VMware News

When troubleshooting VMware VirtualCenter Server issues, it may be helpful to enable Trivia logging on the VMware VirtualCenter server. These logs contain the most verbiage possible, assisting in...

The following concepts are utilized in a ESX network environment: To accomplish network redundancy, load balancing, and fail-over: · Enable link aggregation (also known as Ether-Channel,...

· Administrator users do not have the ability to clone a virtual machine. · The administrator users have been added to a group that was given Virtual Machine...

This article describes the meaning of the Memory Active and Memory Usage indicators on the Performance tab in VirtualCenter and vCenter. Memory Active is the...

  This article provides instruction for collecting support diagnostic information when troubleshooting a purple screen fault in ESXi.   Troubleshooting...

This article describes how to change the vCenter Server database user ID and password. The user ID and password must be changed when the SQL database credentials on a remote SQL Server are...

· Update Manager fails to remediate · You see the error: Value of '0' is not valid for 'Value'. 'Value' should be between 'Minimum' and 'Maximum'. Parameter name: Value This...

· You cannot import an SSL certificate for Virtual Desktop Manager (VDM) · You see the following error: keytool error: java.security.KeyStoreException:...

· Entering credentials during an installation or upgrade of the vCenter Converter Plugin, fails with the error: Failed to register the extension This issue occurs...

  All ESX and ESXi hosts run a syslog service (syslogd) which logs messages from the VMkernel and other system components to a file.    On ESXi hosts, you can use the vSphere Client or the vSphere CLI command...

Release Date: March 08, 2010 Download Size: 138 MB Download Filename: ESX303-201002201-UG.zip md5sum: c18c61d9920232acb0ec0224d40a4b00 Product Versions ESX...

Release Date: March 08, 2010 Download Size: 2.2MB Download Filename: ESX303-201002202-UG.zip md5sum: b111601ecb6978fbac40df2700d08fe2 Product Versions ESX Server 3.0.3...

Release Date: March 08, 2010 Download Size: 52 MB Download Filename: ESX303-201002203-UG.zip md5sum: 49ee56b687707cbe6999836c315f081a Product Versions ESX Server 3.0.3...

Release Date: March 08, 2010 Download Size: 1.3 MB Download Filename: ESX303-201002204-UG.zip md5sum: 84f5a74f629241b616b2c8f2d7e2bfe6 Product Versions ESX Server 3.0.3...

Release Date: March 08, 2010 Download Size: 688 KB Download Filename: ESX303-201002205-UG.zip md5sum: 27c255d70d5e71048deb73008ffdf98e Product Versions ESX Server...

Release Date: March 08, 2010 Download Size: 4.0 MB Download Filename: ESX303-201002206-UG.zip md5sum: 33a2bb95a988015273e2d6970e242583 Product Versions...

Release Date: March 08, 2010 Download Size: 336 KB    Download Filename: ESX303-201002207-UG.zip md5sum: 7950c7dbbefae15d638e768f0848bb26 Product Versions ESX Server...

After upgrading the VI Client to the version shipped with ESX 3.0.3 Update 1, if you try to access a host machine running ESX 3.0.3, the following message appears:...

Release Date: March 08, 2010 Download Size: 117 MB Download Filename: ESX303-Update01.zip md5sum: 4bf15c97eafb15059356676cc28824db   Product Versions ESX 3.0.3 Update 1 Patch Classification...

You are experiencing these issues: · When custom SSL certificates are used, the Storage View, Hardware View and Health Status pages show...

  This article describes how to send /var/log/vmware/hostd*.log to a remote syslog server. When setting up a remote syslog server, hostd logs may not get logged on the remote server. To send...

When you use ThinApp to capture Microsoft Office Live Meeting 2007, start the application, and try to connect to a meeting, the connection fails. ThinApp does not support the...

If you have upgraded from Leopard to Snow Leopard or have used Apple's Migration Assistant to move your system to a new computer, you...

This article answers the following two questions: · I just opened Workstation, and the tab for my virtual machine is missing. What happened to it? Did my virtual machine get deleted? · I accidentally...

A lot of you have been very busy this week, patching ESX hosts(That would be you Jason ;-)) and hopefully reading all the excellent articles being aggregated on Planet V12n...

• Duncan Epping - CPU/MEM Reservation Behavior
  The above paragraph is a bit misleading , as it seems to imply that a VM has to access its full reservation. What it should really say is “Memory which is protected by a reservation will not be reclaimed by ballooning or Host-level swapping even if it becomes idle,” and “Physical machine memory will not be allocated to the VM until the VM accesses virtual RAM needing physical RAM backing.” Then that pRAM is protected by the reservation and won’t be reclaimed by ballooning or .vswp-file swapping. If there is any .vswp memory at all as no .vswp is created when the reservation is equal to the provisioned memory.
• Scott Lowe - PXE Booting VMware ESX 4.0
  Next, you’ll need the PXE boot files. Specifically, you’ll need the menu.c32 and pxelinux.0 files. These files are not on the DVD ISO image; you’ll have to download Syslinux from this web site. Once you download Syslinux, extract the files into a temporary directory. You’ll find menu.c32 in the com32/menu folder; you’ll find pxelinux.0 in the core folder. Copy both of these files, along with vmlinuz and initrd.img, into the root directory of the TFTP server. (If you don’t know the root directory of the TFTP server, double-check its configuration.)
• Stu Radnidge - Challenge Convention & Garbage In / Garbage Out & Engage Support Early & Engage Support Early
  The notion of GIGO is of course much older than I am, but it’s one of those concepts that is timeless. In relation to Cloud, it’s more pertinent than ever. The marketing hype would have you believe that Cloud is a panacea, and many people hawking their wares artfully dodge the subject of your existing tools and processes. But ignore these at your own peril. The COO of the company I work for has a great quote, which goes something like “God made the earth in 6 days, because he started with a clean slate.”. The same is true of internal Cloud (or whatever you want to call it – I’m going to call it that for the sake of convenience) – you could probably nail down the platform code and functionality that you want to launch with in a few weeks, but making the requisite changes to existing processes and integrating with existing tools in your environment is what will take the lion’s share of time to address.
• Luc Dekens - Counter the self-aware VUM
  Today there was quite a bit of activity on Twitter following Jason Boche’s blog post titled VMware Update Manager Becomes Self-Aware. The problem Jason discovered was that the VUM skipped the guests which are hosting the VUM server and the vCenter server. As a consequence you can not select a cluster, select “remediate” and go out for lunch anymore. The resolution was a rather cumbersome and error prone manual procedure. But of course PowerCLI can help the human vSphere administrator...
• Chris Wolf - RSA, Intel, and VMware Take a Big Step Forward in Cloud Security
  In the past, I have talked about this security dilemma in a couple of couple of key areas. First, we need a standardized set of cloud isolation levels. We also need standard metadata (either de facto or industry standard) so that third party audit tools can properly query an application’s relationship to cloud security policy in relation to virtual and physical controls that are in place. I covered those issues in more depth in the post “The Cloud Mystery Machine: Metadata Standards.” In addition, virtual resources need to be able to answer the question “Where are you?” That applies to both the runtime location and data location. It’s important to ensure that data privacy and governance concerns are met, and regulatory compliance issues such as data export restrictions are satisfied.

Recently John Arrasjid(@vcdx001), Steve Kaplan(@roidude) and I (@DuncanYB) released a book titled "Foundation for Cloud Computing with VMware vSphere 4". The book as John Arrasjid described it "provides a starting point for understanding the requirements to design and optimize a virtualized data center that also serves as the foundation for efficient and safe cloud computing."

The book is published by USENIX/SAGE and it is the 21st book in the Short Topics series. SAGE is a Special Interest Group of the USENIX Association. Its goal is to serve the system administration community by organizing conferences and training to enhance the technical and managerial capabilities of members of the profession.

Twenty copies of the book have been given away via Twitter and Mark Vaughn was one of the lucky people who won a copy and published a review. Here's an outtake from Mark's review:

Review by Mark Vaughn
This is not a technical manual designed to walk you through a vSphere installation, this is the book that will explain why you need to develop a virtualization strategy and identify the key items that you will need to address in developing that strategy. This book is a must have reference source for people working with virtualization, whether you are deploying it, developing strategies around it, or simply looking for a better understanding of virtualization technologies and strategies. This is the 21st book in the Short Topics series by USENIX, available on the SAGE website. In fact, I like this book so much that I will probably join SAGE to get access to more of the Short Topics series.

PALO ALTO, CALIF – March 2, 2010 – VMware, Inc. (NYSE: VMW), the global leader in virtualization solutions from the desktop through the data center and to the cloud, today announced that its Board of Directors has authorized the purchase of up to $400 million of its Class A common stock through the end of 2011. Stock will be purchased from time to time, in the open market or through private transactions, subject to market conditions. The Company expects the equity purchase program to help partially offset dilution from its equity programs and believes it to be an appropriate use of proceeds from the exercise of employee stock options. About VMware VMware delivers...

VMware vSphere™, VMware View™ and VMware ThinApp™ Enable Healthcare Customers to Reduce Costs and Help Ensure Availability of Patient-critical Solutions. ATLANTA,GA — March 1, 2010 — Today at HIMSS10, VMware, Inc. (NYSE: VMW), the global leader in virtualization solutions from the desktop through the datacenter and to the cloud, continues to gain momentum in the healthcare industry as more healthcare IT vendors select VMware as their virtualization platform of choice for deploying applications. VMware vSphere™ helps these vendors simplify IT environments, improve patient information security, and boost efficiency. Healthcare providers are increasingly choosing to run their...

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Creating a top 5 seems to be getting more difficult week after week. Not only does the quality of the blog articles increase, the amount of blogs listed on PlanetV12n and the amount of articles also increase steadily. I hope I can keep up with you guys, or I might just need to get a cute assistant to help me out with this.... Hmmm, that's actually not a bad idea. Anyway, here's the list!

• Eric Gray - Taking snapshots of VMware ESX 4 running in a VM
  Clearly, the capability introduced with VMware vSphere 4 that allows VMware ESX 4 to virtualize itself is a real crowd-pleaser. However, one limitation that some have discovered while using this lab-testing technique is the lack of ability to use snapshots with virtual ESX systems. In fact, after taking a snapshot of a virtual ESX VM, you will see the system boot into the recovery shell.
• Kenneth van Ditmarsch - Using LeftHand Snapshot techniques within a VMware Environment
  Well, currently no integration exists between the LeftHand Snapshot technique and vCenter. If the LeftHand Snapshot process is started, vCenter isn’t alerted to quiesce the VM’s and therefore the VM’s are able to continue processing while a LeftHand Snapshot is made, which leads to inconsistent VM states. Last year the LeftHand roadmap indicated that vCenter application integration would be available in the new SAN/iQ 8.5. SAN/iQ 8.5 is currently shipped with the HP/LeftHand P4000 G2 nodes and will be available for download on 29th of March for existing P4000 user. For some reasons however vCenter application integration is shoved back to Q4 2010 or later.
• Steve Kaplan - The multi-hypervisor fallacy
  Implicit in multi-hypervisor advocacy is an undertone of virtualizing servers rather than the data center. This myopic perspective limits both savings and synergies. Cisco studies, for example, show a lack of vNetwork capability results in 30% fewer servers that can be virtualized along with 30% higher administrative requirements. Network administrators have no way to monitor traffic over a vSwitch for compliance, auditing and troubleshooting purposes, and they cannot apply network and security policies that follow a VM as it live-migrates. Since only vSphere enables vNetwork capabilities, multiple hypervisors leave at least a portion of the data center running less efficiently and less secure.
• Steve Chambers - IT Departments and the Collapse of the Silos
  Today I had the opportunity to present at the National Computing Center Think Tank. The NCC have a fantastic remit to bring together practitioners from the private and public sector to explore the current realities. Add to this the vendor invitations where folks like me can share our observations with no axe to sell, and it makes for a really great discussion. Awesome stuff. Prior to this invitation I prepared two documents. First I wrote a blunt paper based on my observations and feedback via Twitter. Second I wrote a Prezi for that to share the findings in ten pieces.
• Craig Risinger - The Resource Pool Priority-Pie Paradox
  We run into this on a daily basis; Misunderstanding of the “shares” concept in combination with resource pools. To start with a bold statement: A few VMs in a Low-shares Resource Pool can outperform each of many VMs in a High-shares Resource Pool. How is this possible you might ask. Resources are divided at the Resource Pool level first. Each Resource Pool is like a pie whose size determines amount of resources usable (during contention). Then that pie is subdivided among the VMs in the pool. A Resource Pool applies to all its VMs collectively. Thus a smaller pie divided among fewer VMs can yield more resources per VM than a larger pie divided by even more VMs.

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Posted by Ben Verghese
Chief Management Architect, Virtualization and Cloud Platforms Business Unit

Today VMware announced a definitive agreement to acquire certain management products from the EMC Ionix portfolio, including Server Configuration Manager (formerly Configuresoft), FastScale, Application Discovery Manager (formerly nLayers), and Service Manager (formerly Infra).   These products will provide new capabilities to VMware’s vCenter family of products.

Over the years, VMware has led the industry in virtualization of IT infrastructure. We have empowered customers to reduce costs, increase automation, and deliver new services that they could not before. Now, as the enterprise has increasingly adopted a virtualized model, the foundation has been built for the transition to cloud computing.

There is so much hype around the word “cloud” these days, but what I am referring to is a way of doing computing that enables a revolutionary business model for enterprise IT. Start with efficient pooling of infrastructure to create on-demand virtualized capacity, add automation based on industry-wide and user-local policies, self-service access to a catalogue of IT services, charge-back and usage reporting, and you achieve public-cloud economics with private cloud control. This is IT-as-a-Service.

An IT-as-a-Service model demands strong capabilities and automation across several aspects of management: provisioning, capacity, configuration, performance, business continuity. With the acquisition of the Ionix products, VMware will extend the capabilities of vCenter in order to meet these demands, especially around configuration management and compliance in the enterprise private cloud.

Let’s take a look at a couple of examples where the Ionix products complement what we already have in the vCenter line. In the drive to IT-as-a-Service, customers have been asking for visibility into full-stack compliance, from metal to apps. We recently announced the ConfigControl product that works closely with vCenter to provide configuration management and compliance to policies in highly dynamic virtualized environments. Ionix Server Configuration Manager enhances this functionality in two important ways. First, it adds visibility of the guest OS and application configuration on virtualized and non-virtualized servers. Second, it provides built-in capability for Compliance Reports ranging from the ESX hardening guide to HIPAA and PCI. The Ionix Application Discovery Manager product (formerly nLayers) automatically discovers complex applications with components on multiple servers, virtual and physical. The combination of these three products, when integration is complete, will give us comprehensive configuration and compliance capability across a broad domain with virtual infrastructure at the core, but extending to the adjacent areas of the OS, complex applications, and physical hardware if needed.

There are many opportunities to integrate these two sets of products to deliver management value in the private cloud.  Another example of synergy is the potential to integrate Studio and the acquired Ionix FastScale provisioning engine.  Studio enables the application developer or integrator to describe the application and the OS and how it should be put together as a Virtual Appliance. The FastScale engine can slim down the Virtual Appliance and deploy or update the image to a VM (or bare hardware if desired). 

Let me be clear: our goal is to simplify management of IT as customers move to an increasingly dynamic and virtualized infrastructure. However, our customers have varied needs and have also made significant investments in management platforms and tools from our partners.  As we integrate the Ionix products into the vCenter family and accelerate innovation towards a new more agile management model, we remain committed to open APIs, and co-operation and integration with our partners.  This approach has allowed us to jointly provide robust solutions for our customers and we will continue to lead in this area.

Acquisition Expands VMware vCenter Management Product Family; Addresses Critical Management Needs as Customers Advance on Journey to Cloud Computing. PALO ALTO, CA and HOPKINTON, MA – February 25, 2010 – VMware, Inc. (NYSE: VMW), the global leader in virtualization solutions from the desktop through the data center and to the cloud, and EMC Corporation (NYSE: EMC) -- the world leader in information infrastructure solutions -- today announced that the two companies have entered into a definitive agreement for VMware to acquire certain software products and expertise from EMC’s Ionix IT management business, including solutions aimed at delivering improved management and deployment of...

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PALO ALTO, Calif., February 24, 2010— VMware, Inc. (NYSE: VMW), the global leader in virtualization solutions from the desktop through the datacenter and to the cloud, today announced that Tod Nielsen, chief operating officer of VMware, will present at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference in San Francisco, CA on March 2, 2010 at 11:00 a.m. PT/ 2:00 p.m. ET. A live webcast will be available on the Investor Relations page at http://ir.vmware.com. The replay of the webcast will be available for one month. About VMware VMware delivers solutions for business infrastructure virtualization that enable IT organizations to energize businesses of all sizes. ...

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