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Hitachi Storage Manager for VMware vCenter

jlchannel — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 15:46:03 +0000

Finally Hitachi Data System(HDS) released the Storage Manager Plugin for VMware vCenter server.

Hitachi Data Systems announces the availability of specific integration for VMware’s vCenter called “Hitachi Storage
Manager for VMware vCenter”. Hitachi, Ltd. and Hitachi Data Systems jointly developed this functionality in which this will
be installed as a separate plug-in for VMware vCenter. Customers upgrading to vSphere 4.1 and vSphere 5.0 using the
Hitachi Adaptable Modular Storage 2000, Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform or Hitachi Universal Storage Platform V will
automatically be able to leverage the capabilities of this key integration.

The Hitachi Storage Manager plug-in for vCenter supports both:

VMware vSphere 4.1 and vCenter 4.1
VMware vSphere 5.0 and vCenter 5.0

Key features of the plug in include:

Provisioning of new datastores into the AMS2000 (VSP and USP-V in a future release)
Capacity utilization for datastores
Provide a self-service solution that allows customers vSphere administrators to easily manage Hitachi storage through the vCenter Console.
Enable Joint Customers of VMware and Hitachi Data Systems to provide an end-to-end solution for management of their VMware Infrastructure on Hitachi Storage.
Close a key integration and competitive gap that other Vendors have existing vCenter integrations.
Correlation between VMware datastores, ESX hosts, virtual machines and storage resources on the AMS2000, VSP and USP-V systems

Please refer to http://www.hds.com/go/vmware or any local HDS representative for more information about Hitachi Storage Manager Plugin for VMware vCenter.

Purple screen for ESX host during vSphere 5 Upgrade

craig — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 18:26:09 +0000

Just read through 1 of the KB here which referring to the potential risk to create a purple screen scenerio during the vSphere 5 upgrade while you ESX host update 2 could potential conflict with the vCenter 5.

You may encounter an issue where:

You have recently upgraded your vCenter Server to version 5.0
You have hosts of minimum version ESXi 4.0 Update 2 (build 261974) and maximum version ESXi 4.0 Patch 9 (build 360236) in your vCenter Server inventory
After the vpxa agents are upgraded, the ESXi 4.0 Update 2 hosts experience a purple screen that includes this error:NOT_IMPLEMENTED bora/vmkernel/filesystems/visorfs/visorfsObj.c:3391

Solution

This issue has been resolved in ESXi 4.0 Update 3. To avoid this issue, upgrade all affected hosts to at least ESXi 4.0 Update 3 (build 398348) before upgrading vCenter Server to 5.0.

please refer to the full post here for more details.

VMware vSphere 5 Web Client

craig — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 16:43:24 +0000

If you require to manage a different Virtual Data center with long distance and latency, now you can consider the alternative management tools beside viClient. vSphere 5 come with a new features call vSphere web client. Which allow you to perform the basic administration from the browser level. It does not allow users to launch the virtual machine console from the web client.

Below are some of the screen shot to share

Option to select vSphere web client for vSphere 5

Configuration wizard for web client

Screen shot on Web Client Management console

VMware vSphere 5 License Comparison Chart

jlchannel — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 15:25:18 +0000

As of 12 July 2011, VMware officially launched the 5.0 release of vSphere. VMware vSphere 5 introduced an impressive number of new features and new licensing format.

The following is complete VMware vSphere 5 license comparison chart.

click to enlarge.

Anyway, you can see “Compare vSphere 5.0 Official Editions” here and here.

VMware vSphere 4.1 Update 1 on SQL 2008 R2

craig — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 00:29:42 +0000

Microsoft SQL 2008 R2 had been officially supported for VMware vSphere 4.1 update 1. Previously it doesn’t supported if you are not on update 1. I just did an upgrade yesterday and here is some finding to share. 1st, I tried to perform an upgrade as usual, and of course I retain all the database information to prevent reconfiguration and performance data lost for the previous environment. Unfortunately, the update manager portion had given error which it not allowed us to continue the installation. It left me no choice that a re installation will be required. If you hit to the same situation, do not panic as your previous configuration will still retain, and no down time require even you are on dVswitch. Ensure no host name changes in this case will be safe enough for you to proceed further.

During the re-installation, you I will suggest you follow the sequence to un-install all the vCenter application 1 by 1. Update Manager required to be un-install before you uninstall the vCenter server. You can backup and re-attach the SQL DB as the MDF and LDF files is in place. If your vCenter is on virtual environment, strongly recommend a snapshot taken before any changes been made. Once you re-attach the DB, you will require to perform the DSN connections to be created from ODBC.

Here is the tricky part you need to take note. It take me 2 hours to figure out due to some confuse and mistake. vCenter Server will able to run on 64 bits DSN as standard, you will not face any issue on that. When come to update manager, DO NOT try to access the ODBCAD32.exe from start run directly on windows. It will point you to the 64 bits ODBC configuration tab. You will require to browse to the path directly as :

%systemdrive%\Windows\SysWoW64\Odbcad32.exe

Honestly speaking, I had no idea why windows had this issue which you required to manually execute the file follow the full path rather than the auto search, this I leave it to Microsoft to explain . Once you launch the right odbcad32.exe, you will able to access the 32 bit ODBC to create the DSN as usual. How you compare whether is correct, the DSN on the vCenter server that you created on 64 bits will not shown on the 32 bits. Then of course you can continue whatever necessary installation to complete the upgrade or installation as usual. Good Luck!!!!!!

Setup cannot create vCenter Server Directory Services instance

jlchannel — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 04:12:38 +0000

While doing the VMware vCenter 4.1 setup on Windows 2008 R2 recently, I have encountered a problem “Error 28038. Setup cannot create vCenter Server Directory Services instance” after re-setup vCenter server.

The solution is simple as below:

Remove Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services (AD LDS) server role on Windows Server 2008.

Click Administrative Tools
Click Server Manager
Click Roles
Click Remove Roles
Click Next
Un-check Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
Click Next
Click Remove
Click Close

For more information, please refer to VMware KB 1015887 and 1013822.

Performance Overview charts fail after Daylight Savings changes are applied

craig — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 15:42:31 +0000

Some of you may experience the issue from vCenter once the day light saving changes are applied. The performance record and data from vCenter will not be shown.

Official KB 1030305

Please refer the full KB here. The temporally work around solution are included in the KB as well. According to the KB, this only happen on vCenter 4.1

Does VMware vCenter Storage Plugin Really Matter?

jlchannel — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 15:52:11 +0000

I have a discussion about VMware vCenter Storage Plugin during VMware Hitachi boot camp today.

As I know EMC have EMC Storage Viewer, EMC Celera SRM Failback Tool & EMC Celera SRM Failback Tool and NetApp have Rapid Cloning Utility (RCU), Virtual Storage Console (VSC), SnapManager® for Virtual Infrastructure & SANScreen® VMInsight vCenter Plugin. I’m not going to discuss about the vCenter plugin features here.

Does vSphere admin really need VMware vCenter Storage Plugin?

For most of the company, they have many IT teams such as network team, storage team, server team or vSphere team. Imagine if you were part of the vSphere or Storage admin team, do you think vSphere admin team should overwrite storage guy job? Frankly speaking, these kinds of politics already happen in many companies today. VMware did a good job by having VAAI API enable. The storage guys should focus on their storage and vSphere admin should focus on their VM environment.

Personally I’m not familiar with most of the VMware vCenter Storage Plugin. Do you think VMware vCenter Storage related plugins is a must? What is the benefit or advantage? Do you think storage vendor should keep working on this? What do you think?

Maximize CPU utilization on ESX host with Cisco UCS B250M2

craig — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 16:01:50 +0000

We were doing some stress test with more than 15 VMs on a single B250M2 Cisco UCS blade machine with 2 x Intel 6 Cores 2.93Ghz, and 192GB memory. While are stress test are pretty simple, each VM been provisioned with 2 vCpu and 4GB of physical memory. We maximize the CPU load of all the virtual machine and end up I was able to capture the print screen as attach here.

Weird Thing had happened here as we maximize the CPU utilization, but the total MHZ on the ESX host had exceeded the calculation if we base on 12 x 2.93 Ghz. I am still trying to understand in details how the system can stretch more than the available capacity on the total Ghz it suppose to have with the chip set on the machine. If you do have any valuable comment to explain this, feel free to comment here as I am interesting to learn this out.

Tips to troubleshoot Nexus 1000V

craig — Sat, 02 Oct 2010 16:14:29 +0000

If you are deploying nexus 1000v in your VMware vSphere environment, you may usually hit to the point require to unload VEM, VSM or reconfigure. Today I found some tips just to share here. If you accidentally deleted your VSM which before you unload the VSM from the vCenter, you will either end up having orphan nexus 1000V show up in your vCenter. Even if you try to name the same as previous, it will prompt the error telling you that the previous extension key and your current extension are mismatch.

Do not panic as you can easily fix this by manually configure your extension key by using the command below

n1000v(config)# vmware vc extension-key

This should able to make your new VSM to have the same extension key as previous. Once you had done this, you should able to reconfigure your new VSM to have the same name with previous. The orphane nexus 1000V DV Switch will not happen in this case.
Good Luck!!!!!