vmware | CrashLoopBackoff

Your mom goes to VMworld 2010

Am I allowed to say that?

ooops the video I used was removed from youtube

Wow, it is almost here. Today I am getting ready for my flight to SFO tomorrow morning. This is a short post to preview what is planned for the blog during VMworld.

A daily recap blog. Getting all of the detail of the days is going to be a big task. So much will be going on there is no way I will get it all but I will give my perspective on that is going on.
A video feature. I am teaming up with @kevin_miller and we will be getting some “unique” perspectives from people in and around VMworld. If no one will cooperate I will make something up. Need to find a mic.
Pictures from the In-n-Out meetup.

I do have some non-goofing around goals for the trip. There is a massive value to VMworld. I hope I get to all the sessions I want early enough to get in. I am looking for ways to improve what I do everyday which is design, implement and support VMware solutions. I am excited for cool new features as much as the next guy but too much focus on futures and you can miss the stuff that will help you right now.

The Mini ESXi 4 Portable Server

Special thanks to Kevin Miller (@kevin_miller), for making sure I didn’t burn up anything and running out to Fry’s to get a new CPU when the orginal we ordered turned out to be not compatible.

List of the material used in final Version:

Intel DH57JG – Motherboard
Intel i5-661 Core Duo – Processor (special note: DO NOT get the i5-655k unlocked CPU in the picture, it was not compatible with any intel Motherboard)
Lian Li MINI ITX Case (6x9x12 in dimensions) supports Full size PSU
Rosewill silent PSU
Intel dual port PCIe 16x Gbe NIC
Stock intel heatsink and fan (Nexus fan in the picture was very cool, just too big to fit anything into the PCIe port.
2x Intel 80GB SSD
2x4GB OCZ Memory Kit

The server built amazingly fast using PXE boot and installing an ESXi image. Only thing that didn’t work that I wish it did was the on board NIC, 2 GigE ports will be more than enough for our purpose. This is not a lab machine but will run all the components I need to deploy a solution in an automated fashion. I really like VMware Fusion but if I try to run Windows 7, a Linux Server and a Windows 2003 server at the same time my awesome Mac Book Pro becomes useless. This is a lightweight and easy way to bring all of these components together for relatively low cost and if it can save half a day on an install it will pay for itself pretty fast.
I am running:
Windows 2003 ( a vCenter Template)
UDA20 – Ultimate Deployment Appliance that I fought with for a while and finally have it running reliably.
vSphere Mangement Assistant

As of this post working on building:
Windows 7 VM (for Powershell and other tools)
Maybe a free NFS/CIFS server for some easy file shares.
Linux Server (just in case I need it)

Now for some pics:

Before:

SSDs Mounted

Two 80 GB SSD’s are mounted in this space.

Everything going into the Case

Size relative to my hand

I do not have NBA player sized hands, hopefully this shows just how small the case is. This solution is a little more pricey for just a lab machine but if it travels I do not need a SATA disk failing because the server had a bumpy ride.

vExpert 2010 – a High Five from VMware

Last Friday night I received an email from John Troyer at VMware inviting me to the vExpert 2010 program. It is an honor to be included with such a great list of people. I never know how to respond to be complimented. That is why I like high fives. It is like saying good job, but the only expected response is to high five back. No awkward thank you, or speeches needed. Just don’t leave me hangin’ and everything is understood.

I am extremely excited to get the VMware vExpert 2010, but since this is the internets, no one is here to high five.

So I will just say, “Thank you.”

Yo Gabba Gabba High Five

Really needed a reason to put this song in a post…

Ask Good Questions

This happened a long time ago. I arrived at a customer site to install View Desktop Manager (may have been version 2). This was before any cool VDI sizing tools like Liquidware Labs. I am installing ESX and VDM I casually ask, “What apps will you be running on this install?” The answer was, “Oh, web apps like youtube, flash and some shockwave stuff.” I thought “ah dang” in my best Mater voice. This was a case of two different organizations thinking someone else had gathered the proper information. Important details sometimes fall through the cracks. Since that day, I try to at least uncover most of this stuff before I show up on site.

Even though we have great assessment tools now, remember to ask some questions and get to know what is your customers end goal.

Things I learned that day. As related to VDI.

1. Know what your client is doing, “What apps are you going to use?”

2. Know where your client wants to do that thing from, “So, what kind of connection do you have to that remote office with 100+ users?”

This is not the full list of questions I would ask, just some I learned along the way.

Random Half Thoughts While Driving

So I often have epiphany teasers while driving long distances or stuck in traffic. I call them teasers because they are never fully developed ideas and often disappear into thoughts about passing cars, or yelling at the person on their cell phone going 15 MPH taking up 2 lanes.

Here is some I was able to save today (VMware related):

1. What if I DID want an HA cluster to be split in two different locations, Why?
2. Why must we over-subscribe iSCSI vmkernel ports to make the best use of the 1gbe phyical nics. Is it a just the software iSCSI in vSphere? Is just something that happens with IP storage? I should test that sometime…
3. If I had 10 GB nics I wouldn’t use them on Service Console or Vmotion that would be a waste. No wait, VMotion ports could use it to speed up your VMotions.
4. Why do people use VLAN 1 for their production servers? Didnt’ their Momma teach em?
5. People shouldn’t fear using extents, they are not that bad. No, maybe they are. Nah, I bet they are fine, how often does just 1 lun go down. What are the chances of it being the first lun in your extent? Ok maybe it happens a bunch. I am too scared to try it today.

Recap of 2009

Thank you to everyone out there that gave any attention to this little blog. I tried to supply new information where I could and also document my journey trying to improve at the esxcfg- commands. In 2009 the traffic increased from less than 100 visits in a week to approaching 500 in a week. That is a slow hour for some of the best vm bloggers (Yellow-Bricks, Scott Lowe) but I am not trying to replace them.

In March I was layed off. I spent 2 months full time looking for work. The VMware community really stepped up. Special thanks go out to a few people that tried to help out or checked in with how the search was going: @jasemccarty @maishk @jasonboche and many others. By the end of April I started a new position as a Virtualization Infrastructure Engineer at Veristor Systems. This job required moving the family from Memphis, Tennessee to Atlanta, Georgia. All the fun of a new job, house hunting and moving to a completely new city. We closed on our new house just a few days after VMworld 2009. My first trip to VMworld was amazing but I would suggest not buying a house while you are in and out of conferences, labs and seminars. Lots of details to fix, I will be happy if this is not the case ever again.

After such a busy year it was only the beginning of September. The rest of the year was filled with VMware Installation projects and VMware health checks. I was all over the Southeast US. Maybe I can come visit some of you in 2010?

Technical/VM/Blogging Goals for 2010:

Continually improve the quality of content going to this blog.
Schedule, take and pass the VCDX exams.
Improve my overall storage knowledge.
Renew my expired CCNA (bad move letting this lapse in 2009)

2009 was such a big year personally. I hope and pray for a little more stability in 2010 but I also love the excitement of new challenges, but the VCDX should be enough. 🙂

Also, I scheduled a Merry Christmas post, but for some reason I didn’t do what I thought I did. So a late Merry Christmas to all of you out there.

Storage Design and VDI

Recently I have spent time re-thinking certain configuration scenarios and asking myself, “Why?” If there is something I do day to day during installs is this still true when it comes to vSphere? or will it still be true when it comes to future versions.
Lately I have questioned how I deploy LUNs/volumes/datastores. I usually deploy multiple moderate size datastores. In my opinion this was always the best way to fit in MOST situations. I also will create datastores based on need afterward. So will create some general use datastores then add a bigger or smaller store based on performance/storage needs. After all the research I have done and asking questions on twitter* I still think this is a good plan in most situations.
I went over a VMworld.com session TA3220 – VMware vStorage VMFS-3 Architectural Advances since ESX 3.0 and read this paper:
http://www.vmware.com/resources/techresources/1059
I also went over some blog posts at Yellow-Bricks.com and Virtualgeek.

An idea occurred to me when it comes to using extents in VMFS, SCSI Reservations/Locks, and VDI “Boot Storms”. First some things a picked up.
1. Extents are not “spill and fill” VMFS places VM files across all the LUNs. Not quite what I would call load balancing, since it does not take IO load into account when placing files. So in situations where all the VM’s have similar loads this won’t be a problem.
2. Only the first LUN in a VMFS span gets locked by “storage and VMFS Administrative tasks” (Scalable Storage Performance pg 9). Not sure if this implies all locks.

Booting 100’s of VM’s for VMware View will cause locking and even though vSphere is much better when it comes to how quickly this process takes. There is still an impact. So I am beginning to think of a disk layout to ease administration for VDI, and possibly lay the groundwork for improved performance. Here is my theory:

Create four LUNs with 200GB each. Use VMFS to extents to group them together. Resulting in an 800 GB datastore with 4 disk queues and only 1 LUN that locks during administrative tasks.

Give this datastore to VMware View and let it have at it. Since the IO load for each VM is mostly the same, and really at the highest during boot other tasks performed on the LUN after the initial boot storm will have even less impact. So we can let desktops get destroyed and rebuilt/cloned all day with only locking that first LUN. This part I still need to confirm in the LAB.

What I have seen in the lab is with same sized clones the data on disk was spread pretty evenly across the LUNs.

Any other ideas? Please leave a comment. Maybe I am way off base.

*(thanks to @lamw @jasonboche and @sakacc for discussing or answering my tweets)

VMware View – Repurpose your Existing PC’s as Thin Clients

I was looking for last couple weeks for a good way to re-purpose PC’s as thin clients to ease the investment in VDI. I stumbled across this PDF from VMware and I thought it was great. I would tend towards using group policy to deploy the new shell described on pages 3 and 4. It can always be undone if the PC is needed as a PC again.

Check it out.

You pretty much replace the default shell (explorer.exe) with the VMware View Client. I would suggest using some group policy to keep people from using the task manager to start new processes. This should be a temporary solution until you have budget to buy some real thin clients or net books even.

There are of course lots of options out there for thin clients, and software to provision a “thin OS” to machines. This is free and easy though. I thought it was cool so I decided to share.

ESX Commands: esxcfg-pciid,rescan,resgrp,swiscsi,upgrade, vmhbadevs

I have been writing on ESX command line stuff for far too long now. I just need to finish it before ESX 5 comes out with no command line support and my year long series is rendered obsolete before it is finished.

Here is a few more commands from ESX 3.5u4. They are pretty short and sweet. So enjoy.
esxcfg-pciid
Used to read the xml files under /etc/vmware/pciid/ – from what I can tell it is used in the process of getting unsupported hardware to work.

esxcfg-rescan
Supply this command with a vm hba and it will rescan for new LUNs.

esxcfg-resgrp
Do a esxcfg-resgrp -l and get a ton of information try following it with a “| more”: esxcfg-resgrp -l | more
It does include options to add remove and restore resource groups. Here is a place on the interwebs with information on how to use it.

esxcfg-swiscsi
Used to enable and disable the Software iSCSI Initiator. esxcfg-swiscsi -q will give you the list of the status.
Make sure to create a vmkernel port first.

esxcfg-upgrade
According to the ESX Configuration Guide this command is not for general use but is used to upgrade VMFS2 to VMFS3. Would be very smart to have moved all VM’s off of the VMFS2 before messing with this command.

esxcfg-vmhbadevs
Use the -m tag to list all vmfs volumes. Typical output will look like this:
vmhba0:0:0:3 /dev/sda3 4afc26df-ddbe3ee5-2037-000c29acbc0a

ESX Commands – esxcfg-nas

esxcfg-nas

Standard use of this command is to add or list your NFS mounts.

List: esxcfg-nas –l

Add: esxcfg-nas –a –o <host> -s <share> <name>

Not much more I can say. A little more detail here:

http://b2v.co.uk/b2vguide2vmware3.htm

A thread in the communities about a problem someone had where the nfsclient wasn’t loaded:
http://communities.vmware.com/message/864559

So go out and add some NFS datastores!