VMware Network Performance

I found this performance study from VMware today, it was actually released yesterday but i want to put a small post about it anyway because i found the results very interesting!

This study shows that the virtual machines on vSphere 4.1 can saturate the physical network cards at 10 Gbit and also what was cool, VM-VM traffic inside one host could get speeds up to 27 Gbit. In this graph that i have copied from the report you can see that with only one vCPU you can get almost 10 Gbit both in transmit and recive, this is really cool cause this shows that virtual machines runnig in vSphere can be loaded with serious amount of network traffic and still deliver!

This report among other shows that there is no longer arguments for using a physical installation for your critical applications! and with the features that comes with virtualization you get more security and availability also.

Collaboration is everything..

Today i have tried to inform my coworkers that we need to collaborate more!

Collaboration means working jointly for success and not as in some cases, solo..

If we have the tools to work together we as a company also needs to do it more actively. My point here is that in the world we live in today there is a distraction from all media sources which in some cases leads to different implementations and deliveries and to unite the companies employees we maybe need updated tools and processes or start actually use the one we have, so we can deliver better and faster and also in a standardized way no matter whom it is delivering, this would give a single method of delivery and give the company a stronger brand and competitiveness compared to other companies in the same industry segment.

The challenge here would be to get all of the coworkers to accept and do the deliveries in a standardized way and help develop the process delivery when they find things that can be done in a better way. The documentations of this is the Management headache but everyone is involved in the development process!

HP Blade 460c G7 strange issues

Today i have been helping a customer with their Hyper-V R2 Cluster and patching it with the hotfix for westmere processor. one strange issue was that we found two of the blades reporting only 36 GB RAM, while the others correctly showed 72 GB RAM. As it was another consultant that was responsible for assembling the servers we first thought that they had missed to put in all DIMMs, when we loooked in the servers all slots where filled? And when we put it back in the chassi and powered on the server correctly showed 72 GB RAM! really strange.

after boot:

i used the following powershell commands in VMM powershell console to get the memory for the cluster nodes:


Get-VMHostCluster -name cluster01
Get-VMHost -VMHostCluster $VMCluster | ft Name, TotalMemory

If this happens again we will report it to the HP Support, (Edit) it happend again now..  it seems to be related to a reboot of the hosts 🙁

Add multiple cores on your vCPU´s in a VMware vSphere VM

And why would you like to add cores to a virtual machines vCPU´s? well as the following table shows, if you have a physical win 2008 r2 standard with 2 pCPU´s and 4 cores each and you want to virtualize the machine with the same amount of cores for processing, the virtual machine cannot utilize the 8 vCPU´s because of the version of the operative system.

How do we in the virtualization platform then?

In VMware vSphere you can use the advanced settings and configure cores on vCPU and lure the operating system to use 8 cores..

 

there is a VMware KB for this 1010184

If you set up a new virtual machine you would probably set it up with enterprise or datacenter edition and then this is not an issue. there might be software that is licensed per cpu and then this could be a way to use more cores instead of more vCPU´s and get better speed and still be in compliance with the license.

 

Microsoft Virtualization Jumpstart videos for VMware Professionals

On Technet Edge there is a couple of videos for Virtualization admins to learn more about how Microsoft Virtualization solution works.

It is a very good way to get up to speed what Microsoft has to offer and that it is a competitive solution!

from the jumpstart site:

About this Jump Start series:

The “Microsoft Virtualization for VMware Professionals” Jump Start is specially tailored for VMware and Microsoft virtualization technology pros. This cutting-edge course features expert instruction and real-world demonstrations of Hyper-V, many components of the System Center Suite, including VMM 2012, and a myriad of VDI solutions. This course is designed for Data Center Managers, IT Professionals, IT Decision Makers, Network Administrators, Storage/Infrastructure Administrators & Architects. Expert IT infrastructure consultant, Corey Hynes, and Microsoft Technical Evangelist, Symon Perriman, leveraged an engaging “team teaching” approach which makes the class as entertaining as it is educational.

Click here to watch the complete video series


 

Hyper-V 2008 R2 hotfix CSV redirect

Hi

on one of the blogs i am following, Adian Finn, he has a post about a new hotfix from Microsoft that has come out regarding a problem with Hyper-V clusters and CSV volumes in redirected mode, read more at this link and get the hotfix

Stop error 0x0000007a occurs on a virtual machine that is running on a Windows Server 2008 R2-based failover cluster with a cluster shared volume, and the state of the CSV is switched to redirected access

Consider the following scenario:

  • You enable the cluster shared volume (CSV) feature on a Windows Server 2008 R2-based failover cluster.
  • You create a virtual machine on the CSV on a cluster node.
  • You start the virtual machine on the cluster node.
  • You move the CSV owner to another cluster node, and you change the state of CSV to redirected access.
  • The connection that is used for redirected access is switched to another connection when one of the following scenarios occurs:
    • The cable for local area network (LAN) is disconnected.
    • The related network adapter is disabled.
    • The connection is switched by using Failover Cluster Manager.

In this scenario, you receive a Stop error message that resembles the following in the virtual machine:

STOP 0x0000007a ( parameter1 , parameter2 , parameter3 , parameter4 )
KERNEL_DATA_INPAGE_ERROR

Note

  • The parameters in this Stop error message vary, depending on the configuration of the computer.
  • Not all “0x0000007a” Stop error messages are caused by this issue.
  • You may also receive other Stop error messages when this issue occurs. For example, you may receive a “0x0000004F” Stop error message.

Virtualization platform matrix

Found this matrix over virtualization solutions and at this site you can get quite a good overview what the competitors can offer and what is enough for your virtualization solution. Still VMware is a bit ahead but Microsoft and their Hyper-V solution with System Center are getting closer.

I believe that every virtualization platform need to be thoroughly designed and thought through not just on the  technical level but also at the organisation and operational levels. As they write in this book, “Design is making the VMware vSphere environment do the things it needs to do”

I really want to recommend this book as it covers much more than just the technical bits on how to tweak the vSphere installation.

//N

Some wine and a ESXi transition online course tonight

Found from one blog a post about a free ESXi transition course and the free ebook got me intrested, i think i have some knowledge about vmware and ESXi but it is always good to get more information and input in the topic..

for those who want the ebook here is the link http://blogs.vmware.com/esxi/2011/04/become-a-true-esxi-expert-with-the-new-free-vmware-elearning-course-and-ebook-offer.html

Playing around with Powershell and SCVMM 2012 beta and Hyper-V R2

Hi

Have been playing a little with powershell and SCVMM2012 and with these simple lines i add 64 SCSI vhd drives á 4 GB each and then delete them all while the VM is running


$VM = Get-VM -Name "VMc2test"

for ($i=0;$i -le 63;$i++){

$vhdfilename = "vhdtest" + $i
New-VirtualDiskDrive -VM $VM -Dynamic -Filename $vhdfilename -sCSI -Size 4000 -Bus 0 -LUN $i
}

and to delete them

$vhds = @(Get-VirtualDiskDrive -VM vmc2test | where {$_.BusType -match "SCSI"})

foreach ($vhd in $vhds){

Remove-VirtualDiskDrive -VirtualDiskDrive $vhd

}

and why did i select the ones that had SCSI in the remove part, well the system vhd where the OS resides is on the IDE controller so i can safely assume that the OS will still be accessible, as some of you already know in Hyper-V the boot volume must reside on a IDE controller for the VM to boot.