VMware launches VI Ops portal

Amazing site (http://viops.vmware.com/home/index.jspa) is launched by VMWare. And great stuff is over here. Proven practices. I like the concept and i can assure it is going to help us all. Just have a look Blades vs. traditional Rack servers. Meaningful discussion is going on here. And many more.

Found a good blog there http://virtuallycrazy.blogspot.com/ 

Good Redbook http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/redp3953.html

And again good stuff here http://perspectives.mvdirona.com/2008/09/11/WhyBladeServersArentTheAnswerToAllQu estions.aspx

What else ? Thanks to VMWare again !!

Good VMWare [Official] blogs

Good VMWare blog sites

Networking Blog

http://blogs.vmware.com/networking/

VMware Infrastructure

http://blogs.vmware.com/vi/

Helpful links

Recently cames across good links on VMware ESX you might wish to add them to your google reader or google home page

 

http://www.ntpro.nl/blog/

http://www.run-virtual.com/

http://www.gabesvirtualworld.com/

http://www.vinternals.com/

http://servervirtualization.blogs.techtarget.com/2008/04/22/attend-the-best-of-vmworld-virtually/

http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-2562 ESX3.5 and VC links

 

query RPM Packages

[root@UDA account]# rpm -qi zip-2.31-1.2.1
Name        : zip                          Relocations: (not relocatable)
Version     : 2.31                              Vendor: Red Hat, Inc.
Release     : 1.2.1                         Build Date: Sun 12 Feb 2006 09:36:31 PM CET
Install Date: Fri 02 Mar 2007 08:39:59 PM CET      Build Host: hs20-bc1-6.build.redhat.com
Group       : Applications/Archiving        Source RPM: zip-2.31-1.2.1.src.rpm
Size        : 303340                           License: distributable
Signature   : DSA/SHA1, Mon 06 Mar 2006 10:22:55 PM CET, Key ID b44269d04f2a6fd2
Packager    : Red Hat, Inc. <http://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla>
URL         : http://www.info-zip.org/pub/infozip/Zip.html
Summary     : A file compression and packaging utility compatible with PKZIP.
Description :
The zip program is a compression and file packaging utility.  Zip is
analogous to a combination of the UNIX tar and compress commands and
is compatible with PKZIP (a compression and file packaging utility for
MS-DOS systems).

Install the zip package if you need to compress files using the zip
program.

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[root@UDA account]# rpm -ql zip-2.31-1.2.1
/usr/bin/zip
/usr/bin/zipcloak
/usr/bin/zipnote
/usr/bin/zipsplit
/usr/share/doc/zip-2.31
/usr/share/doc/zip-2.31/BUGS
/usr/share/doc/zip-2.31/CHANGES
/usr/share/doc/zip-2.31/LICENSE
/usr/share/doc/zip-2.31/MANUAL
/usr/share/doc/zip-2.31/README
/usr/share/doc/zip-2.31/TODO
/usr/share/doc/zip-2.31/WHATSNEW
/usr/share/doc/zip-2.31/WHERE
/usr/share/doc/zip-2.31/algorith.txt
/usr/share/man/man1/zip.1.gz

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cat /etc/vmware/netmap.conf to view contents of file

grep .name /etc/vmware/netmap.conf
find -name “*.vmx”

If you need to create an archive containing a group of files, type

tar cvf filename.tar directory
tar cvf archives/vm-configs.tar vmware

tar tvf filename.tar to view the contents of the file

ps -ef to view all process running on the service cosnole
ps -efH to know parent process

to list all progam running the background

jobs

to restart service

service service-name restart
e.g. service http.vmware restart

to start service at boot time

chkconfig service-name on

available services can be found at ls /etc/init.d

view disk

vdf -h

view the content of vmfs volume

vmkfstools -l vmfs_label
vmkfstools -l vmhba0:0:11

To find the size of the directory

du -sk directoryname

ESX TIPS

Maximum amount of memory you can assign to service console is 800MB, 1600 MB is should be the

swap file size. VCB is license per host and not per processor as are VC,ESX,DRS,HA It is important to

note that virtual center uses a heartbeat per 5 min to check if license is up and changes are made to licenses.

HA Services running on the hosts itself and are NOT part of virtual center(VC), they are just configured using VC .

However DRS is controlled and managed by Virtual Center. DRS is driven by default interval of 5 min or when host

is added/moved from the cluster. So ideally DRS queries cluster 12 times in a hour. Based on this it prioritize series

of recommendations to level load across the cluster.

 

After logging level,Virtual Machine is the major factor in deciding the Virtual center database. Beware changing your logging level wipes out all your previous logged data.

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One of the physical NICs will be allocated exclusively to the ESX console. It is through this ESX Server Service Console NIC that all connections to the ESX node are made, as well as SCP, SSH, or any other tool to access the ESX Server’s file system.

vmxnet virtual NICs can be utilized only after you install the VMware tools onto your virtual machine. When you replace Vlance NIC type to vmxnet NIC, you would have to re-ip the Virtual Machine. 

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What is trunk port ?

It is port configured to carry traffic from multiple VLAN’s. This means every packet flowing through this port is tagged and other end(typically switch) knows where this packet belongs to. So in order to enable VLAN’s in Port which connects to NIC on ESX should be trunked(802.1q VLAN Trunk). Never forget to assign Native VLAN. Anything on Native VLAN is not tagged and whichever packet is not tagged it is not seen by Guest on ESX. And also configure port to allow other VLAN on it, this makes sure that all VLAN’s can been seen by the port.

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What happens when you do “Service network restart” ?

It restarts eth0, service console nic and lo which is loopback adapter.

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