News

LUN Balancing Script

Trolling the VMTN forums today I came across something interesting, a script to balance the LUNs on your ESX hosts across multiple paths:

for PATHS in 2 4 6 8
do
  STPATHS=${PATHS}
  COUNTER="1"
 
  for LUN in $(esxcfg-mpath -l | grep "has ${STPATHS} paths" | awk '{print $2}')
  do
     esxcfg-mpath --lun=${LUN} --path=$(esxcfg-mpath -q --lun=${LUN} |\
     grep FC | awk '{print $4}' | awk '{print NR "S\t " $0}' | \
     grep ${COUNTER}S | awk '{print $2}') --preferred
     COUNT=`expr ${COUNTER} + 1`
     COUNTER=${COUNT}
     if [[ ${COUNTER} -gt ${STPATHS} ]]
     then
        COUNTER="1"
     fi
  done
done

Credit goes to KidE for writing the script. I find this to be very interesting as I see Disk I/O as being the largest bottleneck in ESX today ( only experimental Round-Robin mlutipathing is currently available in ESX 3.5.0 ).

Posted by Dominic Rivera at Monday, March 31, 2008.

ESX 3.5 Scripted Installation Guide

Scripted Install: Part I

I manage a pretty sizable Virtual Infrastructure, and one of the questions that I find myself answering the most often is how to deploy and/or redeploy my hosts using a scripted installation. The answer to that is actually a little complex, and has a lot of minor details that are critical to make it all function well. Over the next few weeks I'm going to share my installation method(s) here on vmprofessional.com.

The first step in creating a scripted installation is to learn a little about the VMware ESX installer, which is based on anaconda and kickstart. VMware has a bit of documentation on the subject available in the online library, but falls short if you want to use a scripted installation to truly be a turnkey solution and not have any manual work to do after the install has been completed.

In part 1: Creating the initial ks.cfg . I'll show you the basics of the ks.cfg file, and how to add custom scripting to finish off the installation.

In part II, I will show you how I create bootable .iso images to deploy the hosts, and in part III I will disclose some more advanced configuration that you may not have even considered in your environment.

Labels: esx 3.5 scripted install kickstart anaconda

Posted by Dominic Rivera at Monday, March 31, 2008.

Review: VMware ESX Server in the Enterprise: Planning and Securing Virtualization Servers

Author: Edward L. Haletky
ISBN: 0132302071
Published: January 8, 2008

For everyone looking for a solid book on server virtualization using VMware Virtual Infrastructure you can rest easy. Equal parts design guide, best practices, and cookbook this book is full of great background, pertinent info, and ways to make your infrastructure more reliable and secure.

If this book were not so thorough I might say it errs on the side of TMI (too much information). However, since it is so complete I believe there is something here for everyone. There's great coverage here of obscure topics like the boot sequence that only serves to add to the level of even an expert's understanding. Do you know how to configure Boot From San? You will if you buy this book. I especially like the hardware agnosticism of having the step by step presented for both Emulex and Qlogic HBAs.

The author's understanding of security factors in design and implementation definitely adds a lot of value and raises the bar for those willing to go the extra distance in their infrastructure. There are auditing and configuration scripts that help you secure your environment.

Networking design and configuration are also covered in depth, with detailed command line examples. I found a lot to like in this book and plan to keep my copy close at hand. If you're interested in your own copy you can get it here: VMware ESX Server in the Enterprise or VMware ESX Server in the Enterprise (Kindle).

DISCLAIMER: Edward is now writing for www.vmprofessional.com

Posted by Jae Ellers at Wednesday, March 19, 2008.

VMware ESX 3.x Backup Comparison

First and foremost, I'd like to give Edward L. Haletky ( texiwill to those of you from the VMTN forums ) author of VMWare ESX Server in the Enterprise: Planning and Securing Virtualization Servers a warm welcome to vmprofessional.com. He has agreed to start writing for vmprofessional.com and has already generated an article that I think will be a staple in virtualization community:

VMware ESX 3.x Backup Comparison

In the article, Edward explores the backup options available to System Administrators who deal with virtualization, and places the available options side by side to compare them on a number of relevant criteria.

Posted by Dominic Rivera at Tuesday, March 18, 2008.

Patchtravaganaza!

VMware has been busy dropping patches in the last week. On March 6th new patches were seeded for ESX 3.0.1/ESX 3.0.2 and today ( March 10th ) VMware dropped a whopping 18 patches for ESX 3.5.0, superseding every single patch that was released in January. There are a number of security patches in the bunch, but more notably, VMware released a patch to the thin provisioning bug with Storage VMotion and a fix to the bug that could cycle your VMs when the management agent was restarted. See below for all fixes released this month:

VMware ESX 3.5.0 (18 Patches)
Update to the bnx2 Driver
Security Update to the util-linux Package
Security Update to the Perl Package
Security Update to the openssl Package
Daylight Saving Time Update
Updates to vmware-hostd
Improved Statistics Collection for Support Scripts, Fix for Patch Issue Seen After Upgrading from ESX Server 2.5.x to 3.5.0
Resolves DMA Issues on LSI 1078 and 106XE HBAs
Update to MegaRAID SCSI Driver to Fix Dell PowerEdge 6650 Boot Issue
Updated aacraid Driver
Security Updates to the Python Package
Fix for Reset Issue with CD-ROM Controller
Unexpected Reboot of Virtual Machines Configured to Automatically Start or Stop
Enhanced Validation Checks, and Fixes for Storage VMotion and Lab Manager
Updates to the VMkernel to Fix Networking and Hardware Issues
Sunfire X4200 Host Hangs Because of HBA Timeouts Due to DMA Problems
Discrete Sensors Report Wrong Information to Monitors
Security Update to Samba Packages

VMware ESX 3.0.2 (4 Patches)
Fixes for Vmotion and Clone Operations Failure, VirtualCenter Server Agent Crash, Hot Addition and Deletion of LUNs Failure, Virtual Machine Level Permissions; VirtualCenter 2.0.x Failure to Read VI 3.5 License Files
I/O Transactions on SUN X4200 Servers Cause SCSI Timeouts
Fixes Packet Latency and tg3 Driver Issues
Support for VMotion Incompatibility, Network Connectivity Issues; Fixes for Hot Addition and Deletion of LUNs Failure, Virtual Machines Boot Failure Through Network for PXE Clients, RARP Broadcast With NICs Failover


VMware ESX 3.0.1 (7 Patches)
Fix for mptscsi_2xx Driver
Fixes Network Connectivity Issues with Intel e1000 Driver
Virtual Machines Boot Failure Through Network for PXE Clients
Fixes Packet Latency and tg3 Driver Issues
I/O Transactions on SUN X4200 Servers Cause SCSI Timeouts
Fixes for VirtualCenter Server Agent Crash, Hot Addition and Deletion of LUNs Failure, Deletion of Virtual Machine Level Permissions; Support for VirtualCenter 2.0.x to Read Virtual Infrastructure 3.5 License Files
Fixes for RARP Broadcast With NICs Failover and Hot Addition / Deletion of LUNs Failure



I've updated all the patchlist.txt files for the esx-autopatch script

Posted by Dominic Rivera at Monday, March 10, 2008.

VMworld 2008 Europe

For any of you fortunate enough to go to VMworld 2008 Europe, you have my jealousy.... what a beautiful part of the world Cannes, France is! To recap the major announcements that took place there:

VMware OEM Partners (HP, Dell, IBM) all announced their 3i systems with time lines:
http://www.vmware.com/partners/oem-esx-server-3i.html

VMware announced the availability of the Thinstall Beta (Northstar):
http://www.vmware.com/beta/northstar/

VMware announced that about 20 security partners including Symantec, McAfee, Checkpoint, RSA, F5 and a whole host of others have signed up to use the VMSAFE API, which is the VM security enablement that is being added to the ESX hypervisor layer:
http://www.vmware.com/company/news/releases/vmsafe_vmworld.html

Veeam Announced the availability of their newest product Veeam Backup 1.0:
http://www.veeam.com/vmware-esx-backup.html


Alessandro Perilli has more notes from the event that are definitely worth a read here:
http://www.virtualization.info/2008/03/vmworld-europe-2008-round-up.html

Posted by Dominic Rivera at Monday, March 03, 2008.