VMware

Restoring individual files from image-level backups of virtual machines

Virtual environments can change the way you back up your servers by providing an additional backup method where you back up the single large virtual disk file instead of the individual files inside the VM operating system. There is sometimes confusion, however, when using this method as if individual file restores are possible and how difficult it might be to restore them back to a VM.

There are two methods for backing up a VM, traditional backup methods that install an agent inside the OS and back it up file-by-file and image-level backups that back up the single virtual disk VMDK file. Image-level backups are usually done by backup applications that are designed to specifically back up virtual machines, like Veeam Backup and Replication. These applications use the snapshot feature that is built in to VMware to stop disk writes to the virtual disk so it can be safely backed up. Backup applications read the original virtual disk file which is now read-only as new disk writes get written to a newly created delta virtual disk file. Once the backup application has read all the blocks from the original virtual disk file the snapshot is committed, which takes the data from the delta virtual disk and writes it to the original virtual disk. Once this is complete the delta virtual disk is deleted.

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What are IP Pools and vApps?

While navigating in the vSphere client the other day I noticed a new tab. When selecting a Datacenter object, a tab called IP Pools appeared. When clicking on this tab you had the option to view and add IP Pools. Having never seen this before my first thought was, what are IP Pools?

After doing some research I found out they were part of the new vApps feature in vSphere. I’ve heard a little about vApps but never looked at them in depth, so I thought I would take the time to research them and write about them.

We’ll come back to IP Pools in a bit. First we’ll cover what a vApp is and how they work in vSphere. VMware’s definition of a vApp is below: Continued »

Checking out PowerWF

Screenshot of PowerWF

In case you haven’t heard, a little company called Devfarm Software has been working on a product called PowerWF (pictured, right). They had a great demo at VMworld 2009, and I was so impressed that I gave them five minutes at the end of my own breakout session to do a demo for my audience.

I’m a big PowerShell and PowerCLI nut, so why do I care about some graphical user interface (GUI) application? Well, there are two answers to that. One, PowerShell is an automation engine, not just the command-line shell. There are plenty of tools out there which use PowerShell behind the scenes to enable the user to automate tasks. Exchange 2007’s admin console and VESI (which I need to spend some time talking about soon) are just two examples. Just because I like to write scripts doesn’t mean I don’t respect the GUI. Continued »

I/O bottlenecks in virtual environments

I saw in a poll taken for a recent SearchServerVirtualization.com article that input/output, or I/O bottlenecks are the number one challenge for VMware users. This didn’t really surprise me because I/O bottlenecks are sometimes not that obvious and can be difficult to find and troubleshoot. Why is that? Because most users don’t understand how to look for them or how to interpret the data that is presented to them from monitoring utilities that would indicate a bottleneck. Some of the most common causes of I/O bottlenecks are improperly architected/configured hosts and network/storage devices, too many high disk I/O VM’s on a single host or LUN and excessive use of vSMP. Continued »

Using the command line doesn’t make you a purist

Lately I’ve been watching David Davis’s Train Signal video on vSphere while exercising at the gym, which has been beneficial on multiple levels. One of the points he makes in the vSphere Management Options video is that the vSphere graphical user interface (GUI) client is used 99% of the time for managing the environment.  I couldn’t agree more — I have multiple shortcuts to different versions of the client on my desktop — it truly is a great tool.  Yet, we still have that 1% of tasks that the GUI just cannot accommodate, for which we must use command-line tools at the Service Console.

In my experience with desktop support many people become so used to GUIs that they don’t want to consider any command line work, even for basic things like running ipconfig at the MS DOS prompt. Others feel that only purists use command line tools, bringing to mind a Hollywood image of some genius hacker hunched over a keyboard, surrounded by empty pizza boxes, writing code in a bunch of terminal windows in his own compiled operating system. Alas, that is not always the case (sometimes it’s take out Chinese boxes).

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Removing old hardware after a P2V conversion

A recent VMware KB article reminded me of a best practice I have been preaching for years that involves cleaning up old server hardware on a virtual machine (VM) after doing physical-to-virtual (P2V) conversions. When you perform a P2V conversion you are taking the operating system and encapsulating it inside a virtual machine. When you power it up on a virtual host afterwards the operating system wakes up and finds out it’s in a different home that has different server hardware and consequently proceeds to automatically load the correct drivers for all the new server hardware. Once that process is completed you typically need to reboot so all the new drivers can be loaded properly. If you go in to the device manager you will see all the new hardware devices, but you won’t see the old hardware devices. The reason for this is not because Windows deletes them — it simply hides them so you can’t see them. Continued »

Are you taking advantage of VMware knowledge on the Web?

Not too long ago I saw a tweet from fellow virtualization blogger Gabe Van Zanten that said the following:

“Today 10ppl on vSphere course all very knowledgeable & working @ VMware partners though none of them knew about any of our blogs Reality check :-)”

It really surprised me that people who are really into VMware virtualization wouldn’t look to the Internet for information on technology that they use everyday. After all, what you know and learn is generally limited to what you read about and what you experience, both of which can be constrained based on the amount of time that you have to do them. Imagine multiplying that with very little effort simply by reading and benefiting from other peoples knowledge and experiences. Instead of spending hours or days trying to learn the intricacies behind VMware’s High Availability feature why not instead spend minutes learning from someone else who took the time to do so. It’s almost impossible to be an expert at every little thing when it comes to virtualization, some guys focus on storage, others on networking and so on. Learning from others is a great and easy way to expand your knowledge. It’s all about working smarter instead of harder.

Which brings me to the point of this post — VMware has an incredibly rich ecosystem of bloggers, authors and evangelists that write about their experiences with VMware technology everyday. To ignore this vast stream of valuable information is like walking through a gold mine and not picking up gold nuggets that lay on the ground. You’ll find information and tips on blogs that you will never find in any class or documentation. There are so many blogs I have a hard time keeping up with them myself, so I made it easy for anyone to find them all by creating my vLaunchpad where I maintain them all, including the top 20 blogs.

So here’s my challenge to you. If you’re reading this post you most likely know about VMware blogs and websites, why not help get the word out to others who may not know by taking the time and spreading the word? I see the same lack of awareness at local VMUG events; people are ignorant to all the great information available on the internet. I made a presentation at two of them that was all about resources for learning VMware where I highlighted all the great blogs and websites that are available.

Why not take your game to the next level and learn from masters like Chad Sakac, Duncan Epping and Scott Lowe. There is a lot of great information available out there and it can be yours with very little effort and no cost. If you’re serious about virtualization there’s simply no excuse for ignoring some of the best information available. If you want to make it even easier, check out Planet V12n.

Master’s guide to VMware Fault Tolerance

I’ve written about the vSphere’s new Fault Tolerance (FT) feature several times and wanted to put the information together in one blog, as well as include some new information. We’ve broken this guide into several sections as it’s a bit lengthy, so you can skim the witty titles and decide if a section for you, or if you’d rather keep on truckin’ to the next section. But first, if you’d like to check out my previous posts on FT, they are available here:

• VMware Fault Tolerance: What it is and how it works
• New SiteSurvey utility from VMware checks for Fault Tolerance compatibility
• More details on VMware’s Fault Tolerance feature

I. And VMware said, ‘Let there be Fault Tolerance’

Fault Tolerance was introduced as a new feature in vSphere that provided something that was missing in VMware Infrastructure 3 (VI3), the ability to have continuous availability for a virtual machine in case of a host failure. High Availability (HA) was a feature introduced in VI3 to protect against host failures, but it caused the VM to go down for a short period of time while it was restarted on another host. FT takes that to the next level and guarantees the VM stays operational during a host failure by keeping a secondary copy of it running on another host server. If a host fails, the secondary VM becomes the primary VM and a new secondary is created on another functional host. Continued »

New series on PowerCLI

Before I get in to it, I guess I should introduce myself as this is my first post on Virtualization Pro.  My name is Hal Rottenberg and I’ve worked in IT for the past 13 years in and around Atlanta, GA.  While virtualization is certainly a passion of mine and I’ve been into that for several years, what I find even more compelling is the automation of an IT environment.

I’m a Windows guy at heart, so up until a few years ago, automation meant hacked batch files and some confusing VBScript mixed in. This didn’t really scratch my itch, and I often found myself doing things the old manual way rather than attempting to automate things with scripts for the simple reason that it was too much work. I mean, I’m a lazy guy here! That, in fact, is the big lure of automation, right? Do more with less and go home early. That’s my plan, anyway. But the problem back then was that VBScript was often not worth the effort, and my attention span is short at best.

Enter PowerShell. I still remember the first day I learned about PowerShell. It was a fine spring day, and of course I was inside at a computer with not a window in sight. Nevermind that. The point I’m trying to make here is that it was such an evolutionary change that I immediately felt compelled to learn all I could about it. And so I did. Newsgroup threads, forum posts and blog entries all flew by, and before I knew it, I’d been nominated to join the ranks of the very few that Microsoft allowed into their Most Valued Professional program each year. At the time, I was one of only 25 in the world to be a PowerShell MVP. As an MVP, I enjoyed (all but) a direct hotline to the PowerShell development team and the support of a world-class group of peer scripters and developers who were in the same boat.

The thing about PowerShell, though, is that it’s an enabling technology. It’s cool and all, but it’s the glue and nails — not the framing — of a well-built IT infrastructure. So I set forth to apply my newly-learned scripting skills to my primary job function at the time, VMware Infrastructure administration. Around the time that I tried to put one and one together, I met the right people at VMware and obtained early access to a developer build of what became the VMware Infrastructure Toolkit, or VI Toolkit, which was later renamed to PowerCLI at the vSphere launch.

I wrote a book about it, and here I am today.

Now that we have the introductions out of the way, you might want to know what it is that I plan on doing ’round these parts. Glad you asked. I’m going to be the PowerCLI guy, as you might have guessed. I’m taking it upon myself to keep you informed as to what VMware is up to with the latest releases of its scripting toolkit. On top of that, I’ll help you keep up with some of the great content that I find around the Web that will help you be a better VMware admin. And last but not least, I plan on doing some article-length tips, tricks, and how-tos that you can really dig into.

Watch this space, and let me know in the comments what you think of my goals. If there’s something specific that you want to see me hit (as long as it has a PowerCLI theme), by all means let me know. In addition to leaving a comment, you can also reach me on Twitter, and I maintain a profile on LinkedIn.

Virtualizing Lotus Domino servers: Support concerns

A reader recently sent me an email after reading some of my articles on SearchDomino.com on virtualizing Domino servers. He was wondering what IBM’s official stance is on virtualizing Domino servers in VMware.

Here’s the back story: He has a pretty nice existing VMware environment consisting of 18 version 3.5 hosts connected to a Cisco Fibre Channel fabric and EMC Clariion CX3-80 and CX4-480 storage arrays. Despite having a beefy, established VMware infrastructure, his organization is preparing to spend a good deal of money on new physical servers for a Domino upgrade to version 8.x. The reason for this is that the Domino administrators have told management that Lotus will not support a virtualized Domino environment. The person who wrote to me is trying to convince them to at least virtualize part of the Domino environment using their existing ESX hosts to save money. Continued »