WJPatton.com

Interpreting ESXTOP files with ESXPlot

wjpatton — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 04:14:32 +0000

Scott Drummonds of vPivot.com posted on ESXPlot, a great tool that is far more efficient and less aggravating than Perfmon for working with ESXTOP output files.

Geoff White has created a badly needed tool here, Perfmon worked but was very time consuming. Especially with those days or weeks of ESXTOP statistic files.

Extract and use the README. For Windows, extract all files, navigate to the esxplot.exe in the Bin directory and you are off and running!

Geoff White now has a full project site with all information and releases. Click here

Labs.vmware.com has now gone live and hosting ESXPlot as well. Click here

VMware Clustering vCenter Server 4 on MSCS

wjpatton — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 23:21:23 +0000

VIOPS has a good document on how to cluster the vCenter services on MSCS. Things have changed slightly from 2.5 and though most of the steps will be old news for some, there are a couple changes so be sure to review before proceeding with your Install/Upgrade projects. It does have a nice section on upgrading existing clusters as well.

Get the document here.

One special note I would point out is running the “jointool.bat” for replicating roles at the end of your cluster config.

VMware KB1003797 – Unable to migrate: Virtual machine is configured to use a device that prevents migration

wjpatton — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 19:13:26 +0000

There seems to be a lot of confusion about vMotion and bus-shared VMDKs. For the record, and from VMware, it is not recommended nor supported to vMotion your VM between ESX Hosts when using either Virtual or Physical mode bus-sharing.

Please see the KB here.

I know there are plenty that will disagree and have found ways of doing it, but within our environments for our MSCS clusters using Physical mode, we disable DRS and only Cold vMotion once the resources of the cluster have been moved off the Node and the VM is Powered Off.

VMware vSphere Hardening Guide – Draft Rev. B

wjpatton — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 15:46:54 +0000

VMware has released a draft of the vSphere Hardening Guide, and are encouraging feedback from the community. It is broken into multiple pieces.

Part 1: Introduction

Part 2: Virtual Machines

Part 3: Host

Part 4: vNetwork

Part 5: vCenter

Part 6: COS

VMware KB1011170 – Checking Zero vs EagerZero Disk Status

wjpatton — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 18:43:59 +0000

VMware has released a KB with a handy vmfstools command to check your VM’s disk status. If the VMFS output shows a “Z” it is Zerothick with blocks that have not been written to yet.

Read the article here.

This allows you to check the disk status for options such as Fault Tolerance or Microsoft Cluster Services. The disks must be in an Eagerzerothick format for these options to work.

Scott Lowe moving to EMC

wjpatton — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 18:11:24 +0000

Even during an economic slowdown there are bright spots and opportunities. Scott Lowe from Blog.ScottLowe.org is taking a new position with EMC as a VMware-Cisco Solutions Principal. Congratulations to Scott!

Scott has pledged to continue his already top-notch blogging, continuing in line with his new boss and another great blogger Chad Sakac.

Read Scott’s post on his site. Read More

Thank you Scott for everything you have contributed and this opportunity, you deserve it.

VMware KB1016262 – vCenter Agent Install Fails on ESXi 4 Host

wjpatton — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 16:52:34 +0000

VMware just posted an alert on this for ESXi 4 Hosts managed by either vCenter 4 or 4 Update 1. If you remove and re-add the Host to vCenter, or upgrade vCenter to Update 1 you may experience this issue.

At this time, there is no official fix, however it appears a reboot should fix the issue but with the Host disconnected from vCenter; vMotion is not an option and the disconnect may trigger HA, but I would hope that you have placed this host into Maintenance Mode prior to disconnecting from vCenter…right? Also, HA should have been disabled prior to your Update 1 patch…you did that as well, right?

Read the official VMware Alert here.

Symantec Doc. ID – 330033 – MSSQL Netbackup DB Backup Skipped

wjpatton — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 20:33:30 +0000

There is an issue with all versions of Netbackup 6.5 through the latest 6.5.5. This issue might cause the backup of a large number of databases to become unreliable and skip databases.

Read the full Document here.

We have seen this behavior on a few systems, and found that carving up the backups into smaller batch files has solved the issue for us but we plan to move back to large batch files with the upcoming 6.5.6 update in Q2 of 2010.

VMware ESX4 Update 01 Removed from Update Manager

wjpatton — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 18:35:34 +0000

If you are looking to update your ESX4 hosts to Update 01, don’t look in Update Manager. VMware has removed the update because of a bug with the HP Management Agents preventing the update from completely successfully and rendering the host inoperable.

From KB1016070:

“Note: If you want to install the update, you must download the update manually. The update is no longer available for automatic download in Update Manager and the vSphere Update Utility. You can find the update on the VMware Downloads site and copy the download to your local depot as needed.”

Note: ESXi 4 is unaffected by this KB.

VMware KB1016070 – ESX 4 Update 01 and HP Management Agents Failed Upgrade

wjpatton — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 18:26:12 +0000

VMware has posted a bug when upgrading ESX 4 to Update 01 with HP Management Agents running. (ESXi is unaffected)

You may have your host end the update unsuccessfully, and in a non-responsive state. To avoid this, disable all the HP Management Agents prior to running the update.

Read the full article here.