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vSphere 4 kernel problem?

jlchannel — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 14:16:53 +0000

Yesterday, I did an APC PCNS installation for 4 unit of VMware vSphere 4 on my customer site and one of the ESX host go wild.

For some reason, I can’t login and the particular ESX host was disconnect for few minutes on vCenter server. Again, the console fly tons of weird error message for few minutes as screen shot below.

click to enlarge.

The similar message also display on /var/log/messages as below:

Aug 20 15:43:56 MYxxxxx02 kernel: [2992240.963580] [] default_wake_function+0×0/0xf
Aug 20 15:43:56 MYxxxxx02 kernel: [2992240.987718] [] :vmnixmod:VMnix64_SwitchPost+0x2c/0×30
Aug 20 15:43:56 MYxxxxx02 kernel: [2992241.011771] [] do_gettimeofday+0x3e/0x8b
Aug 20 15:43:56 MYxxxxx02 kernel: [2992241.035843] [] audit_syscall_entry+0x18b/0x1c1
Aug 20 15:43:56 MYxxxxx02 kernel: [2992241.059990] [] compat_sys_futex+0×101/0×121
Aug 20 15:43:56 MYxxxxx02 kernel: [2992241.084052] [] ia32_sysret+0×0/0×5
Aug 20 15:43:56 MYxxxxx02 kernel: [2992241.108200]
Aug 20 15:43:56 MYxxxxx02 kernel: [2992241.132297] ftProcMon S 000aa157ab2d703d 5720 7303 7052 7304 7300 (NOTLB)
Aug 20 15:43:56 MYxxxxx02 kernel: [2992241.180762] ffff81000e85bcf8 0000000000000086 0000000000000000 0000000000000000
Aug 20 15:43:56 MYxxxxx02 kernel: [2992241.229104] ffff81000ee72af0 ffff81000f3d4280 000000000000d9df ffff81000ee72af0
Aug 20 15:43:56 MYxxxxx02 kernel: [2992241.277503] 0000000000000000 ffff81000e85bef8 ffff81000ee72af0 ffff81000e85bdd0

Something must be wrong with the vSphere 4 kernel and the incident report have been submitted to VMware Technical team. And yet I’m still waiting for the official response.

Stay tuned…….

Tags: bug, kernel, log, messages, problem, vCenter, VMware, vSphere

Import Virtual Machine with VMware Converter 4

craig — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 18:43:41 +0000

New finding while trying to import the existing virtual machine from ESX 3.5 to vSphere 4 ESX host. I got an image from previous ESX 3.5 which is running hardware version 4. I was trying to import it to the new ESX 4.0 through the import wizard, and been failed for couple of times. During the wizard, it allow you to change the virtual machine name, thin provision, disable unnecessary services and upgrade to virtual hardware version 7. I had selected the necessary configuration but non of it were success. It had always failed at the stage of 12 % during the import process. I even had browse the datastore to monitor the progress, for unknown reason, the task will be failed for no reason, which not even a packet was drop during the process.

I decide to do a final round of import which keep every single configuration as default. All the configuration of the existing VM had not been changed and it works. After the success import, I had to manually update the vmtools and virtual hardware version. I had also cloned the virtual machine to the new VM name that I wanted to, with thin provision enable. It had been taken 6 hours for the entire import process, which is consider long as the virtual machine image was 400GB. I will suggest to leave the default setting for future import process as it shown as more consistent process. The rest of the configuration always can be done right after the success import.

Tags: Converter, ESX 3.5, ESX 4, VM 4, VM 7, VMware

Storage vMotion with VAAI on EMC

craig — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 17:30:57 +0000

In 1 of the demo video, I had seen the storage vMotion performance significant improve as much as 25% of the time and reduce the storage processor overhead at roughly 20% which offload the ESX performance during the storage vMotion execution. Previously, you may aware that the storage vMotion will usually take a long time and consume a lot of resource from Host & Storage. With vStorage API Array Integration, you will able to offload this to the storage array to handle directly which reduce the system overhead from ESX host itself.

Here is the option to turn on or off the VAAI, Value of Zero meant off, and 1 refer to ON.

CMD/s spike up to very high without VAAI while executing storage vMotion.

With VAAI, it reduce the CMD/s to < 100 per second

Performance chart been captured from vCenter for Storage vMotion with and without VAAI. Huge different shown.

In general, VAAI help to offload the workload require during storage vmotion back to the array directly and help to save more resource on the ESX host.

Tags: EMC, ESX, Storage Vmotion, VAAI, VMware

VSI Plug-in for vCenter with EMC storage

craig — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 09:40:24 +0000

The new VSI plugin from EMC allow VMware administrator to self service, manage and provide transparency and visibility about the back end SAN storage in the vSphere infrastructure. This had transformed the traditional way how the VMware administrator manage and operate the virtual infrastructure in the past. All of us may agreed that the SAN configuration details are not visible to us previously due to lack of visibility in the management console. If you would like to verify something on the SAN, you may require assistant from the SAN admin, due to restricted access to the SAN box. Now with the new VSI plug-in, it will able to provide the necessary configuration information to the VMware administrator without having to engage the SAN admin to verify some minor information. The VSI plugin support all platform for EMC product range include Clariion, Celerra and Symmetrix.

Here show the plug-in which integrated the the vi-client directly

The plug-in support all the EMC SAN product range from Clariion, Celerra to Symmetrix

Beside this, there are also the configuration wizard allow you to provision the datastore from the default storage pool which had been pre-assign from the SAN. The automation wizard will simplify the Datastore provisioning to the administrator. You will no longer require to rescan all HBA for every single host as the wizard will help you to do so during the provisioning process. 1 of the big improvement are the NFS datastore. Without the provision wizard, you may require log on to multiple console to export the NFS path and mount it to every single host 1 by 1, unless you do it with scripting method previously. You will no longer require to repeat the tire process of doing this as the automated wizard will help you to mount the NFS datastore to the cluster group automatically on the ESX host level.

Here is the NFS provision wizard. This is really helpful to simplify the process of NFS datastore provision on the ESX host.

The EMC plug-in is really helpful and I believe many of us will include this in our deployment in the future.

Tags: EMC, SAN, vCenter, VMware, vsi

VMware VMFS Versioning

jlchannel — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 07:58:50 +0000

VMware VMFS (Virtual Machine File System) is VMware, Inc.’s cluster file system designed for VMware Infrastructure or VMware vSphere. Basically VMFS used to store virtual machine disk images, including snapshots.

According to Wikipedia,

VMFS version 1 was used by ESX Server v1.x, which is no longer sold. It didn’t feature the cluster filesystem properties and was used only by a single server at a time. VMFS1 is a flat filesystem with no directory structure. — Officially named “VMware File System”
VMFS version 2 is used by ESX Server v2.x and (in a limited capacity) v3.x. VMFS2 is a flat filesystem with no directory structure. — Officially named “VMware File System”
VMFS version 3 is used by ESX Server v3.x and vSphere (4.x). As a most noticeable feature, it introduced directory structure in the filesystem. Older versions of ESX Server cannot read or write VMFS3 volumes. Beginning from ESX 3 and VMFS3, virtual machine configuration files are stored in the VMFS partition by default. — Officially named “VMware Virtual Machine File System”

In order to know the exact VMFS version number, see below:

VMware ESX 3 – VMFS ver 3.21
VMware ESX 3.5 – VMFS ver 3.31
VMware vSphere 4 – VMFS ver 3.33
VMware vSphere 4.1 – VMFS ver 3.46

Please take note that migration between different VMFS version may cause some problem in the sense of vSphere vStorage features, probably you may read more here or refer to vSphere Upgrade Guide.

Tags: ESX, version, VMFS, VMware, vSphere

VMware vSphere 4.1 License Comparison Chart

jlchannel — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 03:39:57 +0000

VMware vSphere 4.1 was release on 13 July 2010 last week. VMware vSphere 4.1 introduced an impressive number of new features and new licensing format.

The following is complete VMware vSphere 4.1 license comparison chart.

click to enlarge.

Please feel free to download from here.

Tags: chart, comparison, Enterprise, essential, License, licensing, VMware, vSphere

VLAN ID not remove

jlchannel — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 04:13:18 +0000

To support VLANs for VMware Infrastructure users, the virtual or physical network must tag the Ethernet frames with 802.1Q tags using virtual switch tagging (VST), virtual machine guest tagging (VGT), or external switch tagging (EST). If you’re looking for how to configure VLAN tagging in VMware vSphere, you may refer to VMware KB 1004074 & KB 1004252.

Last week I have configured a VLAN tagging on one of my vSphere 4 Update 2 cluster and due to some reason, I have remove the VLAN ID manually.

After hard reboot, the VLAN ID remains and it’s not removing from Port Group. I was surprised and I guess probably this is a bug for vSphere Update 2? Again, I tried with manual reboot and it’s worked. All the VLAN ID has been removed.

Anyway, I do not make VMware support report and if you have similar case, please feel free to share with me.

Tags: ID, tag, tagging, VLAN, VMware, vSphere

Windows 2008 R2 officially supported on vCenter 4.1

craig — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 12:52:15 +0000

With the VMware vSphere 4.1 release, VMware had officially supported the Windows 2008 R2 with the latest release of the official document. It had taken such a long period for VMWare to officially announce in the compatibility matrix documentation.

Please find the full information from here.

Tags: ESX, VMware, vSphere 4.1, windows 2008 R2

VMware vSphere 4.1 avaible for download now

craig — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 12:41:53 +0000

I just got an email this morning from VMware inform that the official version of VMware vSphere 4.1 are available to be downloaded from the official website. There are a lot of improvement if you compare ESX 4.1 VS ESX 4.0.

Significant Improve on Scalability, IO control for both Network and Storage, Active Directory Integration on Host level, up to 8 vMotion concurrent session at 1 time.

For short review as what’s new on ESX 4.1, you can refer to the official link here.

Tags: ESX4.1, VMware

Surprise Finding on ESX Host after SAN switch outage

craig — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 15:14:28 +0000

I was busy setup the demo solution for the Cisco summit yesterday. The Demo we had were displaying the VMware, Cisco UCS, Nexus 5000, MDS 9124 & Netapp Storage Solution. 1 of the Surprise thing happened during the setup, which the power source for our MDS 9124 had been tripped during the installation yesterday. In this scenerio, all our connection to ESX host and VM were disconnected. It took us for 25 mins to recovered the power failure and the MDS Switch was back on line after that. I was thought to reboot all the ESX host as we are performing BOOT FROM SAN for all the ESX hosts that we setup. Surprise happened here, which I found all the ESX host were still continue running. I did the command uptime and check the system uptime from vcenter, it showed that the ESX host were not rebooted during the SAN connection drop from UCS to our Netapp FAS storage.

I further checked the virtual machines been power on in the ESX servers, which show all the VM were continue running without system crash or rebooted. Now I realize that the failure on SAN switch may not necessary result system crash or hung, in fact it may allow you resume the system state once the SAN switch are back online, of course, this is no guarantee assumption, just some surprise finding experienced yesterday would like to share here.

Tags: Cisco UCS, ESX, MDS, Netapp, Nexus 5000, SAN, VMware