adelp | 2 comments

By Aaron Delp
Twitter: aarondelp
FriendFeed (Delicious, Twitter, & all my blogs in one spot): aarondelp

I have done a number of VMware Lab Manager white boarding sessions and I want to share a few of my design notes and the reason for each.  Most of items come from my installation experience and the version 4 release notes.  Here they are in no particular order.

  • You need an LDAP server to import groups - Yes, you can set up user IDs in Lab Manager but you CAN NOT create groups.  Groups must be imported into the LM Server from an LDAP server.  This is critical if you intend to do any kind of restrictions around lease durations of configurations or storage pools.
  • You need fully qualified name resolution (with functioning reverse look-up) between all clients, ESX/vSphere servers, the LM Server, and the vCenter Server - The clients need the ESX/vSphere servers because if this isn’t in place, remote control of the virtual machines will not function (you get a black screen).  You also need DNS entries for the LM server because if you implement LiveLink functionality, LiveLink is hardcoded to the LM server name.  Lastly, you need the vCenter Server for behind the scenes communication of the LM environment.
  • Workflow and Disk Chains will be the key to success or failure of your project - The VMware documentation does a great job of describing how to do things. But, the documentation falls on its face when it comes to describing WHY you should do things.  The behind the scenes architecture must be planned out very specifically for Lab Manager to perform as you would expect. I will be covering Work Flow and Disk Chains in a future article.
  • Lab Manager version 4 Host Spanning requires an Enterprise Plus subscription because the VMware Distributed Switch technology is required - In the previous version of Lab Manager, VMware HA, DRS, and VMotion were not supported if you set up a fenced (isolated by a NAT router) configuration. The configurations (a configuration is groups of VMs in Lab Manager) were pinned to an ESX server at time of creation and stayed with that server until destruction.  LM version 4 gets around this by using the Distributed Switch to span hosts.  Some people will want this feature but in my experience some will not want to pay the extra dollars just to get this one feature. Also, be aware that the Cisco 1000V isn’t supported with Lab Manager.
  • You will need to monitor the number of configurations per server if you do not use Host Spanning - Lab Manager deploys new configurations to the ESX/vSphere servers using round robin.  A configuration is removed from a host when it is undeployed.  It is possible that the workload in your cluster will become out of balance because certain machines “live” longer than others.  Take this example; you have two vSphere servers and ten configurations with only one VM to keep it easy.  The configurations will be deployed split in between the servers for a total of five per server.  A user removes the configurations on the first server but leaves the configurations on the second server.  Now another ten configurations are deployed.  The new ten configurations will again be deployed five each.  You know have one server with five and one server with ten.  Over time your load will become unbalanced.
  • Lab Manager 4 can’t use vSphere’s thin provisioning for disks - Lab Manager uses the concept of Linked Clones for copies of virtual machines.  The first one in the chain is “thick”, the rest of the machines are delta disks of the first one.  This is a technology that is independent and different from both vSphere and VMware View.
  • I haven’t had a chance to test this one yet but it appears VMware is now supporting and suggesting that you run the Lab Manager 4 server in a virtual machine.  Be careful with this one!  Where are you going to install it?  Are you going to install it on the same cluster and ESX servers you are managing?  This will create a circular dependency that I just don’t like.  Same goes for vSphere.  Have you ever tried to patch ESX servers using Update Manager when vCenter Server is on that host?  I have by accident, it doesn’t work!  For my lab I have my vCenter and Lab Manager servers in a different cluster (Scott’s vSphere cluster) than my LM vSphere servers.  In this configuration the servers are virtual, but they are out of the way.  I know with Lab Manager 3 you couldn’t install LM server on a virtual machine if it detected it was hosted on the ESX server you are trying to manage.  I’m not sure if version 4 still has this checking feature included at installation.
  • Make sure you back up your Crypto Key that Lab Manager generates during the installation -  See the Manual for more information.  You will need it if you run into big issues and need to reinstall Lab Manager.
  • VMware Snapshots are not supported because Lab Manager has a Snapshot feature built-in - Lab Manager allows the user to take one (and only one!) snapshot of a configuration.
  • Increase the Service Console on ESX/vSphere servers from 272MB to 800MB - This will help with the overhead of Lab Manager on the servers.
  • VMware Fault Tolerance (FT) and Distributed Power Management (DPM) are not supported with Lab Manager.
  • Storage VMotion and VMware VCB are not supported with Lab Manager.

If you have any other suggestions or design considerations, please let me know!

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Virtualization Short Take #30

Thursday, October 1, 2009 in Virtualization by slowe | 3 comments

Welcome to Virtualization Short Take #30, my irregularly posted collection of links and thoughts on virtualization. I hope you find something useful here!

  • I believe Jason Boche already mentioned this on his own blog (I couldn’t find a link) and also started this VMware Communities thread discussing the fact that the 8/6 patch breaks FT compatibility between ESX and ESXi hosts in the same cluster. This VMware KB article is now available with more information on the problem. I’m hearing from VMware is that there is no short-term solution; the workaround is to use only ESX or only ESXi within a single cluster. (I don’t recommend not patching the hosts until the problem is fixed.)
  • And while we’re talking VMware FT, here’s a good document on VMware FT architecture and performance. (Eric Siebert’s Virtualization Pro blog post about VMware FT is really good, too.)
  • I’m also hearing reports that there are problems mixing ESX and ESXi in the same cluster when using host profiles. Theoretically, you should be able to use an ESX reference host and apply that to ESXi hosts, but in reality it’s not working so well.
  • If you’re using AppSpeed, you’ll need to manually turn off the AppSpeed sensor VMs in order to put ESX/ESXi hosts into Maintenance Mode. The sensor VM won’t VMotion off the host, so this prevents the host from entering Maintenance Mode.
  • Here’s another topic that I think has been mentioned elsewhere (looks like Duncan mentions it here), but SRM 1.0 Update 1 Patch 4 was released a couple of weeks ago and it includes a fit for customizing the IP addresses of Windows Server 2008 guest operating system instances.
  • Toward the end of August, VMware Infrastructure 3 support was added for NetApp MetroCluster (see this VMware KB article). Now, how about some VMware vSphere 4 support?
  • Most of you are aware by now (and if you aren’t aware, go buy a copy of my book so you will be aware) that you can use Storage VMotion to change virtual disks from thin provisioned to thick provisioned. The problem is this: the type of thick provisioned disk created when you do this via Storage VMotion is eagerzeroedthick, not zeroedthick. This means that it is not friendly to storage array thin provisioning!
  • I’m still looking for a valid use case for this little trick, but it’s mentioned by both Duncan and Eric: the ability to present multiple cores per socket to a virtual machine. Duncan’s post is here; Eric’s post is here. As Eric points out, licensing is one potential use. Anyone have any other valid use cases?
  • Eric Sloof has a great post on dvSwitch caveats and best practices that is definitely worth reading.
  • Want to make linked clones work on vSphere? Tom Howarth points out in this post some information made available by William Lam. Both articles are worth a look.
  • Tom also posted some useful information on enabling firewall logging on VMware ESX hosts.
  • This post over on Aaron Sweemer’s blog was actually written by guest author John Blessing (aka @vTrooper on Twitter) and just goes to illustrate how difficult it can be to create a chargeback model.
  • Of course, the “Super iSCSI Friends” recently produced a multi-vendor post on using iSCSI with VMware vSphere, a great follow-up to the original multi-vendor VI3 post. Here’s Chad’s version of the multi-vendor vSphere and iSCSI post.

That wraps it up for this time around. Thanks for reading, and feel free to submit any other useful or interesting links in the comments below.

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