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Tuesday, October 30, 2007

What's New in the ESX Server 3.0.2 Update 1 Release

Go here to read the full release notes.
This release of VMware ESX Server offers the following improvements:

Support for selected servers based on the Intel Quad-Core Xeon 7300 series processors. Refer to the Systems Compatibility Guide for ESX Server 3.x for information on which servers are supported.
Driver updates for the megaraid_sas, bnx2, cciss, and forcedeth drivers. Refer to the I/O Compatibility Guide for ESX Server 3.x for more information.
Patches Contained in ESX Server 3.0.2 Update 1
ESX Server 3.0.2 Update 1 contains a roll-up of all ESX Server 3.0.2 patches released prior to this release date. See the VMware ESX Server 3.0.2 Patches for more information at http://www.vmware.com/download/vi/vi3_patches_302.html.

ESX Server 3.0.2 Update 1 installs ESX Server 3.0.2, all prior ESX Server 3.0.2 patches, and all of the following patches on the host:

ESX-1001902 - cciss Driver Upgrade, Support for 16+ Logical Drives
For more information, see KB 1001902.
ESX-1001903 - bnx2 Driver Upgrade, Support for Broadcom 5709 Based Network Card (NIC)
For more information, see KB 1001903.
ESX-1001904 - nVidia forcedeth Interrupt Storm Fix
For more information, see KB 1001904.
ESX-1001905 - Support for AMD CPU 64-bit Guest Operating Systems
For more information, see KB 1001905.
ESX-1001906 - megaraid_sas Driver Upgrade, Support for the LSI Logic 1078 HBA
For more information, see KB 1001906.
ESX-1001907 - SMBIOS Fix; PRE-enablement Support for AMD and Intel CPUs
For more information, see KB 1001907.
ESX-1001908 - e1000 Driver Upgrade, Support for New Network Interface Card (NIC)
For more information, see KB 1001908.

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Welcome to the Collective

We are baaaaack!!!

A year ago I started working for a new company called Collective Technologies. A while later we merged with MTI and attempted to merge the two companies. Well... if you have not heard, MTI just closed up shopRead their press release here

To that end, Collective has reformed and we are back in biz!! W00T! This will be a much better deal and I am excited about the possibilities!

So fear not! I still plan on Virtualizing the world!

The new website is here so check it out!

Tuesday, October 9, 2007

VMware: how to get more performance counters in VirtualCenter

VMware: how to get more performance counters in VirtualCenter

Found this and it is blogworthy enough to repost here.

Ever wondered why you could select gazillion performance counters in real-time, but only 1 or 2 counters when selecting Per Day/Per Week/Per Month/Per Year/Custom? Here is the solution: in the VIClient, go to VirtualCenter Management Configuration and then statistics. By default, the Statistics Collection Level is set to 1 (Basic Metrics).


Ideally, you could set the level to 3 or even 4. After a while, you will notice new performance counters available for selection in the chart options menu! These are great for doing memory sizing/ CPU sizing over a longer period of time. Great huh?

Tuesday, October 2, 2007

ESX Server 3i presentation

Loads of good information on the next generation of hypervisor.

32 meg footprint which they say does not rely on a "general purpose OS" which means they have done away with Redhat I assume...
Multi-core processors
Extra memory banks for larger memory configs (at lower cost they say)
More NICs and PCI slots....
Diskless....

Check out page 11 where they talk about the Service Console...

And check out the patching method!!
ESX 3i Patching
Grab the pdf and see for yourself. It sounds exciting to me!

ESX Server 3i presentation

New features in ESX 3.5

From things I have found out on the net...
This is a good read.
They are FINALY bringing what they call "Vmotion Storage" where you can change the datastore that your VM uses without having to shut it down and do a migrate.. Yippie!

Also new HA features... Read the snippit from the above link.


Last he end with a “High Availability” section. Detailing the “record the execution” feature now available experimentally in Workstation 6 where real-time activity is recorded and logged to disk, and replayed at will for application debugging purposes. This new feature has been dubbed “Continious Available” for ESX. In this case you have a primary and second VM on two different ESX hosts. The primary VM on the primary ESX host is continuelly sending the record data to the other VM - not to a log file. The two VMs held in synch. In the demo, when Mendal clicked the start menu you saw this happen on two VMs on two different ESX hosts at the SAME time! See it like two VMs mirrored. Next the pulled power cords out the back of the primary ESX host - and the other VM just kept on running. It was an Exchange server with 100+ of emulated user activity… So this is great - what everyone has been asking HA to do, which currently does do. Sounds great huh? But just remember if the primary VM has a BSOD - so will its mirror…

Monday, October 1, 2007

Archives

Do not edit this page

Configure multiple VMware ESX vswitches at once

http://www.run-virtual.com/?page_id=160



So if you are managing 2 or 3 hosts this is no big deal... But if you have 12-100 hosts and they all need the same switch config..... This is hot..

Thank you google

Thanks to google.com I was able to recover a blog post I made right after I rebuilt the site, but right before the site got trashed and I restored from backup again..

The new install of wordpress must have had google.com scan and record this post immediately as it was only live for 5 min before I did the restore and the post was gone...

Thank you google... Remember me well when you rule the world.

SNMP, Dell OMSA and VMware

If you are using VMware ESX on Dell hardware you need to make sure you have the OpenManage agents installed on the host so that you can get hardware alerts. That said, I ran into some issues last week making six new ESX hosts talk back to the central OMSA server and I found this link. Because the internet changes I will post the important steps that you must take in order to have your ESX hosts show up as something other than “unknown” in the IT Assistant interface.

First, the esx firewall needs to be opened up to allow the various trafic.

esxcfg-firewall -o 1311,tcp,in,OpenManageRequest
esxcfg-firewall -o 162,udp,out,snmptrap
esxcfg-firewall -o 162,udp,in,snmptrap
esxcfg-firewall -o 161,tcp,in,snmp
esxcfg-firewall -o 161,tcp,out,snmp
esxcfg-firewall -o 161,udp,in,snmp
esxcfg-firewall -o 161,udp,out,snmp

Second, make your /etc/snmp/snmpd.conf file look something like this:

### snmpd.conf configuration file

# sec.name source community
com2sec ita 192.168.1.50 ITACommunity

# group.name sec.model sec.name
group itagroup v1 ita
group itagroup v2c ita

# name incl/excl subtree mask(optional)
view all included .1

# group.name context sec.model sec.level prefix read write notif
access itagroup "" any noauth exact all all none

# Added for support of bcm5820 cards.
pass .1.3.6.1.4.1.4413.4.1 /usr/bin/ucd5820stat

# Send traps to the ita box.
trapsink 192.168.1.50 ITACommunity

# Allow Systems Management Data Engine SNMP to connect to using SMUX
smuxpeer .1.3.6.1.4.1.674.10892.1

# VMware MIB modules.
dlmod SNMPESX /usr/lib/vmware/snmp/libSNMPESX.so

Of course you will need to change the ip address to point to your OMSA server and you may want to change the community name as well.

Thanks to the folks over at VMTN for creating such a good resource!