Posts Tagged ‘Microsoft’

Gestalt IT Tech Field Day – Nimble Storage

July 15th, 2010

Next up at Gestalt IT Tech Field Day is Nimble Storage who comes out of stealth mode and officially launches today. Nimble Storage provides a unique iSCSI storage platform by eliminating traditional backup windows using efficient snapshot technology coupled with high performance flash drives. A handful of use cases have already been identified for both virtualized and bare metal OS and application platforms. I’m baffled as to how much competitive room there is in the storage realm, particularly with giants like NetApp, EMC, Hitachi, and others. I believe this is a compliment to each of the players as it takes incredibly bright minds and innovation to stake and maintain a claim.

The secret sauce is in Nimble’s CASL (pronounced “castle” Cache-Accelerated Sequential Layout) Architecture which can be thought of as a reincarnation of VMware co-founder Mendel Rosenblum’s Log-Structured File System.

Inline Compression
Large Adaptive Flash Cache
High-Capacity Disk Storage
Integrated Backup

Resulting advantages provided are:

Inline compression (2:1 – 4:1 ratio)
High performance
Low cost SATA disk stores both primary data as well as 90 day snapshot retention
WAN-efficient offsite replication for cost-effective DR
Storage and Backup Optimized for VMware/Microsoft environments
Benefits for Sharepoint, SQL, and Exchange as well

From the Nimble Storage website:

Storing, accessing, and protecting your data shouldn’t be so complicated and expensive. Nimble’s breakthrough CASL™ architecture combines flash memory with high-capacity disk to converge storage, backup, and disaster recovery for the first time. The bottom line: High-performance iSCSI storage, instant backups and restores, and full-featured disaster recovery — all in one cost-effective, easy-to-manage solution.

Benefits for VMware Deployments

•Dramatic VM Consolidation and Cost Reduction
Groundbreaking CASL architecture includes innovations that enable dramatic consolidation of Virtual Servers and desktops. The hybrid flash and low-cost HDD-based architecture deliver very high random performance for demanding workloads at very low cost. Built-in capacity optimization and block sharing capabilities provide large capacity savings for both flash and disk. The net result is a single array that can easily serve the performance and capacity requirements for hundreds of high performance virtual servers, dramatically reducing cost, rackspace, power, and management expense. Further consolidation and cost savings come from the built-in capacity optimized backup capability, which eliminates dedicated disk backup devices, while enabling 90 days of efficient backup.

•Backup and Restore VMs Instantly
Nimble arrays enable instant Hypervisor consistent backup and restore of datastores and VMs, while eliminating backup windows. Nimble Protection Manager integrates with vCenter APIs to simplify management of Hypervisor-consistent backups, replicas and restores for VMware environments by leveraging Nimble’s instant, capacity optimized array-based snapshots. This converged solution enables dramatically better RPOs and RTOs compared with traditional solutions.

•Automated, Fast Offsite Disaster Recovery
WAN-efficient replication and fast failover enable quick, cost effective disaster recovery. Combined with instant backup capabilities, this enables rapid restore and very granular recovery points in the event of a site disaster. The entire failover process can be automated via management tools such as VMware Site Recovery Manager (SRM) which leverages a Nimble SRA to control the storage level failover capabilities.

•Simplified Virtual Infrastructure Management
Using predefined ESX performance and data protection policies, storage for new datastores can be provisioned and protected in just three steps. The Nimble Protection Manager integrates with vCenter APIs to simplify management of Hypervisor-consistent backups, replicas and restores for VMware environments, by leveraging Nimble’s instant, capacity optimized array based snapshots. A vCenter plugin simplifies and accelerates the task of cloning datastore or VM templates, by leveraging Nimble’s instant, high space efficient zero copy clones.

Two 3U capacity offerings available, both of which are served by an identical configuration of Active/Passive controllers, large flash layer, multicore Intel Xeon processors, and 2x quad GbE NICs (10GbE ready and available soon):

CS220: 9TB primary + 108TB backup
CS240: 18TB primrary + 216TB backup

Follow them on Twitter at @NimbleStorage.

Introduction to Nimble Storage at Tech Field Day Seattle from Stephen Foskett on Vimeo.

Note : Tech Field Day is a sponsored event. Although I receive no direct compensation and take personal leave to attend, all event expenses are paid by the sponsors through Gestalt IT Media LLC. No editorial control is exerted over me and I write what I want, if I want, when I want, and how I want.

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Posted in Virtualization

Tags: 3rd Party Apps Microsoft VMware

Windows 7 Launch Multiple Program Instances Shortcut

June 22nd, 2010

I don’t pretend to know all of the Windows keyboard shortcuts but I do maintain an arsenal of frequently used aka useful ones. Here’s one that I discovered by accident which is helpful for applications which multiple instances can typically be spawned simultaneously. Applications like the vSphere Client, PuTTY, Remote Desktop Connection, Command Prompt, maybe a web browser if you dislike browser tabs.

The shortcut:

With one instance of the desired application already launched (and visible on the Windows 7 taskbar), SHIFT + LEFT MOUSE CLICK on the application on the taskbar:

VIOLA! An additional instance is spawned:

I’ve found immediate use for this with launching multiple vSphere Client instances. Sure I have these frequently used applications pinned to my taskbar for one click launch efficiency but when the application already has one instance launched, the target to click on is ergonomically larger and thus easier to find.

This UI enhancement may also work with Vista. I didn’t use that OS long enough to find out. I’m not sure if Microsoft has an official name for this technology – surely there must be an acronym for it. I’ll pay attention during the “Windows 7 was my idea” commercials as this was obviously someone’s idea and this trick could surface there.

ps. On the subject of Windows 7 enhancements. While I do like and use the feature where an application is snapped to one of the four edges of the screen, at the same time I’ve developed a phobia about carefully navigating my mouse while dragging an application where I DO NOT want it to snap and take up a huge chunk of display real estate. I’m passive aggressive particular about the dimensions of my application windows relative to everything else in the shared area. The four edges of a Windows 7 display have tractor beams and when your mouse comes close to the edge, it sucks you the rest of the way in and before you know it, an app is maximized. I’d bet *nix people don’t have these types of issues.

5 comments »

Posted in General, Virtualization

Tags: Microsoft vSphere Client Windows

Active Directory Problems

June 13th, 2010

I’ll borrow an introduction from a blog post I wrote a few days ago titled NFS and Name Resolution because it pretty much applies to this blog post as well:

Sometimes I take things for granted. For instance, the health and integrity of the lab environment. Although it is “lab”, I do run some workloads which are key to keep online on a regular basis. Primarily the web server which this blog is served from, the email server which is where I do a lot of collaboration, and the Active Directory Domain Controllers/DNS Servers which provide the authentication mechanisms, mailbox access, external host name resolution to fetch resources on the internet, and internal host name resolution.

The workloads and infrastructure in my lab are 100% virtualized. The only “physical” items I have are type 1 hypervisor hosts, storage, and network. By this point I’ll assume most are familiar with the benefits of consolidation. The downside is that when the wheels come off in a highly consolidated environment, the impacts can be severe as they fan out and tip over down stream dependencies like dominos.

Due to my focus on VMware virtualization, the Microsoft Active Directory Domain Controllers hadn’t been getting the care and feeding they needed. Quite honestly, there have several “lights out” situations in the lab due to one reason or another. The lab infrastructure VMs and their underlying operating systems have taken quite a beating but continued running. Occassionally a Windows VM would detect a need for a CHKDSK . Similarly, Linux VMs wanted an FSCK. But they would faithfully return to a login prompt.

A week ago today, the DCs succumbed to the long term abuse. Symptoms were immediately apparent in that I could not connect to the Exchange 2010 server to access my email and calendar. In addtion, I had lost access to the network drives on the file server. Given the symptoms, I knew the issue was Active Diriectory related, however, I quickly found out the typcal short term remedies weren’t working. I looked at the Event Logs for both DCs. Both were a disaster and looking at the history, they had been ill for quite a long time. I was going to have to really dig in to resolve this problem.

I spent several of the following evenings trying to resolve the problem. As each day passed, anxiety was building because I was lacking email which is where I do a lot of work out of. I had cleaned up AD meta data on both DCs, I had removed DCs to narrow the problem down, I examined DNS checking the integrity of AD integrated SRV records. I had restored the DCs to an isolated network from prior backups to no avail. Although AD was performing some base authentication, there were a handful of symptoms remaining which would indicate AD was still not happy. A few of the big ones were:

Exchange Services would either not start or would hang on starting
SYSVOL and NETLOGON shares were not online on the DCs
NETDIAG and DCDIAG tests on the DCs both had major failures, primarily inability to locate any DCs, Global Catalog Servers, time servers, or domain names

All of these problems utlimately tied to an error in the File Replication Service log on the DCs:

Event Type: Warning
Event Source: NtFrs
Event Category: None
Event ID: 13566
Date: 6/10/2010
Time: 9:15:56 PM
User: N/A
Computer: OBIWAN
Description:
File Replication Service is scanning the data in the system volume. Computer OBIWAN cannot become a domain controller until this process is complete. The system volume will then be shared as SYSVOL.

To check for the SYSVOL share, at the command prompt, type:
net share

When File Replication Service completes the scanning process, the SYSVOL share will appear.

The initialization of the system volume can take some time. The time is dependent on the amount of data in the system volume.

I had waited a long period of time for the scan to complete, but it had become apprent that the scan was never going to complete on its own. After quite a bit of searching, I came up with Microsoft KB Article 263532 How to perform a disaster recovery restoration of Active Directory on a computer with a different hardware configuration. Specifically, step 3j provided the answer to solving the root cause of the problem. There is a registry value called BurFlags located in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\NtFrs\Parameters\
Backup/Restore\Process at Startup\. The value needs to be set to d4 to allow SYSVOL to be shared out.

Once this registry value was set, all of the problems I was experiencing went away. Exchange services started and I had access to my Email after a four day inbox vacation. I had been through a few instances of AD meta data cleanup but this turned out to be a more complex problem than that. I am thankful for internet search engines because I probably would have never solved this problem without the MS KB Article. I was actually coming close to wiping my current AD and starting over, although I knew that would be pretty painful considering the integration of other components like Exchange, SQL, Certificate Services, DNS, Citrix, etc. that was tied to it.

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Posted in Virtualization

Tags: Microsoft VMware Windows

New Microsoft .NET Framework Update Breaks vSphere Client

June 10th, 2010

Just a quick heads up to bring attention to an issue which I caught on Twitter. VMware published KB 1022611 today which describes a new issue that is introduced by a recent Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 SP2 & 3.5 SP1 update. Upon installing the update, the vSphere Client stops working. According to the article, the issue impacts ESX(i)3.5, 4.0, and vCenter 4.0. Contrary to the topic of this blog post, I am not placing blame on Microsoft. It remains unclear to me which company’s development staff is responsible for the software incompatibility. Microsoft obviously issued the udpate which revealed the problem, but VMware has some skin in this as well in that they need to make sure they are following Microsoft .NET Framework development standards and best practices for their enterprise hypervisor management.

Key details from the VMware KB article:

The vSphere Clients, prior to the Update 1 release, cannot be used to access the vCenter Server or ESX hosts. A Microsoft update that targets the .NET Framework, released on June 9th 2010 is causing this issue. The update http://support.microsoft.com/kb/980773 causes the vSphere Client to stop working. To correct the issue there are two options that can be performed:

Download and install the latest version of the vSphere Client. To download the latest version, visit our website at http://downloads.vmware.com/d/info/datacenter_downloads/vmware_vsphere_4/4.OR

Remove the MS update from your Windows operating system. The vSphere Client works after the update is removed.

Note: This affects Windows XP, Windows 2003, Windows 2008, Windows Vista, and Windows 7.

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Posted in Virtualization

Tags: Microsoft VMware vSphere Client Windows

VMware Workstation Upgrade to 7.1

May 26th, 2010

Microsoft Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
VMware Workstation 7.0.1 build-227600

I had heard VMware Workstation 7.1 was released. Unfortunately, the VMware Workstation “check for updates” feature doesn’t seem to be serving its intended purpose as it told me no updates were available.

I downloaded the installation package manually and performed the upgrade. Two reboots were required:

After the uninstall of my previous version of Workstation
After the install of Workstation 7.1

I hope the usability experience is better than my upgrade experience. I realize some of the reboot business is on the Microsoft Windows 7 operating system but come on, would someone please figure this out? Is there no way to perform an in place upgrade of Workstation to minimize the reboots to one?

What’s New in VMware Workstation 7.1

•Support for 8 virtual processors (or 8 virtual cores) and 2 TB virtual disks.

•Support for OpenGL 2.1 for Windows Vista and Windows 7 guests.

•Greatly improved DirectX 9.0 graphics performance for Windows Vista and Windows 7 guests. Up to 2x faster than Workstation 7.

•Launch virtualized applications directly from the Windows 7 taskbar to create a seamless experience between applications in your virtual machines and the desktop.

•Optimized performance for Intel’s Core i3, i5, i7 processor family for faster virtual machine encryption and decryption.

•Support for more Host and Guest Operating Systems, including: Hosts: Windows 2008 R2, Ubuntu 10.04, RHEL 5.4, and more Guests: Fedora 12, Ubuntu 10.04, RHEL 5.4, SEL 11 SP1, and more.

•Now includes built in Automatic Updates feature to check, download, and install VMware Workstation updates.

•Ability to import and export Open Virtualization Format (OVF 1.0) packaged virtual machines and upload directly to VMware vSphere, the industry’s best platform for building cloud infrastructures.

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Posted in Virtualization

Tags: Microsoft Rant VMware Windows Workstation

Microsoft Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2010 Upgrade Notes

May 14th, 2010

Last weekend I successfully upgraded, ahem, migrated the lab infrastructure from Microsoft Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2010. This upgrade has been on my agenda for quite some time but I had been delaying it mainly due to lack of time and thorough knowledge of the steps. I had a purchased the Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 Administrator’s Pocket Consultant (ISBN: 978-0-7356-2712-3) in January and marked up a few pages with a highlighter. However, the deeper I got in the book, the more daunting the task seemed to have become, even for a simple one-server environment like mine. In my mind, Exchange has always been somewhat of a beast, with increasing levels of difficulty as new editions emerged. The pocket consultant series of books are wonderfully technical, but they haven’t been able to fit in my pocket for about a decade. They contain so much content that it has become difficult to rely on them as a CliffsNotes guide for platform upgrades, especially when it comes to Exchange.

Then two things happened miraculously at the same time. First, I was invited to a private beta test of a virtualization related iPad application. As part of this test, I needed to be able to send email from my iPad. I had been unsuccessful thus far in getting Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync to work with the iPad (even after following Stephen Foskett’s steps) and could only assume that it was due to several years of wear and tear on my Exchange 2003 Server. I needed to get that upgrade to Exchange 2010 done quickly. Second, the May 2010 issue of Windows IT Pro magazine showed up in my mailbox. To my delight, it was chock full of Exchange 2010 goodness, including a cover story of “Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2010 Step-by-Step Exchange Migration”. I’m pretty sure this was divine intervention with the message being “Get it done this weekend, you can do this.”

The upgrade article by Michael B. Smith started on page 26 and was 100% in scope. The focus was a single server Exchange environment upgrade from 2003 to 2010. I read the seven page artile in its entirety, marking up key “to-do” steps with a highlighter. Following are some things I learned along the way:

Naturally the Exchange server is virtualized on VMware vSphere.
My Exchange environment is built upon a foundation that dates back as far as Exchange 5.5 (pre-Active Directory). There would be no in place upgrades. Exchange hasn’t provided an upgrade since Exchange 2003. That suited me just fine as the Exchange 2003 server has been through so much neglect, although it had gotten pretty slow, it’s a miracle it was still functional. The Exchange migration will consist of bringing up a fresh OS with a new installation of Exchange, and then migrating the mailboxes and services, and then retiring the old Exchange Server. Microsoft calls this a migration rather than an upgrade.
Exchange must be running in Native mode. Not a problem, I was already there.
Pre-migration, there exists a hotfix from Microsoft which is recommended to be installed on the Exchange 2003 server. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/937031/
The Schema Master mast be running Windows Server 2003 SP1 or higher.
There needs to be at least one Global Catalog server at Windows Server 2003 SP1 or higher in the Exchange site.
The AD forest needs to be at Server 2003 Forest Functional Level or higher.
The AD domain needs to be at Server 2003 Domain Functional Level or higher.
For migration flexibility purposes, Exchange 2003 and Exchange 2010 both support DFL and FFL up to Server 2008 R2.
Exchange 2010 requires 64-bit hardware. No problem, that requirement was met with vSphere .
Exchange 2010 can be installed on Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server 2008 R2. I naturally opted for R2. No sense in deploying a two-year old OS when a more current one exists and is supported. Plus, I personally need more exposure to 2008 and R2… 2003 is getting long in the tooth.
Copy the Exchange DVD to a data/utility drive on the server. Reason being, you can drop the most recent rollup available into the \Updates\ folder and basically perform a slipstream installation of Exchange with the most recent rollup applied out of the gate. As of this writing, the most current is Rollup 3.
Here’s a big time saver, install the server roles and features Exchange 2010 requires using the provided script on the DVD:
\scripts\ServerManagerCmd -ip Exchange-Typical.xml -restart
Other sample pre-requisite installer scripts can be found here.
The 2007 Office System Converter: Microsoft Filter Pack (x64) is required to be installed. This is downloadable from Microsoft’s website. A little strange, but I’ll play along. It’s required for the Exchange full-text search engine to search Office format documents.
Run the following commands for good measure. It may or may not be required depending on what’s been done to the server so far:
sc config NetTcpPortSharing start= auto
net start NetTcpPortSharing
Setup logs for Exchange are found in C:\ExchangeSetupLogs\ The main one is ExchangeSetup.log. Hopefully you won’t have to rely on these logs and you are blessed with a trouble-free installation.
There are the usual Active Directory preparatory steps to expand the Schema which seem to have increased in quantity but I could be hallucinating:
1. setup.com /PrepareLegacyExchangePermissions
2. setup.com /PrepareSchema
3. setup.com /PrepareAD
4. setup.com /PrepareAllDomains
Installation can be invoked by CLI with setup.com /mode:install /roles:ca,ht,mb however, I chose a GUI installation which was more intuitive for me.
The article stated the installation would take at least 20 minutes on fast hardware. My installation took less than 15 minutes on a VM hosted by four year old servers attached to fibre channel EMC Celerra storage – bitchin.
A Send connector is required before Exchange 2010 will route mailto the internet.
Exchange 2010 ships with two Receive connectors but they must be configured before they will accept anonymous email from the internet.
Exchange 2010 is managed by the Exchange Management Console which is called the EMC for short. That will be easy to remember.
Exchange 2010 is also managed by PowerShell scripts (also called an Exchange Management Shell, or EMS for short). There are some configuration tasks which can only be made via PowerShell script and not via the EMC.
Lend your end users and Helpdesk staff a hand by creating a meta-refresh document in C:\inetpub\wwwroot\ which points to https://<mail_server_fqdn>/owa effectively teleporting them into Outlook Web App (did you catch the name change? no more Outlook Web Access)
Mailboxes are no longer moved online due to their potential size and problems which may occur if a mailbox is accessed during migration. Mailbox migrations are now handled via EMC by way of a Move Request (either local [same org] or remote[different org]). When a move request is submitted, the process begins immediately but may take some time to complete obviously based on the size of the mailbox as well as the quantity of mailboxes multiple selected for the move request. Tony Redmond wrote a decent article on how this is done. Scheduled move requests can be instantiated via PowerShell script.
One of the final steps of a successful migration is properly decommissioning the old Exchange 2003 environment. This is where things got a little hairy, and I half wasn’t surprised. Upon attempting to uninstall Exchange 2003 to properly remove its tentacles from Active Directory and the Exchange organization, I was greeted by two errors in the following message:

In the legacy Exchange 2003 System Manager, there are two Recipient Update policies which exist. Going from memory, one was for the domain which I was able to remove easily, and one was an Enterprise policy which cannot be removed via the System Manager. Follow the instructions near the end of this article for the procedure to modify Active Directory with adsiedit.
The second error message deals with removal of the legacy Routing Group Connector. There were actually two which needed to be removed. The only way to remove the Routing Group Connector is via PowerShell and it is also described towards the end of this article.
After addressing the issues above, the uninstaller ran briefly and then failed for an unknown reason. Upon attempting to re-run the uninstall, I noticed the ability uninstall Exchange 2003 via Add/Remove Programs in the Control Panel had disappeared, as if it was successfully uninstalled. Clearly it was not as the Exchange services still existed, were running, and I could launch System Manager and manage the organization.
ActiveSync doesn’t work out of the box on privileged administrator level accounts due to security reasons. If you accept the risk, this behavior can be changed by enabling the inheritance checkbox on the user account security property sheet.

I’m pretty happy with the results. The process took took quite a few steps but I am nonetheless pleased. Careful work following a very nicely outlined procedure by Michael B. Smith has yielded both a snappy-fast Exchange 2010 server on Windows Server 2008 R2 as well as ActiveSync integration with my iPad. Exchange 2010 is a beast. I can’t imagine tackling an Exchange project for anything larger than the smallest of environments. I’m not sure how I can have so many years experience managing my own small Exchange environment yet still lack the confidence in the technology. I guess it mostly runs itself and as I said earlier, it’s quite resilient meaning it doesn’t require much care and feeding from me. And thank God for that.

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Posted in Virtualization

Tags: Exchange Microsoft VMware

Windows 2008 R2 and Windows 7 on vSphere

March 28th, 2010

If you run Windows Server 2008 R2 or Windows 7 as a guest VM on vSphere, you may be aware that it was advised in VMware KB Article 1011709 that the SVGA driver should not be installed during VMware Tools installation. If I recall correctly, this was due to a stability issue which was seen in specific, but not all, scenarios:

If you plan to use Windows 7 or Windows 2008 R2 as a guest operating system on ESX 4.0, do not use the SVGA drivers included with VMware Tools. Use the standard SVGA driver instead.

Since the SVGA driver is installed by default in a typical installation, it was necessary to perform a custom installation (or scripted perhaps) to exclude the SVGA driver for these guest OS types. Alternatively, perform a typical VMware Tools installation and remove the SVGA driver from the Device Manager afterwards. What you ended up with, of course, is a VM using the Microsoft Windows supplied SVGA driver and not the VMware Tools version shown in the first screenshot. The Microsoft Windows supplied SVGA driver worked and provided stability as well, however one side effect was that mouse movement via VMware Remote Console felt a bit sluggish.

Beginning with ESX(i) 4.0 Update 1 (released 11/19/09), VMware changed the behavior and revised the above KB article in February, letting us know that they now package a new version of the SVGA driver in VMware Tools in which the bits are populated during a typical installation but not actually enabled:

The most effective solution is to update to ESX 4.0 Update 1, which provides a new WDDM driver that is installed with VMware Tools and is fully supported. After VMware Tools upgrade you can find it in C:\Program Files\Common Files\VMware\Drivers\wddm_video.

After a typical VMware Tools installation, you’ll still see a standard SVGA driver installed. Following the KB article, head to Windows Device Manager and update the driver to the bits located in C:\Program Files\Common Files\VMware\Drivers\wddm_video:

The result is the new wddm driver, which ships with the newer version of VMware Tools, is installed:

After a reboot, the crisp and precise mouse movement I’ve become accustomed to over the years with VMware has returned. The bummer here is that while the appropriate VMware SVGA drivers get installed in previous versions of Windows guest operating systems, Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7 require manual installation steps, much like VMware Tools installation on Linux guest VMs. Add to this the fact that the automated installation/upgrade of VMware Tools via VMware Update Manager (VUM) does not enable the wddm driver. In short, getting the appropriate wddm driver installed for many VMs will require manual intervention or scripting. One thing you can do is to get the wddm driver installed in your Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7 VM templates. This will ensure VMs deployed from the templates have the wddm driver installed and enabled.

The wddm driver install method from VMware is helpful for the short term, however, it’s not the scalable and robust long term solution. We need an automated solution from VMware to get the wddm driver installed. It needs to be integrated with VUM. I’m interested in finding out what happens with the next VMware Tools upgrade – will the wddm driver persist, or will the VMware Tools upgrade replace the wddm version with the standard version? Stay tuned.

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Posted in Virtualization

Tags: ESX ESXi Microsoft Update Manager VMware VMware Tools vSphere Windows

Create a 32-bit vCenter DSN on a 64-bit Operating System

November 21st, 2009

As I had pointed out in this blog post, VMware hints that 64-bit may be the future for vCenter Server. I decided that for my upgrade to vCenter 4.0 Update 1 this weekend, I would take the opportunity to rebuild my vCenter server from Windows Server 2003 32-bit to Windows Server 2008 64-bit.

Once the 64-bit base operating system build was complete, I installed the 64-bit Microsoft SQL Server Native Client drivers (downloadable here) since my back end database is Microsoft SQL Server 2005 on a remote server. A key thing to remember about this installation is that it installs both 64-bit and 32-bit DSN drivers.

The next step is to create the vCenter ODBC DSNs. Although vCenter Server runs on 64-bit operating systems, it currently requires a 32-bit ODBC DSN. This is important to remember because the Windows Start Menu launches the 64-bit ODBC DSN tool, not the 32-bit version I needed. The vCenter Server (and Update Manager) installation will not complete without a 32-bit DSN.

To create a 32-bit DSN on a 64-bit operating system, run the following executable:

[WindowsDir]\SysWOW64\odbcad32.exe

Once the utility opens, you’ll be greeted by all the legacy 32-bit ODBC DSNs you’ve likely seen for years working with tiered Windows platforms. If using Microsoft SQL Server 2005 like me, be sure to select the SQL Native Client driver towards the bottom of the list, and not Driver da Microsoft para arquivos texto highlighted below:

Proceed with the creation of the vCenter Server and Update Manager ODBC DSNs and complete the vCenter Server and Update Manager installations.

This information and much more can be found in the ESX and vCenter Server Installation Guide, page 73.

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Posted in Virtualization

Tags: Microsoft Update Manager vCenter Server VMware vSphere

VMware ESX Guest OS I/O Timeout Settings (for NetApp Storage Systems)

October 29th, 2009

You may already be aware that installing VMware Tools in a Windows VM configures a registry value which controls the I/O timeout for all Windows disk in the event of a short storage outage. This is to help the guest operating system survive high latency or temporary outage conditions such as SAN path failover or maybe a network failure in Ethernet based storage. VMware Tools changes the Windows default value of 10 seconds for non-cluster nodes, 20 seconds for cluster nodes, to 60 seconds (or x03c hex).

Did you know that disk I/O timeout is a configurable parameter in other guest operating systems as well? And why not, it makes sense that we would want every guest OS to be able to outlast a storage deficiency.

NetApp offers a document titled VMware ESX Guest OS I/O Timeout Settings for NetApp Storage Systems. It’s published as kb41511 and you’ll need a free NetApp NOW account to access the document. This white paper serves a few useful purposes:

Defines recommended disk I/O timeout settings for various guest operating systems on NetApp storage systems
Defines benchmark disk I/O timeout settings for various guest operating systems which could be used on any storage system, including local SCSI
In some cases provides scripts to make the necessary changes
Explains the methods to make the disk I/O timeout changes on the following guest operating systems:
- RHEL4
- RHEL5
- SLES9
- SLES10
- Solaris 10
- Windows

Now on the subject disk I/O timeouts, understand the above is to be used as chance for extending the uptime of a VM during adverse storage conditions. As in life, there are no guarantees. A guest OS with high disk I/O activity may not be able to tolerate sustained read and/or write requests for the duration of the timeout value. Windows guests may freeze or BSOD. Linux guests may go read-only on their root volumes which requires a reboot. Which brings me to the next point…

A larger timeout value isn’t necessarily better. In extending disk I/O timeout values, we’re applying virtual duct tape to an underlying storage issue which needs further looking into. Given the complex and wide variety of shared storage systems available to the datacenter today, storage issues can be caused by many variables including but not limited to disks (spindles), target controllers, fabric components such as fibre cables, SFP/GBICs, HBAs, fabric switches, zoning, network components such as copper cabling, NICs, network switches, routers, and firewalls. Also keep in mind that while the OS may survive the disk I/O interruption, application(s) running on the OS platform may not. Applications themselves implement response timeout values which are likely going to be hard coded and non-configurable by a platform or virtualization administrator in the application itself.

Lastly, try to remember that if you go through the effort of increasing your disk I/O timeout values on Windows guests beyond 60 seconds, future installation of VMware Tools will reset the disk I/O timeout back to 60 seconds. What this means is that in medium to large environments, you’re going to need an automated method to deploy custom disk I/O timeout values at least for Windows guests. For those with NetApp storage, NetApp pushes these standards firmly, along with other VMware best practices which I’ll save for a future blog article.

Update 4/28/10: VMware Tools for vSphere installation doesn’t change the disk timeout setting if a custom value was previously set (ie. 190 seconds)

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Posted in Virtualization

Tags: ESX ESXi Linux Microsoft VMware VMware Tools

SQL 2005 SP2 End of Support to Force Rapid vSphere Upgrade?

October 1st, 2009

The way I read it, the Microsoft Support Lifecycle for SQL Server 2005 tells me that SQL Server 2005 SP2 support ends on 12/15/2009. That’s about 10 weeks from today.

Why should you care? If you’re utilizing VMware vCenter Server 2.5 in your production datacenter, you’ve got about 10 weeks to upgrade to vSphere to stay within a VMware supported configuration. The VMware Virtual Infrastructure Compatibility Matrixes reveal on page 10 that vCenter 2.5 is only compatible with SQL Server 2005 up to Service Pack 2. SP3 is not supported.

To make the jump to SQL Server 2005 SP3 or SQL Server 2008 requires upgrading to vSphere to stay within a VMware supported configuration.

I would venture to guess that a lot of VI customers are not ready for the jump to vSphere, especially those who wish to take advantage of the new features and the design considerations which must be evaluated and planned before deployment. Not to mention the licensing considerations which are tied to the new features. While we’re on the subject of licensing, keep in mind Enterprise licensing is retired mid December 2009. To keep existing Enterprise features in the virtual infrastructure will require Enterprise Plus licensing after the mid December Enterprise license retirement date.

With the SQL 2005 SP2 retirement date approaching, I’ll be looking for VMware modify their support stance to support SQL Server 2005 SP3. A lot of customers are going to need this to keep within support.

Speaking of SQL Server 2008, beware a caveat that Orchestrator 4.0 is not supported on SQL 2008 (yet).

9 comments »

Posted in Virtualization

Tags: Microsoft vCenter Server VMware

Setup for Microsoft cluster service

April 1st, 2009

Setting up a Microsoft cluster on VMware used to be a fairly straight forward task with a very minimal set of considerations. Over time, the support documentation has evolved into something that looks like it was written by the U.S Internal Revenue Service. I was an Accountant in my previous life and I remember Alternative Minimum Tax code that was easier to follow than what we have today, a 50 page .PDF representing VMware’s requirements for MSCS support. Even with that, I’m not sure Microsoft supports MSCS on VMware. The Microsoft SVVP program supports explicit versions and configurations of Windows 2000/2003/2008 on ESX 3.5 update 2 and 3, and ESXi 3.5 update 3 but no mention is made regarding clustering. I could not find a definitive answer on the Microsoft SVVP program site other than the following disclaimer:

For more information about Microsoft’s policies for supporting software running in non-Microsoft hardware virtualization software please refer to http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=897615. In addition, refer to http://support.microsoft.com/kb/957006/ to find more information about Microsoft’s support policies for its applications running in virtual environments.

At any rate, here are some highlights of MSCS setup on VMware Virtual Infrastructure, and by the way, all of this information is fair game for the VMware VCP exam.

Prerequisites for Cluster in a Box

To set up a cluster in a box, you must have:

* ESX Server host, one of the following:

* ESX Server 3 - An ESX Server host with a physical network adapter for the

service console. If the clustered virtual machines need to connect with external

hosts, then an additional network adapter is highly recommended.

* ESX Server 3i - An ESX Server host with a physical network adapter for the

VMkernel. If the clustered virtual machines need to connect with external

hosts, a separate network adapter is recommended.

* A local SCSI controller. If you plan to use a VMFS volume that exists on a SAN, you

need an FC HBA (QLogic or Emulex).

You can set up shared storage for a cluster in a box either by using a virtual disk or by

using a remote raw device mapping (RDM) LUN in virtual compatibility mode

(non‐pass‐through RDM).

When you set up the virtual machine, you need to configure:

* Two virtual network adapters.

* A hard disk that is shared between the two virtual machines (quorum disk).

* Optionally, additional hard disks for data that are shared between the two virtual

machines if your setup requires it. When you create hard disks, as described in this

document, the system creates the associated virtual SCSI controllers.

Prerequisites for Clustering Across Boxes

The prerequisites for clustering across boxes are similar to those for cluster in a box.

You must have:

* ESX Server host. VMware recommends three network adapters per host for public

network connections. The minimum configuration is:

* ESX Server 3 - An ESX Server host configured with at least two physical

network adapters dedicated to the cluster, one for the public and one for the

private network, and one network adapter dedicated to the service console.

* ESX Server 3i - An ESX Server host configured with at least two physical

network adapters dedicated to the cluster, one for the public and one for the

private network, and one network adapter dedicated to the VMkernel.

* Shared storage must be on an FC SAN.

* You must use an RDM in physical or virtual compatibility mode (pass‐through

RDM or non‐pass‐through RDM). You cannot use virtual disks for shared storage.

Prerequisites for Standby Host Clustering

The prerequisites for standby host clustering are similar to those for clustering across

boxes. You must have:

* ESX Server host. VMware recommends three network adapters per host for public

network connections. The minimum configuration is:

* ESX Server 3 - An ESX Server host configured with at least two physical

network adapters dedicated to the cluster, one for the public and one for the

private network, and one network adapter dedicated to the service console.

* ESX Server 3i - An ESX Server host configured with at least two physical

network adapters dedicated to the cluster, one for the public and one for the

private network, and one network adapter dedicated to the VMkernel.

* You must use RDMs in physical compatibility mode (pass‐through RDM).

You cannot use virtual disk or RDM in virtual compatibility mode

(non‐pass‐through RDM) for shared storage.

* You cannot have multiple paths from the ESX Server host to the storage.

* Running third‐party multipathing software is not supported. Because of this

limitation, VMware strongly recommends that there only be a single physical path

from the native Windows host to the storage array in a configuration of

standby‐host clustering with a native Windows host. The ESX Server host

automatically uses native ESX Server multipathing, which can result in multiple

paths to shared storage.

* Use the STORport Miniport driver for the FC HBA (QLogic or Emulex) in the

physical Windows machine.

	Cluster in a Box	Cluster Across Boxes	Standby Host Clustering
Virtual disks	Yes	No	No
Pass-through RDM (physical compatibility mode)	No	Yes	Yes
Non-pass-through RDM (virtual compatibility mode)	Yes	Yes	No

Caveats, Restrictions, and Recommendations

This section summarizes caveats, restrictions, and recommendation for using MSCS in

a VMware Infrastructure environment.

* VMware only supports third‐party cluster software that is specifically listed as

supported in the hardware compatibility guides. For latest updates to VMware

support for Microsoft operating system versions for MSCS, or for any other

hardware‐specific support information, see the Storage/SAN Compatibility Guide for

ESX Server 3.5 and ESX Server 3i.

* Each virtual machine has five PCI slots available by default. A cluster uses four of

these slots (two network adapters and two SCSI host bus adapters), leaving one

PCI slot for a third network adapter (or other device), if needed.

* VMware virtual machines currently emulate only SCSI‐2 reservations and do not

support applications using SCSI‐3 persistent reservations.

* Use LSILogic virtual SCSI adapter.

* Use Windows Server 2003 SP2 (32 bit or 64 bit) or Windows 2000 Server SP4.

VMware recommends Windows Server 2003.

* Use two‐node clustering.

* Clustering is not supported on iSCSI or NFS disks.

* NIC teaming is not supported with clustering.

* The boot disk of the ESX Server host should be on local storage.

* Mixed HBA environments (QLogic and Emulex) on the same host are not

supported.

* Mixed environments using both ESX Server 2.5 and ESX Server 3.x are not

supported.

* Clustered virtual machines cannot be part of VMware clusters (DRS or HA).

* You cannot use migration with VMotion on virtual machines that run cluster

software.

* Set the I/O time‐out to 60 seconds or more by modifying

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Disk\

TimeOutValue.

The system might reset this I/O time‐out value if you recreate a cluster. You must

reset the value in that case.

* Use the eagerzeroedthick format when you create disks for clustered virtual

machines. By default, the VI Client or vmkfstools create disks in zeroedthick

format. You can convert a disk to eagerzeroedthick format by importing,

cloning, or inflating the disk. Disks deployed from a template are also in

eagerzeroedthick format.

* Add disks before networking, as explained in the VMware Knowledge Base article

at http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1513.

phew!

2 comments »

Posted in Virtualization

Tags: Cluster Documentation ESX ESXi Microsoft Virtualization VMware

Active Directory authentication with VMware ESX

March 21st, 2009

Integrating Microsoft Active Directory authentication in the ESX Service Console used to be somehwhat of a daunting task. Today, however, the steps have been greatly condensed and I find it a cinch. It basically boils down to two steps for each ESX host you wish to integrate AD with (which can be scripted I might add):

Create a local user account on the ESX host for each AD user account you would like to authenticate
- /usr/sbin/useradd yourusername
Execute an authentication configuration command on the ESX host to be integrated with AD
- /usr/sbin/esxcfg-auth –enablead –addomain yourdomain.com –addc yourdc.yourdomain.com –krb5realm=yourdomain.com –krb5kdc yourdc.yourdomain.com –krb5adminserver yourdc.yourdomain.com –enablekrb5
  - Assuming your AD environment has multiple domain controllers, consider adding redundant –addc yourdc.yourdomain.com parameters to the command line above in case one of your DCs become unavailable on the network

Be sure to repeat the steps above for each ESX host you wish to integrate AD with. As new VI administrators come and go in your environment you’ll need to repeat step 1 above to add new administrator accounts on each ESX host. For administrators that have terminated, you’ll need to remove their account (and home directory if it exists) from each ESX host using the console command /usr/sbin/userdel -r username. -r specifies the removal of the respective home directory if it exists.

For a thorough explanation of the esxcfg-auth command, execute the command man esxcfg-auth in the Service Console.

Warning: One thing to watch out for would the existance of a root account in AD in which you are not the owner of. By implementing AD authentication, a root account in AD is going to be granted root level Service Console access on the ESX host! Take the necessary precautions here.

18 comments »

Posted in Virtualization

Tags: ESX Microsoft VMware

Microsoft Performance Monitor tweaks

February 17th, 2009

Today I discovered the workarounds to a few issues in Microsoft Performance Monitor that have bugged me for quite a while (read: years).

Issue 1: Vertical lines are displayed in the Sysmon tool that obscure the graph view

Cause: This behavior occurs when there are more than 100 data points to be displayed in chart view.

Resolution: Microsoft KB article 283110

To enable or disable this behavior:

Start Regedit.exe.
Navigate to the following key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\SystemMonitor
On the Edit menu, click New, and then click DWord Value.
Type the following value in the Name box:
DisplaySingleLogSampleValue
Set the value to 1 if you do not want to view the vertical line indicators, or set the value to 0, which is the default setting, to display the vertical indicators.

Result:

Issue 2: When looking at large numbers in Performance Monitor (Windows XP), comma separators do not exist thus making it difficult to interpret large numbers.

Cause: Microsoft

Resolution: Microsoft KB article 300884

Follow these steps, and then quit Registry Editor:

Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.
Locate and then click the following key in the registry:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\SystemMonitor\
On the Edit menu, point to New, and then click DWORD Value.
Type DisplayThousandsSeparator, and then press ENTER.
On the Edit menu, click Modify.
Type 1, and then click OK.

Result:

Extra credit: Check out Microsoft KB article 281884 for one additional tweak that deals with viewing PIDs in Performance Monitor counters.

4 comments »

Posted in General

Tags: Documentation Microsoft Rant

Putting some money where my VMware mouth is

February 15th, 2009

I came home this afternoon from a Valentines Day wedding in North Dakota to find that my one and only workstation in the house (other than the work laptop) had a belated Valentines Day present for me: It would no longer boot up. No Windows. No POST. No video signal. No beep codes.

I was feeling adventurous and I needed a relatively quick and inexpensive fix. I decided to take one of the thin clients I received from Chip PC via VMworld 2008 plus a freshly deployed Windows XP template on the Virtual Infrastructure and promote this VDI solution to main household workstation status for the next few weeks. The timing on this could not have been better. The upcoming Minnesota VMUG on Wednesday March 11th is going to be VDI focused. I guess I’ll have more to contribute at that meeting than I had originally planned on. With any luck, Chip PC will be in attendance and we can discuss some things.

The thin client: Chip PC Xtreme PC NG-6600 (model: EX6600N, part number: CPN04209).

Specs:

RMI – Alchemy Au 1550, 500MHz RISC processor (equivalent to 1.2GHz x86 TC processors)
128MB DDR RAM
64MB Disk-On-Chip with TFS
128-bit 3D graphics acceleration engine with separate 2x8MB display memory SDRAM
Dual DVI ports each supporting 1920×1200 16-bit color. Supports quad displays up to 1024×768
Audio I/O
4 USB 2.0 ports
10/100 Ethernet NIC
Power draw: 3.5W work mode, .35W sleep mode
OS: Enhanced Microsoft Windows CE (6.00 R2 Professional)
Integrated applications (Plugins – note plugins are downloaded at no charge from the Chip PC website and are not, by default, embedded or included with the thin client – just enough OS concept)
- Citrix ICA
- RDP 5.2 and 6
- Internet Explorer 6.0
- VDM Client
- VDI Client
- Media Player
- VPN Client
- Ultra VNC
- Pericom (Team Talk) Terminal Emulation
- LPD Printer
- ELO Touch Screen
Compatibility
- Citrix WinFrame, MetaFrame, and Presentation Server 4.5
- MS Windows Server 2000/2003
- MS Windows NT 4.0 – TS Edition
- VMware Virtual Desktop Interface using RDP
Full support of both local and network printers: LPD, LPR, SMB, LPT, USB, COM
Support for USB mass storage (thumb drives – deal breaker for me)
Support for wireless USB NIC (not included)
etc. etc. etc.

Truth be told, this isn’t really a promotion in the sense that I had already performed extensive testing on it. I hadn’t even taken the thing out of the box yet other than to register it for the extended warranty. I’ve had only a little experience on these devices as I have an identical unit in the lab at work which I’ve spent a total of 30 minutes on. To the best of my knowledge, this is the Cadillac unit from Chip PC.

I don’t have any fancy VDI brokering solutions here in the home lab and I’m not up to speed on VMware View so the plan is to leverage Thin Client -> RDP -> Windows XP desktop on VMware Virtual Infrastructure 3.5.

I think this is going to be a good test. A trial by fire of VDI (granted, a fairly simple variation). I spout a lot about the goodness that is VMware and now I’ll be eating some of my own dog food from the desktop workspace. I’m a power user. I’ve got my standard set of applications that I use on a regular basis and I’ve got a few hardware devices such as a flatbed scanner, iPod Shuffle, USB thumb drives, digital cameras, etc. I should know within a short period of time whether or not this will be a viable solution for the short term. Also add to the mix my wife’s career. She uses our home computer to access her servers at work on a fairly regular basis. Lastly, my wife sometimes works from home while I’m away at the office or traveling. It’s going to be critical that this solution stays up and running and continues to be viable for my wife while I’m remote and not able to provide computer support.

So where am I at now? I’ve got the VDI session patched along with my most critical applications installed to get me by in the short term: Quicken, SnagIt, network printer, and Citrix clients. I’ll install MS Office later but for now I can use the published application version of Office on my virtualized Citrix servers. I’ve been listening some Electro House on www.di.fm on the VDI and music quality is as good as it was on my PC before it died, although it doesn’t completely drive my 5.1 surround in the den. Pretty sure I’m getting 2.1 right now. Oh well, at least the sub is thumpin. Shhhh… the thin client is sleeping:

So what else? As long as I’m throwing caution to the wind, I think it’s time to take the training wheels off VMware DPM (Distributed Power Management) and see what happens in a two node cluster.

Based on the environment below, what do you think will happen? CPU load is very low, however, memory utilization is close to being over committed in a one host scenario. Will DPM kick in?

Most of my infrastructure at home is virtual including all components involving internet access both incoming and outgoing. If the blog becomes unavailable for a while in the near future, I’ll give you one guess as to what happened.

No matter what the outcome, vmwarenews.de aka Roman Haug – you are no longer welcomed to republish my blog articles. Albeit flattering, the fact that you have not even so much as asked in the first place has officially pissed me off. You publish my content as if it were your own, written by you as indicated by the “by Roman” header preceeding each duplicated post. Please remove my content from your site and refrain from syndicating my content going forward. Thank you in advance.

Update: Roman Haug has offered an apology and I believe we have reached an understanding. Thank you Roman!

3 comments »

Posted in Virtualization

Tags: Citrix DPM DRS Hardware Microsoft vCenter Server VDI VirtualCenter VMware

How to install Windows 7 on VMware Fusion

January 25th, 2009

The VMware Fusion team has put together a great “how to” guide for installing Microsoft Windows 7 (beta) on VMware Fusion on Mac. Complete with screenshots and detailed explanations, this resource should have you up and running Windows 7 in no time.

I’m hearing from various people in the trenches that Windows 7 on a VM runs very well, better than Vista, and one report says with as little as 512MB RAM. Sometimes it’s hard to tell if people are more excited about running the new Windows OS as a VM, or the fact that the Windows promise land that Vista never provided may be right around the corner.