Malaysia VMware Communities » vSphere

VCP 5 Exam Experience

craig — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 18:21:33 +0000

I just did my VCP 5 Exam las 2 days ago. I would like to share some of my experience to you, who may plan to go for the exam. Currently, VMware will allow all VCP 4 to proceed to direct exam upgrade path for VCP 5. You need to get your VCP 5 before end of Feb 2012. If you are failed to obtained the VCP 5 after end of Feb 2012, you will require to attend the official training before you can sit for the exam.

Well, I would like to share some of my thought and experience for the VCP 5 exam. I had passed it but it took me more than 1.5 hours as I recheck all the 80 questions after I answered the 1st round. I used to be the 1st VCP 5 in Malaysia, but I am not sure whether I am going to be 1st VCP 5 again in Malaysia. The exam is never easy as most of the questions are deep dive into specified technology area, and you will require a lot of hands on deployment, support administration or lab environment to visualize or provide the correct answer. Simon Long’s blog may had helped little bit, but to my surprise, most questions are relevant to the administration experience on VMware stuffs.

If you plan to buy DUMP to pass this exam, I will suggest you save the money and time to perform more testing in your own environment. Most questions are relevant to our day to day job rather than theory.Please ensure you master the functionality on vsphere 5 with all new capabilities and console. The exam cover Hypervisor, Storage, Cloud, Networking, HA deep dive and scenario base troubleshooting. P

I am glad that VMware had set the standard for the certification high, and I hope they will continue maintain the quality of the certification.

I am officially VCP 5 now…. time to enjoy my weekend and good luck to whoever plan to go for VCP 5.

Federated hybrid cloud with vCloud director 1.5

craig — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 21:47:51 +0000

VMworld 2011 had focused a lot on private and hybrid cloud computing environment which address the concerns from enterprise over the public cloud offering in the market today. One of the key highlight during the event was the new capability over vCloud director version 1.5.

With vCD 1.5, you can now manage both private and public as a hybrid mode from the administration with secure federated. It allow you to subscribe, manage, relocate and provision anywhere you prefer, could be internal infrastructure or public cloud provider you choosen and manage in same console. I went through the hands on lab session for this topic and found the setup was great.

It took me sbout 1.5 hours to complete the lab and the lab instruction is clear and no customization required. I would like to thank the folks from vmware who creted the lab and allow me to try it out. Every configuration is web base and wizard base, which allow the administrator to setup and configure easily. Hybrid cloud no longer a concept, whih I believe is real and many users will seriously consider it in the future.

New license offer from VMware vSphere 5 on 3rd party VDI solution

craig — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 16:59:58 +0000

VMware vSphere 5 had been revised to provide better business case to the users who willing to maintain VMware as the hypervisor and run 3rd party VDI solution beside VMware view. The pre-requisite to do this, you must 1st ensure the ESX host cluster are separated from the existing Server cluster which are not running VDI in place. This could be good news to all of us which think to maintain the VMWare as the hypervisor and utilize 3rd party VDI solution in the same organization.

There will be no VRAM limit for this case, but it may be capped around 100 VDI per ESX host. I still yet to go in to details to really find out this. With the new revise, it seems had pleased some of the users who complained about the vTAX issue in vsphere 5, but there are still many users who are complained the SNS entitlement who had purchased upfront for 36 months which end up require to top up their license now.

Rumours from Blogger about new changes on vSphere 5 license change

craig — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 14:59:03 +0000

Since the Official launch of VMware vSphere 5, the hottest topic been discuss in virtualization is all about the new license been implemented by VMware more than what’s new in vSphere 5. After few weeks of complain, discussion and feedback from the users or partner, there are rumours saying that vmware is now ready to revise the license with better capacity limit per CPU sockets.

Here are some of the details to share, which been discuss on the internet frequently and yet to be announced and verified with VMware.

VMware vSphere 5 Essentials will give a 24GB vRAM entitlement
VMware vSphere 5 Essentials Plus will give a 32GB vRAM entitlement
Max vRAM in Essentials / Essentials Plus will be maxed at 192GB vRAM
VMware vSphere 5 Standard vRAM entitlement has changed to 32GB
VMware vSphere 5 Enterprise vRAM entitlement will be doubled to 64GB
VMware vSphere 5 Enterprise Plus vRAM entitlement will be doubled to 96GB

Well, looks like VMware do listen to the feedback, if the above is correct, I think it at least make more sense compare to the previous information been released. One thing i had found from the discussion forum, high consolidation ration no longer unacceptable in fact it had been well adopted by world wide users. Those feedback on the forum had shown that most production host today are beyond 96GB memory with 2 x 6 cores in place tody.

Let’s wait for the announcement from VMware to verify the statement above.

VMware vSphere 5 Official GA Date?

jlchannel — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 16:05:27 +0000

VMware vSphere 5.0 have been launched since 12 July 2011 but the official GA still a missing date. For the past 1 week, my colleague or my friend keep ask about the VMware vSphere 5 Official GA date. Sorry I do not have the answer, please refer to VMware Inc.

Today, I just would like share something interesting that I found from one of the VMware document that probably tell us the answer.

click to enlarge

Can you see the answer? Let’s wait and see the official announcement from VMware Inc.

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

Update Manager Changes on vSphere 5

craig — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 16:27:38 +0000

There are major change on the up coming version of Update Manager on vSphere 5. I was quite surprise with the change which I found out during the training today. In previous version, the update manager was able to provide patch update to virtual machine and ESX host. Which allow users to patch the virtual machine for both windows and Linux easily without require to purchase additional software management tools. With the new version of update manager, this capability had removed. It will only support the patch capability for ESX host level. You will no longer enjoy the benefits to perform patch update for virtual machine with Update Manager vSphere 5.

I was quite disappointing with this changes as I had used to the patch capability on virtual machines in the previous version. I will need to clarify further with the local representative about the changes on this.

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!!!!!!

Bugs on ESX Host and vCenter for ESX 4.0 Update 2

Domain Controller Migration from P2V or V2V

craig — Thu, 26 May 2011 18:26:55 +0000

I had some discussion internally with my buddy today about this topic mainly due to some challenges been faced by the client as their current active DNS and Domain controller is hung once a while due to unknown issue. The current domain controller are hosted on the Windows server 2005 which was not the matured product that came to market more than 5 years ago. They do have a new VMware vSphere 4 Infrastructure in place now.

The question posted by my buddy was; how we could move or migrate the same state of the virtual machine to a physical or virtual without impact to the production environment? My answer to him was big NO as this is Domain controller and not a normal application or database server migration.

We went through some due diligence and found that certain machines had been pointing to this DC for the DNS server preference IP. In this case, we may need to ensure Preferred DNS server IP on the client are require to change.

I would like to talk a little bits of the possibility we usually considered while come to p2v migration or v2v migration about the Domain controller.

As you may know, p2v a domain controller is strongly not recommended. I will usually setup a new DC on the VMware farm that I had, and perform the reconfiguration and role transfer as usual on the Domain controller level for the ease of migration. This mainly just follow the best practices from Microsoft for replacing a DC in the environment.

There may be some cases while users insist to maintain the same host name and IP of the DC, which you really want to perform a conversion from p2v or v2v, I will suggest to try on cold clone method. Which in this case, you will require to power down the domain controller.

Again, no right or wrong, on which method you prefer to do, but just be cautious as reminder that migrating a DC are not same as common application server as we do.

PSOD on HP Proliant G7 with AMD 6100 Series