Author: Davoud Teimouri

VMware vSAN 6.5 – Licensing Guide 0

Reviews

VMware vSAN 6.5 – Licensing Guide

VMware vSAN, formerly known as VMware Virtual SAN, is the industry-leading software powering Hyper-Converged Infrastructure solutions. What vSAN Does Enables You to Respond 10X Faster Respond to dynamic business needs 10x faster with a simplified infrastructure that allows compute and storage to be effortlessly managed as one. Reduce hardware silos, automate provisioning and change management, and scale your infrastructure easily as your business grows. Eliminate traditional performance tuning and sizing tasks and get more out of your resources with a fully flash-optimized HCI. Reduces TCO By 50% Reduce total cost of ownership by 50% by eliminating traditional hardware storage costs with intelligent software-defined storage that accelerates the shift to server economics, affordable flash, and the broadest selection of x86 platforms for HCI. Reduce operational expenses with rapid deployment and simplified day-to-day management using VM-level automation and one familiar management tool, vCenter. Scales to Tomorrow Prepare for tomorrow’s dynamic business in the multi-cloud era with a solution designed to leverage the latest hardware technologies and ready to support a wide range of applications, from business critical applications to next-gen applications using containers. Enjoy a common storage platform for your applications, whether running on-premises or off-premises, and use it as a stepping-stone...

Intel VT Issue 0

How To / Server Virtualization

ESXi host fails with a PSOD due to an Intel Virtualization Technology!

I have read a KB on VMware Knowledge Base and it says that an Intel Virtualization Technology can be cause of PSOD. This is little funny because ESXi will be affected by wide range of Intel Xeon processor family: Intel® Xeon® Processor 55xx Series Intel® Xeon® Processor 56xx Series Intel® Xeon® Processor 65xx Series Intel® Xeon® Processor 75xx Series Intel® Xeon® Processor E5-1400 v2 Product Family Intel® Xeon® Processor E5-1600 v2 Product Family Intel® Xeon® Processor E5-1600 v3 Product Family Intel® Xeon® Processor E5-2400 Product Family Intel® Xeon® Processor E5-2400 v2 Product Family Intel® Xeon® Processor E5-2600 Product Family Intel® Xeon® Processor E5-2600 v2 Product Family Intel® Xeon® Processor E5-2600 v3 Product Family Intel® Xeon® Processor E5-2600 v4 Product Family Intel® Xeon® Processor E5-4600 Product Family Intel® Xeon® Processor E5-4600 v2 Product Family Intel® Xeon® Processor E5-4600 v3 Product Family Intel® Xeon® Processor E5-4600 v4 Product Family Intel® Xeon® Processor E7-2800 Product Family Intel® Xeon® Processor E7-4800 Product Family Intel® Xeon® Processor E7-8800 Product Family Intel® Xeon® Processor E7-8800/4800/2800 v2 Product Families Intel® Xeon® Processor E7-8800/4800 v3 Product Families Intel® Xeon® Processor E7-8800/4800 v4 Product Families There is a workaround for preventing the problem and PSOD on server but VMware...

VMware LABS – Updated Fling 0

Free Tools / Server Virtualization

VMware LABS – Updated Fling

Three flings are updated by VMware engineers and published during this week and past week. HCIBench This fling is a “Hyper-converged Infrastructure Benchmark” tools and if you have vSAN in your environment, this fling is very useful for you. Changelog   Increased Timeout value of client VM disk from 30 seconds to 180 seconds. Disabled client VM password expiration. Disabled client VM OS disk fsck. Set Observer interval to 60 seconds to shrink the size of observer data. Fixed PCPU calculation. Created link directory of /opt/automation/logs, user will be able to review the testing logs in http://HCIBENCH/hcibench_logs/ Increased the RAM of HCIBench from 4GB to 8GB to avoid running out-of-resource issue.

NSX for App Volumes 0

Free Tools

New VMware LABS – NSX for App Volumes

Summary NSX for App Volumes offers the ability to manage network policies associated with an application in App Volumes. More specifically, this Fling gives App Volumes the ability to publish applications to desktops with associated network policies in real-time. The associated network policies will be effective when applications are attached to desktops and deactivated when applications detached. Thus, this Fling enables a per-app network management solution.  

HP Lights-Out Configuration Utility – 1.5.0 0

Reviews

HP Lights-Out Configuration Utility – 1.5.0

The Lights-Out Configuration Utility (HPQLOCFG.EXE) is a Windows®-based utility that connects to iLO 3 or iLO 4 using a secure connection over the network. RIBCL scripts are passed over the secure connection to HPQLOCFG. This utility requires a valid user ID and password with the appropriate privileges. For iLO 4 Firmware version 2.30 and onwards, it is a must to upgrade to  HPQLOCFG v1.50. For iLO 4 Firmware versions below 2.30, iLO 2 and iLO 3, it is recommended to upgrade to HPQLOCFG v1.50. This version of HPQLOCFG supports iLO 4 firmware version 2.30 onwards when FIPS Mode or Enforce AES/3DES Encryption mode is enabled. Note: If AES/FIPS is enabled in iLO, you may need to upgrade to .NET Framework v4.5 or above to communicate with iLO. Also make sure the Operating System supports TLSv1.1 and TLSv1.2. For more information please see iLO 4 Scripting and Command Line Guide. You can download new version from HPE web site.

VMware Labs New Flings – PowerCLI Core 0

Reviews

VMware Labs New Flings – PowerCLI Core

You know that PowerCLI is one of useful automation tools in vSphere and many administrators using it for automating their tasks, creating reports, changing configurations and others. Actually, PowerCLI is a package of PowerShell modules and you need to have Windows for use this tool. But now and after introducing PowerShell for Linux and Mac OS by Microsoft, VMware engineers provide a similar tool for administrator that they can install and run it on Linux, Mac OS and Docker. The new tool (PowerCLI Core) is available for download on this link Read its requirements and installation instruction as well.

ESXi 5.5, 6.x IOPS Limit Not Working – Disk.SchedulerWithReservation 1

How To / Server Virtualization

ESXi 5.5, 6.x IOPS Limit Not Working – Disk.SchedulerWithReservation

Last week, we went limit some our machines IOPS but we saw the limitation is not working on our machines, after searching the issue on VMware KB, we found an KB (2059192) that explain an known issue on ESXi 5.5 and ESXi 6. It seems, disk IO scheduling model has been changed on the platforms and it’s cause of the issue. But the solution is so simple, just you need to change an ESXi’s parameter: Revert the disk I/O scheduler to an earlier version by using the vSphere Web Client In the vSphere Web Client, edit the Disk.SchedulerWithReservation parameter in the Advanced System Settings list for the host. Navigate to the host. On the Manage tab, click Settings and click Advanced System Settings. Locate the Disk.SchedulerWithReservation parameter.Note: You can use the Filter or Find text boxes to find the parameter easily. Click Edit and set the parameter to 0. Click OK. Revert the disk I/O scheduler to an earlier version by using an ESXCLI command In the ESXi Shell to the host, run this console command: esxcli system settings advanced set -o /Disk/SchedulerWithReservation -i=0 There is no need to reboot or anything else. The configuration will be applied immediately.

3DHow to Build a NetApp ONTAP 9 Lab For Free 0

News

NetApp Simulator 9 Free eBook – Build Your Own NetApp ONTAP 9 Lab!

Neil Anderson is one of my readers and he wanted me to share his new how-to guide. Neil has a new blog at http://www.flackbox.com/about-neil/ . You can download his guide after subscription as PDF file. Where to find all the software for free, how to build the NetApp simulators, the Windows and Linux clients, the VMware setup and how to configure the networking. The lab features two NetApp simulator ONTAP 9 clusters, Windows and Linux clients and separate IP subnets to make it as close to a real world environment as possible. You’ll have the entire lab up and running in an hour, and you won’t need to figure anything out along the way because I show you everything. You can build the lab at no cost, all you need is a PC to run it on. I hope you can make use of it to expand your storage knowledge and further your career. The lab build outlined in the book is the same one I use for the hands-on demonstrations in my videos. You can use the instructions in the free eBook to build your own lab and follow along with me as you watch. The post link: http://www.flackbox.com/netapp-simulator/ Please...

KickStart Menu 2

Operating System

Linux KickStart – Automated Installation

Kickstart installations offer a means to automate the installation process, either partially or fully. Kickstart files contain answers to all questions normally asked by the installation program, such as what time zone you want the system to use, how the drives should be partitioned, or which packages should be installed. Providing a prepared Kickstart file when the installation begins therefore allows you to perform the installation automatically, without need for any intervention from the user. This is especially useful when deploying Red Hat Enterprise Linux on a large number of systems at once. Kickstart files can be kept on a single server system and read by individual computers during the installation. This installation method can support the use of a single Kickstart file to install Linux on multiple machines, making it ideal for network and system administrators. All scripts and the log files of their execution are stored in the /tmp directory to assist with debugging installation failures. Note You must read your distribution documents about fresh installation and upgrading current OS because some distributions don’t support upgrading via KickStart. How Do You Perform a Kickstart Installation? Kickstart installations can be performed using a local DVD, a local hard drive, or via NFS, FTP,...

Oracle VM – Virtualization Modes or Domain Types – Part 1 0

Server Virtualization

Oracle VM – Virtualization Modes or Domain Types – Part 1

Introduction Oracle VM introduced two main modes or domain types: Paravirtualized (PVM):A virtual machine with a kernel that is recompiled to be made aware of the virtual environment. Runs at near native speed, with memory, disk and network access optimized for maximum performance.Paravirtualized guests use generic, idealized device drivers, which are part of the guest’s OS. The I/O operations using these generic device drivers are mapped to the real device drivers in dom0. The generic, abstracted drivers in the guest seldom change and provide excellent guest stability. The dom0 domain, alternatively, can use the native hardware vendor drivers, and the guests can safely migrate to another dom0 with slightly different drivers. For other resources such as CPU and memory, paravirtualized kernels make special “hypercalls” to the Xen hypervisor. These hypercalls provide better performance by reducing the number of instructions and context switches required to handle an incoming request. By contrast, on an emulated (hardware virtualized) guest, driver requests engage the guest’s interrupt handler, increasing the I/O operation overhead. Hardware Virtualized Machine (HVM):A hardware virtualized guest runs on the virtualization platform as it would on a physical host. Because the device drivers of the hardware virtualized guest are emulated, dom0 must...

Oracle VM 0

Server Virtualization

Oracle VM Server – Configuration Limits for Release 3.4

Today, virtualization is under development by many companies and big companies trying to have their virtualization solution. Oracle VM is Oracle virtualization platform that it’s based on Xen hypervisor. You may know that any hypervisor has some limitations and configuration maximums and you should consider the limitation when you are deploying infrastructure or creating virtual machines. Oracle VM Manager Maximums em x86 Maximum SPARC Maximum Oracle VM Servers in a server pool (unclustered) 64 64 Oracle VM Servers in a server pool (clustered) 32 32 Number of servers 256 (16 servers * 16 server pools) 256 (16 servers * 16 server pools) Number of server pools 16 16 Number of configured virtual machines 5120 (20 virtual machines * 256 servers) 5120 (20 virtual machines * 256 servers) Number of running virtual machines 2,560 (10 virtual machines per server * 256 servers) 32768 (128 virtual machines per server * 256 servers) Fujitsu M10-4S, this limitation is 65536 (256 virtual machines per server * 256 servers) Oracle SPARC M-series servers, this limitation is 128 virtual machines per server * the number of physical domains (PDoms). Each physical domain acts as its own server with its own set of logical domains.  

Check CPU, Memory and Storage OverCommitment – PowerCLI 1

Server Virtualization / How To

Check CPU, Memory and Storage OverCommitment – PowerCLI

What’s OverCommitment? OverCommitment means virtual machines can use more resources than physical resources. CPU OverCommitment means you can create virtual machines with vCPU more than your server physical CPU, for example: Your server has two socket and each socket has 12 cores and also hyper-threading is enable, so you have 24 physical cores and 48 logical cores totally. But you can create and power on some virtual machines that those virtual machines have more than 48 cores totally. Memory OverCommitment means your virtual machines can use more memory than the physical machine (the host) has available. For example, you can have a host with 2GB memory and run four virtual machines with 1GB memory each. In that case, the memory is overcommitted. Advantages vs Disadvantages With OverCommitment, you can run more virtual machines but if you don’t have sensitive machine. If you have critical services on virtual machines, you need take care about OverCommitment because it can decrease your machines performance. How Take Care? You know, there is many native and third-party applications for monitoring vSphere environment but if you don’t have budget for buy monitoring software, you can use PowerCLI! There is a free PowerCLI module that you can...

Hewlett Packard Enterprise Information Library 0

Server Hardware

Hewlett Packard Enterprise Information Library

Introduction Many of large companies around the world using HPE products to makes their datacenters. HPE produces server, storage, network devices and some others infrastructure equipment and all of them have technical documentation, user guides and maintenance guides. Also anyone who are using the equipment need to access to the documentation. Hewlett Packard Enterprise has provided an online library that they called it “Hewlett Packard Enterprise Information Library”. What information can I find? Actually, any information about your devices and software is available on this library, you can find and download Release Notes, User Guides, White Paper and others documentation in PDF or HTML format and also you can choose different languages for the documents. Also documents are categorized and you can choose your device according to different solutions. After choose the above options to filtering your results, you can find the related documents under the “Information Types / File Types / Languages” section. There is no need to search Google to find HPE products and devices documents anymore.  

CPU Usage 0

How To

Installing and searching for updates is slow and high CPU usage occurs in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2

Problem Do you have Windows 7 as client OS in your VDI environment? If yes, so you should have WSUS server in your environment to download and push Microsoft updates for Windows. If you have WSUS, you need to keep started “Windows Update” service on your clients or even servers but sometimes, searching, downloading and installing updates has huge load on CPU and memory and impact on performance. These processes will impact performance when you don’t have many cores on virtual machines and it will occur on VDI clients more than servers because clients have few cores compare to servers. In my case, this issue impacted our “Call Center” users because they were working with VOIP application and CPU load has impact on voice in VDI environments. Solution Microsoft releasing updates and hot-fixes for Windows Update Client always. So keep update the client on your VDI clients. For example, Microsoft has released the below KB for resolving same issue on Windows 7 and Windows 2008 R2 recently. It’s recommended to applying the update as soon as possible to preventing any impact on client performance. KB3102810 Also you can read my previous post about same issue: Windows Update Scan – Memory...