Category: Virtualization

vSphere 6.5 1

Server Virtualization

Compatible VMware Products – vSphere 6.5

vSphere 6.5 has been released and many of users are planning to upgrade their environments to new version. But we should check vSphere 6.5 compatibility with VMware products and even third-party products. We can check compatibility matrix on the below link: VMware Product Interoperability Matrixes But also you can find the products that those are compatible with vSphere 6.5:   Product Latest Available Version Recommended Action Important Links Platform Services Controller (PSC) Note: External Deployment Only 6.0 Update 2 Upgrade to 6.5 Release Notes Update Procedure vRealize Automation 7.0.1 No supported version available N/A vRealize Business for Cloud 7.0.1 7.2 Release Notes Update Procedure vRealize Configuration Manager (VCM) 5.8.5 No supported version available N/A vCloud Director for Service Providers (VCD) 8.0.1 No supported version available N/A VMware NSX for vSphere 6.2.4 No supported version available N/A Horizon View (View) 7.0.1 7.0.2 Release Notes Update Procedure vCenter Server / vCenter Server Appliance 6.0 Update 2 Upgrade to 6.5 Release Notes Update Procedure vRealize Orchestrator (vRO) 7.0.1 No supported version available N/A vSphere Replication (VR) vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM) VR Version – 6.1.1 SRM Version – 6.1.1 Upgrade to 6.5 VR Release Notes SRM Release Notes Upgrading VR Upgrading SRM vRealize Operations...

vSphere 6.5 Maximums 1

Server Virtualization

vSphere 6.5 Configuration Maximums – Compare to Earlier Versions- Part 2

We’ve reviewed some of vSphere 6.5 configuration maximums in the previous post: http://www.teimouri.net/vsphere-6-5-configuration-maximums/ And we’ll review and compare the rest of configuration maximums in this post. Networking Maximums Item vSphere 5.5 vSphere 6.0 vSphere 6.5 vSphere Standard and Distributed Switch Total virtual network switch ports per host (VDS and VSS ports) 4096 4096 4096 Maximum active ports per host (VDS and VSS) 1016 1016 1016 Virtual network switch creation ports per standard switch 4088 4088 4088 Port groups per standard switch 512 512 512 Static/Dynamic port groups per distributed switch 6500 10000 10000 Ephemeral port groups per distributed switch 1016 1016 1016 Ports per distributed switch 60000 60000 60000 Distributed switches per vCenter 128 128 128 Distributed switches per host 16 16 16 Hosts per distributed switch 1000 1000 2000 Cluster and Resource Pool Maximums Item vSphere 5.5 vSphere 6.0 vSphere 6.5 Cluster (all clusters including HA and DRS) Hosts per cluster 32 64 64 Virtual Machines per cluster 4000 8000 8000 Virtual machines per host 512 1024 1024 Powered-on virtual machine 2048 2048 2048 FT virtual machines per cluster 98 128 FT virtual machines vCPU per Cluster 256 256 Resource pools per host 1600 1600 1600 Children per resource...

vSphere 6.5 Maximums 1

Server Virtualization

vSphere 6.5 Configuration Maximums – Compare to Earlier Versions- Part 1

Each version of vSphere has some improvements and one of important improvements are configuration maximums that allows administrators to have much bigger virtual machines, hosting more virtual machines, use faster network and storage connections. This is very important that you should aware about your current configuration maximums because you can prepare your forecast plans for increasing virtual machine or ESXi host resources or even changes on network or SAN environments based on these configuration maximums. Lets review latest vSphere configuration maximums and compare them with earlier versions. Virtual Machine Item vSphere 5.5 vSphere 6.0 vSphere 6.5 vCPU 64 128 128 Memory 1TB 4TB 6128GB Swap File 1TB 4TB 6128GB Virtual SCSI adapters per virtual machine 4 4 4 Virtual SCSI targets per virtual SCSI adapter 15 15 15 Virtual SCSI targets per virtual machine 60 60 60 Virtual disk size 62TB 62TB 62TB IDE controllers per virtual machine 1 1 1 IDE devices per virtual machine 4 4 4 Floppy controllers per virtual machine 1 1 1 Floppy devices per virtual machine 2 2 2 Virtual SATA adapters per virtual machine 4 4 4 Virtual SATA devices per virtual SATA adapter 30 30 30 Virtual NICs per virtual machine 10...

Intel VT Issue 0

How To / Server Virtualization

ESXi host fails with a PSOD due to an Intel Virtualization Technology!

I have read a KB on VMware Knowledge Base and it says that an Intel Virtualization Technology can be cause of PSOD. This is little funny because ESXi will be affected by wide range of Intel Xeon processor family: Intel® Xeon® Processor 55xx Series Intel® Xeon® Processor 56xx Series Intel® Xeon® Processor 65xx Series Intel® Xeon® Processor 75xx Series Intel® Xeon® Processor E5-1400 v2 Product Family Intel® Xeon® Processor E5-1600 v2 Product Family Intel® Xeon® Processor E5-1600 v3 Product Family Intel® Xeon® Processor E5-2400 Product Family Intel® Xeon® Processor E5-2400 v2 Product Family Intel® Xeon® Processor E5-2600 Product Family Intel® Xeon® Processor E5-2600 v2 Product Family Intel® Xeon® Processor E5-2600 v3 Product Family Intel® Xeon® Processor E5-2600 v4 Product Family Intel® Xeon® Processor E5-4600 Product Family Intel® Xeon® Processor E5-4600 v2 Product Family Intel® Xeon® Processor E5-4600 v3 Product Family Intel® Xeon® Processor E5-4600 v4 Product Family Intel® Xeon® Processor E7-2800 Product Family Intel® Xeon® Processor E7-4800 Product Family Intel® Xeon® Processor E7-8800 Product Family Intel® Xeon® Processor E7-8800/4800/2800 v2 Product Families Intel® Xeon® Processor E7-8800/4800 v3 Product Families Intel® Xeon® Processor E7-8800/4800 v4 Product Families There is a workaround for preventing the problem and PSOD on server but VMware...

VMware LABS – Updated Fling 0

Free Tools / Server Virtualization

VMware LABS – Updated Fling

Three flings are updated by VMware engineers and published during this week and past week. HCIBench This fling is a “Hyper-converged Infrastructure Benchmark” tools and if you have vSAN in your environment, this fling is very useful for you. Changelog   Increased Timeout value of client VM disk from 30 seconds to 180 seconds. Disabled client VM password expiration. Disabled client VM OS disk fsck. Set Observer interval to 60 seconds to shrink the size of observer data. Fixed PCPU calculation. Created link directory of /opt/automation/logs, user will be able to review the testing logs in http://HCIBENCH/hcibench_logs/ Increased the RAM of HCIBench from 4GB to 8GB to avoid running out-of-resource issue.

ESXi 5.5, 6.x IOPS Limit Not Working – Disk.SchedulerWithReservation 1

How To / Server Virtualization

ESXi 5.5, 6.x IOPS Limit Not Working – Disk.SchedulerWithReservation

Last week, we went limit some our machines IOPS but we saw the limitation is not working on our machines, after searching the issue on VMware KB, we found an KB (2059192) that explain an known issue on ESXi 5.5 and ESXi 6. It seems, disk IO scheduling model has been changed on the platforms and it’s cause of the issue. But the solution is so simple, just you need to change an ESXi’s parameter: Revert the disk I/O scheduler to an earlier version by using the vSphere Web Client In the vSphere Web Client, edit the Disk.SchedulerWithReservation parameter in the Advanced System Settings list for the host. Navigate to the host. On the Manage tab, click Settings and click Advanced System Settings. Locate the Disk.SchedulerWithReservation parameter.Note: You can use the Filter or Find text boxes to find the parameter easily. Click Edit and set the parameter to 0. Click OK. Revert the disk I/O scheduler to an earlier version by using an ESXCLI command In the ESXi Shell to the host, run this console command: esxcli system settings advanced set -o /Disk/SchedulerWithReservation -i=0 There is no need to reboot or anything else. The configuration will be applied immediately.

Oracle VM – Virtualization Modes or Domain Types – Part 1 0

Server Virtualization

Oracle VM – Virtualization Modes or Domain Types – Part 1

Introduction Oracle VM introduced two main modes or domain types: Paravirtualized (PVM):A virtual machine with a kernel that is recompiled to be made aware of the virtual environment. Runs at near native speed, with memory, disk and network access optimized for maximum performance.Paravirtualized guests use generic, idealized device drivers, which are part of the guest’s OS. The I/O operations using these generic device drivers are mapped to the real device drivers in dom0. The generic, abstracted drivers in the guest seldom change and provide excellent guest stability. The dom0 domain, alternatively, can use the native hardware vendor drivers, and the guests can safely migrate to another dom0 with slightly different drivers. For other resources such as CPU and memory, paravirtualized kernels make special “hypercalls” to the Xen hypervisor. These hypercalls provide better performance by reducing the number of instructions and context switches required to handle an incoming request. By contrast, on an emulated (hardware virtualized) guest, driver requests engage the guest’s interrupt handler, increasing the I/O operation overhead. Hardware Virtualized Machine (HVM):A hardware virtualized guest runs on the virtualization platform as it would on a physical host. Because the device drivers of the hardware virtualized guest are emulated, dom0 must...

Oracle VM 0

Server Virtualization

Oracle VM Server – Configuration Limits for Release 3.4

Today, virtualization is under development by many companies and big companies trying to have their virtualization solution. Oracle VM is Oracle virtualization platform that it’s based on Xen hypervisor. You may know that any hypervisor has some limitations and configuration maximums and you should consider the limitation when you are deploying infrastructure or creating virtual machines. Oracle VM Manager Maximums em x86 Maximum SPARC Maximum Oracle VM Servers in a server pool (unclustered) 64 64 Oracle VM Servers in a server pool (clustered) 32 32 Number of servers 256 (16 servers * 16 server pools) 256 (16 servers * 16 server pools) Number of server pools 16 16 Number of configured virtual machines 5120 (20 virtual machines * 256 servers) 5120 (20 virtual machines * 256 servers) Number of running virtual machines 2,560 (10 virtual machines per server * 256 servers) 32768 (128 virtual machines per server * 256 servers) Fujitsu M10-4S, this limitation is 65536 (256 virtual machines per server * 256 servers) Oracle SPARC M-series servers, this limitation is 128 virtual machines per server * the number of physical domains (PDoms). Each physical domain acts as its own server with its own set of logical domains.  

Check CPU, Memory and Storage OverCommitment – PowerCLI 1

Server Virtualization / How To

Check CPU, Memory and Storage OverCommitment – PowerCLI

What’s OverCommitment? OverCommitment means virtual machines can use more resources than physical resources. CPU OverCommitment means you can create virtual machines with vCPU more than your server physical CPU, for example: Your server has two socket and each socket has 12 cores and also hyper-threading is enable, so you have 24 physical cores and 48 logical cores totally. But you can create and power on some virtual machines that those virtual machines have more than 48 cores totally. Memory OverCommitment means your virtual machines can use more memory than the physical machine (the host) has available. For example, you can have a host with 2GB memory and run four virtual machines with 1GB memory each. In that case, the memory is overcommitted. Advantages vs Disadvantages With OverCommitment, you can run more virtual machines but if you don’t have sensitive machine. If you have critical services on virtual machines, you need take care about OverCommitment because it can decrease your machines performance. How Take Care? You know, there is many native and third-party applications for monitoring vSphere environment but if you don’t have budget for buy monitoring software, you can use PowerCLI! There is a free PowerCLI module that you can...

Hardening Guide 1

Server Virtualization / Security

VMware vSphere Hardening

Today, many companies have virtualized farms for their server infrastructure or desktop infrastructure and cloud services. The companies have critical information on their virtualized farms and keeping safe them is one of big concerns. Big companies or even small companies have security teams and the teams tries to keeping secure the environments in different layers. Most of the security products are working on physical layer or network and application layer but what about Hypervisor layer? vSphere Hardening VMware publishing a hardening guide for each vSphere version to help administrator to keep their environments more secure. vSphere hardening guides are available in the below link as Excel files: Download – Hardening Guides Previously, VMware had published an application to analyzing your vSphere environment and report you any security issue according to hardening guides. VMware Sphere Compliance Checker was available up to vSphere 5.5 and that’s not available for vSphere 6.x but you can use “VMware vRealize Configuration Manager” on this regard. Anyway, you can check and change security configurations accordion to hardening guides on your servers manually.

Network Ports in Horizon 7 0

Desktop Virtualization

Network Ports in Horizon 7

VMware has updated “Network Ports in Horizon 7” and you can download it as a PDF file. You can find all protocols, port numbers and Horizon 7 components connections in this diagram. It helps you to understand communications between components and design your network infrastructure when you want to deploy Horizon 7 in you environment.It’s available on this link: Download

ESXi Reliable Memory Technology 0

Reviews / Server Virtualization

ESXi Reliable Memory Technology

VMware has introduced new feature for kernel protection against memory error in ESXi. VMware called the new feature: Reliable Memory Technology or RTM. The feature is one of new features in ESXi 5.5! ESXi use a zone of memory that it’s more reliable than other offsets of memory, so risk of PSOD will be reduced. Also when part of memory has error, ESXi will stop to using the part of memory. There is some other technique against memory corruption or memory health error such as memory mirroring but Reliable Memory Technology can help you on this regard without loosing half of your memory capacity. Because memory mirroring is just like to RAID 1 on hard disks. Dell has introduced another feature on its server by using Reliable Memory Technology and called the new feature: Fault Resilient Memory or FRM. Fault Resilient Memory will provide “Fault Resilient Zone” and ESXi will put its kernel to the zone. The features can protect ESXi kernel and VMs as well. So if you have critical service on a VM, you can force ESXi to keep its memory on RTM or FRM zone to avoid memory error and down time for the machine. You can configure...

osjs 0

Reviews / Desktop Virtualization

What is web desktop?

This century has begun with a big jump in portable devices and gadgets technology. Few years ago, we had to carry our big laptop for attending to our meetings or … . Today, we have smart phones and we can do anything on them.But those are not powerful like laptops or desktops and they have small screen and they have many limitation yet. Today, we keeping our data (Important data) on cloud storage services and our portable devices become smaller. Today, we are using virtualization technology for reduce our costs and we are implementing our virtual data centers around the world. Today, we are using virtual desktops instead of physical desktops and we have some protocols for connecting to them remotely and have experiences same as physical desktops even from a web browser. This is a gift from virtualization leaders to us. But virtual desktops are still expensive and needs to modern hardware. There is another solution and you can have your web desktop. A web desktop or webtop is a desktop environment embedded in a web browser or similar client application. A webtop integrates web applications, web services, client–server applications, application servers, and applications on the local client into...

nested virtualization 0

Server Virtualization

ESXi Virtual Appliance

As you may know, you can install hypervisors on virtual machines for testing purpose. When you had installed ESXi on virtual machine, you did nesting virtualization. But think about installation process, any installation needs around 20 minutes and if you cloned a ESXi machine, it will be not worked properly on other virtual machine and you have to change your configuration manually. Now there is good solution and it’s ESXi virtual appliance. You can download ESXi OVA file and import it to your host or vCenter and also you can configure it during import process. ESXi virtual appliance is available at the below links: ESXi 6.0 Virtual Appliance download link ESXi 5.5 Virtual Appliance download link  ESXi virtual appliance maybe updated after releasing new version. The last versions are: ESXi 6.0 U2 ESXi 5.5 U3 The ESXi virtual appliance including the below configurations: ESXi 6.0 U2: ESXi 6.0 Update 2 GuestType: ESXi 5.x (backwards compat) vHW 10 2 vCPU 6GB vMEM 2 x vmxnet3 vNIC 1 x 2GB HDD (ESXi Installation) 1 x 4GB SSD (for use w/VSAN, empty by default) 1 x 8GB SSD (for use w/VSAN, empty by default) VHV added dvFilter Mac Learn VMX params added disk.enableUUID VMX param added...

True SSO Diagnostic Utility 0

Desktop Virtualization / Reviews

True SSO Diagnostic Utility

Another tools (Fling) has been released by VMware engineers and it’s useful same as other tools. Horizon True SSO has been introduced in VMware Horizon 7: Overview of True SSO True SSO provides a way to authenticate to Microsoft Windows, retaining all of the users’ normal domain privileges, without requiring them to provide AD credentials! True SSO is a VMware Horizon technology that integrates VMware Identity Manager 2.6 with Horizon 7. VMware Identity Manager Standard is included in VMware Horizon 7 Advanced and Enterprise Editions. With True SSO, a user can log into Identity Manager using any non-AD method (for example, RSA SecurID credentials) and once authenticated, the user is able to launch any entitled desktop or app (hosted from any domain) without ever being prompted for a password again! True SSO uses SAML (Security Assertion Markup Language) to send the User Principal Name (for example, [email protected]) to the identity provider’s authentication system to access AD credentials. Horizon 7 then generates a unique, short-lived certificate for the Windows login process. Benefits of True SSO True SSO Separates authentication (validating a user’s identity) from access (such as to a specific Windows desktop or application). Provides enhanced security. User credentials are secured...