VMware Infrastructure 3.5 Update 2 have been released

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.

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July 28, 2008 · Filed Under VMware

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VMware CPU Resources

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.

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July 12, 2008 · Filed Under VMware

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How to add a raw mapping device on VMware

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.

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May 3, 2008 · Filed Under How's To, Tips, VMware

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Adding a new Hard Disk in SLES

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: