News

Monday Burn

So I was off on vacation when the latest patches hit the street, and just finally got a chance to update the patchlist.txt files with the latest and greatest. Download your patchlist.txt here.

Vizioncore updated it's vCharter Pro product, and by update I mean that it threw away the old one and built a new one from scratch with a much better interface and easier management. I've actually been working with it for a while and I can't say how much of a night and day difference it is from the old version. Check out the screenshots. I'm remaining optimistic that vRanger will undergo a similar transformation in the near future.

VMTN Forum user Mike Laspina solved an annoying artifact of the ESX 3.5.0 Update 1 ( Why didn't VMware just name this ESX 3.5.1? ) upgrade where Pegasus fails to process the install queue correctly and delays startup of the ESX host.

You will see an error when Pegasus tries to process /var/pegasus/vmware/install_queue/3, and your install log will look like the one below:

Error from the log file /var/pegasus/vmware/install_queue/3.log"
Parsing error: parse error: Error adding class VMware_IdentityMemberOfCollection
to the repository: CIM_ERR_NOT_FOUND: The requested object could not be found:
"VMware_Identity"

Mike Laspina's solution is as follows:

There are a couple of errors in the MOF compiler directives and a file is
missing from the shared provider components.

Here is what you will need to do.

Edit the roleauth-schema compiler directive to include the VMware_Identity
class definition:
#> nano /var/pegasus/vmware/install_queue/3_files/mofs/root/PG_Interop/roleauth-schema.mof

Add the bolded line above the pre-existing member directive.

#pragma include ("VMware_Identity.mof")
#pragma include ("VMware_IdentityMemberOfCollection.mof")

It also needs to be added in the standard cimv2 path.
#> nano /var/pegasus/vmware/install_queue/3_files/mofs/root/cimv2/roleauth-schema.mof

#pragma include ("VMware_Identity.mof")
#pragma include ("VMware_IdentityMemberOfCollection.mof")

Copy the missing file from the stardard cimv2 path to the shared path.

#> cp /var/pegasus/vmware/install_queue/3_files/mofs/root/cimv2/VMware_Identity.mof \
/var/pegasus/vmware/install_queue/3_files/mofs/root/PG_Interop/

Restart the service with this command.
#> /etc/init.d/pegasus restart

Posted by Dominic Rivera at Monday, April 21, 2008.

vmprofessional.com releases snapalert.pl

Snapshots are extremely useful to Virtual Machines, but keeping track of which VMs have snapshots can be problematic and/or time consuming. Snapshots that grow too large often degrade the I/O performance of the VM, lead to unbounded growth on the VMFS filesystem and can be difficult to commit when you decide you no longer need them. snapalert.pl is a perl script written to identify which VMs in your environment currently have snapshots so you can take appropriate action, it works with both ESX and ESXi as there is no console component. Additionally it can be configured to send the report to you via email so you won't have to remember to run it if you schedule the job.

Get the script and the details here.

Posted by Dominic Rivera at Friday, April 11, 2008.

April 10th Updates

VMware Released two anticipated updates today VMware ESX 3.5.0 Update 1, VMWare ESXi 3.5.0 Installable Update 1 and VMware VirtualCenter 2.5 Update 1. The release date for these updates were accidentally posted briefly to the download section at VMware last week.

A quick analysis of the release notes reveals:
MSCS Clustering Support
Support newer hardware Agents from Dell and HP
10GiB Ethernet Controller from Intel
HA Support For ESXi 3.5.0 Installable
Updates to both the Converter Plugin and the Update Manger Plugin
New hardware support ( updated HCL )
New guest operating support


The ESX 3.5.0 rollup contains all patches that have been previously released, plus a pile (17 to be exact ) of new patches. I won't get a chance to try the update out until next week, I'm hopeful that Update Manager can handle upgrading a host to the Update 1 level for both ESX 3.5.0 and ESXi Installable 3.5.0.

Labels: ESX ESXi VirtualCenter Patches Update

Posted by Dominic Rivera at Friday, April 11, 2008.