Tagged: VMware

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...

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.

Photon Platform 1

Reviews

VMware Cloud Native Application | Photon Platform

What’s VMware Cloud Native Application? Operating System Level Virtualization or Container is one of most popular IT concepts during few past year and many companies are working on their native solutions for supporting container concept on their products such as operating systems like Microsoft or Red Hat and Oracle. VMware has introduced VMware Cloud Native Application to supporting container on virtualization platform. VMware Cloud Native Application helps developers and operation administrators to create cloud applications quickly and securely. VMware delivers the Cloud Native Application by Photon Platform. Photon Platform is a Operating System Level Virtualization platform that deliver container on virtual servers based on Photon OS and ESXi. Photon Platform VMware Photon Platform is a container-optimized cloud platform which delivers on-demand tools and services for developers to build, test, and run modern applications while enabling IT to retain security, control and performance of data center infrastructure.   Purpose-built for cloud-native applications with integrated container infrastructure support, Photon Platform is a fully API-driven, multi-tenant platform which brings the scale, performance and features previously accessible only to hyper-scale web companies into enterprise data centers. It leverages industry-leading compute, networking, and storage technologies to bring best-in-class performance, reliability and ease-of-use for cloudnative workloads. Photon Platform | Key Features Production-grade, fully supported Kubernetes distribution...

VMware Tools Client - Main Window 5

Free Tools

VMware Tools Client – Interact with a VM without Network Connectivity

VMware Tools Client VMware Tools Client is a beta tools to interact with VMs without network connectivity. May know, there is some vSphere API that developers can write some codes and developing their tools for vSphere environments. VMware Tools Client written by Pierre Lainé is a useful tool to managing virtual machines via vSphere Guest API and VMware Tools. The tool developed by Java, so JRE or JDK should installed on manage machine. As Java is cross-platform run-time, so VMware Tools Client will run on any machine, Windows, Linux, Unix and Mac. VMware Tools Client allows administrators to: Upload and download files between management client machine and virtual machine. Run scripts to reconfigure operating system, troubleshooting and other tasks. Troubleshooting network by ping some addresses from within the virtual machine. VMware Tools Client be able to connect to vCenter and load vCenter inventory, so administrators can select and manage any virtual machine. PowerCLI also provides commands such as Invoke-VMScript to run script or batch via VMware Tools on virtual machines but VMware Tools Client is more featured. It’s beta version yet but available on this link for public download: Download Link Screenshots:

vSphere 6.5 0

Server Hardware / Server Virtualization

Supported Servers – vSphere 6.5

Which server brand do you use? HPE, Dell, Fujitsu or any other. It doesn’t matter, you should check your server compatibility with new vSphere version before planning for migration or upgrade. I don’t want to share server list because the list will be different during time and new servers will be added to the list. You can find supported servers in VMware Compatibility Guide and it’s best reference for servers compatibility. Also you can check it on OEM web sites: HPE: VMware Support Matrix Just you should choose your ESXi version on the web page and trust to the result! Dell: Virtualization Solutions Choose VMware ESXi version and then should click on “Manual” and download a PDF which contains list of compatible servers. Cisco:UCS Hardware and Software Interoperability Matrix Tool (New) just you should select some items to find proper result. Also you can use older tools: Hardware and Software Interoperability Matrix Utility Tool Fujitsu: I couldn’t find a tools on their web site and we have to download a PDF file and find our product. Sample link for FUJITSU Server PRIMERGY: x86 Servers released OS Lenovo (IBM): OS Interoperability Guide I know, there is more OEM vendor and may...

vSphere 6.5 0

Reviews / Server Virtualization

VMware Hardware Version 13

Each new version of vSphere includes some improvements and new features and many of them will be applied on virtual machines. The improvements and features will be add to “Hardware Version” and you be able to use those, if you use latest “Hardware Version”. It’s strongly recommended that don’t upgrade your hardware version to latest just when you need to use a specific feature or expand hardware resources that older hardware version doesn’t support that. Because “Hardware Version” doesn’t have any compatibility with older ESXi and if you have mixed cluster, you can’t use latest hardware version. Here is an example: You have a cluster and the cluster contains some ESXi 6.5, 6.0 and 5.5. If you upgrade hardware version to 11, your virtual machine will be hosted by ESXi 6.0, ESXi 6.5 and the machine will not be migrated on ESXi 5.5. So, keep your hardware version compatible with oldest ESXi in your environment. You can downgrade hardware version but it’s not recommended. For make sure about hardware version, you can change default version on your cluster anytime. Let’s review new hardware version, compare it with older versions and compatibility with ESXi: Feature ESXi 6.5 and later ESXi 6.0...

vSphere 6.5 0

News / Server Hardware / Server Virtualization

Deprecated and unsupported – Qlogic and Emulex devices

VMware has published a list that includes unsupported and deprecated devices from two vendors: Emulex Qlogic Deprecated devices may still be worked and drivers will be installed but those devices are not supported on vSphere 6.5 officially. You need to upgrade your hardware before upgrading vSphere, but it’s your choice! Because your device may be worked without any issue. You can find the deprecated and unsupported devices in the below table: Partner Driver Name Device IDs Device Name Emulex lpfc 10DF:F0E5:0000:0000 Emulex LPe1105-M4 4 Dual-Channel 4Gb/s Fibre Channel HBA 10DF:F0E5:0000:0000 Emulex LPe1150 Single-Channel 4Gb/s Fibre Channel HBA 10DF:F0E5:0000:0000 Emulex LPe1150 4Gb/s Fibre Channel Adapter 10DF:F0E5:10DF:F0E5 Emulex LPe1150 Single-Channel 4Gb/s Fibre Channel HBA 10DF:F0E5:10DF:F0E5 LPe1150-E Emulex LPe1150 Single-Channel 4Gb/s Fibre Channel HBA for Dell and EMC 10DF:FE00:0000:0000 LPe11002 4Gb Fibre Channel Host Adapter 10DF:FE00:0000:0000 NE3008-102 10DF:FE00:0000:0000 NE2000-001 10DF:FE00:0000:0000 Emulex LPe11000 4Gb PCIe Fibre Channel Adapter 10DF:FE00:10DF:FE00 Emulex LPe11002 Dual-Channel 4Gb/s Fibre Channel HBA 10DF:FE00:10DF:FE00 N8403-018 10DF:FE00:10DF:FE00 EMC LPe11000-E 10DF:FE00:10DF:FE00 EMC LPe11002-E 10DF:FE00:10DF:FE00 Emulex LPe11000 Single-Channel 4Gb/s Fibre Channel HBA 10DF:FE00:10DF:FE22 Emulex L1105-M Emulex LPe1105-M4 Dual-Channel 4Gb/s Fibre Channel mezzanine card for Dell PowerEdge 10DF:FE00:103c:1708 403621-B21 Emulex LPe1105-HP Dual-Channel 4Gb/s Fibre Channel mezzanine card for HP BladeSystem c-Cl 10DF:FE00:10DF:FE00 A8002A – FC2142SR Emulex...

vSphere 6.5 0

Server Virtualization

Supported Update Sequence – vSphere 6.5

You can find VMware products which are compatible with vSphere 6.5 on the below post: Compatible VMware Products – vSphere 6.5 If you need to update the mentioned products, you should upgrade the products according to the below sequence table. Please consider that: You should start with lowest sequence number. If you need to update products with same sequence number, order doesn’t matter. Before you update vCenter Server, disable vCenter Server from vCloud Director. Also ensure that you stop or disable other VMware services so that they do not communicate with vCenter Server during the update process. PSC / SSO External  vRA VCM vRB vCD NSX Manager NSX Controllers View Composer View Connection Server VDP vCenterServer vRO VR VUM vROPs VIN vCC vRLI BDE SRM ESXi VSAN VMware Tools NSX Edge NSX LFw NSX Guest IDS View Agent / Client Seq. 1 2 2 2 3 4 5 5 6 7 8 9 9 9 9 9 10 10 10 10 11 12 12 12 13 13 13   Sample VMware product upgrade scenarios 1st Scenario: VMware Horizon View If applicable, upgrade the External vCenter Single Sign-On / Platform Services Controller instance (sequence step 1) Upgrade View Composer (sequence step 5)...

vSphere 6.5 1

Server Virtualization

Compatible VMware Products – vSphere 6.5

vSphere 6.5 has been released and many of users are planning to upgrade their environments to new version. But we should check vSphere 6.5 compatibility with VMware products and even third-party products. We can check compatibility matrix on the below link: VMware Product Interoperability Matrixes But also you can find the products that those are compatible with vSphere 6.5:   Product Latest Available Version Recommended Action Important Links Platform Services Controller (PSC) Note: External Deployment Only 6.0 Update 2 Upgrade to 6.5 Release Notes Update Procedure vRealize Automation 7.0.1 No supported version available N/A vRealize Business for Cloud 7.0.1 7.2 Release Notes Update Procedure vRealize Configuration Manager (VCM) 5.8.5 No supported version available N/A vCloud Director for Service Providers (VCD) 8.0.1 No supported version available N/A VMware NSX for vSphere 6.2.4 No supported version available N/A Horizon View (View) 7.0.1 7.0.2 Release Notes Update Procedure vCenter Server / vCenter Server Appliance 6.0 Update 2 Upgrade to 6.5 Release Notes Update Procedure vRealize Orchestrator (vRO) 7.0.1 No supported version available N/A vSphere Replication (VR) vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM) VR Version – 6.1.1 SRM Version – 6.1.1 Upgrade to 6.5 VR Release Notes SRM Release Notes Upgrading VR Upgrading SRM vRealize Operations...

vSphere 6.5 Maximums 1

Server Virtualization

vSphere 6.5 Configuration Maximums – Compare to Earlier Versions- Part 2

We’ve reviewed some of vSphere 6.5 configuration maximums in the previous post: http://www.teimouri.net/vsphere-6-5-configuration-maximums/ And we’ll review and compare the rest of configuration maximums in this post. Networking Maximums Item vSphere 5.5 vSphere 6.0 vSphere 6.5 vSphere Standard and Distributed Switch Total virtual network switch ports per host (VDS and VSS ports) 4096 4096 4096 Maximum active ports per host (VDS and VSS) 1016 1016 1016 Virtual network switch creation ports per standard switch 4088 4088 4088 Port groups per standard switch 512 512 512 Static/Dynamic port groups per distributed switch 6500 10000 10000 Ephemeral port groups per distributed switch 1016 1016 1016 Ports per distributed switch 60000 60000 60000 Distributed switches per vCenter 128 128 128 Distributed switches per host 16 16 16 Hosts per distributed switch 1000 1000 2000 Cluster and Resource Pool Maximums Item vSphere 5.5 vSphere 6.0 vSphere 6.5 Cluster (all clusters including HA and DRS) Hosts per cluster 32 64 64 Virtual Machines per cluster 4000 8000 8000 Virtual machines per host 512 1024 1024 Powered-on virtual machine 2048 2048 2048 FT virtual machines per cluster 98 128 FT virtual machines vCPU per Cluster 256 256 Resource pools per host 1600 1600 1600 Children per resource...

vSphere 6.5 Maximums 3

Server Virtualization

vSphere 6.5 Configuration Maximums – Compare to Earlier Versions- Part 1

Each version of vSphere has some improvements and one of important improvements are configuration maximums that allows administrators to have much bigger virtual machines, hosting more virtual machines, use faster network and storage connections. This is very important that you should aware about your current configuration maximums because you can prepare your forecast plans for increasing virtual machine or ESXi host resources or even changes on network or SAN environments based on these configuration maximums. Lets review latest vSphere configuration maximums and compare them with earlier versions. Virtual Machine Item vSphere 5.5 vSphere 6.0 vSphere 6.5 vCPU 64 128 128 Memory 1TB 4TB 6128GB Swap File 1TB 4TB 6128GB Virtual SCSI adapters per virtual machine 4 4 4 Virtual SCSI targets per virtual SCSI adapter 15 15 15 Virtual SCSI targets per virtual machine 60 60 60 Virtual disk size 62TB 62TB 62TB IDE controllers per virtual machine 1 1 1 IDE devices per virtual machine 4 4 4 Floppy controllers per virtual machine 1 1 1 Floppy devices per virtual machine 2 2 2 Virtual SATA adapters per virtual machine 4 4 4 Virtual SATA devices per virtual SATA adapter 30 30 30 Virtual NICs per virtual machine 10...

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...

ESXi 5.5, 6.x IOPS Limit Not Working – Disk.SchedulerWithReservation 0

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.