VirtualOSiti LLC CloudBlog

Best Practices: Round Robin for Storage Paths – Unless you can get EMC PowerPath

Scott Williams — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 03:05:36 +0000

EMC PowerPath is a great product with a price. The alternative is to use Round Robin in Active|Active Storage Arrays for Path Policies in ESXi (vSphere) 5. PowerPath gives you true load balancing and the best performance combined with FCoE and EMC Storage Arrays with VAAI.

Round Robin offers better performance compared to MRU (Most-Recently Used), but it can only leverage the full bandwidth of a single path instead of all Paths being used via PowerPath. PowerPath for VMware comes into play in concurrent operations with lets say – svmotion – where powerpath really shines, as well as restores via Networker and Avamar. PowerPath will help in cases where the Mean Time To Recovery is high and enhances the new features of sDRS.

AutoUnattend.xml – A Decent Example (Finally)

Scott Williams — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 02:50:07 +0000

Finally - after some R&D a good AutoUnattend.xml Example Template takes shape for 2008 R2.

This file will work with Windows 2008 R2 Enterprise.

It will format all drives, and will assign a static IP address with a Default Gateway.

I am also in the process of developing an IPv6 Schema. I hope this helps.

———————-



    
        http://schemas.microsoft.com/WMIConfig/2002/State" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
            
                Never
            
            
                Never
                
                    
                        
                            1
                            1
                            Primary
                        
                    
                    
                        
                            true
                            true
                            NTFS
                            SYSTEM
                            C
                            1
                            1
                        
                    
                    0
                    true
                
            
            
                
                    
                        
                            /IMAGE/INDEX
                            1
                        
                    
                    true
                    Never
                
            
            
                Never
                true
            
            
                
                    
                    Never
                
                true
            
        
        http://schemas.microsoft.com/WMIConfig/2002/State" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
            
                Never
                en-US
            
            en-US
            en-US
            en-US
            en-US
            en-US
        
    
    
        http://schemas.microsoft.com/WMIConfig/2002/State" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
            false
        
    
    
        http://schemas.microsoft.com/WMIConfig/2002/State" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
            
                
                    
                        false
                        10
                        false
                    
                    Local Area Connection
                    
                        192.168.10.10/24
                    
                    
                        
                            1
                            10
                            192.168.1.1
                            0.0.0.0/0

VMware vApprun Troubleshooting

Scott Williams — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 03:15:19 +0000

OVF files created as vApps cannot be deployed directly to vSphere hosts, they must be deployed via vCenter.

Invalid arguments – related to vapprun being a batch file. Variables and arguments need to be placed in quotes.

Not Found – Arguments are case-sensitive ( Linux compatibility)

To date – VMware vCloud director is currently not compatible with OVF vApps. They must be exported to vCenter, then converted to vCloud format.

VMware vApprun Workspace Automation on VMware Workstation

Scott Williams — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 03:11:43 +0000

The following batch script was created to automate the creation of a Workstation vApp. The vapprun command is called due to it also consisting of a batch file. This script (VAPP.cmd) creates two VM’s on the fly. Virtual Machines must be present before vApp creation.

VAPP.cmd:

—

@ ECHO OFF

rem # VAPPRUN TESTING SCRIPT

rem # — Set Variables –

set VAPP=TESTAVAPP

set VM1=TESTAVM1

set VM2=TESTAVM2

rem # Set Disk size in GB

set DISK=5

rem # — END Set Variables –

rem # — Start Creation –

rem # Create vAPP Container

echo Initializing vAPP Container called %VAPP%

call vapprun init

rem # Create or Link VM with VMDK Disk

echo Creating %VM1%

call vapprun create-vm %VM1% “disk=%DISK%”

rem # Create or Link VM with VMDK Disk

echo Creating %VM2%

call vapprun create-vm %VM2% “disk=%DISK%”

rem # Create vAPP Instance

echo Creating vAPP called %VAPP%

call vapprun create-vapp %VAPP%

rem # Link VM to vAPP Instance

echo Linking %VM1% to vAPP Container %VAPP%

call vapprun edit %VM1% “parent=%VAPP%”

rem # Link VM to vAPP Instance

echo Linking %VM2% to vAPP Container %VAPP%

call vapprun edit %VM2% “parent=%VAPP%”

rem # List VM / vAPP status

call vapprun list

rem # Set Startup Order

call vapprun edit %VM1% “startOrder=10″ “startWait=10″ “waitForTools=True” “stopWait=10″

rem # Set Startup Order

call vapprun edit %VM2% “startOrder=20″ “startWait=10″ “waitForTools=True” “stopWait=10″

rem # Start vAPP and VM Guests in Workstation

echo Starting Composite vAPP “%VAPP%”

call vapprun start -gui %VAPP%

rem # List VM / vAPP Status

call vapprun list

The following script illustrates how the vApprun command ‘links’ to VM’s to allow them to become part of the vApp via the path to .vmx files:

VAPPLNK.cmd:

—

@ ECHO OFF

rem # VAPPRUN TESTING SCRIPT

rem # — Set Variables –

set VAPP=TESTAVAPP

set VM1=TESTAVM1

set VM2=TESTAVM2

rem # — Linked VM Variables –

set VM1LINKPATH=”vmx=.\WindowsServer2008R2x64\WindowsServer2008R2x64.vmx”

set VM2LINKPATH=”vmx=.\WindowsServer2008R2x64.2\WindowsServer2008R2x64.vmx”

rem # — END Set Variables –

rem # — Start Creation –

rem # Create vAPP Container

echo Initializing vAPP Container called %VAPP%

call vapprun init

rem # Create or Link VM with VMDK Disk

echo Creating %VM1%

.\src\vapprun.py link-vm %VM1% %VM1LINKPATH%

rem # Create or Link VM with VMDK Disk

echo Creating %VM2%

.\src\vapprun.py link-vm %VM2% %VM2LINKPATH%

rem # Create vAPP Instance

echo Creating vAPP called %VAPP%

call vapprun create-vapp %VAPP%

rem # Link VM to vAPP Instance

echo Linking %VM1% to vAPP Container %VAPP%

call vapprun edit %VM1% “parent=%VAPP%”

rem # Link VM to vAPP Instance

echo Linking %VM2% to vAPP Container %VAPP%

call vapprun edit %VM2% “parent=%VAPP%”

rem # List VM / vAPP status

call vapprun list

rem # Set Startup Order

call vapprun edit %VM1% “startOrder=10″ “startWait=10″ “waitForTools=True” “stopWait=10″

rem # Set Startup Order

call vapprun edit %VM2% “startOrder=20″ “startWait=10″ “waitForTools=True” “stopWait=10″

rem # Start vAPP and VM Guests in Workstation

echo Starting Composite vAPP “%VAPP%”

call vapprun start -gui %VAPP%

rem # List VM / vAPP Status

call vapprun list

—-　

As illustrated, vApps may be created in batch to ensure repeatability and testing.

VMware OVF | OVFTool 2.0.1

Scott Williams — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 03:05:30 +0000

The Open Virtualization Format (OVF) is an industry standard that contains metadata about Virtual Machine images in XML format. The OVF Tool provided by VMware (Version 2.0.1 | May 2011) converts vSphere, VMX (VM), OVA (Xensource), and vApp sources and targets including vApprun Workspaces. The OVFTool can be used to deploy via the command-line directly to vCenter including vApps created by VMware Workstation using vApprun. Sources can be invoked from http, https, ftp, and local filesystems. The OVFTool has the capability to sign and validate OVF x509 certificate signatures. OVF Support is also built into the vSphere Client and the OVFTool can also deploy directly to a vApprun Workspace.

VMware Workstation as a vAPP Deployment Tool

Scott Williams — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 03:01:24 +0000

VMware Workstation can be used to create or evaluate OS images on a client PC. Once created, they can be converted to the OVF format. Once they are converted to OVF, they can be deployed on a vCenter Server or vSphere host. Gold OS images may also have parameters that may be scripted after being unique via Sysprep; then customized via OVF environment variables that may be invoked after post installation.

VMware vApp Virtual Machine Concept

Scott Williams — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 02:59:50 +0000

From a vApp context, a Virtual Machine may be linked or created by tools such as VMware Workstation, vSphere VI Client, vCLI, PowerCLI, and vApprun. The Virtual Machine is an independent entity that is ‘linked’ within a given vApp. Once a Virtual Machine is created, it can then be converted to an OVF as an Appliance. If a requirement is in need of multiple VM’s, they can be grouped or linked into a vApp and also converted into an OVF composite file as an Application Appliance. Once VM’s and vApps are converted to OVF, they are compressed with a ratio greater than 50%, and are transportable to vSphere Hosts and vCenter Servers respectively.

For example, a vApp with 2 VM’s may have 80GB disks that are ‘thin-provisioned’. Since these disks are thin, the average usage of a Windows 2008 R2 OS would be at 8GB of disk usage. With 2 VM’s this would be 16GB with 160GB datastore ‘potential storage’. Once converted to an OVF, these VM’s consume roughly 6.5GB of space for deployment. By comparison that equates to a 96% savings in storage space for Gold Model provisioning for the OS only. Once deployed, the ‘thin’ provisioned disks may be converted to ‘thick’ to enhance performance via SVMotion or on the fly via the ‘thicktarget’ switch within the OVFTool command.

The VMware vAPP

Scott Williams — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 02:58:17 +0000

On the VMware platform, Virtual Application stacks known as vApps are created as containers that support multiple virtual machines that can be created as a composite software solution. This article series also outlines VMware Workstation and OVFTool capabilities in the creation of vApps. The vApp solution can be packaged and deployed via a single OVF (Open Virtual Format) file descriptor. A vApp has power-on order operations for multiple VM Guests and allows for a flexible mechanism of paremeters being established within each given VM guest. VMware vApp containers include Resource Pool functionality within the vAPP and OS level properties that may be configured on the fly such as IP addressing, configurations and automated scripts within a contained vApp VM Guest.

More to follow in this Series…

IP Version 6 | A Primer

Scott Williams — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 03:26:27 +0000

IPv6 can be very intimidating. Guess what, you may already have it on your network. For example try pinging ::1. Now you know… There are millions of addresses that can be created from an IPv6 Address. If you look down at a square yard of sand. You can potentially assign an IP address to each grain, and have plenty to go.

Here is what is interesting about IPv6 that we will cover in this series of articles.

1. It is easier to configure than IPv4 (crazy)

2. It is easier to configure IPv6 on Cisco Equipment (no way! Yes MPBGP is easier)

3. There is no subnetting. (What? Now I can’t impress anyone…) More on this including the breakdown of the IPv6 Address. The new fancy word is called a ‘prefix’. (Add that to your resume’. It makes a great keyword…)

4. There are no broadcasts. (That’s great, no more network related calls… I can retire.)

5. ICMP is required. It basically replaces ARP for Layer 2 to Layer 3 Discovery. It is called Neighbor Discovery (ND or NDP)…(I like my neighbors, not sure if they feel the same.)

6. Routes are auto-summarized. (The world is smaller now.)

7. Everyone gets an address, and DHCP is not required. (Still recommended though.)

8. Multiple addresses can be assigned to the same interface with the same priority (All about teamwork, no superstars allowed…Remember – You were not allowed to be Outstanding in Elementary School. Satisfactory for Everyone!)

I will dive deeper into each point…. Be sure to get your ISP to give you an IPv6 Prefix.

Once you have it, enjoy your 65,536 networks.

ESXTOP Automated

Scott Williams — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 02:51:05 +0000

We are big fans of Automation. This includes automation of VMware performance and load testing. ESXTop is a great tool used with ESXPlot for performance troubleshooting. It gives the big picture from the vSphere Host point of view. The following script installed on a vSphere host will automatically create and archive log files for 65 Minutes (5 minutes for ramping up.). This can be scheduled and ran remotely via PLINK. More to Follow…

—-Script—

#!/bin/sh
#
# ESXTOP Log File Creation and Automation Script
#
# VirtualOSiti LLC 2011
#
# Command: esxtop -a[All] -b[Batch] -d[Delay in Seconds] -n[Interations]
# Note: Do not export variables

#TIME CREATED
TIMESTAMP=$(date “+%b-%d-%y-%H-%M-%S”)

#LOGFILE NAME
LOGFILE=”esxtop-capture-”$TIMESTAMP”.csv”

#LOGFILE PATH
LPATH=/
#OPTIONAL CONFIG FILE
CONFIG=/ESXTOP_PERF_CONFIGURATION

#DELAY (Seconds)
DELAY=5

#ITERATIONS
ITERATIONS=840

#COMMANDS

#This will archive old log files to save space on the host. Be sure to create an /ARCH directory
tar -cvzf $LPATH/ARCH/OLD_CAPTURES.gz $LPATH/*.csv
rm -rf $LPATH/*.csv
esxtop -b -c $CONFIG -d $DELAY -n $ITERATIONS > $LPATH$LOGFILE

#END

—–End of Script—