I want to highlight a risk in one of my previous designs and also explain what you can do to avoid it, if you get approval from the customer. The VMware vSphere versions referenced in the blog post are VMware vCenter Server 5.1.0b 947939 and VMware ESXi server 5.1. Background Below i have listed a few …
Category Archive: vSphere
vCloud Director Management cluster disaster recovery
A while ago i needed to perform a vCloud Director (vCD) management cluster disaster recovery. There are four main sections in the blog post: Infrastructure – describes the infrastructure used by the vCloud Director Management cluster environment. Rollback reasons – describes why the HP LeftHand P4300 storage volume rollback was carried out. Rollback preparation – describes …
Change ESXi license using PowerCLI
A few days ago a new customer asked me to review the PowerCLI script used for the initial ESXi host configuration. The ESXi hosts are factory installed and the most recent batch of ESXi hosts were all configured with the “VMware vSphere Hypervisor 5 License” license. This means the initial ESXi host automatic PowerCLI configuration …
VM per datastore PowerCLI e-mail report
I have been asked to create a monitoring script to calculate the number of virtual machines per datastore. I know there are a lot of examples in the community doing the exact same thing. This particular case includes one requirement which i have not seen in the communities examples. My customer wants one e-mail to …
vCloud Director internal server error when deploying vApps
During VMware vCloud Director (vCD) vApp deployments using the latest versions of both vSphere (ESXi 5.1 and VMware vCenter Server 5.1.0b 947939) and VMware vCloud Director (5.1.1 868405) i got the below vDC error message: The vCD cell logs located in the /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/logs directory told me e.g. “vCenter Server is unresponsive” These errors made me start investigating …
VMware Tools installation fails
When trying to install the VMware Tools software in a virtual machine, using the typical option, i received the following error messages: The virtual machine was running Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 so i have successfully installed VMware Tools many times using the same virtual machine operating system. The virtual machine was running …
vCloud Director thin provisioning & storage allocation per allocation model
I have run into several discussions lately regarding the thin provisioning option, storage over subscription and the storage allocation per Organization virtual datacenter (Org vDC) in vCloud Director (vCD). This is my way of clarifying what to expect from the different options and rule out potential missunderstandings. You activate the thin provisioning option when you …
vCloud Director required RedHat packages challenge
When installing vCloud Director 5.1 the other day i ran in to one interesting challenge. It has nothing to do with the actual vCloud Director software, it was all about the vCloud Director prerequisites. The required RedHat packages are: The customer RedHat image did not include all the packages, the below packages were missing. libXdmcp libXi …
vCenter Orchestrator Player mode
When i logged on to a vCenter Orchestrator server a few days ago i was a bit surprised because i was not able to edit any workflow. I could still run the workflows but the “Edit” option was greyed out. Walking through the vCenter Orchestrator Client UI i found that the vCenter Orchestrator server were …
ESXi host disk.terminateVMOnPDLDefault configuration using PowerCLI
This section is updated since vSphere 5.5 was GA during VMworld 2013. From now on the configuration option has changed regarding two things: Name – It is now called VMkernel.Boot.terminateVMOnPDL and not Disk.terminateVMOnPDLDefault Configuration – It is now an advanced ESXi configuration parameter and not a text string in the ESXi host file /etc/vmware/settings Continue reading if …
vSphere cluster resource pool configuration script
This blog will include the technical aspect (the script) which i mentioned in the blog post vCloud Director implementation for small businesses Input parameters: 4 vSphere cluster resource pools exists at the vSphere cluster root level SLA-Gold with priority value 10 SLA-Silver with priority value 5 SLA-Bronze with priority value 3 SLA-vCloud with priority value …
vCloud Director implementation for small businesses
So this will be the first blog post where i discuss an architectural challenge. Several vCloud Director implementations i have conducted in Sweden lately has been for small businesses or at least including small virtual environments. Some of the customer requirements included in my last project were: 4 ESXi hosts available. Run vCloud Director based …
VMware Multiple NIC vMotion generates unicast flooding in the network
————————————————————————————————- Blog post updated 2013-07-18 The problem described in this blog post has been fixed in the ESXi 5.0 U2 and in the 5.1 U1 releases but the original blog post is left unchanged. ————————————————————————————————- I have been using the VMware multiple NIC vMotion, VMware KB 2007467 , configuration where possible and needed, e.g. running high …