What is a “Step Ticker” You know, it’s one of those little pedometer things you strap onto your hip and tracks how far you’ve walked. Ok, so it’s not that. At least not within the context of servers & virtualization. So what IS it? It’s a horribly named NTP (network time protocol) concept. Yup. That’s
-> Continue reading WTF Is A Step Ticker? – Step Tickers. and Why They Matter
This is a big one to try to tackle in a single post, but the question comes up often enough to try. I figure to best answer it, it would help to understand what each does: VMware HA What it does: VMware HA will detects host & VM (VM heartbeat, etc) failures. On a failure
-> Continue reading Choosing SQL Clustering or VMware HA – What is Right?
UUIDs are wonderful! Really. They’re just not all that easy to get to, at least not when you need more than a few of them at a time. That is where this script comes in: # get-uuid.ps1 # # Takes either a VMHost or VM object from the pipeline, returns the corresponding UUID. Begin {
-> Continue reading New Script – Get VM or ESX Host UUIDs (get-uuid.ps1)
Is your NMI stuck? Well you better catch it! Hey! I’m allowed to make bad jokes. After all, that is why you keep coming back, no? So to follow up some on our prior NMI issues. It seems that unlike what was stated before, this isn’t specific to resource constraints, x64, or vSMP. In fact,
-> Continue reading Is Your NMI Stuck? – More On The NMI Stuck Issue
Can’t be much more descriptive than that. Check the release notes here. What’s New Notes: Not all combinations of VirtualCenter and ESX Server versions are supported and not all of these highlighted features are available unless you are using VirtualCenter 2.5 Update 4 with ESX Server 3.5 Update 4. See the ESX Server, VirtualCenter, and
-> Continue reading ESX 3.5 U4 Now Avail!
About thirty years ago in the jungle in South Korea I was spending some time living as a monk. One of the things I learned from these monks, was the ancient art of Dump reading. Yes! That’s right, I can tell the future by reading the finer texture and smell of a dump. Ok, while
-> Continue reading How To Read Dumps – ESX Crash Dumps That Is
Not sure how useful these will be to anyone else, but here is how to get & use Dell’s DSET utility on ESX: First pull the DSET utility from here. sftp (scp, etc) Dell’s DSET utility to your home dir. chmod 777 the DSET util [root]# ls -alh total 24M -rwxrwxrwx 1 bunchc bunchc 24M
-> Continue reading Vendor Utilities – Dell DSET and ESX
So while ESX 3.5 (not sure about i) may have tcpdump and tcpslice: [root@esx root]# tcp tcpd tcpdump tcpslice They’re of limited use, at least with the way ESX implements networking, vSwitches after all, are good and proper layer 2 devices. Now, that is not to say you couldn’t do something with arp poisoning, but…
-> Continue reading Tapping ESX – Network Sniffing Your VI
Yes, that is what it is! You can get it from here. As listed on the page, it requires the PowerShell 2.0 CTP 3 available from here. You’ll also want to grab the VMware Remote Console from here (It is optional however). Installation: After you pull down the .7z file, extract it anywhere you like.
-> Continue reading psVIC – PowerShell Virtual Infrastructure Client
This particular topic comes up from time to time in discussions. Yes it is OK to run Exchange on VMware, and Exchange 2007 on VMware is a supported configuration… for more info, follow the links below: The Podcast – Wednesday, Jan 14, for another round of the VMware Communities Roundtable podcast The Webinar – Jan
-> Continue reading Exchange on VMware – Podcast, Webinar, and White Papers, Oh My
VMware release KB 1008130 yesterday, describing just this: Symptoms include: VMware ESX or ESXi host might get disconnected form VirtualCenter. All paths to the LUNs are in standby state. esxcfg-rescan might take a long time to complete or never completes (hung). The KB goes on to say, that right now the only fix is a
-> Continue reading Running Update 3? San Gone Funny?
Why? Because it’s awesome, that’s why. Below is an example, complete with syntax and screenshots on how to defragment a windows guest using VMware’s VIX. Here is what it looked like before: Here is the command used from the host where VIX is installed: C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware VIX>vmrun -T esx -h https://vCenter.server.com/sdk – u domain\user -p
-> Continue reading Using VIX to Defrag Windows Guests
Not sure where I got the link to this document, but have found it insanely useful, and should very well be committed to memory! (Yes, it’s that good). Table of Contents Section 1. Introduction Section 2. CPU Section 2.1 Worlds and Groups Section 2.2 Global Statistics Section 2.3 World Statistics Section 3. Memory Section 3.1
-> Continue reading Interpreting esxtop Stats
Sort of, it seems: Today, RSA integrates with VMware in an couple of what I would call "useful but not earth-shattering" points – you can integrate envision authentication with Virtual Center and it also integrates with VDM 2.1 and VMware View Manager for hardened authentication. But, with VMware as mission-critical as it is, security
-> Continue reading ESX Does RSA?
I’ve tried not to cover much outside ESX so far, but one cannot keep their head in the sand about what else is out there. Following on Pancil’s ESXi Post, I’ve found a breakdown, here of the "Free" Virtualization products. Keep in mind, tis not my post, just came across it while looking some things
-> Continue reading "Free" Virtualization Round-Up
We’ve all been there. VM appears to run slow, users complaining about a service that’s been virtualized, etc. First thought, oh must be a VMware problem, let’s call them. Wrong. Stop and think for a minute. Most such issues are due to a poor configuration, poor set of setup choices or simply not understanding what is going on! […]
Had a situation in which time in a Linux guest kept creeping about, slower, faster, etc. To the point where NTP wasn’t helping before. This in turn, like all good questions, turned me to that which is the holy oracle of all knowledge: Google. Google, showed me that I am not alone in my struggles,
-> Continue reading Time Keeps on Slipping… Time Keeping Best Practices for Linux
You’ve got redundant power, a UPS, redundant hosts, redundant networking, etc. Yet despite your best efforts to make things solid, something happens. Disks get corrupt, files go away, Chuck Norris divides by zero, and in general “Bad Things” happen. What do you do when these “Bad Things” happen in the virtual world? Despite the inherent
-> Continue reading Virtual Disk Damaged? – Basic VMDK Repair
I just thought you all should be aware of this KB Article at Symantec’s site: Question/Issue: Is VMware VMotion ESX server supported with Symantec AntiVirus and Symantec Endpoint Protection? Solution: Symantec considers running Symantec AntiVirus Clients and Symantec Endpoint Protection Clients in VMware environments running Vmotion a supported configuration. At this time running the Symantec
-> Continue reading Clarifying Symantec “Support” for ESX
kernel: testing NMI watchdog … <4>WARNING: CPU#0: NMI appears to be stuck This is what I was greeted with this morning on a 64bit RHEL 5 VM. After looking around the internet a bit, I found that this was a guest OS problem that was caused but a number of things. First, was the resource
-> Continue reading 64bit VM Error – NMI Appears to be Stuck