VMFS

No room for VMFS haters here!

Fresh off the release of my recent SearchVMware.com tip on the inner workings of VMware’s vStorage VMFS, I came across a VMFS-hater blog post. I am a big fan of VMFS for VMware implementations, frequently referring to the popular clustered file system as the most underrated technology VMware has ever made. Continued »

VMware product name changes: vCenter, View

VMware has just announced that they are changing the names of their current products to the new product names that were announced at VMworld. The biggest changes are that VirtualCenter is now being referred to as vCenter Server and Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) is now being referred to as View. vCenter is also the name that will be used for all of their infrastructure and management applications (i.e. Lab Manager is now vCenter Lab Manager) and View will also be the name for all of their desktop applications (i.e. Virtual Desktop Manager is now View Manager).

While this was a good time to change the name for VDI to View with the release of the new version (View 3) it was expected that the vCenter name change would not take place until the release of VI4. Subsequently this may lead to confusion for a while as the vCenter name is effective immediately for the current version of the product (VirtualCenter 2.5 Update 3). VMware has updated their website accordingly for all the product download and documentation pages but the name has not been changed in the current documentation or product. Whether they apply the name change inside the application and documentation in the next release of vCenter (presumably 2.5 Update 4) or wait until VI4 is released is not currently known. Additionally this only applies to the current versions which presumably means any version of vCenter 2.5, version 2.0.x is still referred to as VirtualCenter.

All of the product name changes affected by this are listed below:

VMware VirtualCenter → VMware vCenter Server
VMware Lifecycle Manager → VMware vCenter Lifecycle Manager
VMware Converter → VMware vCenter Converter
VMware Lab Manager → VMware vCenter Lab Manager
VMware Stage Manager → VMware vCenter Stage Manager
VMware Update Manager → VMware vCenter Update Manager
VMware Site Recovery Manager → VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager
VirtualCenter Foundation → vCenter Server Foundation
VMFS → VMware vStorage VMFS
VMware Virtual Desktop Infrastructure → VMware View
Virtual Desktop Manager (VDM) → VMware View Manager
VMware Administrator Interface → VMware View Administrator
VDM Agent → VMware View Manager Agent
VDM Web Access → VMware View Portal
VDM Client for Windows → VMware View Client for Windows
VDM Client for Linux → VMware View Client for Linux

VMFS volume names: UUID and symbolic

If you have ever done a directory listing of your VMFS volumes on a VMware ESX host from the Service Console or using a file browser application like WinSCP you will notice the names of your VMFS volumes but also a number of directories that consist of a long string of numbers and letters as seen below.

If you look in these directories the contents of them are exactly the same as the directories that are named the same as your VMFS volumes. So what are these directories? Let’s explain what happens when you create a VMFS volume to find out.

When creating VMFS volumes you are prompted to name them. This name is not what the ESX host uses to reference the volume; it is purely a friendly name to make it easier for the user to identify the volume. The ESX host actually uses a unique identifier called a Universal Unique ID (UUID) to reference the volume. The name you specify when you create a VMFS volume is a user-defined device name which is a symbolic link to the UUID of the VMFS volume. This is done to solve the problem of changing the device name, when you change the volume name you are only changing the user-defined device name and not the UUID of the volume. So when you look in your /vmfs/volumes directory you will see both a UUID, ie. 4404e8b4-bcfd52fc-1e4b-0017a4a91076 and the symbolic link, i.e. ServerA-Local. Changing to the symbolic link name by using the cd command or clicking on it in WinSCP simply takes you to the UUID directory. You can see the relationship between symbolic links and UUID’s by using the ls –l command inside the service console as shown below.

Additionally you can see the UUID of a volume in the VMware Infrastructure Client by selecting a volume in the Configuration, Storage section and then looking in the Details pane at the Location field. It’s definitely a lot easier to remember the volumes friendly name then it’s long UUID which is why symbolic links are used with ESX.