VMWare

How to monitor free space on a LUN?

Hi folks! So further to my last post, once you’ve decided on free space for your LUN, how the heck do you monitor it?

There are a few scripts out there that will do this for you and a few free programs that will show you the free space. But how do you get it to check and then email you an alert if you go past your set threshold? Veeam of course!

The good people at Veeam have a product called Veeam Monitor, which will not only monitor your storage but also monitor a myriad of other VMware related things. Features such as hardware monitoring and performance analysis will also help you with your VMware administration duties.

You can check out the free version of Veeam Monitor here and if you like it you can then opt to purchase the full product.

-RP

How much free space is needed on a LUN for VMware?

Hi folks! One of the common questions you might find in the virtual world with VMware is how much free space do I leave on a LUN? When is it not enough?

A common mistake is to think you only need enough free space for the size of the VM itself and not much more. Well if you do that you’ll quickly find out the hard way that you should have allocated more. You see VMware needs space for things such as snapshots and space for emergency situations where you might need the space for shuffling things around from LUN to LUN.

The general consensus for free space on a VMware LUN is 10% to 20% free space. This isn’t just for snapshots, but also to account for any emergencies you might have to deal with on a VM where you need the free space. So if you don’t have  10% to 20% free space, then essentially you should treat the disk as full for all intents and purposes. 20% can be considered on the conservative side but it doesn’t hurt to be cautious.

I have heard people say 10% to 15% is good enough but only if you have very strict snapshot policies to ensure that you are monitoring the disk space closely.

-RP

Another way to P2V NT

Hello again folks! This is an update to a previous blog post. So I was P2V’ing another Windows NT server the other day and I was able to get P2V to work with an older version of VMware converter.

VMware converter version 3.0.3 is the version I used and it installed into Windows NT just fine (reboot required). Then I was able to launch the application and connect to my ESXi server and launch the conversion of the physical machine.

This means I was able to do a hot clone of Windows NT 4. I hate working with NT boxes but at least we have an easy method to virtualize them. A lot of NT servers out there are on ailing hardware that is not on warranty so having a method to hot clone them is always a good thing!

-RP

Faulty ESX USB keys from HP

Hi guys, I wanted to chat about something I’ve run into in my experiences. Faulty USB keys for ESX! As you know, VMware has the ability to load onto a server using a USB key instead of hard drives. Well I have now seen an issue with this, not with VMware so much as with HP branded ESX USB keys.

If you bought ESX USB keys from HP along with your servers you might have a faulty set of keys. Apparently the keys start to fail and the servers either freeze or cause weird errors like the VMware purple screen of death. I personally ran into this on over 40 HP blades using HP USB keys.

Luckily the good folks at HP have acknowledge this and have posted a fix for this. HP will send you a replacement USB key if you find that you have an issue. They also have posted what to look for on the USB key to determine in advance whether you have one of these faulty keys.

You can check out the following links for more information:

• (USB Key w. ESXi e - bad experiences)

• Warning — faulty HP ESXi USB Keys!

• (HP Knowledge Base article)

-RP

P2V’ing old Windows NT servers with less than 264 MB of RAM

So you’ve been tasked with consolidating a bunch of old servers. You break out the old VMware converter cold clone cd and you start going to town. But then you come across an old Windows NT server with less than 264 MB of RAM. You put the CD in the drive and you boot to CD, you wait for a painstakingly long time and eventually an error spits out on the screen. You don’t have enough RAM to run the CD!

The VMware cold clone cd requires at least 264 MB of RAM to run. Now in this day and age with most servers this is not really an issue. However with old Windows NT boxes this poses a big problem. There’s also no Windows NT install for converter. What do you do?

Well if you still have an old VMware P2V Assistance CD and license kicking around you could use that. Of course if you don’t have that, what are your options? Well, if you can’t create a new virtual server and transfer the services from the old server to the new server you’re probably stuck with disk cloning like Ghost.

Ghost isn’t a trouble free process but it should get the job done with a bit of tweaking.

-RP

Why VMware Workstation is your best friend

Hi folks, so in this day and age of virtualization, and many operating systems, how do you cope? With VMware Workstation of course! Gone are the days of requiring multiple PCs to try and create a test lab to try out different operatings systems, or to setup large lab scenarios.

Like I mentioned in a previous blog post, I highly recommend that IT consultants purchase a copy of VMware Workstation. You can install it on your laptop and easily create virtual environments to test out things you might commonly run into. For example I have a test environment set up on my laptop for all the Windows OS’ I commonly see at client sites. Then if I need to test a new patch, or try out a new solution I can just try it out on one of my test virtual machines. If it blows up I can just revert back to my last snapshot.

Now having said that, VMware is offering a new deal if you buy it now. If you buy VMware Workstation before July 6th, 2009 you will get a free online training course from VMware. This is great for those of you who are just getting started in the virtual world. You can take advantage of this offer here.

-RP

vSphere Announced!

Hi folks, so the vSphere annoucement is now out and we have a ton of cool new features to look forward to! The announcement was all the buzz on Tuesday!

The virtual machines themselves seem beefed up with access to more RAM and CPU, and VMware is capable of more IOPS now as well. Backup is made easy with vSphere, as well as more security features introduced into the product. A more refined networking strategy was also introduced with the concept of Cisco’s virtual switch embedded in vSphere.

The editions available now are:

• Essentials
• Essentials Plus
• Standard
• Advanced
• Enterprise
• Enterprise Plus

VMware has given the customer a lot more choice and flexibility with these options and every size business should be easily able to find the right product to fit their needs.

If you own a current version of VMware with support, you will be eligible for the upgrade the moment it is released. Even though the announcement was on Tuesday, the actual software will only be available within little less than a month. I’m assuming after that happens we will see a rush for individuals to download and get quickly upgraded. Just remember to leave some older VMware servers lying around in case your upgrades don’t go as smooth as you’d like so you have somewhere to roll back. This is just part of good patching practice!

-Cheers, RP

vSphere coming soon to a theatre near you!

Hi folks, looks like we have an announcement on the horizon! VMware has announced that they are going to be making a major announcement for vSphere on April 21st, 2009!

For those of you that don’t know, vSphere is the next version of VMware ESX (ESX 4.0). They have renamed it vSphere and it’s coming out soon. This does not bode well for Microsoft and Citrix as they will now have to play catch up again with all of VMware’s new features!

Some of the features they are announcing? vStorage and vSwitches for starters! Things are really going to start to heat up once vSphere comes out and it will be interesting to see how the competition responds. Like I always say, this competition is going to be great for the consumer!

-RP

Epic Technology Day is here again!

Hi folks, once again it’s time for Epic Technology Day! This is the day long conference my company holds twice a year. Unfortunately due to many ongoing projects I won’t be presenting this year, but I will be in attendance.

Lots of new things to look forward to at Tech Day this year, including the Cisco Now Van which will showcase some of the cool equipment from Cisco.

Also VMware will be there as per usual speaking about their great products. HP and Citrix will also be there touting their wares. Technology day is a great opportunity to network in the Manitoba IT community and learn a lot about what’s new and wonderful in the world of technology. You can register for it here.

Hope to see you there!

-RP

Client Hypervisors

Hi guys, as you all know I’m a huge proponent of virtualization. Virtualizing the server environment is a no brainer in my books. Just imagine how excited I was when the IT community started getting all pumped up about client hypervisors!

There is now talk of the ability to install a client hypervisor on a workstation pc and then use it in the same way we do server virtualization. What does this do for us? Well basically all the same things - it isolates the hardware away from the actual virtual machine, and also allows us to run multiple virtual machines on a single workstation.

In the mobile marketplace, a hypervisor was demonstrated on a mobile device allowing you to run multiple virtualized mobile operating systems on one device. Now that’s just too cool!

Anyways, I can’t wait for this technology to become mainstream. Over the next few years we are going to see the virtualization market explode!

-RP