Comments on: Lab Manager 4 and vDS

By: Sandy Brisbane

Sandy Brisbane — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 09:32:57 +0000

Sounds good but I don’t run VSphere. Anyone got any recommendations for me? Cheers Sandy

By: The Future of VMware Lab Manager » boche.net – VMware Virtualization Evangelist

Mon, 13 Sep 2010 01:14:07 +0000

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By: jason

jason — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 18:26:54 +0000

Before LM4, VMotion only works with VMs having a physical (public) network only. VMotion would not work on configurations with private networks. LM4 fixes this by spanning private networks across all hosts with the vDS (distributed switch) in addition to allowing fenced configurations span hosts.

The pisser is that enabling host spanning creates a service VM on each host which will not migrate (VMotion). Thereby, hosts with one of these service VMs cannot go into maintenance mode or benefit from DPMJ.

It’s an unfortunate catch 22. VMware is lacking the obvious intelligence needed to kill the service VM when a call for Maintenance Mode or DPM is made.

You are correct, disabling host spanning disables the spanning of private networks as well as spanning fenced configurations across hosts and we’re right back to LM3 functionality in that configurations with a private network cannot VMotion and fenced configurations must reside on a single host.

One step forward, two steps back!

By: wayne

wayne — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 15:35:00 +0000

Thanks. This is madening!

Before adding LM4, vMotion works well. I ran into frustating situation when wanting to test the dvs. I expected that I could move a VM in a fenced configuration to another host to another. My simple test would be to watch things to continue to function during and after the migration.

In short, I want to manually do in the LM fenced configuration what I would expect DRS to do automatically.

If I have to disable host spanning before I can manually move a VM to a different host, won’t that disable the distibuted fence????

By: mandren

mandren — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 16:29:24 +0000

While this is a new feature for Lab Manager and other vendors, the Surgient Virtual Automation Platform has supported fenced environments spanning hosts for years. Not only does this work with any level of vSphere, but works on ESX3.5 and Hyper-V as well. Creating maintenance windows works just as well whether spanning hosts or not.

Check it out:
http://www.surgient.com/products.htm

By: pvrajan

pvrajan — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 09:30:09 +0000

You should probably take a look at VMLogix LabManager. They have also added support for host spanning of a fenced configuration – but don’t have any of the limitations mentioned above. Works with vSphere Standard/Advanced/Enterprise/Enterprise Plus as well and “Enter Maintenence Mode” works seamlessly too.

Check out their website for a feature comparison with VMware LM: http://www.vmlogix.com/Products/LabManager-Compare/

By: Alan

Alan — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 23:31:24 +0000

I had no idea about this ‘feature’. I was very excited about using the distributed switch as I felt this would finally allow me to VMotion fenced configurations off a host to perform maintenance. I guess this only partially solves that problem. It doesn’t seem much more convenient compared to undeploy – save state for fenced configurations. At least when compared to paying a premium for Enterprise Plus.