Category: Server Virtualization

ovf 0

Server Virtualization

How to Export Big Virtual Machine (>2TB) as OVA or OVF

I guess, you know the instruction but let’s quick review. You can export virtual machines via some different tools such as vSphere Client, vSphere Web Client and others. All administrators do it today and familiar with OVA and OVF. It’s possible to export small virtual machines via vSphere Client, vSphere Web Client, PowerCLI. If you want to export virtual machine with 200~300 GB virtual disks (Thin or Thick), there is serious problem, just make sure that you have enough free space. But did you try to export big or monster VM as OVA or OVF?

Linux Container 0

Reviews / Server Virtualization

Operating System Level Virtualization (Part 2) – Implementations Comparison

These days, everyone knows what’s Cloud Computing and cloud based services are using for speedup deployment of organizations services. Operating System Level Virtualization or Containers helping system architectures and administrators to achieve the goals. There are many implementations for containers that today, those methods are compatible with different hardware architectures and operating system.

You may know that Unix has OS Level Virtualization from past years and this technology is very older than other virtualization such as Full Virtualization or Paravirtulization.

Full Virtualization (VMware ESXi, Hyper-V) and Paravirtualization (Xen, UML) provides different guest OS but there is no way to use different guest OS when you are using containers. Of curse, some solutions are under development.

iSCSI vs Fiber Channel 0

Server Virtualization

Guest Connected vs RAW Device Mapping (RDM)

RAW Device Mapping (RDM) is one of oldest VMware vSphere features which introduced to resolving some limitation on virtualized environments such as virtual disks size limitation and deploying services top of fail-over clustering services.

You can use a raw device mapping (RDM) to store virtual machine data directly on a SAN LUN, instead of storing it in a virtual disk file. You can add an RDM disk to an existing virtual machine, or you can add the disk when you customize the virtual machine hardware during the virtual machine creation process.

Provisioning Types Comparison 0

Reviews / Server Virtualization

VMDK Write Performance on Different Provisioning Types

VMDK (Virtual Machine Disk) has been designed to mimic the operation of physical disk. Virtual disks are stored as one or more VMDK files on the host computer or remote storage device, and appear to the guest operating system as standard disk drives.

VMware supports three provisioning types:

Thin Provisioned
Thick Provisioned
Eager-zeroed Thick Provisioned

Remote Direct Memory Access 1

Reviews / Server Virtualization

[Review]: What’s Remote Direct Memory Access(RDMA)?

Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) provides direct memory access from the memory of one host (storage or compute) to the memory of another host without involving the remote Operating System and CPU, boosting network and host performance with lower latency, lower CPU load and higher bandwidth. In contrast, TCP/IP communications typically require copy operations, which add latency and consume significant CPU and memory resources.

Illustration of RecoverPoint for VMs protecting VMware VMs 0

Backup & Replication / Server Virtualization

[Review]: Dell EMC RecoverPoint for Virtual Machines

RecoverPoint for VMs is a virtualized solution that provides data replication, protection, and recovery within the VMware vSphere environment.

Enable quick recovery of VMware virtual machines to any point in time. Dell EMC RecoverPoint for Virtual Machines provides continuous data protection (CDP) for operational recovery and disaster recovery. You’ll manage your VM protection simply and efficiently.

VMware vSphere APIs for I/O Filtering (VAIO) 1

Reviews / Server Virtualization

[Review]: VMware vSphere APIs for I/O Filtering (VAIO)

This is not a new features on last vSphere version but I went to write a post about that. We had to deploy different replication scenarios for our customers and some customers needs Point-In-Time Recovery (PiT) and The PiT solutions using VAIO actually so learning about the API is necessary for administrators.

The vSphere APIs for I/O Filtering (VAIO) were introduced in vSphere 6.0 Update 1. The VAIO framework and program were developed to provide VMware and partners the ability to insert filters for I/O into the data path of virtual machines. These “I/O Filters” enable VMware, and partners, to intercept and manipulate the I/O. This manipulation can provide open-ended data services, but thus far is limited to four use cases, two of which are currently exclusive to VMware and two which are open for partners. These use cases are: Replication, Caching, Quality of service (VMware only), Encryption (VMware only).

vSAN ReadyNode Configurator - vSAN OEM 0

Reviews / Server Virtualization

[Review]: What’s vSAN ReadyNode?

vSAN ReadyNode are x86 servers, available from all the leading server vendors, that have been pre-configured, tested and certified for VMware Hyper-Converged Infrastructure Software. Each ReadyNodes is optimally configured for vSAN with the required amount of CPU, memory, network, I/O controllers and storage (SSDs, HDDs or flash devices).

vSAN Hybrid TCO and Sizing Calculator - Sizing Results 0

Free Tools / Desktop Virtualization / Reviews / Server Virtualization

[Review]: VMware Virtual SAN (vSAN) TCO and Sizing Calculator

VMware vSAN Hybrid TCO and Sizing Calculator Virtual SAN or vSAN is a software-defined storage (Hyper Converged) for VMware vSphere environments. Main goal of sing vSAN in VMware vSphere environments, is reducing implementing cost. So calculating TCO and device sizing will help to achieve better results. As vSAN technology owner, VMware has provided an online tool for calculating TCO and sizing for vSAN. The online tool is very useful for IT administrator to find cost of vSAN implementation with different scenarios. The online tool has four different sections: Sizing Inputs: You should fill the sizing inputs form with some information about your environment. Sizing Results: The online tool will calculate results according to the sizing inputs and show the result on this section. TCO Input: You should enter required information for Total Cost of Ownership. TCO Results: According to the information, the tool will calculate and shows the result for TCO calculation. Sizing Inputs This section is using for enter virtualization environment specifications. You must specify the some important information for the online tool to calculating vSAN TCO and sizing. The online tool can calculate requirements according to virtualization platform, there is two platforms for calculations: Server Virtualization Desktop Virtualization The online...

Veeam ONE Alarm - Define Rule 1

How To / Server Virtualization

Veeam ONE: How to Avoid VM Disk I/O Bottlenecks

Controlling resource usage by the metrics, it’s a key to keep your virtual infrastructure up and optimized and also keep your customer happy. Veeam ONE alarm will help you to controlling the metrics and resources.

Before create the alarms, we should know why I/O is important to us? And what is impact of generating lot of I/O by virtual machines?

Veeam ONE Reporter Collection 4

How To / Server Virtualization

[Veeam ONE]: Veeam ONE Reporter Session Task Failed

Veeam ONE Reporter Collection Job Veeam ONE Reporter collection job is a scheduled job to gathering virtual infrastructure information to providing reports for administrators about virtual infrastructure performance, issues and capacity planning. Sometimes, the job will be failed cause of some issues in the Veeam Reporter service and an error will indicate on Veeam ONE Monitor Client. Administrators should care about the issue because the error means that virtual infrastructure information is out of date and any report is unusable. Troubleshooting Step 1: At first step, checking “Veeam ONE Reporter Server” service is very important. Check the service and if it’s stopped, start the service and if it’s started , restart the service and run “Object Properties Collection Task” from Veeam ONE Reporter portal. Wait to job is completed and if issue not resolve go to the next step. Step 2: If stop/start the service didn’t resolve issue, restarting the server is second solution because of OS issues. Run “Object Properties Collection Task” from Veeam ONE Reporter portal, wait to job is completed and if issue not resolve go to the next step. Step 3: If step 1 and step 2 didn’t help to resolve issue, the monitor user permission...

VMware Virtual SAN (vSAN) 1

Reviews / Server Virtualization

[Review]: VMware Virtual SAN (vSAN)

VMware Virtual SAN or vSAN is a software-defined storage or hyper-converged infrastructure and it’s fully integrated with VMware vSphere. vSAN create a software defined storage area from local storage devices or direct attached devices. vSAN supports vSphere features that the features needs shared storage such as HA and DRS. vSAN is also fully integrated with desktop solutions and any virtual machine will be provisioned and protected on vSAN.

Software Bugs 6

Server Virtualization / Server Hardware

ESXi PCI Passthrough – Large VM Memory (MainHeap) BUG!

ESXi PCI Passthrough This is a combination hardware and software feature on hypervisors to allows VMs to use PCI functions directly And we know it as VMDirectPath I/O in vSphere environment. VMDirectPath I/O needs some requirements to work perfectly, please read this KB for more information, as we read it! https://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=2142307 There is also some limitation when using VMDirectPath I/O and the below features will unavailable: Hot adding and removing of virtual devices Suspend and resume Record and replay Fault tolerance High availability DRS (limited availability. The virtual machine can be part of a cluster, but cannot migrate across hosts) Snapshots I couldn’t find any other limitation specially about memory size, so now why we couldn’t use more than 790 GB to 850 GB of our server memory capacity?! Anyway, let’s review our test scenario! Our Test Scenario We have some Sun X4-8 servers with the below specifications: CPU: 8 x E7-8895 v2 Local Disk: 8 x 600 GB SAS Disk Memory: 48 x 16 GB – Totally 768 GB PCI Devices: 2 x QLogic 2600 16 Gb – 2 Ports (HBA) 2 x Intel 82599EB 10 Gb – 2 Ports (Network) Embedded Devices: 2 x Intel I350 1Gb ESXi 6.x U2 has...