Kasraeian

Finally I had chance and time to install and test the “VMware Heartbeat” which I had learnt to install, configure and use during one of my course.

There’s some note about this software which I think they may be good to mention as may be they come useful in latter exams

You need at least two NIC (one for vCenter connection and other as sync/heartbeat between two vCenter).
It’s recommended to config each NIC on separate vSwitch.
Default channel port: 57348
Client port: 52267

I will add more info about VMware vCenter Server Heartbeat latter on.

I know it may not related to the virtualization but it can be used to reduce the need of remote desktop and console connection and …. (by the way, its a reminder for myself to )

Microsoft Windows 7 comes with MMC 3.0 and by default it can’t be used for remote management of Windows Server 2008 as lack of its snap-in.

The solution is downloading and installing the “Microsoft Remote Server Administration Tools for Windows 7″ which comes in two edition of x86 and x64 and both can be found by this link.

The step for it’s installation and make it work can be found on the same page under “Instructions” title.

It take a little long to make a new post, During these times I had checked a various area and read about multiple subjects, so this is the summary:

• ThinApp .DAT files
• ESXi Notes
• Network Notes
• Resources Notes
• Misc Notes

ThinApp .DAT files:

Ok, Just as I thought, it’s a container for all files which we need in order to run a specific program (package/suite).
for example, as you install office on your system, it will install some .exe file and bunch of files with other extension.
For running an application (i.e. Word) you must run it’s exe file and it will connect to its related file which install along with it (in office folder(s)).
So when we virtualizes a program (using VMware Thinstall) it will put .exe file aside and put all other stuff (from registry, dll, …) in the container which it name it “abc.DAT” which abc would be the package name and .DAT is the default file extension for container.
There’s some info about the packages:

1. each package can have only one container
2. for only one file program (only have one exe file), you may not see this .DAT file as it build the whole package in one .exe file
3. you don’t have to just use “abc.DAT” as the name of container, you can change to whatever you want like “Sohrab.kasraeian” or “Kasraeian.vWorld” or …
4. Windows XP has an EXE size limitation of 512MB.
5. Windows Vista (and potentially Win 7) has an EXE size limitation of 2GB.
6. ThinApp can package 32-bit applications as well as 16-bit applications (both 16-bit Win and 16-bit DOS apps).

NOTE: 16-bit applications cannot be executed on 64-bit platforms due to an OS limitation. ThinApp does NOT support 64-bit apps at this time.

ESXi Notes:

This notes taken from “ESXi Lesson Learned” from “Yellow Brick” site, ….

1. As VMware ESXi user may know, there is special partition specific to ESXi only and that’s “Scratch” partion, as I read about it, we can chose to make it or not during installation, it will affect the vm-support output, so you must decide to implement it or not. (If not, ESXi will use your host memory in order to make vm-support output)
2. VMware ESXi is not supporting Automatic deployment (scripted/unattended installations) [at least now]
3. Now ESXi 4.0 support Jumbo Frame for the VMKernel network interfaces.

Network Notes:

When working with your ESX/ESXi hosts using CLI/Console you can use the following information to get the following information:

1. esxcfg-nics –l

Using the above command will get you information about your NIC Name, NIC Connection status, Duplex, MTU and …

2. esxcfg-vswitch –l

Using this command will get us the information about Number of vSwitches, Uplinks for each vSwitch, Number and Name of port groups in each vSwitch.

Resources Notes:

These notes are about CPU and memory allocation for VMs and RPs.

1. Reservation at RPs level will apply immediately
2. Reservation at VMs level will apply only when the VMs are powered on.
3. When the resource is used in reservation, that amount of physical resource will not count in available resources.
4. Memory reservations are activated at startup, yet physical RAM is only allocated as needed. Unallocated physical RAM may be used by others.
5. Once physical RAM is protected by a memory reservation, it will never be reclaimed by ballooning of .vswp-swapping even if the corresponding virtual RAM is idle.

Misc Notes:

We have 2 alarms for power status of VMs, one for VMs which is inside DRS Cluster and one for non-DRS Cluster, So it’s better to be careful when creating alarm for powering on VMs.

Sources:

1. http://blogs.vmware.com/thinapp/2010/02/data-containers-entry-points-and-dats—oh-my.html
2. http://blogs.vmware.com/thinapp/2009/12/top-10-questions-on-thinapp.html
3. http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2009/12/03/esxi-lessons-learned-part-1/
4. http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2009/12/10/esxi-lessons-learned-part-2/
5. http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2009/12/19/esxi-lessons-learned-2-revised/
6. http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2009/12/22/esxi-–-lessons-learned-part-3/
7. http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2010/01/09/esxi-–-lessons-learned-part-4/
8. http://www.vladan.fr/basic-vmware-esx-cli-networking-commands/
9. http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2010/03/03/cpumem-reservation-behaviour/
10. http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2010/03/09/vm-powered-on-alarm/

Hi,

Just as I said before, I start posting the summary here.
So, let start it now, this post contain some info about:

• Result of wrong OS type installation in VM with different OS type
• VMware HA (Design, fail-over, …)

Result of wrong OS type installation in VM with different OS type

One configuration/step during the creation of new VM, is defining the OS type for that VM.

If any other OS except the OS type selected for VM, installed on VM, some of the following even (or all of them) may occurs:

• Some performance issues (according to different method of memory access and addressing, …)
• This would cause the incorrect VMware Tools to get installed in the VM
• If the correct MCA/MCE architecture is not presented to the guest during boot may be it wouldn’t start at all

How to fix it:

• Power off the VM.
• Modify via GUI option General of the properties of your VM.
• Power on the VM.
• Reinstall the correct VMware Tools.

VMware HA (Design, fail-over, …)

When designing or using VMware HA, it’s better to take care of some element in order to get better performance, availability and facing less problem/error.

• Setup/configure second SC/management network so you would have to path for check for host isolation.
• Don’t use default just because they are default, check the other options and compare their result for your own situation. (Number of allowed host failures …)
• For getting better result from your ha cluster, prevent using resource (cpu/memory) reservation as much as you can, as it affect directly the ha cluster performance (slot size/number of slot in cluster, …)
• When using ha on Blade servers, on more than one enclosure use more smaller (at least two) cluster instead of one big cluster.

Feel free to leave comments or any idea you have.
These information are summary (or better say notes) I took during my studies for future use.
If I miss anything; please correct me, thanks.