Recently I got involved in a discussion about “Creating multiple Datacenters with one Clusters rather than one Datacenter with multiple Clusters” First of all lets get the definitions of these objects summarized (as stated in the vSphere Datacenter Administration Guide) Clusters A collection of ESX/ESXi hosts and associated virtual machines intended to work together as [...]
All posts tagged vSphere
Datacenters vs Clusters within the vCenter Inventory
Posted by Kenneth van Ditmarsch on February 3, 2012
http://virtualkenneth.com/2012/02/03/datacenters-vs-clusters-within-the-vcenter-inventory/
BIOS settings in a VMware ESX(i)/vSphere Environment
Over the last period I’ve noticed that a lot of customers aren’t aware of BIOS settings that can be changed as a best practice for VMware ESX(i)/vSphere environments. In this article I want to outline some of these best practices specifically based on HP Hardware, but feature-like options are available within other vendors as well. [...]
Posted by Kenneth van Ditmarsch on December 6, 2010
http://virtualkenneth.com/2010/12/06/bios-settings-in-a-vmware-esxivsphere-environment/
Setting up vSphere ESXi 4.1 Scripted Installation
Scripted installation is a new feature for ESXi which is introduced with the release of vSphere 4.1. In this article I’m describing the setup of my home lab in which I use this new feature. Please be advised that this article assumes some basic understanding of Windows and ESX and gives you some guidelines which you can [...]
Posted by Kenneth van Ditmarsch on July 21, 2010
http://virtualkenneth.com/2010/07/21/setting-up-vsphere-esxi-4-1-scripted-installation/
Microsoft Cluster Service support on vSphere (iSCSI)
Lately a customer asked me about Microsoft Cluster Service support on a vSphere iSCSI environment. The VMware Documentation for vSphere and vSphere Update 1 states: Before you set up MSCS, review the list of functionality that is not supported for this release, and any requirements and recommendations that apply to your configuration. The following environments and [...]
Posted by Kenneth van Ditmarsch on March 19, 2010
http://virtualkenneth.com/2010/03/19/microsoft-cluster-service-support-on-vsphere-iscsi/
SCSI Bus Sharing on the VM Boot Disk SCSI Card
Lately I’ve been asked to review a PID (Project Initiation Document) for a new File Server project based on Linux/GFS v2 (General File System) hosted on VMware vSphere. I noticed that the PID was talking about a dynamic File Server that could (and even would) grow towards 100 TB storage space. That number immediately set [...]
Posted by Kenneth van Ditmarsch on January 18, 2010
http://virtualkenneth.com/2010/01/18/scsi-bus-sharing-on-the-vm-boot-disk-scsi-card/
Testing Scenario's VMware / HP c-Class Infrastructure
Since my blog about Understanding HP Flex-10 Mappings with VMware ESX/vSphere is quite a big hit (seeing the page views per day) I decided to also write about the testing scenario’s which should all be walked through before taking a design as this into production. In my blog I stated: Last word of advice: while implementing [...]
Posted by Kenneth van Ditmarsch on December 4, 2009
http://virtualkenneth.com/2009/12/04/testing-scenarios-vmware-hp-c-class-infrastructure/
Creating easy to identify LeftHand Volumes on ESX/vSphere
Coming from mostly HP EVA environments I got used to identify a Volume/LUN by there LUN number which was a real unique identifier. I could always ”talk” LUN number and be sure that it was understood and unique. So ever since I’ve been working with our LeftHand environment I disliked the way that every Volume/LUN is marked [...]
Posted by Kenneth van Ditmarsch on December 3, 2009
http://virtualkenneth.com/2009/12/03/creating-easy-to-identify-lefthand-volumes-on-esxvsphere/
VMotion and Exchange 2010, not supported
Just a short blog post about Microsoft Exchange 2010 in combination with VMware vMotion. We are running this combination hosted on vSphere platform and noticed that whenever we vMotion over a Exchange 2010 Mailbox server that is using DAG (Database Availability Group’s), the DAG will fail. 25-05-2011 Update for Exchange 2010 SP1: Thanks to Toti [...]
Posted by Kenneth van Ditmarsch on November 20, 2009
http://virtualkenneth.com/2009/11/20/vmotion-and-exchange-2010/
VMFS- and Block Size is important for virtual RDM's
A little post from me since I got an error message while working with large RDM’s. While I twittered out the message it seemed that Duncan Epping from VMware had a posting ready at which he only had to press the “Publish”-button. See his very helpful article over here. What you might have noticed is that a RDM’s size is displayed as the real size [...]
Posted by Kenneth van Ditmarsch on November 10, 2009
http://virtualkenneth.com/2009/11/10/vmfs-and-block-size-is-important-for-virtual-rdms/
VMware VMotion, how fast can we go?
Lately while I was testing out specific failover behaviors in vSphere, I accidently discovered that VMotion Speeds (MB/s) are logged in the the /var/log/vmkernel, now that’s cool! Issue the command tail -f /var/log/vmkernel and than initiate a VMotion. You should get info like this: Host VMotionning to (receiving) Nov 7 21:13:14 xxxxxxxx vmkernel: 10:06:06:18.104 cpu3:9131)VMotionRecv: 226: 1257624621919023 [...]
Posted by Kenneth van Ditmarsch on November 9, 2009
http://virtualkenneth.com/2009/11/09/vmotion-speed-how-fast-can-we-go/
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