Just about an hour ago VMware lifted the NDA on VMware vSphere 4.1 and made available all of the information on this latest release as well as the bits for download available to the public.

I will be covering a more in-depth review on this latest release really soon but I did want my readers to know that the bits are available for download from the VMware website.

http://downloads.vmware.com/d/info/datacenter_downloads/vmware_vsphere_4/4

The upgrade to ESX(i) 4.1 should be relatively easy by using traditional update methods such as VMware Update Manager (VUM).  However, the upgrade to vCenter Server 4.1 is more of a migration since it will only support a full 64-bit environment. Still don’t fret, a vCenter server migration is pretty simple just make sure you have a FULL backup of your vCenter Server database.

Also a little FYI….rumor has it that this will be the final build containing a full ESX install (Service Console). Today might be a good day to start planning that migration to ESXi.

Posted under vCenter, vSphere

EMC is running a webcast hosted by Chad Sakac next Thursday and the topic should be of an interest to any VMware or Storage administrator.  If you haven’t heard about VAAI and it’s great offloading capabilities I strongly urge you to register for this webcast.

Thursday, June 24, 2010, 11:00 am ET

Host: Chad Sakac, VP VMware Technology Alliance, EMC

Register Now by Clicking Here

During this discussion, you can learn about vStorage API for Array Integration (VAAI). There are some functions that your storage system can handle more efficiently than your virtual servers and their hosts can. VAAI are a set of APIs that allows VMware vSphere to offload specific operations to the storage system improving VMware performance and freeing up resources on your virtual servers by leveraging more efficient array-based operations as an alternative to VMware host-based operations.

Join EMC Virtual Geek, Chad Sakac on June 24 to get key updates and honest answers to your most demanding questions.

Register Now by Clicking Here

Posted under EMC, Storage, vSphere

VMware has just dropped the second major update bundle (Update 2) for their flagship virtualization management product, VMware vCenter server.  This update addresses a number of issues found since the release of Update 1 as well as a number of improvements, such as:

Guest Operating System Customization Improvements: vCenter Server now supports customization of the following guest operating systems:

• Windows XP Professional SP2 (x64) serviced by Windows Server 2003 SP2
• SLES 11 (x32 and x64)
• SLES 10 SP3 (x32 and x64)
• RHEL 5.5 Server Platform (x32 and x64)
• RHEL 5.4 Server Platform (x32 and x64)
• RHEL 4.8 Server Platform (x32 and 64)
• Debian 5.0 (x32 and x64)
• Debian 5.0 R1 (x32 and x64)
• Debian 5.0 R2 (x32 and x64)

Here are some of the key issues that are resolved in this update;

Read More…

Posted under vCenter, vSphere

You’ve guessed it, VMware has released Update 2 of their flagship bare-metal virtualization product ESX and ESXi. This update addresses a number of issues found since the release of Update 1 as well as a number of enhancements, such as:

Enablement of Fault Tolerance Functionality for Intel Xeon 56xx Series processors— vSphere 4.0 Update 1 supports the Intel Xeon 56xx Series processors without Fault Tolerance. vSphere 4.0 Update 2 enables Fault Tolerance functionality for the Intel Xeon 56xx Series processors.

Enablement of Fault Tolerance Functionality for Intel i3/i5 Clarkdale Series and Intel Xeon 34xx Clarkdale Series processors— vSphere 4.0 Update 1 supports the Intel i3/i5 Clarkdale Series and Intel Xeon 34xx Clarkdale Series processors without Fault Tolerance. vSphere 4.0 Update 2 enables Fault Tolerance functionality for the Intel i3/i5 Clarkdale Series and Intel Xeon 34xx Clarkdale Series processors.

Enablement of IOMMU Functionality for AMD Opteron 61xx and 41xx Series processors— vSphere 4.0 Update 1 supports the AMD Opteron 61xx and 41xx Series processors without input/output memory management unit (IOMMU). vSphere 4.0 Update 2 enables IOMMU functionality for the AMD Opteron 61xx and 41xx Series processors.

Enhancement of the esxtop/resxtop utility— vSphere 4.0 Update 2 includes an enhancement of the performance monitoring utilities, esxtop and resxtop. The esxtop/resxtop utilities now provide visibility into the performance of NFS datastores in that they display the following statistics for NFS datastores: Reads/s, writes/s, MBreads/s, MBwrtn/s, cmds/s, GAVG/s(guest latency).

Additional Guest Operating System Support— ESX/ESXi 4.0 Update 2 adds support for Ubuntu 10.04. For a complete list of supported guest operating systems with this release, see the VMware Compatibility Guide.

Read More…

Posted under vSphere

Just a little teaser of what we’re working on here at EMC. This is the next version of the EMC Celerra Plug-in for VMware which is v1.1 and offers great new VMware View integration. Below in the video you will see that it has a new wizard based interface for common tasks, as well as the ability to place clones (Full and Fast) of Virtual Machines into a VMware View pool which then can be entitled to users for access.

What does this mean?  Well, with Fast Clones you are now offloading the great ability to do Linked Clones back to the storage array. You can ultimately have hundreds of copies of a single virtual machine which only using minimal disk space, and now with the plug-in have those automatically provisioned into VMware View.

Fast, Easy and Efficient…just how we like it!

Download the high-rez versions here: WMV and MOV

Posted under Celerra, Storage, View

Last month at EMC World we released a storage virtualization product unlike any other. EMC VPLEX not only virtualizes back-end storage from other vendors it also allows shared storage to be presented active/active over long distances. This capability makes it possible for long distance vMotion and brings a new technical term to disaster planning, Disaster Avoidance.

Imagine you’re planning a datacenter shutdown due to a power outage or building maintenance, or perhaps that wildfire is making its way to your office location. Now you have the flexibility to be able to avoid major downtime by simply swinging your workloads to an off-site datacenter.

VMware has taken notice and has officially released a KB article detailing out full support for long distance vMotion with the EMC VPLEX product. More information on this KB article can be found at http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1021215. Perhaps you want to know more about VPLEX or even see a demo of it in action? Chad Sakac posted a great breakdown of how it works along with some videos on his website, check it out now.

Posted under Backup & Recovery, Storage, vCenter, vSphere

As handful of patches have just been released by VMware for their flagship bare-metal virtualization products ESX and ESXi.

With no surprise to me the majority of the patches are for ESX and relate to security flaws and vulnerabilities found within the Service Console.  Keep in mind these vulnerabilities in no-way mean the virtual machines being hosted are at risk. These patches are typically for underlying services that the Service Console rely on, such as openssl, java, gzip and ntp. Sometimes these patches also resolve issues on how the Service Console communicates with the vmkernel layer as well as system devices.

Two of the patch bundles for ESXi share some common fixes with it’s ESX brother which cover a NTP vulnerability, a shared interrupt issue between the vmkernel and console as well as a patch that properly enables quiescing utilizing the Microsoft Windows VSS components found in Windows 2008 R2 and Windows 7.

More information on these patches can be found by reviewing the individual bundles;

ESX 4.0 - ESX400-201005001
Includes 9 updates, including fixes for NTP, gzip, bind, vmkernel, krb5, webCenter, Expat, sudo and gcc.

ESXi 4.0 - ESXi400-201005001
Includes two updates, ESXi400-201005401-SG for the ESXi firmware and ESXi400-201005402-BG for VMware Tools. 

For updating your ESX(i) hosts, simply use Update Manager or download the patches from the VMware website and use the Host Update Utility to perform these updates.

Posted under Uncategorized

VMware vSphere 4 Administration Instant Reference, written by Scott Lowe, Jase McCarty and Matthew Johnson is now available for pre-order on Amazon.com. I was fortunate enough to work on this book as a technical editor, and must say that it is the perfect vSphere quick reference book for both the beginner vSphere admin as well as the seasoned veteran. Be one of the first to get your own copy, and order it now for under $20, it makes the perfect holiday gift!

Posted under Good Reading, Training, vSphere

This last weekend I was reminded of a RCLI command that creates a backup of your ESXi Host configuration.  A client had an ESXi host where the USB drive failed.  The system didn’t entirely crash, it pinged so HA didn’t kick-in however hostd and vpxa weren’t responding so management from vCenter was impossible. Performing a reboot of the host proved it was a USB failure when it failed to boot.

So, HA kicked in finally when the host was powered off - however the remaining hosts in their cluster did not have adequate resources to power everything back on.  We needed to get this failed ESX host back online and quick!

Brought in new USB stick with fresh ESXi 4.0 installed, plugged in and powered up.  In the TUI configured the Management Port IP address/gateway/DNS, etc.    But now what, all of the (NFS) Datastores, vSwitch configuration and advanced settings were toast…and they didn’t have Enterprise Plus.

Say Hello to vicfg-cfgbackup.pl — a RCLI command which could be found in the vMA.  This utility will allow you to create a backup and restore a full ESXi configuration.  Luckily we had this (backup) command running on a nightly basis so we knew the configuration was complete.  A simply command and the host was online.

Seeing that ESX is going to be phased out, this RCLI command is a valid alternative for those ESXi users that do not have Enterprise Plus licensing.

The commands vicfg-cfgbackup.pl (esxcfg-cfgbackup.pl) allow you to backup and restore the configuration of your ESXi host.

To backup the host you would run the command.

vicfg-cfgbackup.pl –server <server_name> -s <backup_file_name>

To restore your backup configuration to your host you would run. This will cause the host to reboot once the process is complete. NOTE: The host must be in Maintenance Mode for this to work. The backup configuration must also match the patch level of the ESXi install. You can add a -f to force if needed.

vicfg-cfgbackup.pl –server <server_name> -l <backup_file_name>

Posted under Backup & Recovery, ESXi 3.5 Tips, vSphere

I’m proud to announce the release of the latest series of video based training from Train Signal… VMware vSphere! This video series will include over 18 hours of vSphere training, jam packed on to 3 DVDs. You also get the videos in multiple file formats such as iPod Video, Mp3 Audio, WMV and high quality AVI. Finally, you get the instructors notes in PDF format to help you follow along with the videos and take more organized notes!

Instructor and fellow vExpert David Davis takes you through the entire course, covering over 36 different topics. On a side note, I know that you’ll really enjoy this video series….why do you ask? Because I was the Technical Editor on this video series, so I know you’re getting quality. This video training series gets the VMnut Stamp of Approval!

Not only do you get over 18 hours of vSphere training, with every paid purchase you also get FREE Downloadable updates to the vSphere Series!  What this means is that any time a new video (or update) is added to the vSphere series, you will get the chance to download it absolutely free!

Don’t just take my word for it, check it out for yourself with the video sample below. When you are ready to purchase visit the Train Signal website and use discount code VSPHERE25 to take $25 off your purchase. Think of this as our little way of saying Thanks. You better do it fast though, the offer ends 09/07/09.

For those of you attending VMworld 2009, here are some events that Train Signal is helping - be sure to check them out!

• Train Signal is sponsoring the VMworld 2009 Sunday night extravaganza
  http://www.vmunderground.com/vmworld-2009-sunday-night-extravaganza
• Train Signal is sponsoring the VMworld 2009 Run
  http://www.active.com/page/Event_Details.htm?event_id=1786485
• David Davis will be doing a Video Signing on Wednesday (9/2) at the VMworld Book store from 12 to 1

Posted under Good Reading, Training