Posts

I’ve found that vmware converter (this may be fixed in newer verions) creates vmware guests with an IDE controller. There can be performance issues if you choose to remain with this particular controller… Best bet is to change it to one of the various vmware SCSI controllers…

Depending on which windows operating system you are running depends on which controller you use….  http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1006621

Guest Operating System	Adapter Type
Windows 2003, 2008, Vista	lsilogic
Windows NT, 2000, XP	buslogic
Linux	lsilogic

 

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/323350

telnet 25 helo me mail from:[email protected] rcpt to:[email protected] data

Type Subject:This is a test, and then press ENTER two times. Type Testing, and then press ENTER. Press ENTER, type a period (.), and then press ENTER.

quit

dmesg | tail

Shows the last few entries in the system log.

Use following script for finding orphaned files in your vmware env…

# # Purpose : List all orphaned vmdk on all datastores in all VC's # Version: 1.1 # Author : HJA van Bokhoven # Modifications: LucD

$arrayVC = @(“server”) $report = @()

foreach ($strVC in $arrayVC) { Connect-VIServer $strVC $arrUsedDisks = Get-View -ViewType VirtualMachine | % {$_.Layout} | % {$_.Disk} | % {$_.DiskFile} $arrDS = Get-Datastore | Sort-Object -property Name foreach ($strDatastore in $arrDS) { Write-Host $strDatastore.Name $ds = Get-Datastore -Name $strDatastore.Name | % {Get-View $_.Id} $fileQueryFlags = New-Object VMware.Vim.FileQueryFlags $fileQueryFlags.FileSize = $true $fileQueryFlags.FileType = $true $fileQueryFlags.Modification = $true $searchSpec = New-Object VMware.Vim.HostDatastoreBrowserSearchSpec $searchSpec.details = $fileQueryFlags $searchSpec.matchPattern = "*.vmdk" $searchSpec.sortFoldersFirst = $true $dsBrowser = Get-View $ds.browser $rootPath = "["+$ds.summary.Name+"]"

Here is a great guide on multipathing and iSCSI MSA

http://jpaul.me/?tag=vmware-multipathing

keeping things simple – below are the numbers to look for when your investigating cpu scheduling issues withing a vmware environment…

Look for the cpu “ready” counter which is a percentage of time that the virtual machine was ready, but could not get scheduled to run on the physical CPU. CPU ready time is dependent on the number of virtual machines on the host and their CPU loads.

These are the peak / average figures to watch for in vmware performance graphs. Anything above 5% cpu ready time is worth fixing. (Note : the sampling rate is different depending on which view you are looking at)

Thought I’d get a bit of clarification around this one. VMWare states –

VMware recommends that you use multicast mode, because unicast mode forces the physical switches on the LAN to broadcast all Network Load Balancing traffic to every machine on the LAN.

There are some issues which come to the surface if you are using unicast. Where possible we should always try to use a Multicast NLB as Unicast can cause some complications around vSwitch configurations. (requirement to change switch notifications to “No” – and seemingly break port id teaming). Detail below;

I’ve been stuck with this error recently on a Celerra manager device : DpRequest_Max_VS_SuspendedCheckpointsReached

This can sometimes happen when a filesystem is held during a replication task. To check what filesystems are currently being replcated run the following command;

nas_replicate -info -all

Either wait until the replication has completed - check status. Or temporary stop the replication task (stop it from the source side if possible).

http://sstallion.blogspot.com/2010/08/opensolaris-is-dead.html

OpenSolaris is Dead.

What follows is an email sent internally to Oracle Solaris Engineers which describes Oracle’s true intentions toward the OpenSolaris project and the future of Oracle Solaris.

This concludes over four years that I (and many other external contributors) have worked on the OpenSolaris project. This is a terrible sendoff for countless hours of work - for quality software which will now ship as an Oracle product that we (the original authors) can no longer obtain on an unrestricted basis.

I can only maintain that the software we worked on was for the betterment of all, not for any one company’s bottom line. This is truly a perversion of the open source spirit.

go here http://blog.scottlowe.org/2010/01/31/emc-celerra-optimizations-for-vmware-on-nfs/

Turn on the uncached write mechanism for NFS file systems used as VMware datastores. This can have a significant performance improvement for VMDKs on NFS but isn’t the default setting. From the Control Station, you can use this command to turn on the uncached write mechanism: server_mount <data mover name> -option <options>,**uncached** <file system name> <mount point> Be sure to review pages 99 through 101 of the VMware on Celerra best practices document for more information on the uncached write mechanism and any considerations for its use.

Straight from the post below, this is the best way (currently) to load balance your NFS datastores…  No MPIO magic here unfortunately.

http://communities.vmware.com/message/1466595#1466595

Basically you can setup IP alias on the NFS side and then setup multiple connections (using a unique IP) per datastore  on each ESX host. This works well if you are using a team of nics running IP-hash load balancing…

Static EtherChannel.

My setup is as follows:

ESXi 4.0 U1, Cisco 3750 Switches, and NetApp NFS on the storage side.

I have a total of 8 nics. I divided the nics into 3 groups.

2 nics on vSwitch0 for Mgmt & vMotion 3 nics on vSwitch1 for VM’s (Multiple port groups (3 VLANS)) 3 nics on vSwitch2 for IP Storage (Mostly NFS, a little iSCSI) (One vSwitch3 I also have a VM port group for iSCSI access from within the VM)

Since I have 3 nics on my IPStorage port group I needed a way to be able to utilize all three nics and not have the server just use one for ingress and egress traffic. This was done by:

Setting up a static EtherChannel on the cisco switch (Port Channel). Configuring the cisco switch to IP Hash Configure the vSwitch to “Route based on IP Hash” as well.

The next part is to create multiple datastores on the NFS device. Each of my NFS datastores is about 500GB in size. Reason for this is that my larger luns are iSCSI and are access directly from the VM using the MS iSCSI initiator from the VM itself. My NetApp NAS has an address of, let say, 192.168.1.50. So all my data stores are accessible by utilizing the address of “\\192.168.1.50\NFS-Store#”. This will not be useful as the esx box and the cisco switch will always use the same nic/port to access the nas device. This is due to the algorithm (IP HASH) to decide what link it’ll go over. So to resolve the issue, I added IP aliases to the NFS box. NetApp allows to have multiple Ip addresses pointing to the same NFS export, I suspect EMC would do the same. So, I added 2 aliases 51 & 52. Now my NFS datastores are accessible by using Ip address 192.168.1.50,.51, & .52.

So I went ahead and added the datastores to the ESX box using the multiple IP addresses:

Datastore1 = \\192.168.1.50\NFS-Store1 Datastore2 = \\192.168.1.51\NFS-Store2 Datastore3 = \\192.168.1.52\NFS-Store3

If you have more datastores it’ll just repeat: Datastore4 = \\192.168.1.50\NFS-Store4 and so on…

Since having multiple datastores and address to each, the 3 nics on the ESX box dedicated to IP Storage get utilized. It does not aggregate the bandwidth but it does use all three to send and recieve packets. So the fastest speed you will get is 1Gbit, theoretically, each way for traffic but, it is better than trying to cram all the traffic over 1 nic.

I also enabled Jumbo Frames on the vSwitch as well as the vmNic for IP-Stroage. (need the best performance!) I should mention that your NFS storage device should have EtherChannel setup on it as well. Otherwise, you’ll be on the same boat just on the other end of it.

Hope it helps!

Larry B.

I should mention that you should not use different addresses to access the same NFS share (datastore). It is not supported and may cause you issues.

Cisco’s Etherchannel and HP’s LACP are very similar – probably why I assumed both are supported by vmware. But as per below – it is not the case.

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1004048

From a procurve perspective the differences between a “trunk” and “static lacp” trunk is the total bandwidth per connection. A typical end point on a “trunk” trunk can transmit various connections down both pipes, but only receive down one – sometimes refered to as TLB (transmit load balancing). In vmwares case when you are using a “trunk” trunk you will have ip hash set as a load balancer, effectively meaning a different nic will be used on the vmware side for each connection a virtual machine makes.

fire up the vm, then run the following after initiating a vmware tools install…

mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom cd /tmp tar zxf /mnt/cdrom/VMwareTools-x.x.x.gz cd vmware-tools-disstrib ./vmware-install.pl

Then just follow the prompts through to the end.

If your running fedora or similar make sure your’ve got gcc and kernel headers…. (you’ll probably have to update kernel too)

yum update shutdown -r now yum install -y gcc make kernel-devel perl

Ubuntu 12.x

apt-get install open-vm-tools

Check this link for a great script to monitor changes made to a virtual machine via the vmware CBT API. This is perfect for finding culprit machines that are generating a lot of replication traffic if you are replicating over a WAN.

http://www.vmguru.com/index.php/articles-mainmenu-62/scripting/105-using-powershell-to-track-block-change-sizes-over-time

If you have some disks on a virtual machine you don’t want this script to capture then just set them as independent disks (so no snapshots can take place). This is handy if you have your windows page file on a separate disk that you don’t want to be measured as a part of the CBT changes.

I’ve been working through a SRM setup and have been looking at ways to optimize the amount of traffic that is sent over the WAN. The first obvious move is to move your vmware swap files off the replicated LUNS.

Another way is to reduce the sync window. i.e. how often is yoru replication technology trying to keep the source and destination in sync? – Increasing this window can sometimes help you out. But that all depends on your delta’s.

I found this on opensolaris forums…. A nice way to increase your swap without the need for a reboot.

First check your current swap size and details;

swap -lh

or

zfs list

Then create a temp swap zfs store and delete and increase swap

zfs create -V rpool/swp

swap -a /dev/zvol/dsk/rpool/swp

swap -d /dev/zvol/dsk/rpool/swap

zfs destroy rpool/swap

zfs create -V rpool/swap

swap -a /dev/zvol/dsk/rpool/swap

swap -d /dev/zvol/dsk/rpool/swp

zfs destroy rpool/swp

Some very nice examples by Gene on how to setup vyatta as a router on this page;

http://www.sonoracomm.com/support/19-inet-support/233-vyatta-cable

Masquerade Natting;

set service nat rule 10 source address 192.168.77.0/24 set service nat rule 10 outbound-interface eth0 set service nat rule 10 type masquerade

set service nat rule 20 source address 10.200.88.0/24 set service nat rule 20 outbound-interface eth0 set service nat rule 20 type masquerade

Essentially every thing leaving from these two networks will be natted via the eth0 interface. i.e. they will be using the same IP as eth0 for their requests.

A nice easy post by Evgeniy on getting opensolaris on HP kit….

http://www.eject.name/2009/07/opensolaris-and-hp-smartarray.html

This page is hard to find, but it has it all…  http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1008705

To generate and import an SSL certificate on the VDM server:

Note: Certificates are only required for client‐facing systems (that is, standard, replica, or security VDM servers).

1. All the commands related to certificates need to be run in System Context. From a command prompt, run:at (In 24 hour format) /interactive cmd.exeFor example:at 21:45 /interactive cmd.exeThis opens a new command window in System Context.

2. On the VDM or security server, change the directory to C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware VDM\Server\jre\bin.

3. Run the following command to create a 1024bit self-signed SSL certificate:keytool -genkey -keyalg “RSA” -keystore keys.p12 -storetype pkcs12 -validity 360To generate 2048bit certificate, run the command:keytool -genkey -keyalg “RSA” -keysize 2048 -keystore keys.p12 -storetype pkcs12 -validity 360Note: The keys.p12 file is created in the current directory.

4. Run the following command to create a certificate signing request (CSR):keytool -certreq -keyalg “RSA” -file certificate.csr -keystore keys.p12 -storetype pkcs12 -storepass , w here is the keystore passwordNote: The certificate.csr file is created in the same location.

5. Send the CSR file (certificate.csr) to a certificate authority and request a certificate in PKCS7 format.Note: If the certificate authority does not offer PKCS7 as a format, see Exporting into PKCS7 format in this article for information about exporting the certificate data in the appropriate format.

6. Copy the contents of the file into a text editor and save it as certificate.p7. The content appears similar to:—–BEGIN PKCS7—– MIIF+AYJKoZIhvcNAQcCoIIF6TCCBeUCAQExADALBgkqhkiG9w0BBwGgggXNMIID LDCCApWgAwIBAgIQTpY7DsV1n1HeMGgMjMR2PzANBgkqhkiG9w0BAQUFADCBhzEL i7coVx71/lCBOlFmx66NyKlZK5mObgvd2dlnsAP+nnStyhVHFIpKy3nsDO4JqrIg EhCsdpikSpbtdo18jUubV6z1kQ71CrRQtbi/WtdqxQEEtgZCJO2lPoIWMQA= —–END PKCS7—–

   Note: For more information about importing certificates issued by an OpenSSL CA, see Importing certificates issued by an OpenSSL CA (1007390).

7. Run the following command to import certificates issued by CA:keytool -import -keystore keys.p12 -storetype pkcs12 -storepass -keyalg “RSA” -trustcacerts -file certificate.p7Where is the keystore password (the password you used when exporting the certificate).

8. To configure the View Connection Server to use the new certificate, place the new certificate and copy the keys.p12 file (the keystore file) in C:\Program Files\VMware\View Manager\Server\sslgateway\conf.

9. Modify or create the following file:C:\ProgramFiles\VMware\View Manager\Server\sslgateway\conf\locked.properties

10. Add the following properties:keyfile=keys.p12 keypass=

    Where is the keystore password (the password you used when exporting the certificate).

11. Restart the View Connection Server service.

Exporting into the PKCS7 format

To export into the PKXS7 format:

1. Open the certificate file.

2. Click Details > Copy to File.

3. Click PKCS7, then select Include Details of Certificate.

   The file is saved with a .P7B extension.

This happens when the virtualcenter service tries to start before some of its dependencies are up and running. Typically due to SQL Server not being in a running state when it tries to startup.

If your in windows 2008 you can choose the service to start automatically (delayed), and most of the time this will resolve the problem. If you want to do it properly, and in a more clean way…. you’ll need to add SQL as a dependency.