Planet Malaysia » VMware

How to add Dell PERC Drivers into VMware Converter Cold Clone ISO

Planet Malaysia — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 06:04:01 +0000

Last week I have completed P2V job for few old Dell PowerEdge servers. When booting a physical server with the VMware Converter coldclone.iso CD, the system do not detect any local drives. In order to complete the P2V and detect the local hard drives, you need a Dell PERC 4/5/6 drivers. I just would like to share “How to add Dell PERC Driversin to VMware Converter Cold Clone ISO”

Enter the Dell PowerEdge server service tag in Dell Support website.
Download Dell PERC 4/5/6 drivers into your computer.
In my example below, I save both of them under c:\perc\PERC4, c:\perc\PERC56 folders.
Type the following command peTool.exe -i coldclone.iso -d c:\perc\PERC4 -d c:\perc\PERC56
Once complete, you can burn coldclone.iso into CD and perform a test.

Enjoy!

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Microsoft SQL 2008 Agent not starts

Planet Malaysia — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 03:42:29 +0000

I was playing around with VMware vSphere ESXi 4.1 & vCenter 4.1 together with Microsoft Windows Server 2008 & Microsoft SQL 2008. I can login to my vCenter and everything seems to be work perfectly. Due to certain reason, I have rebooted the Windows server and the incident happen. The VMware Virtual Center service and SQL Agent do not start. The VMware vCenter service is highly depending on SQL Services before it can startup.

The SQL agent event log show as example below:

Log Name: Application
Source: SQLAgent$SQL2008
Date: 10/9/2008 11:22:57 AM
Event ID: 103
Task Category: Service Control
Level: Error
Keywords: Classic
User: N/A
Computer: WIN2K8.local.planetmy.com
Description:
SQLServerAgent could not be started (reason: Unable to connect to server ‘WIN2K8\VCSQL2008′; SQLServerAgent cannot start).

Google around and I was suspect something wrong with the username and password but look like it can’t help. Finally, the Microsoft Connect page helps me.

First, I tried with SQL agent repair using Control Panel -> Add/Remove Program but the problem still remains same. Next I take a risk for uninstall the SQL Agent and re-install the SQL Agent again using Control Panel instead of using SQL setup.exe. And guess what? It’s worked! I have no idea what is the problem but I would assume something wrong with the Windows registry. I hope this may help you in case you are facing the similar problem like me.

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Basic vmware-cmd VM Management tips

Planet Malaysia — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 10:02:42 +0000

Sometimes using a command line is much more faster than using GUI. Personally I found VMware Virtual Center always have bugs. The following article will guide you how to use vmware-cmd VM management tool for some basic VMware administrative tasks.

The figure below illustrates states, transitions, and state changing commands for virtual machines.

List path and names of registered VM guest vmx files on the present host
For an example:
# vmware-cmd -l
/vmfs/volumes/473ddda7-2a53d446-x25b-001aa0288d45/SLES9/SLES9.vmx
/vmfs/volumes/473ddd52-a6f731ac-3125-001aa0288d45/SLES10/SLES10.vmx
/vmfs/volumes/473dde07-d8a0f854-rqqa-001aa0288d45/WIN2K3-01/WIN2K3-01.vmx
/vmfs/volumes/473dde07-d8a0f854-eqqa-001aa0288d45/WIN2K3-02/WIN2K3-02.vmx
/vmfs/volumes/47f0819a-9f092588-548c-0015174a435a/WIN2K8-01/WIN2K8-01.vmx
/vmfs/volumes/473daqws-2a53d446-625x-001aa0288d45/WINXP-01/WINXP-01.vmx

VMware ESX provide basic power state options include:

Power on — Powers up the virtual machine and boots the guest operating system if the guest operating system is installed. How to power on VM guest using command line:
#/usr/bin/vmware-cmd /vmfs/volumes/473dde07-d8a0f854-rqqa-001aa0288d45/WIN2K3-01/WIN2K3-01.vmx start

Power off — Powers down the virtual machine. The virtual machine does not attempt to gracefully shut down the guest operating system. How to power off VM guest using command line:
#/usr/bin/vmware-cmd /vmfs/volumes/473dde07-d8a0f854-rqqa-001aa0288d45/WIN2K3-01/WIN2K3-01.vmx stop

Suspend — Pauses the virtual machine activity. All transactions are frozen until you issue a Resume command. How to suspend VM guest using command line:
#/usr/bin/vmware-cmd /vmfs/volumes/473ddda7-2a53d446-x25b-001aa0288d45/SLES9/SLES9.vmx suspend

Resume — Allows virtual machine activity to continue, and releases the Suspended state. How to resume VM guest using command line:
#/usr/bin/vmware-cmd /vmfs/volumes/473ddda7-2a53d446-x25b-001aa0288d45/SLES9/SLES9.vmx resume

Reset —Powers down the virtual machine and restarts it. How to reset VM guest using command line:
#/usr/bin/vmware-cmd /vmfs/volumes/473dde07-d8a0f854-rqqa-001aa0288d45/WIN2K3-01/WIN2K3-01.vmx reset

How to check VM guest power state
#/usr/bin/vmware-cmd /vmfs/volumes/473dde07-d8a0f854-rqqa-001aa0288d45/WIN2K3-01/WIN2K3-01.vmx getstate

How to create VM snapshot using command line:
#/usr/bin/vmware-cmd createsnapshot
#/usr/bin/vmware-cmd /vmfs/volumes/473ddda7-2a53d446-x25b-001aa0288d45/SLES9/SLES9.vmx createsnapshot SLES9_1 SLES9_First_Snapshot

Note:
Quiesce will quiesce file system writes
Memory will grab the memory state

How to Revert Snapshot using command line:
#/usr/bin/vmware-cmd /vmfs/volumes/473ddda7-2a53d446-x25b-001aa0288d45/SLES9/SLES9.vmx revertsnapshot

How to Remove Snapshot using command line:
#/usr/bin/vmware-cmd /vmfs/volumes/473ddda7-2a53d446-x25b-001aa0288d45/SLES9/SLES9.vmx removesnapshots

How to query if VM has a snapshot:
#/usr/bin/vmware-cmd /vmfs/volumes/473ddda7-2a53d446-x25b-001aa0288d45/SLES9/SLES9.vmx hassnapshot

How to register VM guest into inventory:
#/usr/bin/vmware-cmd -s register /vmfs/volumes/47f0819a-9f092588-548c-0015174a435a/WIN2K8-01/WIN2K8-01

How to unregister VM guest into inventory:
#/usr/bin/vmware-cmd -s unregister /vmfs/volumes/47f0819a-9f092588-548c-0015174a435a/WIN2K8-01/WIN2K8-01

Thanks to VMware ESX 3.5 Update 2 Bug

Planet Malaysia — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 15:44:23 +0000

I would like to thanks to VMware ESX 3.5 Update 2 BUG, it’s really make it busy today. Thanks god, it’s only happen to few of my VM guest and most of them are not mission critical machine.

Anyway, an official letter from VMware CEO Paul Maritz said about 2 failed.

Not disabling the code in the final release of Update 2; and
Not catching it in our quality assurance process.

I guess the person in charges have to responsible and probably someone may terminate. This is really a big mistake and we know how’s is the VMware quality control work.

I hope VMware can learn from this mistake and do it better. I’m always support you.

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Veeam Backup 2.0 has been released

Planet Malaysia — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 15:43:28 +0000

Less than five months after the first release, Veeam Backup 2.0 has been released!

The interesting features like:

Real-time statistics and reports
Support for VMware ESXi (free of charge)
Support for Microsoft Volume Shadow Service (VSS) in Windows guest OSes backup
Support for 3rd party tape backup devices
Backup and replication combined
Fast file-level recovery
Database-consistent backup

What is Veeam Backup?
Veeam Backup is the first enterprise-ready solution that combines backup and replication in a single product for fast recovery of your VMware ESX servers. Backup is easy, but recovery can be hard – and that’s when the clock is ticking loudest. But with Veeam Backup, fast recovery is easier than you ever thought possible.

Interested?
A demo of the product in Flash is available here (12MB).
The trial is available here.

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VMware Infrastructure 3.5 Update 2 have been released

Planet Malaysia — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 15:21:00 +0000

VMware have been released the Update 2 for ESX (build 103908) and VirtualCenter (104215).

This new version brings a number of important features including:

Cross-processors VMotion (auto-configuration of AMD-V Extended Migration and Intel FlexMigration)
Virtual machines live snapshot through Microsoft Volume Shadow Service (VSS) (only Windows 2003 and 2008 guest OSes)
Virtual machines live cloning
Virtual disks hot-extension (only for flat disks without snapshots in persistent mode)
VMware HA support for individual virtual machines
VirtualCenter alarms for physical servers health (single components supported)
Manual computers addition in Guided Consolidation (by hostname or IP)
Single Sign-On (SSO) on VirtualCenter client (capability to pass-through Windows authentication credentials, with support for smartcards and digital certificates)
Support for Microsoft Windows Server 2008, Sun Solaris 10 U5, Novell SLES 10 SP2 and Ubuntu 8.04 guest OSes
Support for 8GB Fibre Channel HBAs
Support for NFS and iSCSI over 10Gbit Ethernet
Support for Remote Command Line Interface (CLI) (no more experimental)
192 vCPUs per host – VMware now supports increasing the maximum number of vCPUs per host 192 given that the maximum number of Virtual Machines per host is 170 and that no more than 3 virtual floppy devices or virtual CDROM devices are configured on the host at any given time. This support is extended on ESX 3.5 Update 1 as well.

Installation Notes for This Release

See the ESX Server Compatibility Guides before installing this software. It is important to verify that your server, I/O, storage, guest operating system, management agent, and backup software needs are compatible. These guides also address minimum requirements and scaling limits associated with this release. To view a guide, click one of the following links:

Systems Compatibility Guide for ESX Server 3.5 and ESX Server 3i (PDF)
I/O Compatibility Guide for ESX Server 3.5 and ESX Server 3i (PDF)
Storage/SAN Compatibility Guide for ESX Server 3.5 and ESX Server 3i (PDF)
Backup Software Compatibility Guide for ESX Server 3.5 and ESX Server 3i (PDF)

Read the Installation Guide for step-by-step guidance on installing and configuring ESX Server and VirtualCenter.

VMware update 2 released notes and download a trial of VI 3.5 Update 2 here.

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VMware CPU Resources

Planet Malaysia — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 06:13:21 +0000

Look at my VMware ESX Server CPU Resources.

click here for bigger image.

As you can see from graph above, my VMware ESX Server running for more than 85% – 97% of CPU resources.

Basically I have 2 VMware ESX 3.5 running on top of Dell R900, Intel Xeon E7330 @2.4 Ghz processor and 128 RAM on each server. The CPU hungry incident happen when I did a vMotion about 40 VM guests from ESX 1 to another ESX 2 server for VMware ESX host patches update. Thanks god! My VM guest are still running without any issue and this is mixed of PRODUCTION and DEVELOPMENT servers.

That’s mean I can’t run more than 40 to 1 VM guest on the hardware spec like this and the bottle neck is CPU.

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How to add a raw mapping device on VMware

Planet Malaysia — Fri, 02 May 2008 17:13:59 +0000

VMware ESX Server offers two choices for managing disk access in a virtual machine—VMware Virtual Machine File System (VMFS) and raw device mapping (RDM). It is very important to understand the I/O characteristics of these disk access management systems in order to choose the right access type for a particular application. Choosing the right disk access management method can be a key factor in achieving high system performance for enterprise-class applications.

Basically you can read few VMware RDM related guide from VMware such as: http://www.vmware.com/pdf/esx25_rawdevicemapping.pdf and http://www.vmware.com/resources/techresources/1040

I would like to share “How to add a raw mapping device on VMware” in my VMware ESX development box together with SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 VMware guest.

Click on SLES 10 VMware guest in my Virtual Infrastructure Client
Click Edit Setting
Click Add
Select Hard Disk
Click Next
Selecet Raw Device Mappings
Click Next
Select Target LUN
/vmfs/devices/disks/vmhba0:0:16:0
/vmfs/devices/disks/vmhba0:0:22:0
Click Next
Select Store with Virtual Machine OR Specify datastore
Click Next
Select Compatibility
Choose physical (allow the guest operating system to access the hardware directly. Taking a snapshot of this virtual machine will not include this disk)
For Virtual (it’s allow the virtual machine to use VMware snapshots and other advanced functionality
Click Next
Select Virtual Device Node -> SCSI (0:1)
Click Next
Ready to Complete
Click Finish
Click OK

Done!

As you can see from pictures show above, SLES 9 with 200G Raw Device Mapping Drive created.

SSH to SLES 9 and type:

rescan-scsi-bus.sh
cat /proc/partitions

You should be able to see new RDM drive and you can continue with fdisk or configure raw disk.

Additional Tips:
How to check VMware ESX version?
SSH to VMware ESX Server, type:
vimsh -n -e ‘hostsvc/hostsummary’ | grep fullName

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Adding a new Hard Disk in SLES

Planet Malaysia — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 16:28:21 +0000

For any system that can avoid downtime would be a great solution for system admin like me. I have a request from customer ask for additional 10G partition for /u03 due to emergency request in my SuSE Linux Enterprise Server running on top of VMware ESX host.

Adding a new hdd in VMware is pretty simple. Logon to VMware Infrastruce Client -> click edit setting in my SLES VMware guest and add new hard disk.

SSH as superuser into my SLES box and type:

rescan-scsi-bus.sh

That’s simple. I can view my new hard disk using command:

cat /proc/partitions

Run fdisk to continue.

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VMware ESX 3.5.1 Updated

Planet Malaysia — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 16:09:57 +0000

VMware Inc. released VMware ESX 3.5 Update 1 on 10 April 2008 and I made time to apply on my ESX development box today.

1. Download latest VMware ESX 3.5.1 from VMware web site.

2. Unzip the ‘upgrade-from-esx3.5-3.5.0_Update_1-82663‘ into one of my Apache web server.

3. VMotion existing VMware guest to another VMware Host and Enter Maintenance Mode.

4. Run

esxcfg-firewall -allowOutgoing
esxupdate -r http://webserver/esxupdate/upgrade-from-esx3.5-3.5.0_
Update_1-82663/ update
esxcfg-firewall -blockOutgoing

OR
you can use Update Manager by run update signature from scheduled task and apply critical & non-critical baseline for the particular ESX host from Update Manager.

5. Once the update completed, you can check using command
#cat /proc/vmware/version VMware ESX Server 3.5.0 [Releasebuild-82663], built on Mar 18 2008 vmkernel build: 82663, vmkcall: 45.0 driver interface: 8.0 kernel: 61.0 vmnixmod build: 82663, interface: 2850028248vmksysinfo version: ffa98bbe1556b94447ee4055935ecc6f Loadable module version info:vmkernelID: 0x45f7df95 vmklinux build 82663: Built on: Mar 18 2008 megaraid_sas build 82663: 00.00.03.09 bnx2 build 82663: 1.5.10b lvmdriver build 82663: 3.16, built on: Mar 18 2008 vmfs3 build 82663: 4.31, built on: Mar 18 2008 etherswitch build Built on: Mar 18 2008 shaper build Built on: Mar 18 2008 tcpip build 82663: Built on: Mar 18 2008 cosShadow build 82663: Built on: Mar 18 2008 migration build 82663: protocol: 5.0 vmk interface: 3.0nfsclient build 82663: Built on: Mar 18 008 deltadisk build 82663: Built on: Mar 18 2008vmfs2 build 82663: 2.52, built on: Mar 18 2008
OR
#vmware -v"VMware ESX Server 3.5.0 build-82663
OR
#esxupdate -l query Installed software bundles: ------ Name ------ --- Install Date --- --- Summary --- 3.5.0-64607 18:29:18 03/18/08 Full bundle of ESX 3.5.0-64607 ESX350-200802415-SG 13:02:05 04/07/08 Security Update to Samba Packages. ESX350-200802303-SG 15:26:39 04/07/08 util-linux security update ESX350-200802305-SG 15:28:22 04/07/08 openssl security update ESX350-200802405-BG 16:56:04 04/07/08 Update to MegaRAID SCSI Driver. ESX350-200802304-SG 17:16:09 04/07/08 perl security update ESX350-200802306-BG 17:16:56 04/07/08 tzdata update ESX350-200802408-SG 17:18:30 04/07/08 Security Updates to the Python Package . ESX350-200803209-UG 12:29:31 04/14/08 Update to the ESX Server Service Console le ESX350-Update01 12:29:31 04/14/08 ESX Server 3.5.0 Update 1 ESX350-200803201-UG 12:29:31 04/14/08 Upgrade the Openwsman Protocol Adapter ESX350-200803208-UG 12:29:31 04/14/08 Update to the esxupdate utility ESX350-200803204-UG 12:29:31 04/14/08 Update the VMware mptscsi_2xx driver ESX350-200803207-UG 12:29:31 04/14/08 Update the VMware qla2300-v707 driver ESX350-200803211-UG 12:29:31 04/14/08 Update to vmkernel and vmnix ESX350-200803216-UG 12:29:31 04/14/08 Update to VMware-esx-drivers-net-tg3 ESX350-200803203-UG 12:29:31 04/14/08 Update to VMware-cim-esx ESX350-200803213-UG 12:29:31 04/14/08 Driver Versioning Method Changes ESX350-200803217-UG 12:29:31 04/14/08 Update to the mgmt-vmware Service ESX350-200803202-UG 12:29:31 04/14/08 Update to VMware-esx-tools, others ESX350-200803215-UG 12:29:31 04/14/08 Update to Virtual Infrastructure Client ESX350-200803205-UG 12:29:31 04/14/08 Update to VMware-esx-drivers-net-ixgbe ESX350-200803206-UG 12:29:31 04/14/08 Update the VMware lpfc_elx_v740 driver ESX350-200803212-UG 12:29:31 04/14/08 Update VMware qla4010/qla4022 drivers ESX350-200803210-UG 12:29:31 04/14/08 Update to VMware-esx-drivers-net-bnx2 ESX350-200803214-UG 12:29:31 04/14/08 Update to Third Party Code LibrariesNew packages: VMware-vpxa-2.5.0-64192

6. Exit maintenance mode

Basically the whole upgrade process take about an hour to finish and so far so good.

Beside this, I found a VMware server problem that consist more than 64Gb pyhsical memory few weeks back. Said you have 128GB pyhsical memory in your ESX host but somehow the ESX host reserved > 60GB for System Memory which show in Virtual Infrstructure Client. What? After check with VMware support and solution:

1.Log in to VirtualCenter as an administrator using the Virtual Infrastructure Client.
2.From the Inventory click the ESX Server.
3.Click the Configuration tab.
4.Click Advanced Settings link.
5.Navigate to VMKernel>Boot.
6.Deselect the option for VMkernel.Boot.force36BitMTRRMask.
Reboot the ESX Server host for the change to take effect. Once rebooted, I can see my ESX System Memory drop to around 8.xGB. Solved.

Lastly, VMware Server 1.0.5 is available for download now.

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