One of the great things about virtualization is that it is such a flexible platform that we can change our mind on almost anything. But, that's not to say that there are some things that we just shouldn't do -- for examples, see my "5 Things To Not Do with vSphere." One of those areas is storage, and in a way I'm torn as to whether a broad recommendation makes sense for expanding VMFS volumes.
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Posted by Rick Vanover on 05/06/201311 comments
I'm what you might call a contradiction. I'm definitely not a fan of the repetitive task, but am also coincidentally too lazy to learn how to script this very same task. Sometimes I luck out and a quick Web search will point me in the right direction, or other times my laziness takes me to built-in functions that can help me out just as well. The vSphere Client (and Web Client!) have helped me avoid scripting one more time! Whew!
The repetitive task of the day is adding a VMFS volume to a vSphere cluster. Before I found this little gem I'm about to show you, I had to log into each hosts' storage area and click the rescan button to ensure the local IQN and Fibre Channel interfaces are instructed to search for new storage. This is usually the case when a new LUN is added to existing Fibre fabrics or existing iSCSI targets; a simple rescan will have the new volume arrive and be usable (assuming it is formatted as VMFS).
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Posted by Rick Vanover on 04/24/20131 comments
I'll admit it -- I love the flexibility that VMware vSphere virtualization provides. The fact is, you can do nearly anything on this platform. This actually can be a bad thing at times. I recently was recording a podcast with Greg Stuart, who blogs at vdestination.com and we observed this very point. We agreed that all virtualized environments are not created equal, and it is very rare if not impossible to see two environments that are the same.
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Posted by Rick Vanover on 04/10/20132 comments
There is one thing that we all know about virtualization: Storage is your most important decision. I've said a number of times that my transition to virtualization as the core part of my IT practice also led to me knowing a lot about shared storage technologies. As I've developed my storage practice to enable my virtualization practice, one thing I've become good at is breaking down details on transports for virtual machine storage systems.
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Posted by Rick Vanover on 03/25/20135 comments
My last blog on post-installation tweaks for vSphere was a hit! So, I thought this would be a great opportunity to do the same for Microsoft Hyper-V. I think these tips are very helpful. In fact, I may find myself making more little tips like this.
You know what I mean here -- the tips here are some of the things that you actually already know, but how often is it that we forget the little things?!
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Posted by Rick Vanover on 01/28/20134 comments
For the most part, I live in a world of default configurations. There are, however a number of small tweaks that I do to ESXi hosts after they have been installed to customize my configuration.
While this list is not specific-enough to work everywhere, chances are you will pick up something and say "Oh, yeah, that's a good idea!" I don't include specific networking or storage topics, as they apply to each specific environment, but this generic list may apply to you in each of your virtualization practices. Most if not all of these settings can be pushed through vSphere Host Profiles, but I don't always work in environments licensed to that level.
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Posted by Rick Vanover on 12/19/20123 comments
One of my absolute favorite features of Windows Server 2012 with Hyper-V is the VHDX disk file format. This new virtual disk format goes up to 64 TB and is the answer to many storage challenges for VMs when larger workloads end up as a VM.
While my virtualization practice frequently sees me leverage thin-provisioning, I don't always make virtual disk files exactly to the maximum size they can be made. There isn't too much harm in that point, unless the guest operating systems, of course, fill up. Monitoring discussions aside, there are situations where the VM will need its storage allocation increased.
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Posted by Rick Vanover on 12/13/20125 comments
There is no shortage of storage solutions today that position storage around some form of cloud technology. Love or hate the cloud buzzword, here is something different: Oxygen Cloud.
I got to check out the Oxygen Cloud technology and here are my thoughts. First of all, it's not what you think. In fact, I was struggling to say "what" the Oxygen Cloud is. At first it may just look like another file distribution tool, like DropBox. A closer look and I found that it's got a lot more going on.
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Posted by Rick Vanover on 09/12/20125 comments
By default, an ESXi host is permitted to have eight NFS datastores. In vSphere environments, you might have find it necessary to go over the limit and add more than eight NFS datastores and it may not be obvious why you can't add another one. Historically, NFS datastores were unique compared to VMFS datastores in that they could scale above 2 TB without using extents. With vSphere 5 and VMFS-5, that limitation is now removed.
It is possible to have a few number of large NFS datastores, but it is also a valid configuration to leverage a larger number of smaller NFS datastores. This may or may not be on multiple storage controllers, as today storage can exist in many forms on vSphere hosts.
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Posted by Rick Vanover on 08/29/20122 comments
If you haven't been following Microsoft's news, messaging and strategies of late, you really should, if only to be aware of the announcements with Hyper-V and the upcoming Windows Server 2012 release. System Center Virtual Machine Manger 2012 (SCVMM) recently went generally available and brings a lot of management options for Hyper-V hosts.
One area that caught my interest with SCVMM was the Fabric Resources section. Storage and network fabric management are one of the most challenging administrative aspects of virtualization. It's even worse for someone like me, who is historically used to other virtualization technologies. Learning this on Hyper-V and SCVMM platforms can be challenging.
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Posted by Rick Vanover on 07/11/20120 comments
It becomes incredibly difficult with multiple layers of virtualization to sometimes know what is what. One particular area where this becomes a challenge is determining MAC addresses of the ESXi components. Specifically, determining what MAC addresses compose the vmkernel interfaces can become challenging with virtual switches provided by the host and multiple host-based network services on that switch.
While this can be done with PowerCLI or SSH, I'm a fan of getting this point information in the vSphere Client.
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Posted by Rick Vanover on 06/11/20120 comments
Let's face it, VMware is the virtualization platform to beat! The company has so many offerings in the space right now, that one can only take the time to make a wish list. While you might expect me to write a blog like this around the end of the year -- some sort of New Year's Resolution, as it were -- this came to me just today and I had to share it! It's not a rant, but a random collection of thoughts on VMware topics.
The VMTN Revival
This comes up from time to time and I even did an open microphone podcast about it. Basically, I'd love to see VMware offer a program where IT pros could pay for access to VMware licensing for lab use. This could be for learning new products before trying them in production, studying for certification paths, or writing a blog!
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Posted by Rick Vanover on 05/30/201233 comments