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Contents

FEB.2011

Cover Story 04. HP BladeSystem Matrix – Got questions about HP’s converged offerings? We got to sit down with the experts to talk HP Matrix.

News 06. New VMware Certifications – With VDI growing VMware releases new certifications focused on virtualized desktops.

Storage 07. Designing with VAAI – New VMware features can change some old rules. 08. 64K - Learn about balancing your ESX host loads across HP EVA arrays.

Reviews 09. PerfectDisk 11 – Disk Defrag always a discussion topic. Find out how it performed. 10. RVTools – Find out more about a great tool created by a VMware community member.

VirtualizeTips.com // February 2011

Contents

FEB.2011

How To 11. Dell Host Firmware updates – Learn a few ways to handle Dell firmware updates.

Network 13. ESXi and NIC trunking – ESXi management ports behave differently in these scenarios.

Community 14. Home Lab Series – Interview with Kendrick Coleman about his new green VMware lab. 15. vCommunity Trust – Learn more about this great story of people helping grow virtualization talent. Connect with us at VirtualizeTips.com If you want to recommend a topic or have an interesting product you would like us to review drop us an email.

Writers: want to join us? If you are a VMware, Networking, Storage, Hyper-V, Citrix or Virtualization related blogger and want to help contribute articles, let’s talk.

Advertisements: Want to advertise your company in an upcoming issue? Please drop us an email to discuss options. Email: [email protected] Twitter: @virtualizetips


16. VMUG Guide

Cover Story Interviewed: HP BladeSystem Matrix

What can you do with

HP BladeSystem Matrix With all the talk about converged infrastructure and stacks these days especially in the virtualization space I was really glad that I got to do this interview. There has been a lot written about its competitors but the HP BladeSystem Matrix was still kind of a mystery to anyone that had not had HP in to talk about it. I was lucky enough to spend some time talking with a couple of members from the HP BladeSystem Matrix team. These guys were very helpful in explaining what Matrix is and answered all of my crazy questions.

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What I hope everyone gets from this is a better understanding of what BladeSystem Matrix has to offer if you’re looking at these types of converged offerings. Also highlight some of the features that are unique to the HP stack. In interest of being totally open I am also an employee of


HP but my current work responsibilities have nothing to do with BladeSystem Matrix. Now that all that is out of the way let’s get started with the good stuff. VT: Can you give me your elevator pitch? HP: Matrix is the foundation for a private cloud solution managing both physical and virtual infrastructure. Matrix allows you to rapidly provision infrastructure via a self service portal. In addition, it offers the ongoing life-cycle management including capacity planning and disaster recovery. You can buy Matrix with a single SKU that includes hardware, software and services. The solution is all tested and certified by HP to work together. VT: Who benefits from this solution? HP: Customers who need to be able to address fast change and

achieve a competitive advantage through time to market. Typical customers for Matrix are large Enterprises and Service Providers who have invested already in virtualization and shared infrastructure and want to take the next step to cloud computing. I think that these target customers are common to all converged infrastructure offerings. VT: What hardware makes up a BladeSystem Matrix? HP: BladeSystem Matrix all begins with something called a starter kit. This kit includes the following items, Central Management Server on a ProLiant DL360, HP C7000 Blade Chassis w/Virtual Connect networking and Insight Management software for managing Matrix. For the storage you have multiple options – you can use your existing Fiber Channel SAN storage if it’s supported

// PROFILE Name: Andy Schneider Role: Product Manager for Blade Matrix Name: Rick Roeling Role: Software Architect for Blade Matrix Web: BladeSystem Matrix

or you can use HP storage, e.g. 3PAR or HP EVA 4400 array. iSCSI storage is supported as well for VM data stores. There is also something called an Expansion kit which is a C7000 Blade chassis, Insight Management software licenses and HP Services needed to integrate the expansion kit into your existing Matrix environment. It should be noted that Matrix supports both ProLiant and Integrity blades. VT: What are HP Cloud Maps and how do they relate to BladeSystem Matrix? HP: These Cloud Maps help customers to get started quickly with Matrix – they jump start the creation of a customized self-service portal. Cloud Maps include white papers and templates for hardware or software configurations that can be imported into BladeSystem Matrix that can save days or weeks of design time. A Cloud Map can also provide workflows and scripts designed to expedite the installation. VT: What does the CMS or Central Management Server do? HP: The CMS server is a physical server that is running the management software that controls,

Cover Story Interviewed: HP BladeSystem Matrix

automates and monitors your BladeSystem Matrix. If you have a DR site with a Matrix you would need a CMS server there to control the environment. It’s also possible to setup the CMS in a HA or Highly Available configuration to prevent a single failure point for Matrix management. Lastly for large environments that exceed the maximums of a single CMS you can now stand up secondary CMS servers that will still allow you to manage everything from one admin console. VT: Can I use existing HP gear with a Matrix install? HP: If you purchase a new HP BladeSystem Matrix you can use it to also manage any qualifying HP hardware that you already own. HP has created something called the Matrix Conversion Services to assist with integrating your existing HP infrastructure with BladeSystem Matrix. This program is new and will evolve to allow customers to accomplish these integrations. VT: Can I use arrays from other vendors? HP: You can use Storage Arrays from other vendors as long as they are able to meet a list of criteria – for example the storage vendor needs to be certified with Virtual Connect. More details can be found in the Matrix compatibility chart. VT: What software is used for Matrix? HP: The software for Matrix is called the Matrix Operating Environment, which includes the whole Insight Management stack including Insight Foundation and Insight Control. With Insight Foundation you get the controls to install, configure, and monitor physical servers. With Insight Control you get all the essential server management including server deployment and power management. The real magic happens with the additional Matrix Operating Environment software (aka Insight Dynamics). It provides a service design tool, infrastructure provisioning with a self-service portal, capacity plan-


ning, and recovery management. VT: Does it come configured and who does the setup work? HP: Some factory configuration is done then remaining work is done onsite by HP Services. The install and configure period can take from a few days to 2 weeks depending on the level of complexity. VT: Explain how it is managed? HP: There are two separate consoles that control a BladeSystem Matrix. The first would be the admin console used by your support team to configure and control the environment. The second would be the Self Service portal site. This allows for IT consumers to request and provision resources from the Matrix environment. VT: What types of automation and provisioning can Matrix do? HP: One example would be in the creation of templates. You can create templates in the Matrix software or use ones already created, for example on your VMware vCenter server. If you use an existing template that might be created with only one OS partition you can use the Matrix template process to provision the VM and add on additional disks and features not present in the base template. VT: How is support handled for Matrix customers? HP: There is a dedicated team to contact for Matrix support issues. Matrix is treated as a single solution, with all calls coming in through a central team. This team is cross trained in the various aspects that make up Matrix and they will escalate to product specific engineers if needed. VT: Can you explain fail over P2V and then back to V2P for DR? HP: This feature allows for a physical server to be recovered at the DR site on a physical or virtual machine. To make this HP spoke about creating what is known as a “portable image” What this meant was that the logical server was created in a

way that it would be able to be deployed on either another physical blade, or as a VM within a virtual machine host. . I asked about if there was any type of conversion process that takes place and there is not. The engineer talked about the creation of the portable image which to me meant that you need to include both OS drivers for the physical hardware and the virtual hardware. This way when the imaged was moved to the other platform the physical OS or the hypervisor-based OS would find all of the devices. The last piece would be the network settings and these are preserved with an application called PINT so that when new network cards are installed your settings will remain. VT: How does it integrate with VMware? HP: The HP tool set for BladeSystem Matrix offers many integration points with VMware vSphere. A short list of the functions would include provisioning VM’s, change in power state, activate/ deactivate, add servers to group, and add disks to a VM or group of VM’s. Along with those features Matrix monitors status and performance, capacity & workload analysis and Disaster Recovery integration. VT: What separates Matrix from other converged stacks? HP: A big selling point is that HP BladeSystem Matrix is integrated and engineered holistically by one company, while still allowing for heterogeneous components in areas such as networking and storage. Also at this time BladeSystem Matrix is the only solution that is capable of managing both physical and virtual servers with the same tools and allow movement between physical and virtual resources. Something that Matrix offers that others do not is integrated automated Disaster Recovery. Lastly Matrix supports both VMware and Microsoft Hyper-V, as well as Integrity Blades, for virtualization. VT: What SAN protocols are supported today? HP: As of today BladeSystem

Matrix supports Fiber Channel as the preferred method of connecting to storage. In addition, Matrix does support FCOE and iSCSI for VM data stores. VT: What is storage provisioning manager? HP: This was explained as enhanced volume provisioning management, allowing more proactive maintenance of the pools of storage available for provisioning of an environment. Where this seem to tie for me was using it to publish or tag which volumes are available for provisioning. For example you could label a volume as boot disk and others as data disks. Then when creating your templates for provisioning the system will know which volumes are available for boot, as well as which volumes are available as data volumes during OS install, so that you provide better management of the storage you’ll utilize during provisioning. VT: How many customers or units sold so far? HP: I had to try but was only told that HP does not release any numbers or revenues for products. BladeSystem Matrix is made up of components that have been offered for many years by HP, and includes multi-million unit sales of components such as BladeSystem servers and Virtual Connect. VT: How will software and firmware updates be handled? HP: There are update bundles that are created for BladeSystem Matrix. At this time these updates must be performed by an HP Services person. These updates can be done in person or remotely. VT: How does the SAN fabric interact with BladeSystem Matrix? HP: In the current version of Matrix you will need to pre-create volumes and your server zoning ahead of any provisioning.

News

VMware adds desktop certification to its lineup With each year that passes Virtual Desktops or VDI continues to become a priority to more companies. For the last several years different consultants and media people are quick to declare this as the year of VDI. This has kind of become a joke among the admin community. There is no doubt that VDI is here and companies are deploying it. Since the release of View 4.0 VMware seems to be showing that they are very serious about achieving the same level of dominance in the VDI market that they share in server virtualization. VMware quickly followed up with View 4.5 that brought many needed features to level the feature set with Citrix’s offerings.

Also as a first there will be no VMware course requirement to earn the VCA4-DT certification. Typically in the past the first level certifications have always required a VMware course. With more advanced levels leaving VMware courses as optional, figuring that most people able to acquire them would already possess the necessary skills. You can see from the image that VMware is recommending a list of courses that would help candidates achieve the knowledge needed to take the first level exam.

To continue proof that they are committed to this Desktop race VMware has announce a Certification track for the Desktop. The new program is called the VMware Certified – Desktop program and is made up of three certification levels. This new approach adds a new lower level certification that was not available with vSphere certifications. VMware Desktop Certifications VMware Certified Associate 4 – Desktop (VCA4-DT): is directed toward Virtualization System Administrators who seek to demonstrate their ability to manage, monitor and troubleshoot desktop deployments and VMware View 4.5 components, as well as their knowledge of adjacent, complementary technologies to VMware solutions. Learn more. Coming soon! VMware Certified Professional 4 – Desktop (VCP4-DT) is directed toward Virtualization Systems Engineers who seek to demonstrate their ability to install and configure the VMware View environment and enable View Client users. Candidates must also be able to configure the vSphere environment, possess a deep understanding of VMware core components and their relation to storage and networking and be proficient in datacenter design methodologies. Coming soon! VMware Certified Advanced Professional – Desktop (VCAP-DT): is directed toward Virtualization Architects who seek to demonstrate their deep knowledge of VMware vSphere and VMware View design. Candidates will be able to expertly manage all aspects of the vSphere and View environments from installation and configuration to maintenance and troubleshooting. Candidates will also possess a deep knowledge of virtualization architectures and components and be able to architect VMware desktop solutions to meet specific customer business requirements.


I have to say that this has been a long time coming and I’m pretty glad to see that they have finally arrived. With the demand for VDI growing companies are looking for ways to see employee’s prove they have the skills necessary to successfully implement VDI. Also vendors are sure to welcome these certifications as a way to bolster their VDI sales pitches and prove they are worthy of your business.

Storage

Designing with VAAI in mind With the release of vSphere 4.1 last summer VMware customers were provided several new features. Many of these new features were created to lower the burden on the ESX host by being more efficient or offloading the work to something outside of the Virtualization stack. The overall goal of the new features was to continue to improve performance of virtual machines. The one that I am writing about today is VAAI or vStorage API for Array Integration. I wanted to write about how using VAAI in your Architecture Designs is changing the way you are creating environments.

offloaded to the storage array and it’s now possible to lock only the blocks that are being written to. This opens up the possibility to use larger volumes and increase the amount of VM’s that can be run on a single volume. Block Zeroing – This feature is saving vSphere from having to send redundant commands to the array for writes. The host can simple tell the storage array which blocks are zeros and move on. The storage device will handle the work without needing to receive repetitive write commands from the host.

The goal of VAAI is too offload some of the storage focused activiSo now that you should have an understanding of what VAAI is and ties that VMware had previously handled to your storage array. This how it should help free up resources. I will now talk about how this was accomplished by VMware working closely with the major storchanges the way we should be thinking about different design conage vendors. The idea of VAAI was first announced back at VMworld siderations. 2008 and finally came to market when vSphere 4.1 was released. By offloading these storage functions The first thing that comes to mind is that it has reduced the load on the ESX(i) can now think about using larger dahosts and also increased the perforVAAI feature provides upwards of 10x Itastores without the worry of affecting mance of these activities by letting the performance due to locking issues. With storage array do the work that it was speed improvements VAAI the storage device is going to hancreated to do. dle the locking and allow me to have far for VM’s per volume than the 5-10 In the current offering of VAAI there are 3 functions that have been previously held as a guideline to live by in past versions. It’s now offloaded. In future product releases it is expected that VMware will possible to have 50+ VM’s on a single volume if you had a valid continue to work with storage vendors to increase the features of reason to. VAAI and the currently available features are explained below. Full Copy – So you’re probably wondering how this feature is going to help me. I can think to two VMware functions that this VAAI feature provides upwards of 10x speed improvements in. The first would be when you are deploying a VM from a template. We will say for example that you are going to deploy a 50 GB VB. When the VM is deployed vSphere is going to read the entire 50 GB and then write the 50 GB for a total of 100 GB of I/O. With VAAI enabled and a storage array that supports VAAI this process creates very little I/O at the host. The vSphere host will send a command to the storage array that say make a copy of this VM and name it this. The copy will be done locally on the storage array and results in very little I/O between the host and array. Once completed the array will send a notice to the host to let it know the works was completed. The second VMware feature to benefit from this is a Storage vMotion. I feel that this is where this really pays off because you are most likely moving a larger chunk of data with this command. For example sake let’s say we are going to move a 100 GB Virtual Machine from one disk to another. To do this in the past this would have caused 200 GB of I/O on the host. With VAAI the burden on the host is almost nothing as this work is done on the storage array. Hardware assisted locking – Too allow multiple hosts in your cluster to talk to the same storage volume VMware would lock the volume when one of the VM’s needed to write to it. This locking is to prevent another host from trying to write to the same blocks. This was not a large issue If you were using smaller volumes with only a handful of virtual machines on them. Now with VAAI the locking has been


The next thing that came to mind is that I will be able to achieve higher consolidation ratios on vSphere hosts if needed. Due to the savings in CPU, Network and Storage I/O overhead we can use that savings to host more virtual machines on each host. In particular if you are using Blade Chassis you can expect to see a lot of network I/O traffic savings since you can have up to 16 blades in a chassis depending on your vendor. That can equal to a huge decrease in traffic flowing through those shared ports. Something that I was wondering about and saw little discussion about was what type of extra load does VAAI functions place on the array. I reached out and asked this question to Chad Sakac of EMC and Vaughn Stewart of NetApp. Both contacts replied back via Twitter and stated that currently VAAI adds little to no extra burden to the arrays and in coming firmware updates it’s expected to be even less. Lastly to sum up what you need to take advantage of VAAI. You will need to have vSphere 4.1 and you need to be licensed for Enterprise or Enterprise Plus. Next you must have a storage array that supports VAAI, this is probably going to be the largest hurdle for most. If you array was purchased within that last 2 years there is a good change that with a firmware upgrade your array may support VAAI. If not you will need to purchase a new one and this is an expensive investment. So it’s conceivable that many smaller shops will never get to reap the benefits of VAAI because of these requirements. Brian Suhr is the Editor of Virtualize Tips. E-mail him at [email protected] or follow him on twitter at twitter.com/bsuhr

Storage

Episode 1: Balancing Act Here at 64k, in our smaller cube near the vending machines, we storageoriented folks like to mull over ideas big and small, 4k at a time. We also deal in a great number of puns, so consider yourself warned. Today, in our maiden voyage, I’d like to talk about some of my experience with HP’s line of EVA storage arrays. As many of our readers know, the EVA line is a middle tier offering from HP. Though likely to be usurped in the near future by 3PAR’s goodies, I am not here to begin that debate. Rather, let us delve into a few common gotcha’s that can be overlooked in environments where EVAs live.

fabric A and all ports of controller B on fabric B! Definitely a big problem there!

ONE]

For the host side, there is a bit more that can be done. There is some work to be done on the array as well, which I will address. The hosts should have the latest firmware, drivers, and software for their HBAs. Additionally, make sure you have the latest HP DSM software. Within the DSM software, you will want to enable Automatic Load Balancing. As I stated before, this is not enabled by default. To enable, just right click on each LUN (listed by WWN) that is listed and choose Enable ALB.

The tight rope act begins with the storage array, our bright and shiny EVA. At a fundamental level, an EVA is comprised of two controllers. The operating environment of the EVA is such that it can, in a semi-intelligent fashion, manage vdisk ownership between the two controllers itself. By default, vdisks are set to no preference for a failover/mode setting at the time of creation. This means the EVA will decide which controllers get which vdisks when it (the EVA itself) boots. Every vdisk is assigned to a controller (and only one controller). If the non-owning controller is receiving the IO for a server(s) talking to a vdisk, it will after a period of time change the ownership of the vdisk. This will reduce the load crossing the mirror ports. While the EVA can run in this fashion, it is sub-optimal. The other side of the tight rope of this balancing act is the hosts. IO can walk many paths from host to array, some optimal and others not. The start of such begins at the host’s adapter. If it is a dual port (or multiple single port) host, then you have all the more paths to choose from. Even in the case of a single port host, you can still cover multiple paths to arrive at the vdisk. The handling of the proper path comes in the form of multipathing software. From HP for Microsoft operating systems, we have Device Specific Module (DSM), which uses MS’s MPIO stack as its basis. HP makes specific DSM’s for each of its line of arrays. Without the MPIO stack, the host will see a drive presented once for each host port. In an 8x00 series array, that is 8! So clearly the MPIO software and HP’s DSM is needed for correct operation. The default install does not enable Adaptive Load Balance (ALB). This hampers read operations by not passing through the correct controller for a vdisk. Note that non-MS based operating systems (like VMware) have their own multipathing stacks. In the case of VMware ESX(i) 3.x, the options are fixed and mru. In the case of vSphere, we get round robin added to the mix. In pre-vSphere environments, the fixed path does not by default balance load across the host ports. You can end up with all your VM traffic running over one host port! Yikes! TWO] Now, to balance things out, let me start with the array. A good habit to get into involves understanding your environment from an IO perspective. You need to understand the profile, or workload, of your IO, so that you can balance between the controllers (among other things!). Make sure to capture your performance data using evaperf (or other tools) to allow you the view of your controller’s current load. As you add new vdisks, you can balance them by setting the failover/mode setting to the controller with failover + failback. This will allow the balancing to remain should you lose and regain a controller. Further, this specifies the controller for the vdisk in terms of mastership. This helps from the host side as the controller it needs to talk through is clearly defined. One thing to keep in mind also is the need to accept all load on one controller should failure occur. This should be something you are aware of via your performance data. A good rule of thumb is a controller should be no more than 30% ideally (at least in my experience). And as always, have the latest Command View and XCS code. One other thing to check for balance is to make sure the host ports are set to their top speed (4GB, except the very old EVA models) as well as properly balanced on the fabric (equal ports on both sides). One customer I came across had all ports from controller A on


more than 30% ideally (at least in my experience). And as always, have the latest Command View and XCS code. One other thing to check for balance is to make sure the host ports are set to their top speed (4GB, except the very old EVA models) as well as properly balanced on the fabric (equal ports on both sides). One customer I came across had all ports from controller A on fabric A and all ports of controller B on fabric B! Definitely a big problem there!

So, as a quick explanation: write requests from hosts will hit the controller that owns the vdisk in question, but that write will propagate over the mirror link into both controllers’ cache. This is in case a controller is lost, the write can still be committed. Read requests will hit whichever controller, and if it is the wrong controller, will have to travel over the mirror ports to the correct controller. This is sub-optimal, but is alleviated by enabling ALB. ALB communicates with the array and will always communicate its read requests through the owning controller. Very handy! Now, from a VMware standpoint, let’s talk about fixed and then round robin (two most common multipathing situations found today). For Fixed, you will need to balance IO to your datastores over the host ports of the controllers. Also keep in mind which controller you selected at the array. As an example, if I have 8 datastores of average IO (no virtualized heavy apps) then I would want 4 datastores on each controller. To further balance, I would have each datastore talking over one of the host ports for each of the controllers (4 ports per controller x 2 controllers). The IO is evenly balanced. To set this, simply go into each datastore properties (via the VI Client) and pick the WWN for the corresponding host port). Under heavy IO circumstances, you may not be able to move your traffic to a different host port. Just try again at a later date. When it comes to round robin, the IO works a bit differently. Round Robin will send IO to each host port in turn after a certain amount of IOPS. In the HP best practices for vSphere on the EVA, it states to change this value to 1 (and thus pushing even IOPS over every host port visible). There was a bug which would, after a reboot of the ESX(i) host, reset this to a very high number. I have found in my experience that leaving it as-is seems to work fairly well. I would guess there is good reason that HP came up with that figure, and so at this point, with vSphere 4.1, I would suspect you could set this without issue. Summary Presented here are some of the findings I have come across in working with different customers. I figure that having these kinds of storage discussions can help to make for a very engaging conversation. Let me know what you think (and if I make any errors, which being human, am prone to!

Mike Mills is a Columnist for Virtualize Tips. E-mail him at [email protected] or follow him on twitter at twitter.com/reverseninja

Reviews

PerfectDisk 11 vSphere Bundle A short while back, a respected member of the VMware community, Matt Liebowitz (@mattliebowitz), tweeted a blurb on the version 11 release of PerfectDisk that ties directly into a virtualized environment. The PerfectDisk 11 vSphere Bundle is billed as an automated solution for defragmenting and optimizing file placement on VMware guests. There are many offerings that provide scheduled defragmentation and file placement optimization, such as MyDefrag in the open source arena and DiskKeeper 2010 as a paid offering. One major challenge is that these tools are ignorant of the underlying storage structure, assuming that the server is a standalone silo without any disk contention. Using these versus PerfectDick 11 vSphere Bundle requires creativity from the administrator. Setting up dynamic fragmentation schedules to accommodate pooled storage structure requires time and foresight; in some cases forgoing the hassle on all but the Tier 1 guests is the preferred setup. I gave PerfectDisk 11 vSphere Bundle a spin for 2 weeks on a number of servers that, for this test, were made to purposely share a single VMFS datastore on a single LUN to introduce contention. Using the Enterprise Console

Daily Administration

Zero! The “StealthPatrol full auto schedule” continuously trends the guest’s CPU and I/O thresholds to determine the optimum time to run. Since the agent is communicating with the vCenter server, it also knows if I/O is occurring on a datastore/LUN outside of the guest. There is nothing for the administrator to do besides view the reports or deploy agents to additional guests. The Results I installed the Enterprise Console and agents on the 25th of January onto 4 virtual servers that share a LUN. The servers are diverse in nature, running Configuration Requirements different workloads at different times. To produce the work Initial Setup loads, I simply cloned producInitial setup basically boils down tion boxes via Veeam v5 virtual to: lab and automated requests to 1. Create some Managed simulate production. Groups of computers (VM1. Server 1 – SQL 2005 ware guests). Database with heavy CPU I/O 2. Configure the vSphere at night. Virtual Guest profile to in2. Server 2 – File Sever with clude your vCenter credenheavy CPU & Disk I/O during tials. business hours. 3. Setup the security 3. Server 3 – Image Deploycredentials for PerfectDisk ment Server, very rarely used to use when installing the during business hours, but agents on the guests. heavy Disk I/O when used. 4. Deploy the agent to the 4. Server 4 – Job Server, guests. heavy CPU & Disk I/O during production, lighter after busiEven with the learning curve of ness hours. using new software, the configuration took less than 30 minutes Job Times to get some guests tied to the For each server, I took a look at Enterprise Console and report- the history to see when PerfectDisk felt it should start up the jobs. ing back. The console is laid out in an easy to navigate manner. Once I deployed the agents to the test guests, most of my time was spent in either the Defrag Monitoring or Reporting menu items. The main landing page includes a nice Getting Started page with a step-by-step walk through on how to use the software.


1.Server 1 – Ran between noon and 6PM. (OK) 2. Server 2 – Ran between mid night and 4AM.(OK) 3. Server 3 – Ran between 1AM and 5AM. (OK) 4. Server 4 – Ran at 2AM and again on 9AM the day of the big Chicago blizzard when I did not schedule any activity (neat!). (OK) PerfectDisk was a 4/4 on figuring out when to run the jobs on the guests. Also, no two jobs ran at the same time. Fragmentation Values To my surprise, the servers started at nearly at double-digit fragmentation (Server 4 was at 38% on the data disk). All servers maintained less than 1% fragmentation after being scheduled with StealthPatrol. Latency Reduction Unfortunately, there’s not a ton of data to review as I’m working with a subset of test virtual machines. However, here’s a look at the latency (read is purple and write is red) for this particular datastore with the 4 servers on it. I’ve highlighted specifically when the busiest server (Server 2) was defragmented. There is a definite downward trend in latency.

Thoughts The good news is that the software works well, is almost completely hands off, and even in a test environment I’ve seen general latency values drop. Additionally, the licensing is at a per-host model, so it’s simple to figure out what both the CapEx and OpEx will turn out to be. I’d like to suggest that PerfectDisk work on their automated reporting methods. Specifically the e-mail report; it is very difficult to read as it comes in a block text format with issue, server name, threshold, and current value. It would be nice to get something similar to what can be found within the enterprise console, or perhaps even something to toss up the chain to senior management (pie charts and graphs work great, right?). All in all, I think the value of this software is worth the purchase and I’m interested in seeing how much performance can be gleamed in a production environment with hundreds of servers tied to a variety of SAN tiers. Chris Wahl is a guest writer of Virtualize Tips. Follow him at http://wahlnetwork.wordpress. com and twitter at twitter.com/ chriswahl

Review

Free Tools

RVTools By now most people have heard of or used RVTools. If not then run to your web browser and download a copy of it today. The amount of good information this little free application will provide you with is amazing. This free tool will open your eyes to the health of your environment and allow you to pull data necessary to plan upgrades and other events. The application allows you to enter in your credentials and also supports pass-through authentication. The gui is simple but gives you everything you need in a table format. You can choose to look at the data in the application or export to Excel or a CSV file. The data that it pulls is broken out into 3 areas which include Virtual Machines, ESX hosts and Health. Within each of these sections there are tabs that give you more details about resources and configurations. To give you an idea on the VM side you have tabs for vInfo, vCPU, vMemory and vDisk along with a few others. The idea here is that the main consumables and virtual hardware parts are available to be reported on. So you can choose to look at vDisks for the virtual machines. With this view you will be able to see all disks and what VM they are attached to, along with details about capacity, shares, controller, path and is it a thin disk. Each of the tabs provides a wealth of information about the specific item that you are looking at. On the ESX host level reporting tabs you get the same type of reports at a higher level. You will be able to see details about Hosts, vNics, vSwitches, Ports and Datastores. Just to give an example maybe you needed a report to look at the vNics of all of your hosts so that you can verify what driver they are using, find out the speed and duplex settings along with their MAC addresses. Those details would all be easily found by the data that RVTools collects. The last tab to cover would be the vHealth one that gives you a view into the health of your environment. This view is going to show you things that you should be concerned about and should look into further. It will give you details about both virtual machines and the ESX hosts. You will see things like VMs with out of date tools, low disk space warnings, Zombie VM warning and many others. The tool is extremely easy to use and installing it takes about 1 minute and a child could do it. The author is active in keeping it working with new releases of VMware and has typically offered several updates each year. Each up date has added more features and I’ve seen this tool grow a great deal over the past 2 years. The creator of this fine tool is Rob de Veij, you can find him and download RVTools from his blog www.robware.net. According to his blog Rob has been working with VMware since 2007 and long before he worked in Unix support and continues to code in different languages. You can also stay up to date with RVTools by following on Twitter at twitter.com/rvtools


How To

Dell host firmware updates

As we know, ESXi is the future of the hypervisor from VMware. As such, it is becoming more and more prevalent in datacenters. Certainly there are enterprises out there that are reluctant to come around, but come around they will! ESXi introduces a number of newer challenges for managing and maintaining hosts. One of the foremost challenges can be dealing with firmware and BIOS updates for the hosts. In the case of Dell, they have made great strides in this realm, both specific to VMware and not. The first method I’ll discuss involves Dell’s Repository Manager tool for building a bootable iso to update firmware. The second method covers Dell’s vCenter plugin that will allow automated firmware updates right through the vsphere client. Repository Manager is a Windows-based software tool that allows you to download drivers and firmware specific to the many server offerings from Dell. I would like to see a future offering of a Linuxbased version of the tool. The install is a next, next, finish type, and will leave you with a server and client icon on your desktop. Launch the Server app and you are presented with the initial splashscreen. One thing of note: when I first came across the splash screen, I checked the box do not show again along with NOT checking automatically import ftp.dell.com. I was unable to pull updates from ftp. dell.com from within the app no matter what I did. A reinstall did not fix the issue either, and I could find no way to add the ftp site as a repository. Just avoid what I did! So, check the box to pull from ftp. dell.com and hit import repository.


How To Now hit Finish to create the repository. Next you will need to have it download the software, so hit the save button to the top left. This can take a fair amount of time, depending on the speed of your internet connection. Once completed, you are ready to export to an iso. If this is the first time you are doing so, there is a plugin that will need to be installed (Repository Manager will take care of this for you but you will need to reboot). Check the box next to the bundle you want to use (in this case our linux bundle) and hit the export button at the bottom. This will start the export wizard. Select Next and then click where it says Deployment Media (Linux only) Export to ISO.

The plugin check will occur, then move on to asking if you need to run a custom script. Here is where you will specify your folder used for your repository, then choose if you need to run a custom script. I did not need to a custom script and just left it at no, and then was at the finish. It will then create the iso and drop it in your repository. Once you burn it to a CD, you can pop it in the server and boot from it. The updates are automated and do not require any interaction until they are complete. There is no indicator as to what is being flashed however. The screen is filled with ….. as the update progresses. It took about an hour for me from start to finish, and it did not update the Qlogic CNA cards. Thankfully that is an easy update using Qlogic’s update CD. Overall, I think this process is an easy one to follow. I think I still prefer HP’s firmware DVD, as it explains more of what it is updating, as well as from and to for firmware versions. But Dell could move in that direction with the Repository Manager tool certainly. The Dell Management Plugin for vCenter looks to be very cool. It has a wide range of features, but specifically I am covering the ability to update firmware on hosts. It can put the host in maintenance mode, take the latest baseline using ftp.dell.com (in similar fashion to Repository Manager), apply the updates and reboot the host. You can also feed it an update bundle from Repository Manager. Overall, though I have not gotten hands on with the plugin, it looks to be smooth and seamless integration into vCenter. I would definitely encourage customers to consider this for ease of managing host hardware right from vCenter. For more information, Dell offers a good technical document to cover the features available.


Network

ESXi behavior with NIC trunking Sometimes very challenging problems will arise. Things that make you scratch your head, want to hurl your coffee cup, or just have a nice cold adult beverage. Customers can change a projects requirements mid-way through, a vendor’s storage array code upgrade can go awry, or a two can creep into the ones and zeros. In this section, we present examples of those crazy situations with the hopes of helping out our fellow engineers in the field before they become as frustrated as we have! Recently in working with a customer, the request was for a new cluster comprised of ESXi 4.1 hosts. They would be using just two onboard NICs for the vmkernel and virtual machine traffic. These two NICs would feed into a pair of Cisco Nexus 5020’s, using virtual port channel (VPC). Because of the use of VPC, the virtual switch load balancing needs to be set to IP Hash for the NIC teaming policy. Okay, no sweat! After installing ESXi and completing the initial configuration on the hosts, it was time to add the second NIC to vSwitch0 and plug it in. (Note this configuration is all being done on the hosts directly as no vCenter server has been built yet). After adding the second adapter to the active section of vSwitch0, and changing the NIC teaming policy to IP hash, we plugged in the second cable. The host immediately lost connection from our vSphere client, and dropped off entirely from being able to be contacted. No ping, no nothing! This was most puzzling indeed: we unplugged the second cable and the host started to ping again. We thought maybe there was something wrong with the NIC itself, and so setup a separate NIC to take its place. This had the same result, and we then thought to look at the switch. After discussing the current configuration with the network engineer, we felt that his configuration was correct. The configuration (and more!) can be found in the white paper put out by Cisco and VMware: “Deploying 10 Gigabit Ethernet on VMware vSphere 4.0 with Cisco Nexus 1000V and VMware vNetwork Standard and Distributed Switches - Version 1.0” This doc has been a very helpful during the implementation of this project. So! With the network being deemed not the problem and wearing a sheepish smile on my face after the network guy commented “it’s always the network isn’t it?” I returned to the host. I then tried setting up both NICs on a non-nexus switch that is being used for out of band management, and they worked just fine using virtual port id for NIC teaming. So at that point, I fired up the googalizer and did some checking. I came across this KB article from VMware:


VMware KB 1022751: NIC teaming using EtherChannel leads to intermittent network connectivity in ESXi Details: When trying to team NICs using EtherChannel, the network connectivity is disrupted on an ESXi host. This issue occurs because NIC teaming properties do not propagate to the Management Network portgroup in ESXi. When you configure the ESXi host for NIC teaming by setting the Load Balancing to Route based on IP hash, this configuration is not propagated to Management Network portgroup. So, based on this very helpful information, I followed the instructions listed in the KB and had great success. Now my ESXi hosts are talking on both NICs via IP Hash and life is good.

Community

vArchitect & His Lab These days it’s almost a necessity that if you want to continue to increase your technical skills you will need to build a home lab. With a lab at home you can learn new technology that you might not get the chance to work with at the office. In the safety of your Lab you can break things and fix them without any worries. I was able to sit down and talk with Kendrick Coleman this month about his newly created home lab. I thought that Kendrick would be a great first victim for this column, since he just built his lab. Some of the choices that he picked for his equipment intrigued me and I wanted to learn more. In case you don’t know Kendrick he is a vArchitect for VCE and works with Service Providers in his role evangelizing the benefits of the VCE stack. I hope to find other interesting home lab stories for upcoming issues. VT: Why did you create your home lab? KC: To keep myself up to date with all things related to vSphere. Since joining VCE as a vArchitect my role is more of a Pre-Sales function. I don’t have that daily access to servers in a datacenter to test out features. VT: How long did it take you to assemble? KC: I really took about a month to do research on the parts that I purchased for the lab. I spoke with people online and read a lot of blogs that others wrote on their labs. I needed to decide if I was going to go with one really large server or two servers with shared storage model. VT: What do you want to test in the lab? KC: I’ve been working with the Uber Celerra VSA that Nick created and the Cisco UCS emulator. I will also be checking out the Uber UIM VM that Nick setup. A lot of my time at VCE will be centered around architecting A lot of

Name: Kendrick Coleman Job: vArchitect for VCE Blog: www.kendrickcoleman.com

crosoft guru or anything like that. VT: What is the best thing that you have learned so far? KC: The best thing so far was to take your time and make sure that you do your research on the products that you buy. You will want to make sure that the motherboard and parts will work with vSphere. I highly recommend that you choose a network card that is on the VMware HCL, while I was able to do some driver injection to get the onboard Nic to work I still have some issues with it. my time at VCE will be centered around architecting VDI and vCloud Director solutions. So I will be working with these products to test out different solutions that will help me in my designs. VT: What type of equipment is on your wish list for future lab upgrades? KC: I’ve been using it a ton lately but I also just finished building it. So my wife has already been complaining about my time spent with the lab. VT: Do you keep it running all of the time? KC: Yes it’s just a few feet from me as we are speaking and I can barely hear it. That was my goal by looking for products that are green. By selecting these parts I was able to keep the power consumption low and also build a lab that is very quiet. I built the shut-

tle systems without hard drives or optical drives this kept the cost down and I can barely hear them running.

“I don’t plan on becoming an SQL DBA or a Microsoft guru or anything like that.” VT: Will you be running anything other than VMware products in the lab? KC: I only plan on running things that related to what I’m doing as a vArchitect. So things like a Nexus 1000V virtual switch, VMware products and EMC / Cisco offerings that tie in with VCE. I don’t think that I’ll be running anything else. I don’t plan on becoming a SQL DBA or a Mi-

Want to share your home lab with us? Send a photo of lab to [email protected]


VT: You choose to run ESXi on both servers why? KC: I went with ESXi on both because it allowed me to go diskless on both servers and boot from USB sticks. VT: What method are you using to connect to the shared storage? KC: Right now I am using both iSCSI and NFS. This allows me to play with both methods and I recently setup CHAP authentication for the iSCSI. That’s something that I never did in the past. During this I encountered an error with the iSCSI and was able to take the time and correct it rather than just starting over. Kendrick also wrote up an extensive post on his blog that talks about some of the technical setup steps that he went through. It’s a great read and I suggest you give it a look also at this link.

Community

Education

vCommunity Trust I’ve thought to myself on several occasions that the VMware community is really awesome. In the last few years I have met a bunch of people that are very smart and very willing to share knowledge with others. The community is largely based online but groups gather locally at VMUGs and at mass during VMworld each year. With this people benefit in knowledge gained and jobs found. The latest idea from a small group of people is a way to pay some of this forward even further. I am talking about the vCommunity Trust. This idea to help others gain knowledge and experience that would not have the opportunity in the past is just brilliant. I was able to interview several of the Board Members that are building this idea and talk about what their vision is and how the idea came about. The idea for the vCommunity Trust was born while several community members were enjoying a few Beers at VMworld 2010 in San Francisco. The idea quickly grew legs and Paul Valentino sought out a few people to help with the process of making this idea a reality. Some of the people that jumped at the idea of helping out this cause were Tim Oudin, Caroline Orloff, Matthew Leib and Chris Cicotte. This group now operates as the Board for the Trust and is tasked with building the framework for the idea. So by now you’re probably saying what are they going to do and who do they plan on helping. The idea is to help people that are new to virtualization or that want to learn the skills of virtualization but do not have the opportunity. These might be support people that work in lesser roles in the IT world or in low paying jobs. By helping new people enter the virtualization industry we grow our community and help people advance their careers that might have not been possible before. The group would also like to see people that complete this process stay around and help with mentoring new candidates. My next question was how do you plan on helping these people. The idea as it sits today is to build a library of training materials created by volunteers and from publicly available materials. This could include books, lab exercises, blog posts or training videos. Along with these other materials the Trust is working on creating a VMware Lab environment that candidates would be able to use to learn hands on skills. By providing a lab people are able to gain skills that are necessary for them to succeed in virtualization. The group wants to create and obtain materials that will allow the candidates to easily follow a learning plan that will lead them to obtaining their VMware VCP certification. This is really the goal in the end is to be able to offer the training materials and then be able to fund the necessary VMware training course to achieve the VCP certification.


Now for anyone that has looked into the VCP certification knows that the required VMware class can be an expensive requirement if you’re paying for this out of your pocket. The vCommunity Trust does not yet know how many people they will be able to eventually help, but I think no matter how large or small the number of people is they are a winner in my book. You’re probably saying this sounds like a lot of work for a couple of people. And you would be right so the vCommunity Trust can always use volunteers to help them. The Board is meeting on a regular basis to keep progress moving forward and is looking for people to help them in different areas. The list of needs is not finalized and probably growing but you can help in donating your time, donating a few dollars or maybe you’re in the position to donate equipment to help build the lab environment. The Board has already incorporated as a NonProfit and is waiting for paperwork to be processed that will allow any donations to be tax deductible for the giving party. You can watch their web site for updates or follow them on twitter. The people that are building this are a great bunch and very easy to approach. I would highly recommend that if you are able to help them in any manor to reach out and join in. You can find the vCommunity Trust at www.vcommunitytrust.org or on twitter at twitter.com/vCommunityTrust.

Community

VMware User Groups

Find other VMware maniacs near you. Here’s a list of active VMUGs. Ann Arbor, MI VMUG @aavug Arkansas VMUG @carvmug Atlanta VMUG @mjmaluf

Barcelona VMUG @vmugbcn Dutch VMUG @dutchvmug

VMUG of the Month / Chicago VMUG

Melbourne VMUG @mvmug

Central Ohio VMUG Chicago VMUG @chicagovmug Cincinnati VMUG @gcvmug DC VMUG @novavmug or @dcvmug DFW VMUG Greensboro, NC Triad VMUG @triadvmug Indy VMUG @indyvmug Kansas City VMUG @kcvmug Louisiana VMUG Batton Rouge, LA @lavmug or @bdwill New England VMUG @Csharney Oklahoma City VMUG Phoenix VMUG @vmugphoenix Rochester VMUG San Diego VMUG Wisconsin VMUG @wivmug


The Chicago VMUG is a revitalized group of VMware enthusiasts. The group meets on a quarterly basis split between the city and suburbs. With recent meetings covering VDI and vSphere you are sure to find something interesting. The presentations are open and technical in focus and many meetings include Q&A with an expert panel for you to interact with. To find out more and see what has been discussed at past meetings, visit www.chicagovmug.com

If you run a VMUG and want to be listed. Let us know and we’ll add you to the list. EMAIL [email protected]