IMPortant Techical Vminterview Question

Vmware Interview question and answer

Configuratin for maximum comparison for Vmware 5.0; 5.1; 5.5

Here I have summarized the comparison with a list of selected features between vSphere ESXi 5.0, 5.1 and5.5. I have skipped some of the features for detailed overview on all the comparison factors please visit vmware's official website.

ESXi Virtual Machine Maximum

Items Maximum

vSphere

5.0vSphere 5.1 vSphere 5.5

Virtual CPUs per virtual machine32 64 64

RAM per virtual machine 1 TB 1 TB 1 TB

Virtual SCSI targets per virtual

machine60 60 60

Virtual Disks per virtual machine 60 60 60

Virtual NIC per virtual machine 10 10 10

Concurrent remote console

connection per virtual machine40 40 40

Virtual disk size2 TB 2 TB 62 TB

Video memory per virtual machine 128 MB 128 MB 512 MB

ESXi Host maximum

Items Maximum

vSphere

5.0vSphere 5.1 vSphere 5.5

Logical CPUs per host 160 160 320

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Virtual machine per host 512 512 512

Virtual CPUS per host 2048 2048 4096

Virtual CPUs per core 25 25 32

FT Virtual Disks 16 16 16

RAM per FT virtual machine 64 64 64

FT virtual machine per host 4 4 4

FT virtual CPUs per virtual machine 1 1 1

Memory Maximum

Items Maximum

vSphere 5.0 vSphere 5.1 vSphere 5.5

RAM per host 2 TB 2 TB 4 TB

No of swap files per virtual machine 1 1 1

Swap file size 1 TB 1 TB NA

Storage Maximum

Items Maximum


Virtual Disks per host 2048 2048 2048

LUNs per server 256 256 256

Broadcom 1Gb iSCSI HBA initiator ports per server 4 4 4

Broadcom 10Gb iSCSI HBA initiator ports per server 4 4 4

No. of total paths on a server 1024 1024 1024

No. of paths to a LUN 8 8 8

Software iSCSI targets 256 256 256

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LUNs per host 256 256 256

LUN size NA 64 TB 64 TB

No. of paths to a LUN 32 32 32

No. of total paths on a server 1024 1024 1024

No. of HBAs of any type 8 8 8

HBA ports 16 16 16

Targets per HBA 256 256 256

Concurrent vMotion operations per datastore 128 128 128

Concurrent storage vMotion operations per datastore 8 8 8

Concurrent storage vMotion operations per host 2 2 2

Concurrent vMotion operations per host (1Gb/s network) 4 4 4

Concurrent vMotion operations per host (10Gb/s network)

8 8 8

Cluster and resource pool maximums

Items Maximum


Hosts per cluster 32 32 32

Virtual machine per cluster 3000 4000 4000

Virtual machines per host 512 512 512

Resource pools per host 1600 1600 1600

Children per resource pool 1024 1024 1024

Resource pools per cluster 1600 1600 1600

vCenter Server maximums

Items Maximum

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Hosts per vCenter Server 1000 1000 1000

Powered‐on virtual machines per vCenter Server 10000 10000 10000

Registered virtual machines per vCenter Server 1500 1500 1500

Linked vCenter Servers 10 10 10

Hosts in linked vCenter Servers 3000 3000 3000

Concurrent vSphere Client connections to vCenter Server

100 100 100

Number of host per datacentre 500 500 500

Registered virtual machines in linked vCenter Servers

50000 50000 50000

Storage DRS

Items Maximum


Virtual disks per datastore cluster 9000 9000 9000

Datastores per datastore cluster 32 32 32

Datastore clusters per vCenter 256 256 256

Vmware file description

*.nvram file – This file contains the CMOS/BIOS for the VM. The BIOS is based off the

PhoenixBIOS 4.0 Release 6 and is one of the most successful and widely used BIOS and is

compliant with all the major standards, including USB, PCI, ACPI, 1394, WfM and PC2001. If

the NVRAM file is deleted or missing it will automatically be re-created when the VM is

powered on. Any changes made to the BIOS via the Setup program (F2 at boot) will be saved

in this file. This file is usually less then 10K in size and is not in a text format (binary).

vmdk files – These are the disk files that are created for each virtual hard drive in your VM.

There are 3 different types of files that use the vmdk extension, they are:

*–flat.vmdk file - This is the actual raw disk file that is created for each virtual hard drive.

Almost all of a .vmdk file's content is the virtual machine's data, with a small portion allotted

to virtual machine overhead. This file will be roughly the same size as your virtual hard

drive.

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*.vmdk file – This isn't the file containing the raw data anymore. Instead it is the disk

descriptor file which describes the size and geometry of the virtual disk file. This file is in

text format and contains the name of the –flat.vmdk file for which it is associated with and

also the hard drive adapter type, drive sectors, heads and cylinders, etc. One of these files

will exist for each virtual hard drive that is assigned to your virtual machine. You can tell

which –flat.vmdk file it is associated with by opening the file and looking at the Extent

Description field.

*–delta.vmdk file - This is the differential file created when you take a snapshot of a VM

(also known as REDO log). When you snapshot a VM it stops writing to the base vmdk and

starts writing changes to the snapshot delta file. The snapshot delta will initially be small

and then start growing as changes are made to the base vmdk file, The delta file is a bitmap

of the changes to the base vmdk thus is can never grow larger than the base vmdk. A delta

file will be created for each snapshot that you create for a VM. These files are automatically

deleted when the snapshot is deleted or reverted in snapshot manager.

*.vmx file – This file is the primary configuration file for a virtual machine. When you create

a new virtual machine and configure the hardware settings for it that information is stored in

this file. This file is in text format and contains entries for the hard disk, network adapters,

memory, CPU, ports, power options, etc. You can either edit these files directly if you know

what to add or use the Vmware GUI (Edit Settings on the VM) which will automatically

update the file.

*.vswp file – This is the VM swap file (earlier ESX versions had a per host swap file) and is

created to allow for memory overcommitment on a ESX server. The file is created when a

VM is powered on and deleted when it is powered off. By default when you create a VM the

memory reservation is set to zero, meaning no memory is reserved for the VM and it can

potentially be 100% overcommitted. As a result of this a vswp file is created equal to the

amount of memory that the VM is assigned minus the memory reservation that is configured

for the VM. So a VM that is configured with 2GB of memory will create a 2GB vswp file when

it is powered on, if you set a memory reservation for 1GB, then it will only create a 1GB

vswp file. If you specify a 2GB reservation then it creates a 0 byte file that it does not use.

When you do specify a memory reservation then physical RAM from the host will be

reserved for the VM and not usable by any other VM’s on that host. A VM will not use it vswp

file as long as physical RAM is available on the host. Once all physical RAM is used on the

host by all its VM’s and it becomes overcommitted then VM’s start to use their vswp files

instead of physical memory. Since the vswp file is a disk file it will effect the performance of

the VM when this happens. If you specify a reservation and the host does not have enough

physical RAM when the VM is powered on then the VM will not start.

*.vmss file – This file is created when a VM is put into Suspend (pause) mode and is used to

save the suspend state. It is basically a copy of the VM’s RAM and will be a few megabytes

larger than the maximum RAM memory allocated to the VM. If you delete this file while the

VM is in a suspend state It will start the VM from a normal boot up instead of starting the vm

from the state it was when it was suspended. This file is not automatically deleted when the

VM is brought out of Suspend mode. Like the Vswp file this file will only be deleted when the

VM is powered off (not rebooted). If a Vmss file exists from a previous suspend and the VM is

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suspended again then the previous file is re-used for the subsequent suspensions. Also note

that if a vswp file is present it is deleted when a VM is suspended and then re-created when

the VM is powered on again. The reason for this is that the VM is essentially powered off in

the suspend state, it’s RAM contents are just preserved in the vmss file so it can be quickly

powered back on.

*.log file – This is the file that keeps a log of the virtual machine activity and is useful in

troubleshooting virtual machine problems. Every time a VM is powered off and then back on

a new log file is created. The current log file for the VM is always vmware.log. The older log

files are incremented with a -# in the filename and up to 6 of them will be retained. (ie.

vmware-4.log) The older .log files are always deleteable at will, the latest .log file can be

deleted when the VM is powered off. As the log files do not take much disk space, most

administrators let them be.

*.vmxf file – This is a supplemental configuration file in text format for virtual machines

that are in a team. Note that the .vmxf file remains if a virtual machine is removed from the

team. Teaming virtual machines is a Vmware Workstation feature and includes the ability to

designate multiple virtual machines as a team, which administrators can then power on and

off, suspend and resume as a single object — making it particularly useful for testing client-

server environments. This file still exists with ESX server virtual machines but only for

compatibility purposes with Workstation.

*.vmsd file – This file is used to store metadata and information about snapshots. This file

is in text format and will contain information such as the snapshot display name, uid, disk

file name, etc. It is initially a 0 byte file until you create your first snapshot of a VM and from

that point it will populate the file and continue to update it whenever new snapshots are

taken. This file does not cleanup completely after snapshots are taken. Once you delete a

snapshot it will still leave the fields in the file for each snapshot and just increment the uid

and set the name to “Consolidate Helper” presumably to be used with Consolidated Backups

*.vmsn file - This is the snapshot state file, which stores the exact running state of a virtual

machine at the time you take that snapshot. This file will either be small or large depending

on if you select to preserve the VM’s memory as part of the snapshot. If you do choose to

preserve the VM’s memory then this file will be a view megabytes larger then the maximum

RAM memory allocated to the VM. This file is similar to the vmss (Suspend) file. A vmsn file

will be created for each snapshot taken on the VM, these files are automatically deleted

when the snapshot is removed.

Snapshot Files

When you take a snapshot, you capture the state of the virtual machine settings and the virtual disk. If you are taking a memory snapshot, you also capture the memory state of the virtual machine. These states are saved to files that reside with the virtual machine's base files.

Snapshot Files

A snapshot consists of files that are stored on a supported storage device. A Take Snapshot operation creates .vmdk, -delta.vmdk, .vmsd, and .vmsnfiles. By default, the first and all

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delta disks are stored with the base .vmdk file. The .vmsd and .vmsn files are stored in the virtual machine directory.

Delta disk files

A .vmdk file to which the guest operating system can write. The delta disk represents the difference between the current state of the virtual disk and the state that existed at the time that the previous snapshot was taken. When you take a snapshot, the state of the virtual disk is preserved, which prevents the guest operating system from writing to it, and a delta or child disk is created.A delta disk has two files, including a descriptor file that is small and contains information about the virtual disk, such as geometry and child-parent relationship information, and a corresponding file that contains the raw data.Note

If you are looking at a datastore with the Datastore Browser in the vSphere Client, you see only one entry to represent both files.

The files that make up the delta disk are referred to as child disks or redo logs. A child disk is a sparse disk. Sparse disks use the copy-on-write mechanism, in which the virtual disk contains no data in places, until copied there by a write operation. This optimization saves storage space. A grain is the unit of measure in which the sparse disk uses the copy-on-write mechanism. Each grain is a block of sectors that contain virtual disk data. The default size is 128 sectors or 64KB.

Flat file A -flat.vmdk file that is one of two files that comprises the base disk. The flat disk contains the raw data for the base disk. This file does not appear as a separate file in the Datastore Browser.

Database file

A .vmsd file that contains the virtual machine's snapshot information and is the primary source of information for the Snapshot Manager. This file contains line entries, which define the relationships between snapshots and between child disks for each snapshot.

Memory file

A .vmsn file that includes the active state of the virtual machine. Capturing the memory state of the virtual machine lets you revert to a turned on virtual machine state. With nonmemory snapshots, you can only revert to a turned off virtual machine state. Memory snapshots take longer to create than nonmemory snapshots. The time the ESX host takes to write the memory onto the disk is relative to the amount of memory the virtual machine is configured to use.

A Take Snapshot operation creates .vmdk, -delta.vmdk, vmsd, and vmsn files.

F i l e D e s c r i p t i o n

vmname-number.vmdk and vmname-number-delta.vmdk

Snapshot file that represents the difference between the current state of the virtual disk and the state that existed at the time the previous snapshot was taken.

The filename uses the following syntax, S1vm-000001.vmdk where S1vm is the name of the virtual machine and the six-digit number, 000001, is based on the files that already exist in the directory.

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The number does not consider the number of disks that are attached to the virtual machine.

vmname.vmsd Database of the virtual machine's snapshot information and the primary source of information for the Snapshot Manager.

vmname.Snapshotnumber.vmsn Memory state of the virtual machine at the time you take the snapshot. The file name uses the following syntax, S1vm.snapshot1.vmsn, where S1vm is the virtual machine name, and snapshot1 is the first snapshot.

Note

A .vmsn file is created each time you take a snapshot, regardless of the memory selection. A .vmsn file without memory is much smaller than one with memory.

What is a .vmdk file?

This isn’t the file containing the raw data. Instead it is the disk descriptor file which

describes the size and geometry of the virtual disk file. This file is in text format and

contains the name of the –flat.vmdk file for which it is associated with and also the hard

drive adapter type, drive sectors, heads and cylinders, etc. One of these files will exist for

each virtual hard drive that is assigned to your virtual machine. You can tell which –

flat.vmdk file it is associated with by opening the file and looking at the Extent Description

field.

Difference between ESXi5.1 and ESXi 5.5

The new features added in VMware vSphere 5.5 and also some enhanced features from

older versions.

vSphere ESXi Hypervisor Enahncements

Hot Pluggable PCIe SSD Devices

Support for Reliable Memory Technology

Enhancements for CPU C-States

VMware vCenter Server Enhancements

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VMware vSphere Web Client

VMware vCenter Server Appliance

vSphere App HA

Virtual Machine–Virtual Machine Affinity Rules Enhancements

vSphere Big Data Extensions

vSphere Storage Enhancements

Support for 62TB VMDK

MSCS Updates

vSphere 5.1 Feature Updates

16GB E2E support

vSphere Flash Read Cache

vSphere Networking Enhancements

Link Aggregation Control Protocol Enhancements

Traffic Filtering

Quality of Service Tagging

40GB NIC support

vSphere ESXi Hypervisor Enahncements

Hot Pluggable PCie SSD Devices

In earlier versions VMware had a feature to swap storage devices such as SATA and SAS

hard disks without affecting the running virtual machines reducing the amount of downtime.

With vSphere 5.5 users can now also hot-add or hot-remove an Solid State Disks (SSD) while

a vSphere host is running.

Support for Reliable Memory Technology

There is a feature in CPU hardware which can provide the details of a portion of the memory

which is considered as more "reliable" with respect to to other sections of memory. vSphere

5.5 is utilizing this feature to get memory information and runs the VMkerenl on this section

of memory to reduce the slightest probability of any memory crash or failure which in case

could futher lead to adverse effects to VMware Hypervisor.

Enhancements for CPU C-States

In vSphere 5.1 and earlier versions CPU P state was used which are responsible for lowering

the CPU multiplier and CPU voltage when there is no work load. But with vSphere 5.5 CPU C-

State has been introduced which has advanced CPU current lowering technologies. Another

potential benefit of reduced power consumption is with inherent increased performance.

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VMware vCenter Server Enhancements

VMware vSphere Web Client

Enhanced features have been added to vSphere web client also providing full support for

Mac OS X. The vSphere web client also includes the following new features

Drag and Drop: Administrators now can drag and drop objects from the center panel onto

the vSphere inventory, enabling them to quickly perform bulk actions.

Filters: Administrators can now select properties on a list of displayed objects and selected

filters to meet specific search criteria. Displayed objects are dynamically updated to reflect

the specific filters selected.

Recent Items: Administrators spend most of their day working on a handful of objects. The

new recent items navigation aid enables them to navigate with ease, typically by using one

click between their most commonly used objects.

vCenter Server Appliance

With the release of vSphere 5.5, the vCenter Server Appliance addresses this with a re

engineered, embedded vPostgres database that can now support as many as 100 vSphere

hosts or 3,000 virtual machines (with appropriate sizing). With new scalability maximums

and simplified vCenter Server deployment and management, the vCenter Server Appliance

offers an attractive alternative to the Windows version of vCenter Server when planning a

new installation of vCenter Server 5.5.

vSphere App HA

This is an additional feature added to vSphere 5.5. In earlier versions we had vSphere HA

which enabled virtual machine monitoring and in case of any heart beat failures within a

given amount of time the vShphere HA would reset the vm. But using vSphere App HA any

critical application service and be monitored and in case of any failure the application or the

virtual machine can be restarted.

Virtual Machine–Virtual Machine Affinity Rules Enhancements

As we know the usage of DRS in earlier version of VMware vSphere but in vSphere 5.5 an

additional rule is added to DRS where user can define the virtual machines which should be

kept together on same host or separate hosts. This rule is termed as virtual machine–virtual

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http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ObkuxQZyGk0/U7DYMQUwBQI/AAAAAAAADpQ/KglV9l0NYjA/s1600/Untitled.p

machine anti affinity rule. So now before attempting to move any vm during a resource

outage this rule plays its part and migrates the vm accordingly.

VMware vSphere Data Protection Enhancements

New enhanced features has been added to VMware vpshere Data Protection which is a

backup and recovery solution for VMware virtual machines. The following enhancements

were made

Direct-to-host emergency restore:

Backup and restore of individual virtual machine hard disks (.vmdk

files): Individual .vmdk files can be selected for backup and restore operations.

Replication to EMC Avamar

Flexible storage placement

Mounting of existing backup data storage to new appliance

Scheduling granularity


BDE is a tool that enables administrators to deploy and manage Hadoop clusters on vSphere

from a familiar vSphere Web Client interface.

BDE performs the following functions on the virtual Hadoop clusters it manages:

Creates, deletes, starts, stops and resizes clusters

Controls resource usage of Hadoop clusters

Specifies physical server topology information

Manages the Hadoop distributions available to BDE users

Automatically scales

vSphere Storage Enhancements


VMware is increasing the maximum size of a virtual machine disk file (VMDK) in vSphere 5.5.

The previous limit was 2TB—512 bytes. The new limit is 62TB. The maximum size of a virtual

Raw Device Mapping (RDM) is also increasing, from 2TB—512 bytes to 62TB. Virtual machine

snapshots also support this new size for delta disks that are created when a snapshot is

taken of the virtual machine.

Enhancements in MSCS

In vSphere 5.5, VMware supports the following features related to Microsoft Cluster Service

(MSCS):

Microsoft Windows 2012

Round-robin path policy for shared storage

iSCSI protocol for shared storage

Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) protocol for shared storage

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16GB E2E Support

In vSphere 5.1, VMware introduced support to run these HBAs at 16Gb. However, there is no

support for full, end-to-end 16Gb connectivity from host to array. To get full bandwidth, a

number of 8Gb connections must be created from the switch to the storage array.

In vSphere 5.5, VMware introduces 16Gb end-to-end FC support. Both the HBAs and array

controllers can run at 16Gb as long as the FC switch between the initiator and target

supports it.

vSphere Networking Enhancements

Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP) Enhancements

LACP is a method to bundle several physical network links to form logical channel for

increased bandwidth and redunancy purposes. The fllowing key enhancements are available

in vSPhere Distributed Switch with vSphere 5.5:

22 new hashing algorith options are available

64 LAG (Link Aggregation Group) per host

Traffic Filtering

Traffic filtering is the ability to filter packets based on the various parameters of the packet

header. This capability is also referred to as access control lists (ACLs), and it is used to

provide port-level security.

Quality of Service tagging

QOS is responsible for differentiating traffic importance and helps reserving bandwidth

accordingly. VMware has supported 802.1p tagging on VDS since vSphere 5.1. The 802.1p

tag is inserted in the Ethernet header before the packet is sent out on the physical network.

In vSphere 5.5, the DSCP marking support enables users to insert tags in the IP header. IP

header–level tagging helps in layer 3 environments, where physical routers function better

with an IP header tag than with an Ethernet header tag.

40GB NIC Support

Support for 40GB NICs on the vSphere platform enables users to take advantage of higher

bandwidth pipes to the servers.

Summary

So this was a brief article on few of the enhancements and new features added in vSphere

5.5 as compared to earlier versions. To summarize this article I have separated the points in

two sub sections as shown below

New features in vSphere 5.5

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Hot plug SSD PCIe devices

vSphere App HA

Reliable memory Technology:

vSphere DRS virtual machine–virtual machine affinity rule



16GB E2E support

40GB NIC Support

Enhanced features in vSphere 5.5

Enhancements to CPU C-states

Expanded virtual graphics support

vSphere Web Client platform support and UI improvements

MSCS updates

PDL AutoRemove

Improved LACP capabilities

Traffic filtering

Quality of Service tagging

Difference Between vSphere 5.1 and vSphere 5.5

Features vSphere 5.1 vSphere 5.5

Physical CPUs per host 160 320

Physical RAM per host 2 TB 4 TB

NUMA nodes per host 8 16

Maximum vCPUs per host 2048 4096

VMDK Size 2TB 62 TB

Max Size of Virtual RDM 2TB 62 TB

VM Hardware Version 9 10

40 GBps physical Adapter support No yes

ESXi Free version RAM limit 32 GB unlimited

ESXi Free version maximum vSMP 8-way virtual SMP 8-way virtual SMP

16 GB fibre channel End-to-End support Support to run these

HBAs at 16Gb. However, there is no

Yes

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support for full, end-to-end 16Gb connectivity

from host to array.

APP HA No Yes

vFlash Read Cache support No Yes

VMware VSAN support No Yes

Expanded v-GPU and G-GPU support only NVIDIA NVIDIA, AMD and Intel GPU

vCenter Server Appliance With Embedded Database support upto

5 Hosts and 50 Virtual Machines

100 Hosts and 3000 Virtual Machines

Microsoft Windows 2012 Cluster Support No Yes

PDL (Permanent Device Loss) AutoRemove No Intoduced in vSphere 5.5

Graphics acceleration support for Linux Guest OS No Yes

Hot-pluggable SSDPCIe devices No Yes

Support for Reliable Memory Technology No Yes

CPU C-state Enhancement

Host power management leveraged only the performance state (P-state), which

kept the processor running at a lower frequency and

voltage

Processor power state (C-state)

also is used, providing additional power savings

and increased Performance

LSI SAS support for Oracle Solaris 11 OS No Yes

vSphere Big Data Extensions No Yes

SATA-based virtual device nodes via AHCI (Advanced Host Controller Interface) support No

Yes (Support upto 120 devices per VM)

Improved LACP Supportone LACP group per

distributed switch Supports up to 64

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Multiple point-in-time replicas

vSphere Replication kept

only the most recent copy

of a virtual machineVersion 5.5 can keep up to

24 historical snapshots

Diffrence between ESX and ESXi

How to access the ESX and ESXi?

ESXi Shell Access with the Direct Console

An ESXi system includes a direct console (also called DCUI) that allows you to start and stop the system and to perform a limited set of maintenance and troubleshooting tasks. The direct console includes the ESXi Shell, which is disabled by default. You can enable the ESXi Shell in the direct console or by using the vSphere Client. You can enable local shell access or remote shell access:

■Local shell access allows you to log in to the shell directly from the Direct Console. See Enabling Local ESXi Shell Access.

■Remote shell (SSH) access allows you to connect to the host using a shell such as PuTTY, specify a user name and password, and run commands in the shell.

The ESXi Shell includes all ESXCLI commands, a set of deprecated esxcfg- commands, and a set of commands for troubleshooting and remediation.

Important All ESXCLI commands that are available in the ESXi Shell are also included in the vCLI package.

VMware recommends you install the vCLI package on a supported Windows or Linux system or deploy the vMA virtual appliance, and run commands against your ESXi hosts. Run commands directly in the ESXi Shell in troubleshooting situations only.

Enabling Local ESXi Shell Access

You can enable the ESXi Shell from the direct console or from the vSphere Client.

If you have access to the direct console, you can enable the ESXi Shell from there.

To enable the ESXi Shell in the direct console

1 At the direct console of the ESXi host, press F2 and provide credentials when prompted.

2 Scroll to Troubleshooting Options and press Enter.

3 Choose Enable ESXi Shell and press Enter.

On the left, Enable ESXi Shell changes to Disable ESXi Shell. On the right, ESXi Shell is Disabled changes to ESXi Shell is Enabled.

4 Press Esc until you return to the main direct console screen.

If you do not have access to the direct console, you can enable the ESXi Shell from the vSphere Client.

To enable the local or remote ESXi Shell from the vSphere Client

1Select the host, click the Configuration tab, and click Security Profile in the Software panel.

2 In the Services section, click Properties.

3 Select ESXi Shell and click Options.

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4 Change the ESXi Shell options.

■To change the Startup policy across reboots, click Start and stop with host and reboot the host.

■ To temporarily start or stop the service, click the Start or Stop button.

5 Click OK.

After you have enabled the ESXi Shell, you can use it from that monitor or through a serial port.

The ESXi Shell timeout setting specifies how long you can leave an unused session open. By default, the timeout for the ESXi Shell is 0, which means the session remains open even if it is unused. If you change the timeout, for example, to 30 minutes, you have to log in again after the timeout period has elapsed.

Note If you are logged in when the timeout period elapses, your session will persist. However, the ESXi Shell will be disabled, preventing other users from logging in.

Setting Timeouts for the ESXi Shell

The ESXi Shell supports availability timeout and idle timeouts. By default, each timeout is disabled.

■

Availability timeout. The amount of time that can elapse before you must log in after the ESXi Shell is enabled. After the timeout period, the service is disabled and users are not allowed to log in.

■

Idle timeout. The amount of time that can elapse before the user is logged out of an idle interactive sessions. Changes to the idle timeout apply the next time a user logs in to the ESXi Shell and do not affect existing sessions.

To set ESXi Shell timeouts from the Direct Console

1From the Troubleshooting Mode Options menu, select Modify ESXi Shell and SSH timeouts and press Enter.

2 Enter the availability timeout, in seconds, and press Enter.

3 Enter the idle timeout, in seconds, and press Enter.

4 Press Esc until you return to the main menu of the Direct Console Interface.

To set ESXi Shell timeouts from the vSphere Web Client

1 Select the host in the inventory, click the Manage tab, and click Settings.

2 Under System, select Advanced System Settings.

3 In the left panel, click UserVars.

4 Select UserVars.ESXiShellTimeOut and click the Edit icon

5 Enter the availability timeout in minutes.

You must restart the SSH service and the ESXi Shell service for the timeout to take effect.

6 Select UserVars.ESXiShellInteractiveTimeOut and click the Edit icon

7 Enter the availability timeout in minutes.

You must restart the SSH service and the ESXi Shell service for the timeout to take effect.

8 Click OK.

Using the Local ESXi Shell

After you enable the ESXi Shell in the direct console, you can use it from main direct console screen or remotely through a serial port.

To use the local ESXi Shell

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1At the main direct console screen, press Alt-F1 to open a virtual console window to the host.

2 Provide credentials when prompted.

When you type the password, characters are not displayed on the console.

3 Enter shell commands to perform management tasks.

4 To log out, type exit in the shell.

5 To return to the direct console, type Alt-F2.

See vSphere Installation and Setup documentation for information on serial port setup.

ESXi server port number for ssh, VUM, vmotion, SCSI,HA

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?

language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1012382

Difference between clone and template?

Clone Template

Clone creates an exact copy of a running Virtual Machine at the time of cloning process

Template acts as a baseline image with the predefined configuration as per organization standards

Cloning a virtual machine creates a exact duplicate copy of the virtual machine with the same configuration and installed software without performing any additional settings.

Create a template to create a master image of a virtual machine from which you can deploy multiple virtual machines

You can create a clone of existing installed and Configured running virtual machine by right clicking the VM and Clone.

You can create a template by converting a virtual machine to a template, cloning a virtual machine to a template, or cloning another template

VM clones are best suited in test and development environments where you want to create, test and work with exact copies of production servers without disturbing production servers by creating clone of the production virtual machine.

Templates are best suited for production environments where you want the mass deployment of virtual machines along with the installed OS and basic software, configured policy as per the security policy of your organization as a base Machine. Once template is deployed, you can install software depend on the role of the server like IIS,Database

VM Clones are not suited for mass deployment of Virtual Machines

Templates are best suited for Mass Deployment of Virtual Machines

We Cannot Convert back the Cloned Machine You can convert the template back to virtual

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machine to update the base template with the latest released patches and updates and to install or upgrade any software and again convert back to template to be used for deployment of virtual machines with latest patches.

Cloned Virtual Machine Can be powered on Templates cannot be powered on

You cannot Clone a Virtual Machine if you have connected directly to ESX/ESXi host using vSphere Client

You cannot create a template of a Virtual Machine if you have connected directly to ESX/ESXi host using vSphere Client

You can customize the guest operating system of the clone to change the virtual machine name, network settings, and other properties. This prevents conflicts that can occur if a virtual machine and a clone with identical guest operating system settings are deployed simultaneously.

You can also Customize the guest operating system while deploying from template.

Clone of a virtual machine can be created when the virtual machine is powered on.

Convert virtual Machine to template cannot be performed, when Virtual machine is powered on. Only Clone to Template can be performed when VM is powered on.

Difference between clone, template, snapshort

A clone is a copy of a virtual machine. A template is a master copy of a virtual machine that can be used to create many clones.

When you clone a virtual machine, you create a copy of the entire virtual machine, including its settings, any configured virtual devices, installed software, and other contents of the virtual machine's disks. You also have the option to use guest operating system customization to change some of the properties of the clone, such as the computer name and networking settings.

Cloning a virtual machine can save time if you are deploying many similar virtual machines. You can create, configure, and install software on a single virtual machine, and then clone it multiple times, rather than creating and configuring each virtual machine individually.

A template is a master copy of a virtual machine that can be used to create and provision virtual machines. Templates cannot be powered on or edited, and are more difficult to alter than ordinary virtual machine. A template offers a more secure way of preserving a virtual machine configuration that you want to deploy many times.

A snapshot preserves the state and data of a virtual machine at a specific point in time.

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The state includes the virtual machine’s power state (for example, powered-on, powered-off,

suspended).

The data includes all of the files that make up the virtual machine. This includes disks,

memory, and other devices, such as virtual network interface cards.

How to create a new VM template on VMware vSphere ?

A VM template is a master copy of the virtual machine which can be used to create a new

virtual machines in a few clicks. Normally template will be used to create a similar type of

machines. For an example, to build a web-server on Redhat Linux,

1. You need to create a virtual machine

2. Install Redhat Linux Operating system

3. Install the necessary software for Apache

4. Install Apache.

You have to setup the things only for the first VM if you are going to use template. Using

that newly created VM, You can create a template which will be act as master copy for

future provisioning. So the bottom line is that template has the operating system installed

virtual machine and set of installed applications on that VM.

We can create a new virtual machine template from existing virtual machine or you can

covert the virtual machine as template. Here we will see how we can create a new template

from existing VM.

1. Login to vSphere Client and select the VM from which you want to generate new

template.

Select the VM

2.Right click the VM and Select “clone to template”. If you select “convert to template”, VM

will be converted as template permanently.

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Right Click to make template

3. Enter the meaning full template name.

Enter Meaning full template Name

4. Select the cluster or ESXi host .

Select the cluster or ESXi host

5. Select the datastore for VM template.

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Select the datastore

6. Click Finish, once you have reviewed the settings to create a new VM template.

Finish the wizard

7. Click on the recent tasks to check the template clone status.

VM template – clone

8. Once the clone is completed, click on the VM & Template tab. Here you can see the

template details which you have created by cloning the existing VM.

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Template Details

Using the VM template, you can create new virtual machines in few clicks. But configuring

the IP address, setting the unique host name and configuring the application needs to be

done after creating the new VM manually.

What is VMware vMotion and what are its requirements?

VMware VMotion enables the live migration of running virtual machines from one physical

server to another with zero downtime.

VMotion lets you:

Automatically optimize and allocate entire pools of resources for maximum hardware

utilization and

Availability.

Perform hardware maintenance without any scheduled downtime.

Proactively migrate virtual machines away from failing or underperforming servers.

Below are the pre-requisites for configuring vMotion

Each host must be correctly licensed for vMotion

Each host must meet shared storage requirements

vMotion migrates the vm from one host to another which is only possible with both

the host are sharing a common storage or to any storage accessible by both the

source and target hosts.

A shared storage can be on a Fibre Channel storage area network (SAN), or can be

implemented using iSCSI SAN and NAS.

If you use vMotion to migrate virtual machines with raw device mapping (RDM) files,

make sure to maintain consistent LUN IDs for RDMs across all participating hosts.

Each host must meet the networking requirements

Configure a VMkernel port on each host.

Dedicate at least one GigE adapter for vMotion.

Use at least one 10 GigE adapter if you migrate workloads that have many memory

operations.

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Use jumbo frames for best vMotion performance.

Ensure that jumbo frames are enabled on all network devices that are on the vMotion

path including physical NICs, physical switches and virtual switches.

VLAN Tagging in ESX (VST,EST & VGT)

There are 3 types of VLAN tagging available in Vsphere.

1.Virtual Switch Tagging (VST)

2.External Switch Tagging (EST)

3.Virtual Guest Tagging (VGT)

There is no specific settings named “VLAN Tagging” is avialable in the vpshre host

network settings. VLAN tagging is determined by the VLAN value specified at the port

group and it tells the vswitch or Phyiscal switch or Virtual machines to how to handle the

VLAN tagging.

1. Virtual Switch Tagging (VST)

1.1 VST uses 802.1q VLAN trunks and tagged traffic.

1.2 VLAN tagging for all packets is performed by the Virtual Switch before leaving the

ESX/ESXI host

1.3 Port groups on the Virtual switch of ESX server should be configured with VLAN ID (1-

4094)

1.4 vSwitch responsibilities is to strip off the vlan tag and send packet to virtual machine

in corresponding port group.

1.5 Reduces the number of Physical nics on the server by running all the VLANs over one

physical nic. Better solution would be keeping 2 nics for redundancy.

1.6 Reduces number of cables from ESX server to physical switch.

1.7 The physical switch port connecting the uplink from the ESX should be configured as

Trunk port.

1.8 virtual machine network Packet is delivered to vSwitch and before it is sent to

physical switch the packet is tagged with vlan id according to the port group

membership of originating virtual machine.

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2.External Switch Tagging (EST)

2.1 In EST, ESX host doesn’t see any vlan tags and does not handle any VLAN tagging.

2.2 All the tagging operation is done by physical switch and virtual switch is not aware

about that.

2.3 Number of physical nics = no of VLANs connected to ESX

2.4 Port groups on the Virtual switch of ESX server need not to be configured with the

VLAN number or configure VLAN ID 0 (if it is not native VLAN)

2.5 Count of NICS and cable connected to ESX is more as compared to VST approach.


Access port assigned to specific VLAN.

2.7 virtual machine network Packet is delivered to physical switch without any tagging

operation performed by the virtual switch.

3. Virtual Guest Tagging (VGT)

3.1 you must install 8021.Q VLAN trunking driver instide virtual machine guest operating

system.

3.2 All the VLAN tagging is performed by the virtual machine with use of trunking driver

in the guest.

3.3 VLAN tags are understandable only between the virtual machine and external switch

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when frames are passed to/from virtual switches.

3.4 Virtual Switch will not be involved or aware of this operation. Vswitch only forwards

the packets from Virtual machine to physical switch and will not perform any operation.

3.5 Port group of the virtual machine should be configured with VLAN ID 4095


Trunk port

Below is comparison table for the people want a comparison under single table

Virtual Disk Provisioning Policies

Thick Provision Lazy Zeroed

Creates a virtual disk in a default thick format. Space required for the virtual disk is allocated when the virtual disk is created. Data remaining on the physical device is not erased during creation, but is zeroed out on demand at a later time on first write from the virtual machine.Using the default flat virtual disk format does not zero out or eliminate the possibility of recovering deleted files or restoring old data that might be present on this allocated space. You cannot convert a flat disk to a thin disk.

Thick Provision Eager Zeroed

A type of thick virtual disk that supports clustering features such as Fault Tolerance. Space required for the virtual disk is allocated at creation time. In contrast to the flat format, the data remaining on the physical device is zeroed out when the virtual disk is created. It might take much longer to create disks in this format than to create other types of disks.

Thin Provision

Use this format to save storage space. For the thin disk, you provision as much datastore space as the disk would require based on the value that you enter for the disk size. However, the thin disk starts small and at first, uses only as much datastore space as the disk needs for its initial

What is HA?

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VMware HA i.e. High Availability which works on the host level and is configured on

the Cluster.

A Cluster configured with HA will migrate and restart all the vms running under any of

the host in case of any host-level failure automatically to another host under the

same cluster.

VMware HA continuously monitors all ESX Server hosts in a cluster and detects

failures.

VMware HA agent placed on each host maintains a heartbeat with the other hosts in

the cluster using the service console network. Each server sends heartbeats to the

others servers in the cluster at five-second intervals. If any servers lose heartbeat

over three consecutive heartbeat intervals, VMware HA initiates the failover action of

restarting all affected virtual machines on other hosts.

You can set virtual machine restart priority in case of any host failure depending

upon the critical nature of the vm.

NOTE: Using HA in case of any host failure with RESTART the vms on different host so the

vms state will be interrupted and it is not a live migration

How HA works?

how to setup HA for a VM?

Applying a VMware HA customizationUsing the vSphere Web Client

1. Log in to VMware vSphere Web Client.2. Click Home > vCenter > Clusters.3. Under Object click on the cluster you want to modify.4. Click Manage.5. Click vSphere HA.6. Click Edit.7. Click Advanced Options.8. Click Add and enter in Option and Value fields as appropriate (see below).9. Deselect Turn ON vSphere HA.10. Click OK.11. Wait for HA to unconfigure, click Edit and check Turn ON vSphere HA.12. Click OK and wait for the cluster to reconfigure.

Using the vSphere Client

1. Log in to vCenter Server with vSphere Client as an administrator.2. Right-click the Cluster in the Inventory and click Edit Settings.3. Click VMware HA.4. Click the Advanced Options button.5. Enter Option and Value fields as appropriate (see below).6. Click OK.7. Click OK again.8. Wait for the Reconfigure Cluster task to complete and right-click the Cluster again

from the Inventory.9. Click Properties.10. Disable VMware HA and wait for the Reconfiguration Cluster task(s) to complete.

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11. Right-click the cluster and Enable VMware HA to have the settings take effect.

Note: See below if reconfiguration of the hosts is necessary.

There are three types of HA advanced options and each is set in a different way.

vCenter Server options (VC) -- these options are configured at the vCenter Server level and apply to all HA clusters unless overridden by cluster-specific options in cases where such options exist. If the vCenter Server options are configured using the vCenter Server options manager, a vCenter Server restart may not be required -- see the specific options for details. But if these options are configured by adding the option string to the vpxd.cfg file (as a child of the config/vpxd/das tag), a restart is required.

Cluster options (cluster) -- these options are configured for an individual cluster and if they impact the behavior of the HA Agent (FDM), they apply to all instances of FDM in that cluster. These options are configured by using the HA cluster-level advanced options mechanism, either via the UI or the API. Options with names starting with "das.config." can also be applied using the "fdm options" mechanism below, but this is not recommended because the options should be equally applied to all FDM instances.

fdm options (fdm) -- these options are configured for an individual FDM instance on a host. They are configured by adding the option to the /etc/opt/vmware/fdm/fdm.cfg file of the host as a child of the config/fdm tag. Options set in this way are lost when fdm is uninstalled (for example if the host is removed from vCenter Server and then re-added) or if the host is managed by Auto Deploy and is rebooted.

Common Options

Version Name Description

Reconfiguration

Type of Option

Cluster Configuration

5.0, 5.1, 5.5 das.allowNetworkX

Allows you to specify the specific management networks used by HA, where X is a number between 0 and 9. For example if you set a value to ʺManagement Networkʺ, only the networks associated with port groups having this name are used. Ensure that all hosts are configured with the named port group and the networks are compatible. In 5.5, this option is ignored if vSAN is enabled for the cluster.

Yes. Reconfigure HA on all hosts to have the specification take effect.

Cluster

5.0, 5.1, 5.5

das.ignoreRedundantNetWarning HA will report a config issue on a host if the host is not configured with redundant networks for

Yes. Reconfigure HA on a host to have the config

Cluster

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the networks used by HA. Prior to 5.5, HA only uses management networks, while in 5.5, if vSAN is enabled, HA will use the networks configured for vSAN. Valid values are true/false. Set to true to suppress the config issue. False is assumed if the option is not set.

issue for that host cleared.

5.0, 5.1, 5.5 das.heartbeatDsPerHost

HA chooses by default 2 heartbeat datastores for each host in an HA cluster. This option can be used to increase the number to a value in the range of 2 to 5 inclusive.

Yes. Reconfigure HA on all hosts in the cluster.

Cluster

5.0, 5.1, 5.5 das.ignoreInsufficientHbDatastore

HA will report a host config issue if it was not able to select the required number of datastores for a host given by das.heartbeatDsPerHost. Set this option to true to suppress this warning, and false to enable it. A value of false is assumed if the option is not set.

Yes. Reconfigure HA on all hosts in the cluster.

Cluster

5.0, 5.1, 5.5 das.includeFTcomplianceChecks

Whether to check the cluster for compliance with Fault Tolerance as part of the cluster profile compliance check. Set this option to false if you don't plan to use FT in the cluster. A value of true enables the checks. If unset, a value of true is assumed. No

Cluster

Admission Control

5.0, 5.1, 5.5 das.vmMemoryMinMB

Value in MB to use for the memory reservation of a virtual machine if no non-zero memory reservation is set by a user. 0 is assumed if the option is not set. No

Cluster

5.0, 5.1, 5.5 das.vmCpuMinMHz

Value in MHz to use for the CPU reservation of a virtual machine if no non-zero CPU reservation are set by a user. 32 is assumed if the option is not set. No

Cluster

5.0, 5.1, 5.5

das.slotCpuInMHz Maximum value in MHz to use for CPU component of the slot size. No limit is

No Cluster

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imposed if the option is not set. In 5.1, the CPU component of the slot size can be exactly specified in the UI and the API (see the vim.cluster.slotPolicy object). Note that this option and the UI/API behave differently -- this option sets a max while the UI/API sets the exact value. If a slot policy is defined and this option is specified, the value specified by this option is ignored.

5.0, 5.1, 5.5 das.slotMemInMB

Maximum value in MB to use for memory component of the slot size. No limit is imposed if the option is not set. In 5.1, the memory component of the slot size can be exactly specified in the UI and the API (see the vim.cluster.slotPolicy object). Note that this option and the UI/API behave differently -- this option sets a max while the UI/API sets the exact value. If a slot policy is defined and this option is specified, the value specified by this option is ignored. No

Cluster

Restarting virtual machines

5.0, 5.1, 5.5

das.maxvmrestartcount The maximum number of times an FDM master will try to restart a virtual machine before giving up. Five attempts are made if this option is unset. This limit only applies if the time since the first restart attempt was made is less than das.maxvmrestartperiod. Note that FT secondary virtual machine restarts are governed by the separate parameter, das.maxftvmrestartcount.Warning: Setting this value to a very high number creates a large amount of extra logging which can have an impact on your system log

No Cluster

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directories.

5.0, 5.1, 5.5 das.maxvmrestartperiod

The maximum amount of time (in seconds) during which a FDM master will attempt to restart a virtual machine after the first restart attempt failed. The time is measured from when the FDM master first tried to restart the virtual machine. This time limit takes precedence over das.maxvmrestartcount. No time limit is imposed if this option is unset. No

Cluster

5.0, 5.1, 5.5 das.maxftvmrestartcount

The maximum number of times an FDM master will try to start a secondary virtual machine for an FT virtual machine pair before giving up. Five attempts are made if this option is unset.Warning: Setting this value to a very high number creates a large amount of extra logging which can have an impact on your system log directories No

Cluster

5.0U1, 5.1, 5.5 das.maskCleanShutdownEnabled

When a virtual machine powers off and its home datastore is not accessible, HA cannot determine whether the virtual machine should be restarted. So, it must make a decision. If this option is set to false, the responding FDM master will assume the virtual machine should not be restarted, while if this option is set to true, the responding FDM will assume the virtual machine should be restarted. If the option is unset in 5.0U1, a value of false is assumed, whereas in ESXi 5.1 and later, a value of true is assumed. No

Cluster

5.5das.respectVmVmAntiAffinityRules

Respect vm-vm anti-affinity rules when restarting virtual machines after a failure. The valid values are "false" (default) and "true" No

Cluster

Isolation Response

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5.0, 5.1, 5.5 das.isolationAddressX

IP addresses an FDM agent uses to check for isolation when no agent network traffic is observed on the network(*) used by HA, where X = 0-9. HA will use the default management-network gateway as an isolation address by default plus those specified by this advanced option as additional addresses to check. We recommend adding an isolation address for each management network used by HA.(*) Prior to 5.5, HA uses only the management network, but in 5.5 when vSAN is also enabled on the cluster, HA will use the vSAN network for inter-agent communication. No

Cluster

5.0, 5.1, 5.5 das.useDefaultIsolationAddress

Whether the default isolation address (gateway of management network) should be used when determining if a host is network isolated. Valid values are true/false. By default, the management network default gateway is used. If the default gateway is a non-pingable address, set the “das.isolationaddressX” to a pingable address and disable the usage of the default gateway by setting this option to “false”. No

Cluster

5.1, 5.5

das.config.fdm.isolationPolicyDelaySec

The number of seconds an FDM agent waits before executing the isolation policy once it has determined that the host is isolated. The minimum value is 30. If set to a value less than 30, the delay is 30 seconds. No

Cluster

5.0, 5.1, 5.5 das.isolationShutdownTimeout

The number of seconds an FDM waits for a virtual machine to power off after initiating a guest shutdown before the FDM issues a power off. If the option is unset, 300s is used. No

Cluster

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Virtual machine/App Monitoring

5.0, 5.1, 5.5 das.iostatsInterval

If an FDM detects that a sufficient number of VMtools heartbeats are missing to trigger a virtual machine's configured virtual machine/App monitoring policy, the FDM checks if any I/O have been issued in the last ioStatsInterval, and will only reset the virtual machine if no I/O occurred in this interval. Values of 0 or greater are valid. 120s is assumed if the option is unset. No

Cluster

Fault Tolerance

5.0, 5.1, 5.5 das.maxFtVmsPerHost

Specifies the number of Fault Tolerance virtual machines that can be run on a host at one time. If unset, a value of 4 is used. A value of -1 or 0 disables the limit. The limit is enforced by vCenter Server when executing user initiated power ons and vmotions, and by DRS when doing initial placement and load balancing. HA does not enforce this limit to maximize uptime. DRS does not correct any violations of this limit. No

Cluster

Logging

5.0, 5.1, 5.5

das.config.log.maxFileNum Controls the number of FDM log-file rotations retained by the FDM file-based logger. The file-based logger is used by default only by the FDM when running on ESX versions earlier than ESX 5.0. If you wish to change the number of log-file rotations maintained for a pre ESX 5.0 host, set this option to the desired number of log files. For ESX 5.0 and later hosts, the FDM logs to syslog by default and so you need to use the syslog configuration mechanism to change the amount of retained logging history. However, it is possible to

Yes Cluster

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enable the file-based logger for ESXi 5.0 and later hosts hosts also. To do so, set this option to a valid value. If you are using vSphere 5.0 Update 1 or later, you must also set the option das.config.log.outputToFiles to true. For all ESX versions, setting the option das.config.log.maxFileNum to 1 will disable the log-file rotations. The location of log files can be changed using the option das.config.log.directory.

5.0, 5.1, 5.5 das.config.log.maxFileSize

See das.config.log.maxFileNum Yes

Cluster

5.0, 5.1, 5.5 das.config.log.maxFileSize

Controls the size of each log file written out by the FDM file-based logger. Files are 1 MB in size unless this option is specified. This option is used in conjunction with das.config.log.maxFileNum to control the log history. Yes

Cluster

Less Common Options

Caution: These options have a range of subtle effects and should not be used in production environments unless directed by VMware Support.

Version

Name Description Reconfiguration

Type of Option

Cluster Configuration

5.0, 5.1, 5.5

vpxd.das.aamMemoryLimit Memory limit in MB for the resource pool used by HA (the aam resource pool). If unspecified, 100 MB is used. Value applies to all clusters in the vCenter Server inventory.

Yes. HA must be reconfigured on all hosts for which the change is required.

VC

5.0, 5.1, 5.5

vpxd.das.electionWaitTimeSec How long does vCenter Server wait in seconds after sending the host list to a new host for vCenter Server to learn

No. Applied the next time a FDM is configured.

VC

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the outcome of the election. A timeout exception is thrown if the host is not a master or connected slave by the timeout. If not specified, a value of 120 seconds is used. The value can not exceed 2000 as it causes failures of HA.

5.0, 5.1, 5.5

fdm.nodeGoodness When a master election is held, the FDMs exchange a goodness value, and the FDM with the largest goodness value is elected master. Ties are broken using the host IDs assigned by vCenter Server. This parameter can be used to override the computed goodness value for a given FDM. To force a specific host to be elected master each time an election is held and the host is active, set this option to a large positive value. This option should not be specified at the cluster level.

No. The new goodness value is used in the next election.

fdm

5.0, 5.1, 5.5

vpxd.das.sendProtectListIntervalSec Minimum time (in seconds) between consecutive calls by vCenter Server to the HA master agent (it is in contact with) to request that it protect a new virtual machine. If not specified, 60s is used. This option also controls how frequently vCenter Server sends the master updates to the virtual machine to host compatibility information for virtual machines that are powered on when their compatibility with hosts changes.

Yes. vCenter Server needs to be restarted after setting this option.

VC

5.5 fdm.cluster.vsanDatastoreLockDelay The delay (in seconds) before the vsan

No. The value is read

fdm

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datastore object is "acquired". Failover of virtual machines on a datastore do not take place until the vSan datastore has been acquired by the Master. The delay gives time for the isolated or partitioned slave to communicate its powered on virtual machines to avoid duplicate power ons. The default is to wait 30 seconds, and only if there are heartbeat datastores defined.

when the master is elected.

Admission Control

5.0, 5.1, 5.5

vpxd.das.slotMemMinMB vCenter Server-wide default value in MB to use for memory reservation if no memory reservation is specified for a virtual machine. Setting the cluster option das.vmMemoryMinMB for a cluster will override this value for that cluster. If this option is not set, a value of zero is assumed unless overridden by das.vmMemoryMinMB.

No. The value is taken into account the next time admission control is done.

VC

5.0, 5.1, 5.5

vpxd.das.slotCpuMinMHz vCenter Server-wide default value in MHz to use for cpureservation if no CPU reservation is specified for a virtual machine. Setting the cluster option das.vmCPUinMHz for a cluster will override this value for that cluster. If this option is not set, a value of 32 is assumed unless overridden by das.vmCPUinMHz.

No. The value is taken into account the next time admission control is done.

VC

Detecting Failures

5.0, 5.1, 5.5

das.config.fdm.hostTimeout Controls the time in seconds a master FDM waits in seconds for a slave FDM to respond to a heartbeat before declaring the slave host is not connected

Yes. Reconfigure HA on all hosts.

Cluster

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and initiating the work flow to determine whether the host is dead, isolated, or partitioned. If not specified, 10s is used.

5.0, 5.1, 5.5

fdm.deadIcmpPingInterval ICPM pings are used to determine whether a slave host is network accessible when the FDM on that host is not connected to the master. This option controls the interval (expressed in seconds) between pings. If not specified, 10s is used.

In ESXi 5.0, after making a change, HA must be reconfigured on all hosts in the cluster. In 5.1 and later, No

Cluster

5.0, 5.1, 5.5

das.config.fdm.icmpPingTimeout Defines the time an FDM waits in seconds for an ICMP ping reply before assuming the host being pinged is not network accessible. If not specified, 5s is used.

In ESXi 5.0, after making a change, HA must be reconfigured on all hosts in the cluster. In 5.1 and later, No

Cluster

5.0, 5.1, 5.5

vpxd.das.heartbeatPanicMaxTimeout This option impacts how long it takes for a host impacted by a PSOD to release file locks and hence allow HA to restart virtual machines that were running on it. If not specified, 60s is used. HA sets the host Misc.HeartbeatPanicTimeout advanced option to the value of this HA option. The HA option is in seconds.

Yes, after setting the option, HA needs to be reconfigured on all hosts in all HA clusters.

VC

Restarting virtual machines

5.0, 5.1, 5.5

das.config.fdm.policy.unknownStateMonitorPeriod

Defines the number of seconds the HA master agent waits after it detects that a virtual machine has failed before it attempts to restart the virtual machine. If not specified, 10s is used.

No Cluster

5.0, 5.1, 5.5

das.perHostConcurrentFailoversLimit The number of concurrent failovers a given FDM will have in progress at one time. Setting a larger value will allow more virtual machines to be

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restarted concurrently but will also increase the average latency to power each on since a greater number adds more stress on the hosts and storage. The default value is 32. This value was determined empirically to provide the minimum overall latency.

Virtual machine operation coordination

5.0, 5.1, 5.5

das.config.fdm.ft.cleanupTimeout When a vSphere Fault Tolerance virtual machine is powered on by vCenter Server, vCenter Server informs the HA master agent that it is doing so. This option controls how many seconds the HA master agent waits for the power on of the secondary virtual machine to succeed. If the power on takes longer than this time (most likely because vCenter Server has lost contact with the host or has failed), the master agent will attempt to power on the secondary virtual machine. If the option is not specified, 900s is used.

No Cluster

5.0, 5.1, 5.5

das.config.fdm.storageVmotionCleanupTimeout

When a storage vmotion is done in an HA enabled cluster using pre 5.0 hosts and the home datastore of the virtual machine is being moved, HA may interpret the completion of the storage vmotion as a failure, and may attempt to restart the source virtual machine. To avoid this issue, the HA master agent waits the specified number of seconds for a storage vmotion to complete or fail. When the storage vmotion completes or the timer

No Cluster

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expires, the master will assess whether a failure occurred. If the option is not specified, 900s is used for the timeout.

Reporting

5.0, 5.1, 5.5

das.config.log.outputToFiles Enable the FDM file-based logger for ESXi 5.0 and later hosts. 5.0 host log to the ESX syslog and so file-based logging is not enabled by default. This option has no affect on pre-5.0 hosts. To enable the file-based logger, set das.config.log.outputToFiles to true and das.config.log.maxFileNum to a number greater than 2. To disable file-based logging, set this option to false.

Yes Cluster

5.0, 5.1, 5.5

das.config.log.directory Sets the directory used by the FDM file-based logger. If not specified, files are written into/var/log/vmware/fdm. See the option das.config.log.maxFileNum for more information.

Yes Cluster

5.0, 5.1, 5.5

das.config.fdm.stateLogInterval Frequency in seconds a FDM logs a summary of the cluster state. If not specified, 600s (10 min) is used.

In ESXi 5.0 - Yes, HA must be reconfigured on all hosts. In ESXi 5.1 and later - No

Cluster

5.0, 5.1, 5.5

das.config.fdm.event.maxMasterEvents Defines the maximum number of events cached by the master. If not specified, 1000 are cached.

In ESXi 5.0 - Yes, HA must be reconfigured on all hosts. In ESXi 5.1 and later, No

Cluster

5.0, 5.1, 5.5

das.config.fdm.event.maxSlaveEvents Defines the maximum number of events cached by a slave. If not specified, 600 are cached.

In ESXi 5.0 - Yes, HA must be reconfigured on all hosts. In 5.1 and later - No

Cluster

5.0, 5.1,

vpxd.das.reportNoMasterSec A vCenter Server parameter that

Yes, vCenter Server needs

VC

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5.5 determines how long to wait in seconds before issuing a cluster config issue to report that vCenter Server was unable to locate the HA master agent for the corresponding cluster. If not specified, 120s is used.

to be restarted.

Configure Admission Control

After you create a cluster, admission control allows you to specify whether virtual machines can be started if they violate availability constraints. The cluster reserves resources to allow failover for all running virtual machines on the specified number of hosts.

The Admission Control page appears only if you enabled vSphere HA.

Procedure

1 In the vSphere Web Client, browse to the vSphere HA cluster.2 Click the Manage tab and click Settings.3 Under Settings, select vSphere HA and click Edit.4 Expand Admission Control to display the configuration options.5 Select an admission control policy to apply to the cluster.

O p t i o n D e s c r i p t i o n

Define failover capacity by static number of hosts

Select the maximum number of host failures that you can recover from or to guarantee failover for. Also, you must select a slot size policy.

Define failover capacity by reserving a percentage of the cluster resources

Specify a percentage of the cluster’s CPU and Memory resources to reserve as spare capacity to support failovers.

Use dedicated failover hosts Select hosts to use for failover actions. Failovers can still occur to other hosts in the cluster if a default failover host does not have enough resources.

Do not reserve failover capacity

This option allows virtual machine power-ons that violate availability constraints.

6 Click OK.

Admission control is enabled and the policy that you chose takes effect.

How to Configure VMware High Availability (HA) Cluster

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In this article you’ll learn how to configure VMware High Availability (HA) cluster. It’s not in depth article about HA, but gives you enough knowledge and get things running.

VMware HA components changed in vSphere 5 where the AAM agent (automated availability manager) responsible for the communication between hosts present in the cluster and vCenter, has been replaced by FDM (Fault Domain Manager).

VMware High Availability (HA) components

VMware vSphere High Availability (HA) is composed from three main components, which each of them plays different role.

FDM – Fault Domain Manager is responsible for communication between hosts which

are part of the cluster, informing other members about available resource, and VMs

state. FDM manages the restart of VMs in case host fails.

Hostd Agent – responsible for communication between hostd and vCenter. If this agent

has a problem, then HA stops functionning. Restart possible from DCUI – Under

Troubleshooting Options >Enter > F11 >restart the services OR through the CLI…

./sbin/services.sh restart

vCenter Server – is used to deploy and configure FDM agents inside the cluster.

Manages the election of server elected master. If the whole vCenter server (or just the

service) fails, the HA still continues to work.Basic two hosts HA cluster running in my lab.

To be able to create cluster with ESXi hosts, a vCenter is needed. The most basic package, vSphere Essentials cannot be used since the limited licensing does not allow you to create HA cluster as only vSphere Essentials Plus allows you to do that. The essentials package basicaly allows you manage three hosts from central location which is – vCenter server for essentials.

The Essentials Plus allows you not only create HA cluster, but provides also vMotion, Enhanced vMotion, and also many other products which are part of the Essentials Plus bundle:

vSphere Data Protection (backup product)

vSphere Replication (VR) can replicate VMs to another host for DR scenarios –

supports VSS) – see video.

vShield Endpoint ( AV, Security)Essentials Plus is an entry level package for small business which needs to consolidate (virtutalize) like 20-30 physical servers, and make the VMs to be high available. Any hardware failure of the physical hosts enables automatic restart of VMs on another host in the cluster.

VMware vSphere High Availability Cluster Requirements

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http://www.vladan.fr/wp-content/uploads/images/vsphere-ha-cluster.j

There is many requirements for VMware HA. Firs one of them is to have the right VMware vSphere license, as I mentioned above. Here are other requirements:

vSphere Essentials Plus or higher.

Shared Storage – you’ll need some kind of shared storage. I say some kind, since you

can use dedicated storage device (NAS, SAN) or also you can use other (software based)

products which emulates the shared storage, likeStormagic’s SvSAN, VMware’s vSphere

Storage Appliance for Essentials Plus, OR you can also transform Windows servers in to

a SAN (with Starwind iSCSI SAN).

CPU compatibility between the hosts – the ideal cluster is cluster with exactly same

hardware and memory size. Small 3 host cluster allowing to run 20-30 VMs will satisfy

most of SMBs. But you can use VMware EVC to adjust cluster settings for CPU

compatibility.Once you install vCenter Server, configure network of each of your ESXi hosts, you can start creating your cluster. Each of your hosts should have redundancy assured by using at least two physical NICs for each network:

management network

vm network

vMotion networkTo make this article shorter, I’m skipping the network configuration now. The installation of vCenter server on Windows Server OS is another piece which is not covered in my article as you can simply use easy install or you can deploy vCenter Server Appliance (vCSA) – read my detailed article : How-to install vCenter Server Appliance (vCSA) and possibly save on Microsoft’s licensing

The vCSA has the advantage that its all-in-one prepackaged product , part of the bundle, and so no need to install the individual components one by one.

Another requirement for creating VMware HA cluster is solid DNS architecture with forward and reverse zones created and working. If not already done, create on your DNS server the necessary records now.

Let’s create datacenter and cluster now.

To do so, fire up vSphere Client and go to Hosts and clusters

Then, position yourself on the Manage Tab > right click the vCenter server >New datacenter

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Once done, you should see new icon appear. I called my Datacenter vladan. -:). Then again, right click the datacenter you just create, and create new cluster.

While going through the assistant you’re asked, if you want to Turn On DRS andTurn On HA. If you’re on the Essentials Plus licensing, you’ll get a pop-up saying that Essentials Plus isnt’s available, or something like this. As the DRS is available only in Enterprise and Enterprise Plus.

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If you don’t want to activate those options now, you can leave unchecked, and continue the assistant.

You can do exactly the same steps by using the vSphere Windows Client, as configuration of VMware vSphere (HA) cluster is still the base element of VMware, and the new vSphere Web Client only brings new functions like vSphere Enhanced vMotion or deployment and management of vSphere Replication.

So we have Datacenter, we have cluster. Now we need to add our ESXi hosts to our cluster. To do so, just follow those steps, right-click (I like right clicking) the HA cluster we just created > Add Host

As you can see, my host’s FQDN (fully qualified domain name) is esxi5-01.vladan-fr.local

You’re prompted for a root password on that host.

And also, you’ll receive a security prompt before validating the assistant…

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http://www.vladan.fr/vsphere-web-client-new-in-vmware-vsphere-5-1/

http://www.vladan.fr/vsphere-web-client-new-in-vmware-vsphere-5-1/

http://www.vladan.fr/wp-content/uploads/images/vsphere-ha-cluster5.j

The last point is to attach a license. In my case, the license has already been entered in vCenter server, so I can assign that license to that host. When you first installing your hosts and vCenter server, you have 60 days for entering your license, and here through this assistant you wan use the Evaluation Mode license. But after 60 days, the VMs will get disconnected from vCenter and the HA won’t function.

Optionally, to reinforce your company’s security, you can prevent login directly to the host and check Enable lockdown mode. Users will be forced to login only through vCenter….

What is the difference between VMware HA and vMotion?

VMware HA is used in the event when any of the hosts inside a cluster fails then all the

virtual machines running under it are restarted on different host in the same cluster.

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Now HA is completely dependent on vMotion to migrate the vms to different host so vMotion

is just used for the migration purpose between multiple hosts. vMotion also has the

capability to migrate any vm without interrupting its state to any of the host inside cluster.

What is storage vMotion?

Storage vMotion is similar to vMotion in the sense that “something” related to the VM

is moved and there is no downtime to the VM guest and end users. However, with

SVMotion the VM Guest stays on the server that it resides on but the virtual disk for

that VM is what moves.

With Storage vMotion, you can migrate a virtual machine and its disk files from one

datastore to another while the virtual machine is running.

You can choose to place the virtual machine and all its disks in a single location, or

select separate locations for the virtual machine configuration file and each virtual

disk.

During a migration with Storage vMotion, you can transform virtual disks from Thick-

Provisioned Lazy Zeroed or Thick-Provisioned Eager Zeroed to Thin-Provisioned or the

reverse.

Perform live migration of virtual machine disk files across any Fibre Channel, iSCSI,

FCoE and NFS storage

Where to get the HA Status?

NAME

haStatus – Obtain configuration and status information of High-availability objects.

SYNOPSIS

haStatus [-help] [ -c clustername ] [ -a | -i ]

DESCRIPTION

haStatus command provides configuration and status information of clusters, nodes in the

cluster, resource groups and resources in a high-availability cluster.

haStatus command uses cluster_mgr command to obtain information.

OPTIONS

haStatus takes several options:

-a Prints detailed configuration and status information of all objects.

-i Prints detailed configuration information of all objects.

-cclustername

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Prints information only about objects in the cluster

clustername.

-help Prints command usage information.

How to promote or demote the Server in HA config?

Where is HA config file? and log file?

HA configuration is stored in a local on disk database.

/var/log/ This directory contains all the log files. VMware’s log files start with letters

“vm”. The general main log file is “messages”.

What is DRS?

VMware DRS (Distributed Resource Scheduler) is a utility that balances computing workloads

with available resources in a virtualized environment. The utility is part of a virtualization

suite called VMware Infrastructure 3.

With VMware DRS, users define the rules for allocation of physical resources among virtual

machines. The utility can be configured for manual or automatic control. Resource pools can

be easily added, removed or reorganized. If desired, resource pools can be isolated between

different business units. If the workload on one or more virtual machines drastically

changes, VMware DRS redistributes the virtual machines among the physical servers. If the

overall workload decreases, some of the physical servers can be temporarily powered-down

and the workload consolidated.

Other features of VMware DRS include:

Dedicated infrastructures for individual business units

Centralized control of hardware parameters

Continuous monitoring of hardware utilization

Optimization of the use of hardware resources as conditions change

Prioritization of resources according to application importance

Downtime-free server maintenance

Optimization of energy efficiency

Reduction of cooling costs.

How DRS works?

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VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) is a feature which is available in vCenter to

balance the load on ESX/ESXi Servers.

VMware DRS allocates and balances resources in a DRS cluster. It does this dynamically and

continuously monitors for changes in utilization.

Resource pools are used to allocate resources to a set of virtual machines in a DRS cluster.

When load increases in a VM, DRS will redistribute VMs to other physical servers if required

to ensure all VMs get their correct share of resources.

When a VM is powered on DRS is used to decide which server it is best to be placed on.

If a VM is running and DRS decides that it needs to be placed on another physical server to

ensure its requirements are met, vMotion is used.

This allows the VM to be moved without powering it off or loss of service, allowing resources

to be balanced.

What is VMware DRS and how does it works?

Here DRS stands for Distributed Resource Scheduler which dynamically balances

resource across various host under Cluster or resource pool.

VMware DRS allows users to define the rules and policies that decide how virtual

machines share resources and how these resources are prioritized among multiple

virtual machines.

Resources are allocated to the virtual machine by either migrating it to another

server with more available resources or by making more “space” for it on the same

server by migrating other virtual machines to different servers.

The live migration of virtual machines to different physical servers is executed

completely transparent to end-users through VMware VMotion

VMware DRS can be configured to operate in either automatic or manual mode. In

automatic mode, VMware DRS determines the best possible distribution of virtual

machines among different physical servers and automatically migrates virtual

machines to the most appropriate physical servers. In manual mode, VMware DRS

provides a recommendation for optimal placement of virtual machines, and leaves it

to the system administrator to decide whether to make the change.

Vmware License types?

How to add license?

Adding License Keys

To add licenses:

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1. Log in to the vSphere Client.2. Click Home.3. Under the Administration section, click the Licensing icon.4. Click Manage vSphere Licenses.5. Enter the License Key in the Enter new vSphere license keys field (one per line).6. Include labels for new license keys as necessary.7. Click Add License Keys.

After clicking Add License Keys, you can review the license keys you added, capacity counts, expiration dates, and labels associated with the license keys.

8. Click Next to assign the license keys.

Assigning License Keys

To assign licenses to the vCenter Server or the ESXi host:

1. Log in to the vSphere Client.2. Click Home.3. Under the Administration section, click the Licensing icon.4. Choose Evaluation Mode and expand the list. Find the product you want to license.5. Right-click on the product and click Change License Key.6. Assign a key from list that was entered previously on Manage License window.7. Click OK.8. Verify that the product is licensed now.

Note: When the cursor is hovered over a license key in the Manage vSphere Licenses wizard displays a tool tip with all of the asset's information.Removing License Keys

Note: Ensure that the asset such as ESXi host is not currently registered with vCenter Server. If so, place the ESXi host in maintenance mode and remove from Inventory before proceeding with the steps.

To remove license keys:

1. Log in to the vSphere Client.2. Click Home.3. Under the Administration section, click the Licensing icon.4. Click Manage vSphere Licenses.5. Click Next twice.6. Choose the license key you want to remove.7. Click Next to proceed to the confirm changes page.You can review your changes on

the Confirm Changes page before applying them to your inventory.8. Click Finish to apply all of the changes.

Changing License Keys

To license your product with a different license key:

1. Log in to the vSphere Client.2. Click Home.3. Under the Administration section, click the Licensing icon.4. Expand the product you want to change the license for.5. Right-click on the product and choose Change License Key.6. Choose the license you want to use to license the product.

Note: From this dialog, you can place a product in Evaluation Mode during the first 60 days.Licensing a standalone ESXi host

To license a standalone ESXi 5.x (vSphere Hypervisor):

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1. Log in to the ESXi host using vSphere Client.2. Click the Configuration tab.3. Click Licensed Features under Software.4. Click Edit under Licensed Features.5. Select Assign a new license key to this host.6. Press Enter and enter the License Key.7. Click OK.

Licensing vCenter Server

To license vCenter Server 5.x:

1. Log in to the vSphere Client.2. Click Home.3. Under the Administration section, click vCenter Server settings.4. Select Assign a new license key to this vCenter Server and click OK.5. Enter the license key for the vCenter Server and, if necessary, include labels.6. Click Next and Finish.

How to config cluster?

How to network load balancing?



NIC teaming in ESXi and ESX



Vmware path selection?

To change the default path selection policy for any new storage for a Storage Array Type Plug-in (SATP):

Log into the ESXi/ESX host.

To check the existing path selection policy:

In ESXi 5.x:

Run one of these commands:

# esxcfg-info | grep -A1 "Default Path Selection Policy"

# esxcli storage nmp satp list

Run this command to change the default pathing policy:

In ESXi 5.x:

# esxcli storage nmp satp set --default-psp=policy --satp=your_SATP_name

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Where policy is:

VMW_PSP_MRU for Most Recently Used mode

VMW_PSP_FIXED for Fixed mode

VMW_PSP_RR for Round Robin mode

Reboot the ESXi/ESX host to apply the changes.

To get the current SATP, use one of these options:

Run this command:

In ESXi 5.x

# esxcli storage nmp satp list

Follow step 4 in the vSphere Client section under ESXi 5.x and ESX 4.x in Obtaining LUN

pathing information for ESX or ESXi hosts (1003973).

Note: By default, VMware ESX uses the recommended failover path policy for the storage

array connected. If the configured policy is not listed for the SAN array's entry in the

Hardware Compatibility List, you may experience problems.

Warning: Changing the default pathing policy for a specific SATP when there are multiple

storage arrays using the same plug-in can cause other issues, such as incorrect pathing

policies and unexpected storage failover results.

swap size?

Tuning ESXi Host Memory Configuration

This post aims to cover the ‘Tune ESXi Host Memory Configuration’ objective in the VCAP-

DCA blueprint. Memory management and configuration is a huge subject, which can’t be

covered in a single post, so the aim here is to cover some of the main configuration options

and features relating to memory management, hopefully with some useful examples. I’ll also

include some links to some useful documents on memory management and configuration.

Memory Management Techniques

There are a number of methods through which an ESXi host can reduce the amount of

physical memory allocated to a virtual machine.

Page Sharing: ESXi is able to share memory pages between virtual machines,

eliminating redundant pages.

Ballooning: ESXi can use ballooning to force a VM to give up memory pages that the

guest OS considers least valuable. VMtools is required as it includes the vmmemctl

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module which makes ballooning possible. The guest OS must also be configured with

sufficient swap space.

Memory Compression: If there is a danger of host level swapping, then ESXi will use

memory compression to reduce the number of pages that it needs to swap out.

Swap to Host Cache: If compression doesn’t reduce memory usage sufficiently, ESXi

will reclaim memory by swapping memory pages to the host cache. Host cache is stored

on SSD so is faster than regular swapping (where the files are generally stored on non-

SSD devices).

Regular Swapping: If there is no host cache configured, or it is full ESXi will swap out

pages to the virtual machine swap file. If this occurs then there is likely to be severe

performance degradation.

Virtual Machine Swap Files

When a virtual machine is powered on, the host creates a swap file for the virtual machine.

The size of this swap file is equal to the difference between the virtual machine’s configured

memory and the memory reservation for the VM (if one is set).

By default, virtual machine swap files are created in the virtual machine’s working directory

(the same location as the .vmx file). However, it is possible to change the default location.

The first thing to do is to configure the cluster swap file setting:

Bear in mind, that if you choose to store the swapfiles in a specified datastore, rather than

with the virtual machines, then vMotion performance can be degraded. For example, you

may choose to store swapfiles on local datastores.

After updating the cluster settings you need to configure the host setting. This is found

under the Configuration tab for the host. Click on ‘Virtual Machine Swapfile Location’:

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http://buildvirtual.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/swapfile-location-setting.j

http://buildvirtual.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/vm-swapfile-location.j

Again, by default the swap files are created in the virtual machines working directory. To

configure a specific swapfile location click ‘Edit’:

After choosing the datastore to store swap files on, click ok. This setting is specific to the

host, so you will need to make the change on all hosts in the cluster.

Swap file location can be overridden on a per virtual machine basis by setting the option in

the virtual machine’s settings:

VMX Swap Files

Along with the swap files detailed above, with ESXi 5 a second swap file is used for every

virtual machine (that has a guest hardware version of 7 or above). This swap file is

dedicated for memory overhead for the virtual machine and is used when the host is is

under memory constraint. You can see this swap file in the data store browser, prefixed with

‘vmx’:

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http://buildvirtual.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/swap-datastore-location.j

http://buildvirtual.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/vm-swap-file-location.j

http://buildvirtual.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/vnx-swap-file.j

The amount of memory overhead required is determined by a number of different factors

including the number of vCPU allocated, the amount of RAM, and whether 3D support is

enabled.

Host Cache Configuration

Datastores that are created on SSD storage devices can be used to allocate space for host

cache. You can read a lot more about this feature here.

To configure the host cache, go to the host’s configuration tab in the vSphere client and

click ‘Host Cache Configuration’. You should see any existing datastores that reside on SSD

storage. If you have yet to create a datastore on your SSD storage you can from this pane

by clicking ‘Add Storage’.

To configure Host Cache, select a datastore and click properties:

After clicking ok, and refreshing the storage, a bunch of .vswp files will be created on the

datastore:

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http://buildvirtual.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/host-cache-configuration.j

http://buildvirtual.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/host-cache-properties.j

Memory Sharing Configuration

You can use advanced settings to configure the rate that the host scans memory to look for

redundant pages. The following two advanced settings can be changed:

Mem.ShareScanTime

Mem.ShareScanGHz

You can also disable memory sharing on a per-virtual machine basis by setting the following

setting to false:

sched.mem.pshare.enable

This setting is found under Configuration Parameters in the advanced settings for a virtual

machine:

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http://buildvirtual.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/host-cache-vswp-files.j

Configuring Memory Compression

Memory compression is enabled by default, however it can be disabled by changing the

following advanced setting:

Mem.MemZipEnable (change to enable/disable memory compression)

Mem.MemZipMaxPct (change to set the maximum percentage of a vm’s memory that

can be compressed – default value is 10)

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http://buildvirtual.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/vm-sched-setting.j

Memory Tax for Idle Virtual Machines

Idle virtual machine memory can be reclaimed using the balloon driver. The host will identify

the virtual machines with the largest amounts of idle memory and begin to reclaim. You can

change the idle memory tax rate using the ‘Mem.IdleTax’ setting.

VMKernel Memory

The ‘Mem.MinFreePct‘ advanced setting is used to set the minimum percentage value for

host much host memory we wish to keep free.

Prior to vSphere 5 this value was always set at 6%, however with hosts with a large amount

of memory this meant that a lot of RAM was being unnecessarily reserved for VMkernel

tasks. For example, for a host with 256 GB ram, 30 GB would be reserved.

With vSphere 5, this value is more of a sliding scale. For example rather than always leaving

6% free, for hosts with 4 – 12 gigabytes of RAM, 4% is kept free for the VMkernel, and for

hosts with more 12 GB ram, 2 % of RAM is kept available.

Whatever the value is set as defines when the host begins to reclaim memory using

ballooning or swapping. Within the free memory, there are a number of thresholds at which

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http://buildvirtual.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/adv-mem-settings.j

http://buildvirtual.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/memminfreepct.j

the host will use different methods to reclaim memory. Using figures from vSphere 4 the

following will take place:

6 percent free (High): Begin ballooning.

4 percent free (Soft): Ballooning and begin compressing virtual memory.

2 percent free (Hard): VM swapping.

1 percent free (Low): No new pages are provided to virtual machines.

You can read more about this concept here.

Memory Management Best Practices

VMware highlight a number of best practices in this document, including:

Do not disable the page sharing or balloon driver.

Set appropriate reservations.

Host memory should be larger than guest memory usage.

Set an appropriate virtual machine memory size.

What is balloning?

ESXi can use ballooning to force a VM to give up memory pages that the guest OS

considers least valuable. VMtools is required as it includes the vmmemctl module which

makes ballooning possible. The guest OS must also be configured with sufficient swap

space.

Thin provisioning?

Installing ESXiserver in blade server?

Installing ESXi- boot from SAN



What is SRM?

VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager 5.5 adds the following new features and improvements.

Use Storage DRS and Storage vMotion on sites that SRM protects:

o vSphere Replication supports movement of virtual machines by Storage DRS and Storage vMotion on the protected site. See Using SRM with vSphere Replication on Sites with Storage DRS or Storage vMotion.

o Array-based replication supports movement of virtual machines by Storage DRS and Storage vMotion within a consistency group. See Using SRM with Array-Based Replication on Sites with Storage DRS or Storage vMotion.

Preserve multiple point-in-time (PIT) images of virtual machines that are protected with vSphere Replication. See Replicating a Virtual Machine and Enabling Multiple Point in Time Instances.

Protect virtual machines that reside on VMware vSphere Flash Read Cache storage. vSphere Flash Read Cache is disabled on virtual machines after recovery.

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How to config SRM?

What is FT?

VMware Fault Tolerance provides continuous availability to applications running in a

virtual machine, preventing downtime and data loss in the event of server failures.

VMware Fault Tolerance, when enabled for a virtual machine, creates a live shadow

instance of the primary, running on another physical server.

The two instances are kept in virtual lockstep with each other using VMware

vLockstep technology

The two virtual machines play the exact same set of events, because they get the

exact same set of inputs at any given time.

The two virtual machines constantly heartbeat against each other and if either virtual

machine instance loses the heartbeat, the other takes over immediately. The

heartbeats are very frequent, with millisecond intervals, making the failover

instantaneous with no loss of data or state.

VMware Fault Tolerance requires a dedicated network connection, separate from the

VMware VMotion network, between the two physical servers.

What is difference between HA and FT?

The key difference between VMware's Fault Tolerance (FT) and High Availability (HA) products is interruption to virtual machine (VM) operation in the event of an ESX/ESXi host failure. Fault-tolerant systems instantly transition to a new host, whereas high-availability systems will see the VMs fail with the host before restarting on another host.

VMware High Availability

VMware High Availability should be used to maintain uptime on important but non-mission-critical VMs. While HA cannot prevent VM failure, it will get VMs back up and running with very little disturbance to the virtual infrastructure. Consider the value of HA for host failures that occur in the early hours of the morning, when IT is not immediately available to resolve the problem.

In addition to tending to VMs during ESX/ESXi host failure, VMware High Availability can monitor and restart a VM, ensuring the machine is capable of restarting on a new host with enough resources.

VMware Fault Tolerance

VMware vSphere Fault Tolerance has been around since 2009. If your company cannot withstand downtime for end users, VMware FT or a similar tool is required. Don't use FT for load balancing -- its role is protecting VMs when an ESX server goes down.

How does VMware FT work?

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http://searchitchannel.techtarget.com/tip/VMware-ESX-Server-in-the-Enterprise-Planning-and-securing-virtualization-servers-Disaster-Recove

http://searchservervirtualization.techtarget.com/tip/Understanding-VMware-Fault-Tolerance-benefits-and-requirements

http://www.vmware.com/products/vsphere/features/fault-tolerance.html

http://searchdisasterrecovery.techtarget.com/High-availability-guidelines-and-VMware-HA-best-practices

http://searchitchannel.techtarget.com/feature/VMware-HA-implementation-and-ESX-ESXi-host-addition

http://searchitchannel.techtarget.com/feature/VMware-HA-implementation-and-ESX-ESXi-host-addition

http://searchservervirtualization.techtarget.com/definition/virtual-machine

VMware FT instantly moves VMs to a new host via vLockstep, which keeps a secondary

VM in sync with the primary, ready to take over at any second, like a Broadway

understudy. The VM's instructions and instruction sequence are the actor's lines, which

pass to the understudy on a dedicated server backbone network. Heartbeats ping

between the star and understudy on this backbone as well, for instantaneous detection of

a failure.

How and when to use VMware FT

So your company's IT resources are mission-critical, and unplanned downtime is out of

the question. Ramp up fault tolerance tools and you're done right? Not so fast. VMware FT

has stringent hardware requirements to take into account when requisitioning server

hardware. Before you plan a fault-tolerant virtualized environment, check out your

options for when and where to use FT.

How do I turn it on FT?

The feature is enabled on a per virtual machine basis. Instructions for enabling Fault Tolerance can be found in the Turning on Fault Tolerance for Virtual Machines section of the vSphere Availability Guide for your version of ESXi/ESX.

What happens when I turn on Fault Tolerance?

In very general terms, a second virtual machine is created to work in tandem with the virtual machine you have enabled Fault Tolerance on. This virtual machine resides on a different host in the cluster, and runs in virtual lockstep with the primary virtual machine. When a failure is detected, the second virtual machine takes the place of the first one with the least possible interruption of service. More specific information about how this is achieved can be found in the Protecting Mission-Critical Workloads with VMware Fault Tolerance whitepaper.

Why can't I turn Fault Tolerance on?

VMware Fault Tolerance can be enabled on any virtual machine that resides in a cluster that meets the necessary requirements. If you have difficulty enabling Fault Tolerance for a specific virtual machine, see The Turn on Fault Tolerance option is disabled (1010631).

How do I turn Fault Tolerance off?

For Instructions on disabling Fault Tolerance, see Disabling or Turning Off VMware FT (1008026). How do I tell if my environment is ready for Fault Tolerance?

The VMware SiteSurvey Tool is used to check your environment for compliance with VMware Fault Tolerance. It can be downloaded from the VMware Shared Utilities page.

Where do I find the product's website?

VMware has a website for Fault Tolerance on the VMware vSphere page. What happens during a failure?

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http://searchvmware.techtarget.com/tip/Using-fault-tolerant-systems-for-more-resilient-data-centers

When a host running the Primary virtual machine fails, a transparent failover occurs to the corresponding Secondary virtual machine. During this failover, there is no data loss or noticeable service interruption. In addition, VMware HA automatically restores redundancy by restarting a new Secondary virtual machine on another host. Similarly, if the host running the Secondary virtual machine fails, VMware HA starts a new Secondary virtual machine on a different host. In either case there is no noticeable outage.

What is the logging time delay between the Primary and Secondary Fault Tolerance virtual machines?

The actual delay is based on the network latency between the Primary and Secondary. vLockstep executes the same instructions on the Primary and Secondary, but because this happens on different hosts, there could be a small latency, but no loss of state. This is typically less than 1 millsecond (ms). Fault Tolerance includes synchronization to ensure that the Primary and Secondary are synchronized.

In a cluster with more than 3 hosts, can you tell Fault Tolerance where to put the Fault Tolerance virtual machine or does it chose on its own?

You can place the original (or Primary virtual machine). You have full control with DRS or vMotion to assign it to any node. The placement of the Secondary, when created, is automatic based on the available hosts. But when the Secondary is created and placed, you can vMotion it to the preferred host. What happens if the host containing the Primary virtual machine comes back online (after a node failure)?

This node is put back in the pool of available hosts. There is no attempt to start or migrate the Primary to that host. Is the failover from the Primary virtual machine to the Secondary virtual machine dynamic or does Fault Tolerance restart a virtual machine?

The failover from the Primary to Secondary virtual machine is dynamic with the Secondary continuing execution from the exact point where the Primary left off. It happens automatically with no data loss, no downtime, and little delay. Clients see no interruption. After the dynamic failover to the Secondary virtual machine, it becomes the new Primary virtual machine. A new Secondary virtual machine is spawned automatically. Where are Fault Tolerance failover events logged?

All failover events are logged by vCenter Server. I encountered an error message that I can't find in the Knowledge Base. Where else should I check?

The vSphere Availability Guide contains a list of known errors in the Fault Tolerance Error Messages. Does Fault Tolerance support Intel Hyper-Threading Technology?

Yes, Fault Tolerance does support Intel Hyper-Threading Technology on systems that have it enabled. Enabling or disabling Hyper-Threading has no impact on Fault Tolerance. What happens if vCenter Server is offline when a failover event occurs?

When Fault Tolerance is configured for a virtual machine, vCenter Server need not be online for FT to work. Even if vCenter Server is offline, failover still occurs from the Primary to the

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Secondary virtual machine. Additionally, the spawning of a new Secondary virtual machine also occurs without vCenter Server.

How many virtual CPUs can I use on a Fault Tolerant virtual machine ?

vCenter Server 4.x and vCenter Server 5.x support 1 virtual CPU per protected virtual machine.

New product features in VMware FT and HA

With a major overhaul to HA in vSphere 5 and murmurs of a soon-to-be-released new feature, we share some key points to know about VMware FT and HA road maps.

What's new? Faster failover in VMware HA, but no FT for SMP

VMware is planning a new high-availability design for release in 2013, called Virtual Machine Component Protection. Choosing a VM within a host to vMotion according to specific failover conditions improves failover.

Unlike HA, VMware FT uses synchronous replication to prevent any service interruption in the event of a VM failure. Mission-critical applications need fault tolerance, but despite user interest, FT for symmetric multiprocessing systems (SMP) seems stuck in a VMware preview purgatory.

High availability in a heartbeat

VMware instituted new intelligence for High Availability in vSphere 5. If the master cluster becomes unavailable or orphaned from the network, an election process takes over to prevent false-positive failovers. If a host becomes orphaned from the cluster in vSphere 5's HA, the storage network is available as backup. The admin can choose their heartbeat data stores in the HA Clustering dialog boxes.

Goodbye Legato, hello Fault Domain Manager

VMware also revamped the HA architecture in vSphere 5. Fault Domain Manager (FDM) took over for Legato Automated Availability Manager software, which was frustratingly complex. Now, admins have one master server, with all other servers in the HA cluster waiting in the wings to help in the event of a failure. If you're switching to vSphere 5 from an older version, make sure you have at least two shared data stores between all hosts in the HA cluster. What other changes can you expect? Heartbeats, simpler log and configuration files, and installs in under a minute, thanks to FDM.

The nitty gritty of vSphere 5's HA and FT setup

With the move from Legato to FDM comes major HA architecture changes, even if the "look and feel" will be familiar to legacy users. Learn the responsibilities of Master and Slave hosts in a cluster. This tip also covers important tips for using FT now that it is properly compatible with VMware's Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS).

Difference between HA and DRS?

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http://searchvmware.techtarget.com/tip/Whats-not-so-new-in-vSphere5-Part-5-VMware-Clusters-Availability

http://searchvmware.techtarget.com/tip/Whats-not-so-new-in-vSphere5-Part-5-VMware-Clusters-Availability

http://searchvmware.techtarget.com/tip/Understanding-VMware-High-Availability-updates-in-vSphere-5

http://searchvmware.techtarget.com/tip/Whats-new-in-vSphere-5-Delving-into-Storage-DRS-and-VMware-HA

http://searchvmware.techtarget.com/definition/VMware-Virtual-SMP

http://searchdisasterrecovery.techtarget.com/definition/synchronous-replication

http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/server-virtualization/vmware-ha-to-add-virtual-machine-component-protection/

Difference between FT and SRM ?

Cluster maximum?

What is a snapshot?

A snapshot preserves the state and data of a virtual machine at a specific point in time.

The state includes the virtual machine’s power state (for example, powered-on, powered-off, suspended).

The data includes all of the files that make up the virtual machine. This includes disks, memory, and other devices, such as virtual network interface cards.

A virtual machine provides several operations for creating and managing snapshots and

snapshot chains. These operations let you create snapshots, revert to any snapshot in the

chain, and remove snapshots. You can create extensive snapshot trees.

In VMware Infrastructure 3 and vSphere 4.x, the virtual machine snapshot delete

operation combines the consolidation of the data and the deletion of the file. This caused

issues when the snapshot files are removed from the Snapshot Manager, but the

consolidation failed. This left the VM still running on snapshots, and the user may not

notice until the datastore is full.

In vSphere 4.x, an alarm can be created to indicate if a virtual machine was running in

snapshot mode. For more information, see Configuring VMware vCenter Server to send

alarms when virtual machines are running from snapshots (1018029).

In vSphere 5.0, enhancements have been made to the snapshot removal. In vSphere 5.0,

you are informed via the UI if the consolidation part of a RemoveSnapshot or

RemoveAllSnapshots operation has failed. A new option, Consolidate, is available via the

Snapshot menu to restart the consolidation.



How to change the default snapshort location in Vmware Esxi 5?

Be default the snapshots which are taken for any vm are stored with their parent in the

same directory or storage. Sometimes you may run out of space and you might not be able

to take anymore snapshots so in that case you can always use some other location for the

storage of snapshots.

But how will you change the default locations of all the snapshots which will be taken for any

vm ?

These are the required steps to be taken:

NOTE: Please ensure that the vm you are working on is powered OFF.

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Right Click the vm and select Edit Settings

Click on Options from the top TAB, select General and open the Configuration parameters

Add a new row with the following detailssnapshot.redoNotWithParent

Save this parameter with a value "true" as shown below

Now open the CLI of the host where the vm is located

Go to the vm's parent directory where all the vm files are stored and open the main .vmx file

As in my case# cd /vmfs/volumes/50925c85-54a206c1-a9e5-d4ae526b9890/test_XP# vi test_XP.vmx

Now add this line anywhere in the .vmx file with the path location where you want your

snapshots to be stored

workingDir = "/vmfs/volumes/50925be7-ea8ab367-d40d-d4ae526b9890/snapshots"Save the file and exit

Now you need to reload this vm to make the changes take affect.# vim-cmd vmsvc/getallvms | grep test_XP56 test_XP [iSCSI-Datastore15] test_XP/test_XP winXPProGuest vmx-07

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http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-GRjvzWQfEfo/UW5yWvYyqiI/AAAAAAAACIc/6csEHm5DI4Q/s1600/17-04-2013+15-21-42.p

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-FwRcsIK92bo/UW5yYwuBjmI/AAAAAAAACIs/L8Y8imk-H5Q/s1600/17-04-2013+15-23-40.p

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-T2HYNOFEXF0/UW5yXZe6SvI/AAAAAAAACIk/mgkgLe5VAPk/s1600/17-04-2013+15-25-00.p

Here 56 is the vm id which you can find out using the above command# vim-cmd vmsvc/reload 56Now when you take snapshots the snapshot files and vm swap files will be created in a different location.

How to redirect vm's swap file

In case you do not want vm swap file to be redirected to another location and you want it to

the same parent directory.

Add an extra parameter in the Configuration Parameter option shown abovesched.swap.dir="<path_to_vm_directory>"For example/vmfs/volumes/50925be7-ea8ab367-d40d-d4ae526b9890/vmswap

Save the settings and exit. Now each time you take snapshot the snapshot files and vm

swap files will be saved at specified different location.

How to link the vcenter’s?

ESXi log files ?

Documentation contents referenced below for vSphere 5.1 and 5.5 are the same and can be used interchangeably.

You can review ESXi 5.1 and 5.5 host log files using these methods:

From the Direct Console User Interface (DCUI). For more information, see About the Direct Console ESXi Interface in the vSphere 5.5 Installation and Setup Guide.

From the ESXi Shell. For more information, see the Log In to the ESXi Shell section in the vSphere 5.5 Installation and Setup Guide.

Using a web browser at https:// HostnameOrIPAddress/host. For more information, see the HTTP Access to vSphere Server Filessection.

Within an extracted vm-support log bundle. For more information, see Export System Log Files in the vSphere Monitoring and Performance Guide or Collecting diagnostic information for VMware ESX/ESXi using the vm-support command (1010705).

From the vSphere Web Client. For more information, see Viewing Log Files with the Log Browser in the vSphere Web Client in the vSphere Monitoring and Performance Guide.

ESXi 5.1 Host Log Files

Logs for an ESXi 5.1 host are grouped according to the source component:

/var/log/auth.log: ESXi Shell authentication success and failure.

/var/log/dhclient.log: DHCP client service, including discovery, address lease requests and renewals.

/var/log/esxupdate.log: ESXi patch and update installation logs.

/var/log/lacp.log: Link Aggregation Control Protocol logs.

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/var/log/hostd.log: Host management service logs, including virtual machine and host Task and Events, communication with the vSphere Client and vCenter Server vpxa agent, and SDK connections.

/var/log/hostd-probe.log: Host management service responsiveness checker.

/var/log/rhttpproxy.log: HTTP connections proxied on behalf of other ESXi host webservices.

/var/log/shell.log: ESXi Shell usage logs, including enable/disable and every command entered. For more information, seevSphere 5.5 Command-Line Documentation and Auditing ESXi Shell logins and commands in ESXi 5.x (2004810).

/var/log/sysboot.log: Early VMkernel startup and module loading.

/var/log/boot.gz: A compressed file that contains boot log information and can be read using zcat /var/log/boot.gz|more.

/var/log/syslog.log: Management service initialization, watchdogs, scheduled tasks and DCUI use.

/var/log/usb.log: USB device arbitration events, such as discovery and pass-through to virtual machines.

/var/log/vobd.log: VMkernel Observation events, similar to vob.component.event.

/var/log/vmkernel.log: Core VMkernel logs, including device discovery, storage and networking device and driver events, and virtual machine startup.

/var/log/vmkwarning.log: A summary of Warning and Alert log messages excerpted from the VMkernel logs.

/var/log/vmksummary.log: A summary of ESXi host startup and shutdown, and an hourly heartbeat with uptime, number of virtual machines running, and service resource consumption. For more information, see Format of the ESXi 5.0 vmksummary log file (2004566).

/var/log/Xorg.log: Video acceleration.

Note: For information on sending logs to another location (such as a datastore or remote syslog server), see Configuring syslog on ESXi 5.0 (2003322).

Logs from vCenter Server Components on ESXi 5.1 and 5.5

When an ESXi 5.1 / 5.5 host is managed by vCenter Server 5.1 and 5.5, two components are installed, each with its own logs:

/var/log/vpxa.log: vCenter Server vpxa agent logs, including communication with vCenter Server and the Host Management hostd agent.

/var/log/fdm.log: vSphere High Availability logs, produced by the fdm service. For more information, see the vSphere HA Security section of the vSphere Availability Guide.

vmware services? how to restart the services?

From the Local Console or SSH:

1. Log in to SSH or Local console as root.

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2. Run these commands:

/etc/init.d/hostd restart/etc/init.d/vpxa restart

Alternatively, run this command:

ps -s | grep hostd

You should see output similar to:

456566 2878 hostd-worker WAIT UFUTEX 0-7 hostd456567 2878 hostd-worker WAIT UFUTEX 0-7 hostd

To reset the management network on a specific VMkernel interface, by default vmk0, run the command:

esxcli network ip interface set -e false -i vmk0; esxcli network ip interface set -e true -i vmk0

Note: Using a semicolon (;) between the two commands ensures the VMkernel interface is disabled and then re-enabled in succession. If the management interface is not running on vmk0, change the above command according to the VMkernel interface used.

To restart all management agents on the host, run the command:

services.sh restart

Caution:

Check if LACP is enabled on DVS for version 5.x and above. For more information, see vSphere 5.0 Networking Guide.

If LACP is not configured, the services.sh script can be safely executed. If LACP is enabled and configured, do not restart management services

using services.sh script instead restart independent services using /etc/init.d/module restart command.

If the issue is not resolved, and you have to restart all the services that are a part of the services.sh script, take a downtime before proceeding to the script.

Note: For more information about restarting the management service on an ESXi host, see Service mgmt-vmware restart may not restart hostd in ESX/ESXi (1005566).

Restarting the Management agents on ESX

To restart the management agents on an ESX host:

1. Log in to your ESX host as root from either an SSH session or directly from the console.

2. Run this command:

service mgmt-vmware restart

Caution: Ensure Automatic Startup/Shutdown of virtual machines is disabled before running this command or you risk rebooting the virtual machines. For more information, see Restarting hostd (mgmt-vmware) on ESX hosts restarts hosted virtual machines where virtual machine Startup/Shutdown is enabled (1003312) and Determining whether virtual machines are configured to autostart (1000163).

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3. Press Enter.4. Run this command:

service vmware-vpxa restart

5. Press Enter.6. Type logout and press Enter to disconnect from the ESX host.

how to troubleshoot vmotion?

Validate that each troubleshooting step below is true for your environment. Each step provides instructions or a link to a document, in order to eliminate possible causes and take corrective action as necessary. The steps are ordered in the most appropriate sequence to isolate the issue and identify the proper resolution. Do not skip a step.

1. Ensure that vMotion is enabled on all ESX/ESXi hosts. For more information refer to Enabling vMotion and Fault tolerance logging (1036145).

Determine if resetting the Migrate.Enabled setting on both the source and destination ESX or ESXi hosts addresses the vMotion failure. For more information on this issue, see vMotion fails at 10% with the error: A general system error occurred: Migration failed while copying data, Broken Pipe (1013150).

2. Verify that VMkernel network connectivity exists using vmkping. For more information, see Testing VMkernel network connectivity with the vmkping command (1003728).

3. Verify that VMkernel networking configuration is valid. For more information, see ESX/ESXi power on error: Unable to set VMkernel gateway as there are no VMkernel interfaces on the same network (1002662) .

4. Verify that the virtual machine is not configured to use a device that is not valid on the target host. For more information, see Troubleshooting migration compatibility error: Device is a connected device with a remote backing (1003780).

5. If Jumbo Frames are enabled (MTU of 9000) (9000 -8 bytes (ICMP header) -20 bytes (IP header) for a total of 8972), ensure thatvmkping is run like vmkping -d -s 8972 <destinationIPaddress>. You may experience problems with the trunk between two physical switches that have been misconfigured to an MTU of 1500.

6. Verify that Name Resolution is valid on the host. For more information, see Identifying issues with and setting up name resolution on ESX/ESXi Server (1003735).

7. Verify that Console OS network connectivity exists. For more information, see Testing network connectivity with the ping command (1003486).

8. Verify if the ESXi/ESX host can be reconnected or if reconnecting the ESX/ESXi host resolves the issue. For more information, see KB article Changing an ESXi or ESX host's connection status in vCenter Server (1003480)

9. Verify that the required disk space is available. For more information, see Investigating disk space on an ESX or ESXi host (1003564) .

10. Verify that time is synchronized across environment. For more information, see Verifying time synchronization across an ESX/ESXi host environment (1003736).

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11. Verify that valid limits are set for the virtual machine being vMotioned. For more information, see VMware vMotion fails if target host does not meet reservation requirements (1003791) .

12. Verify that hostd is not spiking the console. For more information, see Checking for resource starvation of the ESX Service Console (1003496).

13. This issue may be caused by SAN configuration. Specifically, this issue may occur if zoning is set up differently on different servers in the same cluster.

14. Verify and ensure that the log.rotateSize parameter in the virtual machine's configuration file is not set to a very low value. For more information, see vMotion fails at 10% with the error: Operation timed out (2007343).

Note: If the issue still exists after trying the steps in this article:

Gather the VMware Support Script Data. For more information, see Collecting diagnostic information in a VMware Virtual Infrastructure Environment (1003689).

File a support request with VMware Support and note this KB Article ID in the problem description. For more information, see How to Submit a Support Request.

virtual switch port types?

Types of port binding

These three different types of port binding determine when ports in a port group are assigned to virtual machines:

Static Binding Dynamic Binding Ephemeral Binding

Static bindingWhen you connect a virtual machine to a port group configured with static binding, a port is immediately assigned and reserved for it, guaranteeing connectivity at all times. The port is disconnected only when the virtual machine is removed from the port group. You can connect a virtual machine to a static-binding port group only through vCenter Server.

Note: Static binding is the default setting, recommended for general use.Dynamic bindingIn a port group configured with dynamic binding, a port is assigned to a virtual machine only when the virtual machine is powered on and its NIC is in a connected state. The port is disconnected when the virtual machine is powered off or the virtual machine's NIC is disconnected. Virtual machines connected to a port group configured with dynamic binding must be powered on and off through vCenter.

Dynamic binding can be used in environments where you have more virtual machines than available ports, but do not plan to have a greater number of virtual machines active than you have available ports. For example, if you have 300 virtual machines and 100 ports, but never have more than 90 virtual machines active at one time, dynamic binding would be appropriate for your port group.

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Note: Dynamic binding is deprecated from ESXi 5.0, but this option is still available in vSphere Client. It is strongly recommended to use Static Binding for better performance.Ephemeral bindingIn a port group configured with ephemeral binding, a port is created and assigned to a virtual machine by the host when the virtual machine is powered on and its NIC is in a connected state. The port is deleted when the virtual machine is powered off or the virtual machine's NIC is disconnected.

You can assign a virtual machine to a distributed port group with ephemeral port binding on ESX/ESXi and vCenter, giving you the flexibility to manage virtual machine connections through the host when vCenter is down. Although only ephemeral binding allows you to modify virtual machine network connections when vCenter is down, network traffic is unaffected by vCenter failure regardless of port binding type.



how to change the root password in esxi host?

1. Log into the ESXi/ESX host service console, either via SSH or the physical console.

2. If you did not log in as root, you must acquire root privileges by running the command:

su -

Enter the current root password when prompted.

3. Change the root password by executing:

passwd root

4. Enter the new root password, and press Enter. Enter the password a second time to verify. You are warned about, but not prevented from using, bad passwords.

If you make a mistake when typing or retyping the new root password, you must start over. For example:

# passwd rootChanging password for user root.New UNIX password:Retype new UNIX password:Sorry, passwords do not matchNew UNIX password:Retype new UNIX password:passwd: all authentication tokens updated successfully.#

Not able to access the server via putty?

Symptoms

Unable to add the ESXi host to vCenter Server Cannot connect to the ESXi host using SSH Connecting to the ESXi host using SSH fails You see the error:

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Cannot contact the specified host (IP Address/hostname). The host may not be available on the network, a network configuration problem may exist. or the management service on this host may not be responding.

Cannot connect to the ESXi host using putty When connecting to the ESXi host using putty, you see the error:

Network error: Connection Refused

You have enabled Tech Support Mode. For more information, see Using Tech Support Mode in ESXi 4.1 and ESXi 5.0 (1017910).

Cause

This issue may occur if the /etc/inetd.conf file is empty or does not contain the correct settings for remote shell access and VMware authentication daemon.

Note: In ESXi 5.0, the inetd.conf file is located at /var/run/.

Resolution

To resolve this issue:

1. Connect to the ESXi console directly using a Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) , such as iLO, iLOM, DRAC, RSA, or IP KVM, pressALT+F1, and then log in as root.

2. Open the inetd.conf file using a text editor.

To open the file using the vi editor, run this command:

# vi /etc/inetd.conf

3. Ensure that the contents of the /etc/inetd.conf file are similar to:

# Internet server configuration database

# Remote shell access ssh stream tcp nowait root /sbin/dropbearmulti dropbear ++min=0,swap,group=shell -i -K60 ssh stream tcp6 nowait root /sbin/dropbearmulti dropbear ++min=0,swap,group=shell -i -K60

In ESXi 5.0, the contents under Remote shell access appear similar to:

ssh stream tcp nowait root /usr/lib/vmware/openssh/bin/sshd sshd ++swap,group=host/vim/vimuser/terminal/ssh -issh stream tcp6 nowait root /usr/lib/vmware/openssh/bin/sshd sshd ++swap,group=host/vim/vimuser/terminal/ssh -i

# VMware authentication daemon authd stream tcp nowait root /sbin/authd authd authd stream tcp6 nowait root /sbin/authd authd

4. Save the changes made to the file.

Note: Alternatively, you can copy the inetd.conf file from a good known ESXi host using a utility such as WinSCP.

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http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/search.do?cmd=displayKC&docType=kc&docTypeID=DT_KB_1_1&externalId=1017910


5. Run this command to restart the SSH daemon for the changes to take effect:

# /etc/init.d/TSM-SSH restart

Note: In ESXi 5.x, run this command:

/etc/init.d/SSH restart

Vmware update manager process?

How P2v Works?

http://www.experts-exchange.com/Software/VMWare/A_12358-HOW-TO-P2V-V2V-for-FREE-VMware-vCenter-Converter-Standalone-5-5.html

Vmware converter port number?

VMware vCenter Converter fails if one or more required ports are blocked. Follow the section that matches your conversion scenario.

In this article, the following terms are used:

Source computer The physical or virtual machine that is being converted.

Converter server The server portion of VMware vCenter Converter. In a typical installation, both the Converter server and Converter client are installed at the same location. By default, this is the installation method that is used.

Converter client The client portion of VMware vCenter Converter. In a custom installation, the Converter client can be installed to a different computer than the Converter server.

VirtualCenter The VirtualCenter computer that is being used as the conversion destination, if such was chosen.

ESX The VMware ESX host that is being used as the conversion destination, if one is chosen, or the ESX host that is hosting the target virtual machine.

Fileshare path The path to a virtual machine's .vmx file, if the source is an existing or standalone virtual machine, or the path to a directory if the destination is to be a standalone virtual machine.

Standalone virtual machine

A virtual machine that is being managed by a VMware product other than VMware ESX.

Helper virtual machine When converting a powered on Linux operating system (P2V), this is the target virtual machine that is being used temporarily for the purpose of copying files from the source computer. It uses the

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TCP/IP information that is entered in the Converter wizard for the target virtual machine. Make sure that this IP address can communicate directly with the source computer.

Notes:

If you perform a corrective action, determine if the problems initially encountered are still being experienced.

To test port connectivity, do so from a command or shell prompt. For more information, see Opening a command or shell prompt (1003892) .

To test TCP port connectivity use the telnet command. For more information, see Testing port connectivity with Telnet (1003487).

To test UDP port connectivity from Linux or MacOS use the traceroute command. For more information, see a traceroute man page.

To test UDP port connectivity from Windows use the Portqry utility. For more information, see the Microsoft Knowledge Base article 310099.

Note: These links were correct as of March 15, 2009. If you find a link is broken, provide feedback and a VMware employee will update the link.

Converting a powered on Windows operating system (P2V)

Source Destination TCP Ports UDP Ports

Notes

Converter server

Source computer

445, 139, 9089 or 9090

137, 138 If the source computer uses NetBIOS, port 445 is not required. If NetBIOS is not being used, ports 137, 138, and 139 are not required. If in doubt, make sure that none of the ports are blocked.

Port 9089 is used for Converter Standalone versions, and 9090 is used for the Converter plugin.Note: Unless you have installed Converter server to the source computer, the account used for authentication to the source computer must have a password, the source computer must have network file sharing enabled, and it cannot be using Simple File Sharing.

Converter server

VirtualCenter 443, 902 Only required if the conversion target is VirtualCenter.

Converter client

Converter server

443 Only required if a custom installation was performed and the Converter server and client portions are on different computers.

Source computer

ESX/ESXi 443, 902 If the conversion destination is vCenter Server, only port 902 is required from the

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http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310099

http://linux.die.net/man/8/traceroute



source to the ESX/ESXi hosts.

Converting a powered on Linux operating system (P2V)

Source Destination TCP Ports Notes

Converter server Source computer 22 The Converter server must be able to establish an SSH connection with the source computer.

Converter client Converter server 443 Only required if a custom installation was performed and the Converter server and client portions are on different computers.

Converter server VirtualCenter 443, 902 Only required if the conversion target is VirtualCenter.

Converter server ESX/ESXi 443, 902, 903

If the conversion destination is vCenter Server, only port 902 is required from the source to the ESX/ESXi hosts.

Converter server Helper virtual machine

443

Helper virtual machine

Source computer 22 The helper virtual machine must be able to establish an SSH connection with the source computer. By default the helper virtual machine gets its IP address assigned by DHCP. If there is no DHCP server available on the network chosen for the target virtual machine you must manually assign it an IP address.

Converting an existing virtual machine (V2V)

Source Destination TCP Ports UDP Ports

Notes

Converter server

Fileshare path 445, 139 137, 138 This is only required for standalone virtual machine sources or destinations.

If the computer hosting the source or destination path uses NetBIOS, port 445 is not required. If NetBIOS is not being used, ports 137, 138, and 139 are not required. If in doubt, make sure that none of the ports are blocked.

Converter client

Converter server

443 Only required if a custom installation was performed and the Converter server and client portions are on different computers.

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Converter server

VirtualCenter 443, 902 Only required if the target is VirtualCenter.

Converter server

ESX/ESXi 443, 902 If the conversion destination is vCenter Server, only port 902 is required from the source to the ESX/ESXi hosts.

Vmware converter requirements?

Vmware converter steps?

how to config vmsafe? XXXXXXX

difference between VI and vpshere client?XXXXXX

vcenter services?

How to increase the c: drive size?

Caution: VMware strongly recommends that you have backups in place before performing any disk partition operation. Also make sure the virtual machine has no snapshots, before starting to extend the VMDK. If the virtual machine has snapshots use "Delete all" from the Snapshot Manager to commit them. Verify again in the Snapshot Manager, in the Edit Settings and the virtual machine datastore that the snapshots were committed. To expand VMDK and extend a partition:

1. Log into the VMware ESX/ESXi host as the root user. Verify that the virtual machine does not have any snapshots by going into the virtual machine's directory and looking for Delta files. Run the command:

#ls -lah /vmfs/volumes/datastore_name/vm_name/*delta*-rw------- 1 root root 1.8G Oct 10 10:58 vm_name-000001-delta.vmdk

Note: For more information on logging into the ESX/ESXi, see the following:

o For more information on VMware ESX Service Console, Unable to connect to an ESX host using Secure Shell (SSH) (1003807).

o For more information on VMware ESXi Technical Support Mode, Tech Support Mode for Emergency Support (1003677).

o For more information on VMware ESXi 4.1 and ESXi 5.0 Technical Support Mode, Using Tech Support Mode in ESXi 4.1 and ESXi 5.x (1017910).

2. If the virtual machine does have snapshots, commit them using these commands:

#vmware-cmd -l /vmfs/volumes/datastore_name/vm_name/vm_name.vmx#vmware-cmd /vmfs/volumes/datastore_name/vm_name/vm_name.vmx removesnapshotsremovesnapshots() = 1

Note: For committing snapshots on an ESXi 5.1 or later host, see Committing snapshots on ESXi host from command line (1026380).

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3. Power off the virtual machine.

Note: The virtual machine can be powered on to increase the vmdk size in steps 4 and 5. However ensure to power off the virtual machine after increasing VMDK size.

4. To expand the VMDK using the VI Client (if the option exists), edit the settings of the virtual machine and click the hard disk you want to expand.

5. Enter a new value in the New Size field:

To expand the VMDK using the vmkfstools -X command, run the command:

#vmkfstools -X <New Disk Size> <VMDK to extend>

#vmkfstools -X 30G /vmfs/volumes/datastore_name/vm_name/vm_name.vmdk

Note: Ensure that you point to the vm_name.vmdk, and not to the vm_name-flat.vmdk. Using vmkfstools -X is the only option to expand an IDE virtual disk .

6. To extend the C: partition, find a helper virtual machine and attach the disk from the first virtual machine to the helper.

To add an existing virtual disk to the helper virtual machine:

a. Go to the Edit Settings menu of the virtual machine.b. Click Add > Hard Disk > Use Existing Virtual Disk.c. Navigate to the location of the disk and select to add it into the virtual

machine.

Note: A helper virtual machine is a virtual machine that has the same operating system to which you attach the disk.

Start the virtual machine.Verify the volume in question has been mounted and has been assigned a drive letter. This can be set in Windows Disk Management or by selecting the volume and typing assign from within the DiskPart command.

In versions of Windows prior to 2008, open a command prompt and run the DiskPart command:

C:\Documents and Settings\username>diskpart

Microsoft DiskPart version 5.1.3565Copyright (C) 1999-2003 Microsoft Corporation.On computer: USERNAME-HELPER-VMDISKPART> list volume

Volume ### Ltr Label Fs Type Size Status Info---------- --- ----------- ----- ---------- ------- --------- --------Volume 0 D CD-ROM 0 BVolume 1 C NTFS Partition 30 GB Healthy SystemVolume 2 E NTFS Partition 10 GB Healthy

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DISKPART> select Volume 2Volume 2 is the selected volume.

DISKPART> extend disk=2DiskPart successfully extended the volume.DISKPART> exitLeaving DiskPart...

Note: Where 2 above is the disk volume number of the volume to extend.

Note: Ensure to choose the correct volume. The Size is the old value.

Note: If you are in Windows 2003, and you see the error The volume you have selected may not be extended. Please select another volume and try again, see the Microsoft Knowledge Base article 841650.

In Windows 2008, click Start > Computer Management > Disk Manager, right-click on the partition and select Extend Volume. For more information, see the Microsoft Knowledge Base article 325590.

Note: The preceding links were correct as of March 14, 2013. If you find a link is broken, provide feedback and a VMware employee will update the link.

Power off and detach the disk from the helper virtual machine. Keep all default settings and do not delete the VMDK from the disk.Power on the first virtual machine and verify the disk size change.


Increase the datastore size?

Symptoms

When you try to grow or expand a VMFS volume, you experience these symptoms:

One or more storage devices have been increased in capacity from the storage array. When you click Increase, there are no available devices to select. When you click Increase, a device is listed but does not have Expandable = Yes. When you select the volume and click Next, you see the error:

failed to update disk partition information

Purpose

This article provides the steps to increase the capacity (grow or extend) a VMFS datastore successfully.

Note: Increasing the size of the backing storage device on the storage array is outside the scope of this article, and a prerequisite before modifying the size of the VMFS Datastore filesystem. VMware vSphere cannot modify the size of a LUN or other storage device on the array. Modifying the size of an array device must be done using the storage array vendor's management tools. For more information, contact the storage array vendor.Note: This method only works for non-Local non-Boot devices. For Local VMFS datastores, see Growing a local datastore from the command-line in vSphere ESX 4.x

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(1009125) or Growing a local datastore from the command line in vSphere ESXi 4.x and 5.x (2002461).

Resolution

To increase the capacity of a VMFS datastore:

1. In vCenter Server, select the Datastores view.2. Select the datastore you want to grow and identify the host that has more virtual

machines running on it.3. Open another vSphere client that connects directly to the ESX host.4. Go to Configuration > Storage adapters and perform a rescan. For more

information, see Performing a rescan of the storage on an ESX/ESXi host (1003988).5. Go to Configuration > Storage, click the datastore that you want to grow, and

click Properties.6. Ensure that the new size of the device is listed in the Extent Device list. If the

increased size is not reflected, review the changes on the storage array and rescan again.

7. Click Increase.8. Select a device from the list of storage devices for which the Expandable column is

Yes and click Next.9. Set the capacity for the extent. The default capacity for the extent is the entire free

space on the storage device. VMware recommends you to use the default setting.10. Click Next.11. After the process completes, go to vCenter Server, right-click the cluster that sees

the expanded datastore, and click Rescan for Datastores. For more information, see Performing a rescan of the storage on an ESX/ESXi host (1003988).

12. If there are other hosts that see the expanded datastore, perform a rescan on these hosts also.

Note: If the LUN experiences a high I/O throughput when growing the VMFS, the ESX host may not be able to complete the operation. In such a case, repeat the process during non-business hours and when backup operations are not running. If the problem persists, power off some of the virtual machines residing on the LUN and then retry.For more information, see Adding an extent to a VMFS volume fails after increasing local storage space (1002821).

Additional Information

Notes:

If a shared datastore has powered on virtual machines and becomes 100% full, you can increase the datastores capacity only from the host on which the powered-on virtual machines are registered.

As an alternative work around, you can free up additional storage space by performing a Storage vMotion to migrate some of the virtual machines to a datastore with more available space.



.vmfs version?

cloning?

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how to remove the host from the cluster?

To move an ESXi/ESX host from one VirtualCenter Server/vCenter Server to another, remove the host from VirtualCenter Server/vCenter Server, then add the host to a new VirtualCenter Server/vCenter Server. This operation will not affect the state of any virtual machines running on the ESXi/ESX, the historical performance data of both the ESXi/ESX and its virtual machines will however be purged. Removing the ESXi/ESX host from VirtualCenter Server/vCenter Server

To remove the ESXi/ESX host from VirtualCenter Server/vCenter Server:

1. If the managed host is in a cluster, right-click the cluster. Set the Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) mode to manual anddisable VMware High Availability by deselecting Configure HA.

2. Click OK and wait for the reconfiguration to complete.3. Click Inventory in the navigation bar, expand the inventory as needed, and click the

appropriate managed host.4. Right-click the managed host icon in the inventory panel and choose Disconnect (wait

for the task to complete).5. Right-click the managed host icon in the inventory panel and choose Remove.6. Click Yes to confirm that you want to remove the managed host and all its

associated virtual machines.

Adding the ESXi/ESX host to a new VirtualCenter Server/vCenter Server

To add the ESXi/ESX host to a new VirtualCenter Server/vCenter Server:

1. Connect VMware Infrastructure Client/vSphere Client/vSphere Web Client to the new VirtualCenter Server/vCenter Server.

2. Click Inventory in the navigation bar.3. Expand the inventory as needed, and click the appropriate datacenter or cluster.4. Click File > New > Add Host.5. In the first page of the Add Host wizard, enter the name or IP address of the

managed host in the Host name field.6. Enter the username and password for a user account that has administrative

privileges on the selected managed host.7. Click Next.

how to troubleshoot PSOD?

we received lot of Purple Screen of death(PSOD) on ESXi host 5.5. When analyzed the logs

and googled related to the error, It comes to know that it is a known issue with hpsa (HP

ProLiant Smart Array Controller ) driver affecting ESXi 5.5. It is causing memory leak

associated with device rescans resulting in out of memory conditions and a potential PSOD.

HP has released the latest version of HPSA. HP has released the latest version of HPSA driver

(5.5.0.60-1) for vSphere 5.5.

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Below issues were addressed as part of this latest HPSA driver version

Fixed a memory leak associated with device rescans resulting in out of memory conditions

and a potential PSOD.

Fixed a null pointer dereference in error handling code that can cause a PSOD in rare cases

when device inquiries fail.

Restore LUN numbering policy to start with 1 instead of 0, avoiding potential issues with

Raw Device Maps.

Enable 64bit DMA mapping instead of default 32bit mapping.

Improve null pointer checks in device rescanning code, avoiding a potential PSOD.

Restore maximum outstanding command count, removing artificial limitation that could

impact performance.

Restore support for legacy HP Smart Array P700m controller.

To identify the current version of HPSA driver installed with your ESXi 5.5 host, execute the

below command:

~ # vmkload_mod -s hpsa | grep Version

Version: Version 5.5.0.58-1OEM, Build: 1331820, Interface: 9.2 Built on: Dec16

2013

Driver Version: HP HPSA Driver (v 5.5.0.58-1OEM)” meant the affected software driver was

used.

How to Install the latest HPSA driver for ESXi 5.5:

Download the HPSA driver vib file (scsi-hpsa-5.5.0.60-1OEM.550.0.0.1331820.x86_64.vib) for

vSphere 5.5 and upload it in your ESXi host datastore

1.Place your ESXi host into Maintenance Host

2.Install the hpsa driver VIB using the below following command:

esxcli software vib install -v /tmp/scsi-hpsa-5.5.0.60-

1OEM.550.0.0.1331820.x86_64.vib

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http://www.vmwarearena.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/ESXi5.5-Purple-Screen-of-Death-PSOD.j

3.Reboot the ESXi host for the changes to take effect

4.Verify the HPSA driver version after the installation using the below command:

~ # vmkload_mod -s hpsa | grep Version

Version: Version 5.5.0.60-1OEM, Build: 1331820, Interface: 9.2 Built on: May 15

2014

5.Exit your ESXi host from the Maintenance mode

http://www.vmwarearena.com/2014/07/troubleshoot-psod-on-esxi-5-5-due-to-hpsa-driver-5-5-0-58-1.html

******https://communities.vmware.com/thread/472795

what is WWN? and WWPN?

usually use the WWPN (World Wide Port Name) which is assigned to a single port. With a single port HBA you have one WWN/WWNN (World Wide Node Name), and a single WWPN, and for multi-port cards you will still have a single WWN/WWNN but multiple WWPNs, which may be used for different zones.

HOW TO: Find HBA WWN number on VMware vSphere ESX server

There are several ways to get HBA WWNs on VMware vSphere ESX/ESXi host:

1. vSphere Client ;2. Using ESXi Shell ;3. Using Powershell / PowerCLI script .

1. Connect to a server or vCenter, open server Configuration tab, under Hardware select Storage Adapters:

You can also copy WWNN (World Wide Node Name) and WWPN (World Wide Port Name)

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http://www.vstrong.info/2012/09/21/how-to-find-hba-wwn-number-on-vmware-esx-server/#3



https://communities.vmware.com/thread/472795



http://www.vmwarearena.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/ESXi-HPSA-driver-installation-VMware-Arena1.p

http://www.vstrong.info/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/ESX-HBA-WWN.j

2. How to find HBA WWN via ESXi Shell / CLI:

VMware vSphere ESXi 5.0+:

~ # esxcli storage core adapter listHBA Name Driver Link State UID Description-------- ------------ ---------- ------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------vmhba0 megaraid_sas link-n/a unknown.vmhba0 (0:1:0.0) LSI / Symbios Logic MegaRAID SAS SKINNY Controllervmhba1 fnic link-up fc.20000025b5020110:20000025b502a121 (0:8:0.0) Cisco Systems Inc Cisco VIC FCoE HBA Drivervmhba2 fnic link-up fc.20000025b5020110:20000025b502a120 (0:9:0.0) Cisco Systems Inc Cisco VIC FCoE HBA Driver

VMware ESX/ESXi 2.1.0 – 4.1.x:

~ # esxcfg-scsidevs -avmhba0 megaraid_sas link-n/a unknown.vmhba0 (0:1:0.0) LSI / Symbios Logic MegaRAID SAS SKINNY Controllervmhba1 fnic link-up fc.20000025b5020110:20000025b502a121 (0:8:0.0) Cisco Systems Inc Cisco VIC FCoE HBA Drivervmhba2 fnic link-up fc.20000025b5020110:20000025b502a120 (0:9:0.0) Cisco Systems Inc Cisco VIC FCoE HBA Driver

OR

Connect to ESXi shell either via putty/SSH or DCUI (Direct Console User Interface) / server console

Run ‘ls /proc/scsi/‘ and check the folder names:

1

2

~ # ls /proc/scsi/

mptsas qla2xxx

Look for a folder like ‘qla2xxx‘ – QLogic HBA, ‘lpfc820‘ – Emulex HBA, ‘bnx2i” – Brocade HBA;

Run ‘ls /proc/scsi/qla2xxx’. You will get a list of files, named by a number. Each file contains information about one HBA;

1

2

~ # ls /proc/scsi/qla2xxx/

6 7

Now run ‘cat /proc/scsi/qla2xxx/6‘ to get full info on the HBA. Alternatively, run the following commands:

o Run ” cat /proc/scsi/qla2xxx/6 | grep -A3 ‘SCSI Device Information:’ ” to get WWNN and WWPNs:

1

2

3

~ # cat /proc/scsi/qla2xxx/6 | grep -A3 'SCSI Device Information:'

SCSI Device Information:

scsi-qla0-adapter-node=20000024ff31f0c8:000000:0;

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4 scsi-qla0-adapter-port=21000024ff31f0c8:000000:0;

o Run ” cat /proc/scsi/qla2xxx/6 | grep ‘Host Device Name’ ” to get vmhba number:

1

2

~ # cat /proc/scsi/qla2xxx/6 | grep 'Host Device Name'

Host Device Name vmhba3

3. Powershell script to list host name, vmhba number, HBA model / driver and World Wide Port Name (WWN):

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

$scope = Get-VMHost # All hosts connected in vCenter

#$scope = Get-Cluster -Name 'MyCluster' | Get-VMHost # All hosts in a specific cluster

foreach ($esx in $scope){

Write-Host "Host:", $esx

$hbas = Get-VMHostHba -VMHost $esx -Type FibreChannel

foreach ($hba in $hbas){

$wwpn = "{0:x}" -f $hba.PortWorldWideName

Write-Host `t $hba.Device, "|", $hba.model, "|", "World Wide Port Name:" $wwpn

}}

Result:

?

1

2

3

Host: ESXi5-001.vstrong.info

vmhba1 | Cisco VIC FCoE HBA Driver | World Wide Port Name: 20000025b502a101

vmhba2 | Cisco VIC FCoE HBA Driver | World Wide Port Name: 20000025b502a100

what is chap authentication

ESXi supports unidirectional CHAP for all types of iSCSI initiators, and bidirectional CHAP for software and dependent hardware iSCSI.

Before configuring CHAP, check whether CHAP is enabled at the iSCSI storage system and check the CHAP authentication method the system supports. If CHAP is enabled, enable it for your initiators, making sure that the CHAP authentication credentials match the credentials on the iSCSI storage.

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ESXi supports the following CHAP authentication methods:

Unidirectional CHAP

In unidirectional CHAP authentication, the target authenticates the initiator, but the initiator does not authenticate the target.

Bidirectional CHAP

In bidirectional CHAP authentication, an additional level of security enables the initiator to authenticate the target. VMware supports this method for software and dependent hardware iSCSI adapters only.

For software and dependent hardware iSCSI adapters, you can set unidirectional CHAP and bidirectional CHAP for each adapter or at the target level. Independent hardware iSCSI supports CHAP only at the adapter level.

When you set the CHAP parameters, specify a security level for CHAP.

Note

When you specify the CHAP security level, how the storage array responds depends on the array’s CHAP implementation and is vendor specific. For information on CHAP authentication behavior in different initiator and target configurations, consult the array documentation.

CHAP Security Level

C H A P S e c u r i t y L e v e l D e s c r i p t i o n S u p p o r t e d

None The host does not use CHAP authentication. Select this option to disable authentication if it is currently enabled.

Software iSCSI

Dependent hardware iSCSI

Independent hardware iSCSI

Use unidirectional CHAP if required by target

The host prefers a non-CHAP connection, but can use a CHAP connection if required by the target.

Software iSCSI


Use unidirectional CHAP unless prohibited by target

The host prefers CHAP, but can use non-CHAP connections if the target does not support CHAP.

Software iSCSI



Use unidirectional CHAP The host requires successful CHAP authentication. The connection fails if CHAP negotiation fails.

Software iSCSI



Use bidirectional CHAP The host and the target support bidirectional CHAP.

Software iSCSI


how to discover LUN ?

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There are two methods used to obtain the multipath information from the ESX host:

ESX command line – use the command line to obtain the multipath information when performing troubleshooting procedures.

VMware Infrastructure/vSphere Client – use this option when you are performing system maintenance.

ESXi 5.x / ESXi 5.5Command lineTo obtain LUN multipathing information from the ESXi host command line:

1. Log in to the ESXi host console.2. Type esxcli storage core path list to get detailed information regarding the paths. For

example:

fc.5001438005685fb7:5001438005685fb6-fc.5006048c536915af:5006048c536915af-naa.60060480000290301014533030303130 UID: fc.5001438005685fb7:5001438005685fb6-fc.5006048c536915af:5006048c536915af-naa.60060480000290301014533030303130 Runtime Name: vmhba1:C0:T0:L0 Device: naa.60060480000290301014533030303130 Device Display Name: EMC Fibre Channel Disk (naa.60060480000290301014533030303130) Adapter: vmhba1 Channel: 0 Target: 0 LUN: 0 Plugin: NMP State: active Transport: fc Adapter Identifier: fc.5001438005685fb7:5001438005685fb6 Target Identifier: fc.5006048c536915af:5006048c536915af Adapter Transport Details: WWNN: 50:01:43:80:05:68:5f:b7 WWPN: 50:01:43:80:05:68:5f:b6 Target Transport Details: WWNN: 50:06:04:8c:53:69:15:af WWPN: 50:06:04:8c:53:69:15:af

3. Type esxcli storage core path list -d <naaID> to list the detailed information of the corresponding paths for a specific device.

The command esxcli storage nmp device list lists of LUN multipathing information:

naa.60060480000290301014533030303130 Device Display Name: EMC Fibre Channel Disk (naa.60060480000290301014533030303130) Storage Array Type: VMW_SATP_SYMM Storage Array Type Device Config: SATP VMW_SATP_SYMM does not support device configuration. Path Selection Policy: VMW_PSP_FIXED Path Selection Policy Device Config: {preferred=vmhba0:C0:T1:L0;current=vmhba0:C0:T1:L0} Path Selection Policy Device Custom Config: Working Paths: vmhba0:C0:T1:L0

Notes:

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For information on multipathing and path selection options, see Multipathing policies in ESX/ESXi 4.x and ESXi 5.x (1011340).

If a Connect to localhost failed: Connection failure message is received, the hostd management agent process may not be running, which is required to use esxcli. In this situation, you can use localcli instead of esxcli

For more information, see the 5.5 Command Line Reference Guide

vSphere ClientTo obtain multipath settings for your storage in vSphere Client:

1. Select an ESX/ESXi host, and click the Configuration tab.2. Click Storage.3. Select a datastore or mapped LUN.4. Click Properties.5. In the Properties dialog, select the desired extent, if necessary.6. Click Extent Device > Manage Paths and obtain the paths in the Manage

Path dialog.

For information on multipathing options, see Multipathing policies in ESXi 5.x and ESXi/ESX 4.x (1011340).

How to setup maintance mode? and procedure?

First make sure there is no removable media attached to any VMs running on that ESXi host (e.g. ISO Image mounted from a datastore or shared CD ROM).

Just right click the host and enter maintenance mode, check the box and vMotion will take care of the rest. You do not have to disable HA and DRS

I have my DRS set to fully automated applying 1 - 4 recommendations. It has been that way for years. I'm running about 50 guests on 3 ESXi 5.5 Hosts.

On a side note, if you are doing this to patch a system you should remediate it from the update manager tab. This will pop a wizard that will detach all removable media from guests if required then put in maintenance mode, install patches, reboot, re-attach, and exit maintenance mode all on its own.

What is resource pool?

A resource pool is a logical abstraction for flexible management of resources. Resource pools can be grouped into hierarchies and used to hierarchically partition available CPU and memory resources.

Each standalone host and each DRS cluster has an (invisible) root resource pool that groups the resources of that host or cluster. The root resource pool does not appear because the resources of the host (or cluster) and the root resource pool are always the same.

Users can create child resource pools of the root resource pool or of any user-created child resource pool. Each child resource pool owns some of the parent’s resources and can, in turn, have a hierarchy of child resource pools to represent successively smaller units of computational capability.

A resource pool can contain child resource pools, virtual machines, or both. You can create a hierarchy of shared resources. The resource pools at a higher level are called parent resource pools. Resource pools and virtual machines that are at the same level are called

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siblings. The cluster itself represents the root resource pool. If you do not create child resource pools, only the root resource pools exist.

In the following example, RP-QA is the parent resource pool for RP-QA-UI. RP-Marketing and RP-QA are siblings. The three virtual machines immediately below RP-Marketing are also siblings.

Parents, Children, and Siblings in Resource Pool Hierarchy

For each resource pool, you specify reservation, limit, shares, and whether the reservation should be expandable. The resource pool resources are then available to child resource pools and virtual machines.

Vmware user and admin rights?

How to Create a non-root account with Administrator capabilities on ESX

As per the ESX Server Configuration Guide:

1. To add a user to the Users Table.a. Log in to the host using the vSphere Client, using the root userid.b. Click the Local Users & Groups tab and click Users.c. Right-click anywhere in the Users table and click Add to open the Add New

User dialog.d. Enter a login name, a user name, and a password.

Note: The vSphere Client automatically assigns the next available UID to the user on the ESX host. You can over-write the populated field.

e. Create a password that meets the length and complexity requirements. However, the ESX host checks for password compliance only if you have switched to the pam_passwdqc.so plug-in for authentication. The password settings in the default authentication plug-in, pam_cracklib.so, are not enforced. To allow a user to access the ESX host through a command shell, select Grant shell access to this user.

f. In general, do not grant shell access unless the user has a justifiable need. Users that access the host only through the vSphere Client do not need shell access.

g. To add the user to a group, select the group name from the Group drop-down menu and click Add.

h. Click OK

2. To select the Permissions tab, also in the local host vSphere client session, and then:3.

a. Right click "Add Permissions"b. select Administrator from the Assigned Role drop-down boxc. click Add to bring up a list of available usersd. select the user you added in Step 1 and click Add, then OKe. click OK

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f. At this point, you should now be able to login to the ESX host using that user, and the vSphere client.

https://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-51/index.jsp?topic=%2Fcom.vmware.vsphere.security.doc%2FGUID-670B9B8C-3810-4790-AC83-57142A9FE16F.html

Esx and ESXi architecture ?

Feature Summary

VMware vSphere® 5.5 is the latest release of the flagship virtualization platform from VMware. VMware vSphere, known in many circles as "ESXi", for the name of the underlying hypervisor architecture, is a bare-metal hypervisor that installs directly on top of your physical server and partitions it into multiple virtual machines. Each virtual machine shares the same physical resources as the other virtual machines and they can all run at the same time. Unlike other hypervisors, all management functionality of vSphere is possible through remote management tools. There is no underlying operating system, reducing the install footprint to less than 150MB.

Improved Reliability and Security

The ESXi bare-metal hypervisor’s management functionality is in VMkernel, reducing the footprint to 150 MB. This gives it a very small attack surface for malware and over-the-network threats, improving reliability and security.

Streamlined Deployment and Configuration

With few configuration options and simple deployment and configuration, the ESXi architecture makes it easy to maintain a consistent virtual infrastructure.

Reduced Management Overhead

vSphere ESXi uses an agentless approach to hardware monitoring and system management with an API-based partner integration model. Management tasks are on remote command lines with the vSphere Command Line Interface (vCLI) and Power CLI, which uses Windows PowerShell cmdlets and scripts for automated management.

Simplified Hypervisor Patching and Updating

Fewer patches mean smaller maintenance windows and fewer scheduled maintenance windows.

What is service console?

It’s time for another post in my all-new “back to basics” series. That’s my term for wiping down my lab environment and deploying vSphere5.5 – and trying to reacquaint myself with all that vSphere knowledge that was once at my finger tips. This time its the turn of the DCUI.

The Direct Console User Interface (DCUI) is the front-end management system that allows for some basic configuration changes and troubleshooting options should the VMware ESXi host become unmanageable via conventional tools such as the vSphere Client or vCenter.

Typical administration tasks include:

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Reset ‘root’ password

Configure Lockdown mode

Configure, Restart, Test and Restore the VMware ESX Management Network

Restart Management Agents

Configure Keyboard

Troubleshoot

View System Logs

Reset System Configuration (Factory Reset)

Shutdown/Restart the VMware ESX Host

Most actions are carried out by using [F2] on the keyboard or [F11] confirm changes, along with typical options such as [Y] and [N] to various system prompts. Before carrying out any task you will be required to supply the ‘root’ password. However, the first law of security is to secure the physical server – so take care to ensure your access to ILO/RAC/BMC interfaces are properly secured. Although the VMware ESX host can be rebooted from the DCUI this is regarded as an action of last resort. If the VMware ESX hosts has running VMs these will crash, and may or may not be restarted on other hosts depending on whether they are part of a cluster.

http://blogs.vmware.com/smb/2013/12/back-to-basics-managing-vmware-esxi-5-5-direct-user-interface-dcui.html

https://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-55/index.jsp?topic=%2Fcom.vmware.vcli.migration.doc%2Fcos_upgrade_technote.1.1.html

What is vmkernel ?

How to upgrade the ESX server?

Purpose

This article provides best practice information about installing or upgrading to ESXi 5.5.

Notes:

This article assumes that you have read the vSphere Installation and Setup Guide for ESXi 5.5 Installation or the vSphere Upgrade Guide for ESXi 5.5 upgrades. These guides contain definitive information. If there is a discrepancy between the guide and this article, assume that the guide is correct.

vCenter Server is upgraded to version 5.5 before upgrading ESXi to version 5.5

o Upgrading to vCenter Server 5.5 best practices (2053132) o Installing vCenter Server 5.5 best practices (2052334)

VMware provides several ways to install or upgrade to ESXi 5.5 hosts. For more information, see:

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http://www.vmware.com/support/pubs/vsphere-esxi-vcenter-server-pubs.html

https://www.vmware.com/support/pubs/vsphere-esxi-vcenter-server-pubs.html





o Methods of installing ESXi 5.5 (2052439) o Methods of upgrading to ESXi 5.5 (2058352)

Note: These methods include Interactive ESXi Installation, Scripted ESXi Installation, and Customizing Installations with ESXi Image Builder CLI.

ESXi 5.5 System Requirements

When installing or upgrading to ESXi 5.5, ensure that the host meets these minimum hardware configurations supported by ESXi 5.5:

1. Your hardware is compliant on the VMware Compatibility Guide. This includes:

o System compatibilityo I/O compatibility (Network and HBA cards)o Storage compatibilityo Backup software compatibility

2. You have a 64-bit processor. VMware ESXi 5.5 only installs and runs on servers with 64-bit x86 CPUs. It also only supports LAHF and SAHF CPU instructions.

3. You have an ESXi 5.5 host machine with at least two cores.4. The NX/XD bit is enabled for the CPU in the BIOS.5. Your processor is supported. ESXi supports a broad range of x64 multicore

processors. For a complete list of supported processors, see the VMware Compatibility Guide.

6. You have 4GB RAM. This is the minimum required to install ESXi 5.5. Provide at least 8GB of RAM to take full advantage of ESXi features and run virtual machines in typical production environments.

7. Support for hardware virtualization (Intel VT-x or AMD RVI) is enabled on x64 CPUs (to support 64-bit virtual machines). For a complete list of operating systems supported with ESXi, see the VMware Compatibility Guide. Hosts running virtual machines with 64-bit guest operating systems have these hardware requirements:

o For AMD Opteron-based systems, the processors must be Opteron Rev E or later.

o For Intel Xeon-based systems, the processors must include support for Intel Virtualization Technology (VT). Many servers that include CPUs with VT support might have VT disabled by default, so you must enable VT manually. If your CPUs support VT , but you do not see this option in the BIOS, contact your vendor to request a BIOS version that lets you enable VT support.

Note: To determine whether your server has 64-bit VMware support, download the CPU Identification Utility from the VMware Website.

8. You have one or more Gigabit or 10GB Ethernet controllers. For a list of supported network adapter models, see the VMware Compatibility Guide.

9. You have Storage controllers with any combination of one or more of:

o Basic SCSI controllers. Adaptec Ultra-160 or Ultra-320, LSI Logic Fusion-MPT, or most NCR/Symbios SCSI.

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o RAID controllers. Dell PERC (Adaptec RAID or LSI MegaRAID), HP Smart Array RAID, or IBM (Adaptec) ServeRAID controllers.

10. You have SCSI disk or a local, non-network, RAID LUN with unpartitioned space for the virtual machines.

11. For Serial ATA (SATA), a disk connected through supported SAS controllers or supported on-board SATA controllers. SATA disks are considered to be remote, not local. These disks are not used as a scratch partition by default because they are seen as remote.

Note: You cannot connect a SATA CD-ROM device to a virtual machine on an ESXi 5.5 host. To use the SATA CD-ROM device, you must use IDE emulation mode.

12. You are using a supported storage system. ESXi 5.5 supports installing on and booting from these storage systems:

o SATA disk drives. SATA disk drives connected behind supported SAS controllers or supported on-board SATA controllers.

LSI1068E (LSISAS3442E) LSI1068 (SAS 5) IBM ServeRAID 8K SAS controller Smart Array P400/256 controller Dell PERC 5.0.1 controller

o SATA disk drives. Supported on-board SATA include:

Intel ICH9 NVIDIA MCP55 ServerWorks HT1000

Note: ESXi does not support using local, internal SATA drives on the host server to create VMFS datastores that are shared across multiple ESXi hosts.

13. You have Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) disk drives supported for installing ESXi 5.5 and for storing virtual machines on VMFS partitions.

14. You have dedicated SAN disk on Fibre Channel or iSCSI.15. You have USB devices that are supported for installing ESXi .16. You can install and boot ESXi from an FCoE LUN using VMware software FCoE

adapters and network adapters with FCoE offload capabilities. See the vSphere Storage documentation for information about installing and booting ESXi with software FCoE.

ESXi booting requirements

vSphere 5.5 supports booting ESXi hosts from the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI). With UEFI you can boot systems from hard drives, CD-ROM drives, or USB media. Network booting or provisioning with VMware Auto Deploy requires the legacy BIOS firmware and is not available with UEFI.

ESXi can boot from a disk larger than 2TB, provided that the system firmware and the firmware on any add-in card that you are using support it. For more information, see the vendor documentation.

Note: Changing the boot type from legacy BIOS to UEFI after you install ESXi 5.5 may cause the host to fail to boot. In this case, the host reports an error similar to:

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Not a VMware boot bank. Changing the host boot type between legacy BIOS and UEFI is not supported after you install ESXi 5.5.

Storage requirements

ESXi 5.5 has these storage requirements:

Installing ESXi 5.5 requires a boot device that is minimum 1GB in size. When booting from a local disk or SAN/iSCSI LUN, a 5.2GB disk is required to allow the creation of the VMFS volume and a 4GB scratch partition on the boot device. If a smaller disk or LUN is used, the installer attempts to allocate a scratch region on a separate local disk. If a local disk cannot be found, the scratch partition (/scratch) is located on the ESXi host ramdisk, linked to /tmp/scratch. You can reconfigure /scratch to use a separate disk or LUN. For best performance and memory optimization, VMware recommends that you do not leave /scratch on the ESXi host ramdisk.

To reconfigure /scratch, see Set the Scratch Partition from the vSphere Client in the vSphere Installation and Setup Guide.

When installing ESXi onto a USB flash drive or SD flash card, if the drive is less than 8 GB, this prevents the allocation of a scratch partition onto the flash device. VMware recommends using a retail purchased USB flash drive of 16 GB or larger so that the "extra" flash cells can prolong the life of the boot media but high quality parts of 4 GB or larger are sufficient to hold the extended coredump partition.

Due to the I/O sensitivity of USB and SD devices, the installer does not create a scratch partition on these devices. When installing on USB or SD devices, the installer attempts to allocate a scratch region on an available local disk or datastore. If no local disk or datastore is found, /scratch is placed on the ramdisk. You should reconfigure /scratch to use a persistent datastore following the installation.

In Auto Deploy installations, the installer attempts to allocate a scratch region on an available local disk or datastore. If no local disk or datastore is found, the /scratch directory is placed on ramdisk. Reconfigure the /scratch directory to use a persistent datastore following the installation.

For environments that boot from a SAN or use Auto Deploy, it is not necessary to allocate a separate LUN for each ESXi host. You can co-locate the scratch regions for many ESXi hosts onto a single LUN. The number of hosts assigned to any single LUN should be weighed against the LUN size and the I/O behavior of the virtual machines.

Best practices for upgrading or migrating ESXi hosts

For a successful upgrade or migration, follow these best practices:

1. If your vSphere system includes VMware solutions or plug-ins, ensure that they are compatible with the vCenter Server version that you are upgrading to. For more information, see the VMware Product Interoperability Matrix.

2. Read Preparing to Upgrade Hosts in the vSphere Upgrade Guide to understand the changes in configuration and partitioning between ESX/ESXi 4.x and ESXi 5.x, the upgrade and migration scenarios that are supported, and the options and tools available to perform the upgrade or migration.

3. Read the VMware vSphere Release Notes for known installation issues.4. If your vSphere installation is in a VMware View environment, see Upgrading vSphere

Components Separately in a Horizon View Environment in the vSphere Upgrade Guide.

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To prepare your system for the upgrade:

1. Ensure that your current ESX/ESXi version is supported for migration or upgrade. For more information, see Supported Upgrades to ESXi 5.5 in the vSphere Upgrade Guide.

2. Ensure that your system hardware complies with above ESXi requirements. For more information, see the System Requirementssection in the vSphere Upgrade Guide and the VMware Compatibility Guide. Check for system compatibility, I/O compatibility (network and HBA cards), storage compatibility, and backup software compatibility.

3. Ensure that sufficient disk space is available on the host for the upgrade or migration. Migrating from ESX 4.x to ESXi 5.x requires 50MB of free space on your VMFS datastore.

4. If a SAN is connected to the host, detach the fibre before continuing with the upgrade or migration. Do not disable HBA cards in the BIOS.

Note: This step does not apply to ESX hosts that boot from the SAN and have the Service Console on the SAN LUNs. You can disconnect LUNs that contain the VMFS datastore and do not contain the Service Console.

VMware strongly recommends that you back up your host before performing an upgrade or migration, so that, if the upgrade fails, you can restore your host.

Important: After upgrading or migrating your host to ESXi 5.x, you cannot roll back to the earlier version.

Depending on the upgrade or migration method you choose, you may have to migrate or power off all virtual machines on the host.

After the upgrade or migration, test the system to ensure that the upgrade or migration completed successfully.

Reapply your host licenses. For more information, see the Reapplying Licenses After Upgrading to ESXi 5.5 section in the vSphereUpgrade Guide.

Consider setting up a syslog server for remote logging, to ensure sufficient disk storage for log files. Setting up logging on a remote host is especially important for hosts with limited local storage. Optionally, you can install the vSphere Syslog Collector to collect logs from all hosts. See Providing Sufficient Space for System Logging. For information about setting up and configuring syslog and a syslog server, setting up syslog from the host profiles interface, and installing vSphere Syslog Collector, see the vSphere Installation and Setup Guide.

If the upgrade or migration was unsuccessful, you can restore your host if you have a valid backup.

Difference between patches and upgrades?

What is EVC ?

Enhanced vMotion Compatibility (EVC) simplifies vMotion compatibility issues across CPU generations. EVC automatically configures server CPUs with Intel FlexMigration or AMD-V Extended Migration technologies to be compatible with older servers.

After EVC is enabled for a cluster in the vCenter Server inventory, all hosts in that cluster are configured to present identical CPU features and ensure CPU compatibility for vMotion. The features presented by each host are determined by selecting a predefined EVC baseline. vCenter Server does not permit the addition of hosts that cannot be automatically configured to be compatible with the EVC baseline.

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Table 1.1: Description of Intel EVC Baselines

EVC Level

EVC Baseline Description

L0 Intel® "Merom" Gen. (Intel® Xeon® Core™ 2)

Applies baseline feature set of Intel® "Merom" Generation (Intel® Xeon® Core™ 2) processors to all hosts in the cluster.

L1 Intel® "Penryn" Gen. (formerly Intel® Xeon® 45nm Core™ 2)

Applies baseline feature set of Intel® "Penryn" Generation (Intel® Xeon® 45nm Core™ 2) processors to all hosts in the cluster.Compared to the Intel® "Merom" Generation EVC mode, this EVC mode exposes additional CPU features including SSE4.1.

L2 Intel® "Nehalem" Gen. (formerly Intel® Xeon® Core™ i7)

Applies baseline feature set of Intel® "Nehalem" Generation (Intel® Xeon® Core™ i7) processors to all hosts in the cluster.Compared to the Intel® "Penryn" Generation EVC mode, this EVC mode exposes additional CPU features including SSE4.2 and POPCOUNT.

L3 Intel® "Westmere" Gen. (formerly Intel® Xeon® 32nm Core™ i7)

Applies baseline feature set of Intel® "Westmere" Generation (Intel® Xeon® 32nm Core™ i7) processors to all hosts in the cluster. Compared to the Intel® "Nehalem" Generation mode, this EVC mode exposes additional CPU features including AES and PCLMULQDQ.

Note: Intel® i3/i5 Xeon® Clarkdale Series processors that do not support AESNI and PCLMULQDQ cannot be admitted to EVC modes higher than the Intel® "Nehalem" Generation mode.Note: Intel® Atom™ C2300-C2700 processors support the Intel® "Westmere" Gen. EVC baseline although their architecture is different from the architecture of the Intel® "Westmere" Generation processors.

L4 Intel® "Sandy Bridge" Generation

Applies baseline feature set of Intel® "Sandy Bridge" Generation processors to all hosts in the cluster. Compared to the Intel® "Westmere" Generation mode, this EVC mode exposes additional CPU features including AVX and XSAVE.

Note: Intel® "Sandy Bridge" processors that do not support AESNI and PCLMULQDQ cannot be admitted to EVC modes higher than the Intel® "Nehalem" Generation mode.

L5 Intel® "Ivy Bridge" Generation

Applies baseline feature set of Intel® "Ivy Bridge" Generation processors to all hosts in the cluster. Compared to the Intel® "Sandy Birdge" Generation EVC mode, this EVC mode exposes additional CPU features including RDRAND, ENFSTRG, FSGSBASE, SMEP, and F16C.

Note: Some Intel® "Ivy Bridge" processors do not provide the full "Ivy Bridge" feature set. Such processors cannot be admitted to EVC modes higher than the Intel® "Nehalem" Generation mode.

Note: In vCenter Server 5.1 and 5.5, the Intel® "Ivy Bridge" Generation option is only displayed in the Web Client.

Table 1.2: Description of AMD EVC Baselines

EVC Level

EVC Baseline Description

A0 AMD Opteron™ Applies baseline feature set of AMD Opteron™ Generation 1 (Rev.

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Generation 1 E) processors to all hosts in the cluster.

A1 AMD Opteron™ Generation 2

Applies baseline feature set of AMD Opteron™ Generation 2 (Rev. F) processors to all hosts in the cluster.Compared to the AMD Opteron™ Generation 1 EVC mode, this EVC mode exposes additional CPU features including CPMXCHG16B and RDTSCP.

A3 AMD Opteron™ Generation 3

Applies baseline feature set of AMD Opteron™ Generation 3 (Greyhound) processors to all hosts in the cluster.Compared to the AMD Opteron™ Generation 2 EVC mode, this EVC mode exposes additional CPU features including SSE4A, MisAlignSSE, POPCOUNT and ABM (LZCNT).

Note: Due to 3DNow!™ support being removed from AMD processors after mid 2010, use AMD Opteron™ Generation 3 (no 3DNow!™) when possible to avoid compatibility issues with future processor generations.

A2, B0

AMD Opteron™ Generation 3 (no 3DNow!™)

Applies baseline feature set of AMD Opteron™ Generation 3 (Greyhound) processors, with 3DNow!™ support removed, to all hosts in the cluster.This mode allows you to prepare clusters containing AMD hosts to accept AMD processors without 3DNow!™ support.

B1 AMD Opteron™ Generation 4

Applies baseline feature set of AMD Opteron™ Generation 4 (Bulldozer) processors to all hosts in the cluster.Compared to the AMD Opteron™ Generation 3 (no 3DNow!™) EVC mode, this EVC mode exposes additional CPU features including SSSE3, SSE4.1, AES, AVX, XSAVE, XOP, and FMA4.

B2 AMD Opteron™ "Piledriver" Generation

Applies baseline feature set of AMD Opteron™ "Piledriver" Generation processors to all hosts in the cluster.Compared to the AMD Opteron™ Generation 4 EVC mode, this EVC mode exposes additional CPU features including FMA, TBM, BMI1, and F16C.

Note: In vCenter Server 5.1 and 5.5, the AMD Opteron™ "Piledriver" Generation option is only displayed in the Web Client.

It is often the case that an older release of vSphere supports a new processor but not the corresponding new EVC baseline that exposes the maximum guest-visible features of that processor. A newer vSphere release usually supports both the processor and the new EVC baseline. This is because the older release can only support those features of the new processor that are in common with older processors. Therefore, support of an EVC baseline is not identical to the support of the corresponding processor. Tables 2.1 and 2.2 indicate the earliest vSphere release that supports each EVC baseline.

As an example, consider the Intel® “Sandy Bridge” Generation EVC baseline and the Intel® Xeon e5-2400 (a processor based on the Intel® “Sandy Bridge” architecture). The processor is supported by both vSphere 4.1 Update 2 (and later) and vSphere 5.0 (and later). But because vSphere 4.1 update 2 lacks support for advanced “Sandy Bridge” features such as AVX, the Intel® “Sandy Bridge” Generation EVC baseline is only supported starting with the vSphere 5.0 release. However, vSphere 4.1 Update 2 does support lower level EVC baselines on the Intel® Xeon e5-2400, such as Intel® “Westmere” Generation and Intel® “Merom” Generation.

Not all members of a given processor generation can support the same maximum EVC baseline. Either because of BIOS configuration or branding decisions made by OEM or CPU vendors, some members of that generation may lack a feature required to participate at the maximum EVC baseline. For example, some Intel® Xeon i3/i5 Clarkdale processors (based on the Intel “Westmere” processor architecture) do not have AESNI capability, which is required for the Intel “Westmere” Generation EVC baseline. Therefore, these processors cannot support that EVC baseline and must use lower levels of EVC baselines. Another

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example is where AESNI has been disabled by BIOS in an Intel® Xeon 5600 processor (also based on the Intel “Westmere” processor architecture); as a result, this processor also cannot support the Intel® “Westmere” EVC baseline and must use lower levels of EVC baselines.

The VMware Compatibility Guide always correctly lists the maximum EVC baseline for a processor assuming that no BIOS disablement of features has been enforced. Since disabling of features by BIOS is OEM and customer specific, the guide cannot address these cases.

Table 2.1: AMD EVC Baselines supported in vCenter Server releases

EVC Cluster Baseline

vCenter Server Release

AMD Opteron™ Gen. 1



AMD Opteron™ Gen. 3 (no 3DNow!™)


AMD Opteron "Piledriver" Gen.

VirtualCenter 2.5 U2 and later updates

Yes No No No No No

vCenter Server 4.0

Yes Yes Yes No No No

vCenter Server 4.0 U1 and later updates


vCenter Server 4.1

Yes Yes Yes Yes No No

vCenter Server 5.0

Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No

vCenter Server 5.1

Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

vCenter Server 5.5


Table 2.2: Intel EVC Baselines supported in vCenter Server releases

EVC Cluster Baseline

vCenter Server Release

Intel® "Merom" Generation

Intel® "Penryn" Generation

Intel® "Nehalem" Generation

Intel® "Westmere" Generation

Intel® "Sandy Bridge" Generation

Intel® "Ivy Bridge" Generation

VirtualCenter 2.5 U2 and later updates

Yes No No No No No

vCenter Server 4.0


vCenter Server 4.0 U1 and later updates


vCenter Server 4.1


vCenter Server 5.0

Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No

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vCenter Server 5.1


vCenter Server 5.5


How to export syslog to vmware customer care?


What backup mechanism ?XXXXXXXXXXXXX

Vmware backup types?( agents)XXXXXXXXX

What is template?

Difference between template and clone?

Difference between hot clone and cold clone?

How is VMware Consolidated Backup Used?

VMware Consolidated Backup enables:

• Full and incremental file backup of virtual machines for recovery of individual files and directories

• Full image backup of virtual machines

How to config VCB( vmware consolidated backup)- port?- how it works?

VMware Consolidated Backup enables off-host backup of virtual machines running any supported operating system from a centralized backup proxy server using backup software from VMware partners that is already in the environment.

1. A backup job is created for each virtual machine and that job is dispatched to the backup proxy server.

2. VMware Consolidated Backup takes a virtual machine snapshot and mounts the snapshot to the backup proxy server. As part of this process, the virtual machine is quiesced to ensure that the entire state of the virtual machine is captured at the point in time the snapshot is created.

3. The third-party backup agent, already in place on the backup proxy server, then backs up the contents of the virtual machine as a virtual disk image or as a set of files and directories depending on the operating system.

4. Finally, VMware Consolidated Backup tears down the mount and takes the virtual disk out of snapshot mode.

Key Features of VMware Consolidated Backup

Integration with leading backup products.

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Leverage existing investment in backup agents to move virtual machine data from the backup proxy server to tape or disk. VMware Consolidated Backup is supported with backup software from leading backup vendors.

Backup proxy server.

Remove load from VMware ESX hosts by using an off-host backup server. In addition to running as a standalone server, the backup proxy server can be run inside a virtual machine for enhanced flexibility.

Image level backup.

Back up and recover entire virtual machine images for virtual machines running any operating system.

File level full and incremental backup.

Recover individual files and directories with file level full and incremental backups for virtual machines running supported Windows® operating systems.

Broad storage support.

Support for backup of virtual machines residing on Fibre Channel and iSCSI SAN, NAS or local storage.

Support for Microsoft Volume Snapshot Copy Service (VSS).

Consolidated Backup supports use of VSS for application quiescing on supported platforms when taking snapshots of virtual machines for backup.

Optimized I/O path for backup.

VMware Consolidated Backup uses a “hot add” transport mode that delivers optimized performance for backups done using a virtual machine as a backup proxy server.

How to install new VM – step by step ?

Software iSCSI Adapter

A software iSCSI adapter is a VMware code built into the VMkernel. It allows your host to connect to the iSCSI storage device through standard network adapters. The software iSCSI adapter handles iSCSI processing while communicating with the network adapter. With the software iSCSI adapter, you can use iSCSI technology without purchasing specialized hardware.

Hardware iSCSI Adapter

A hardware iSCSI adapter is a third-party adapter that offloads iSCSI and network processing from your host. Hardware iSCSI adapters are divided into categories.

Dependent Hardware iSCSI Adapter

Depends on VMware networking, and iSCSI configuration and management interfaces provided by VMware.

This type of adapter can be a card that presents a standard network adapter and iSCSI offload functionality for the same port. The iSCSI offload functionality depends on the host's network configuration to obtain the IP, MAC, and other parameters used for iSCSI sessions. An example of a

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dependent adapter is the iSCSI licensed Broadcom 5709 NIC.

Independent Hardware iSCSI Adapter

Implements its own networking and iSCSI configuration and management interfaces.

An example of an independent hardware iSCSI adapter is a card that either presents only iSCSI offload functionality or iSCSI offload functionality and standard NIC functionality. The iSCSI offload functionality has independent configuration management that assigns the IP, MAC, and other parameters used for the iSCSI sessions. An example of a independent adapter is the QLogic QLA4052 adapter.

Hardware iSCSI adapters might need to be licensed. Otherwise, they will not appear in the vSphere Client or vSphere CLI. Contact your vendor for licensing information.

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