VMware vSphere 6.0 with the new Virtual Volumes (VVol) storage architecture is in the market since 9 month now. Many vendors have adopted the technology and the list of supported storage arrays has grown massively in the last couple of month. This post takes a look on the current status and which vendors are supported today:
About 16 years ago, long before ESXi and vSphere, VMware published their first product: VMware 1.0. VMware was the first application that allowed to run multiple operating systems on a single x86 machine. The VMware Virtual Platform technology adds a thin software layer that allows multiple guest operating systems to run concurrently on a single standard PC.
The first product "VMware" is still available today, but known as VMware Workstation. Read More »VMware Workstation from 1999 to 2015
The 6th Generation of my favorite Homelab systems are ready to be launched and the shipping is expected to start in December. Intel NUCs are small, silent, transportable and have a very low power consumption, making it a perfect system for homelabs or homeservers. Intel has put its latest Skylake mobile CPU into the mini system.
Intel NUCs were never officially supported by VMware but they have a great community support. Their last 4th and 5th Generations are proven in many homlabs or even for demonstrating Virtual SAN deployments.
Read More »Preview on 6th Gen (Skylake) Intel NUC for VMware ESXi
VMware has published a patch for ESXi 6.0 that resolves the (new) CBT Bug documented in KB2136854.
Product: VMware ESXi 6.0
Release date: November 25, 2015
Patch: ESXi600-201511001
Build: 3247720
Links: KB2137545 | Download
This patch updates the esx-base VIB to resolve an issue that occurs when you run virtual machine backups which utilize Changed Block Tracking (CBT) in ESXi 6.0, the CBT API call QueryDiskChangedAreas() might return incorrect changed sectors that results in inconsistent incremental virtual machine backups. The issue occurs as the CBT fails to track changed blocks on the VMs having I/O during snapshot consolidation.
Read More »ESXi 6.0 November 2015 CBT Fix Patch (Build 3247720)
In my last article I've created a custom vCenter alert with a special event trigger. I've received a question about how to figure out the trigger event string to be used for creating alarms.
The vSphere Client shows the following error event:
To create an alarm based on this event, you have to create a new alarm and use the following event trigger: com.vmware.vc.vsan.RogueHostFoundEvent
As a common best practice you should separate management, vMotion and Virtual SAN traffic from production traffic. This is not only a performance requirement, but also for security concerns. Compared to management traffic which is encrypted and requires authentication and vMotion traffic which is impracticable to eavesdrop, Virtual SAN traffic presents a large surface area to attacks.
This article explains why it is critical to keep Virtual SAN traffic in protected networks and what can happen when you ignore this guideline. I am also explaining how you can detect and monitor such attacks.
I was wondering if it possible to speed up my Intel NUC based ESXi with Virtual SAN. The idea is that compared against vSphere Flash Read Cache, Virtual SAN can use the SSD not only as read cache but also as write buffer. This post explains how you can create a Virtual SAN Datastore on a single ESXi host from the command-line without a vCenter Server.
It goes without saying that this is neither the idea behind Virtual SAN nor officially supported by VMware. It also violates VMware's EULA if you are running Virtual SAN without a VSAN license. To assign a licence you need a vCenter Server and wrap the single ESXi into a Cluster.
My configuration for this test:
I've read this excellent article by Cormac Hogan explaining why and when a Virtual Machine receives a "stun". This post is a follow-up explaining how you can determine the duration of a Virtual Machine stun on the most common vSphere functions:
Read More »How long are Virtual Machines stunned for Snapshots and vMotion?
Intel NUCs with ESXi are being used as home servers and in many home labs. If you are generally interested in running ESXi on Intel NUCs, read this post first. Officially, it is limited to 16GB memory which might come a little bit short for virtualization labs. Recently Crucial has launched 16GB DDR3L modules for an affordable price (Intelligent Memory was the first in the market with 16GB modules, but they were quite expensive). I've ordered two Crucial 16GB modules (CT204864BF160B) and tested them in my 5th Gen Intel NUC (NUC5i5MYHE).
When you open a Support Request (SR) at VMware, the Global Support Services usually requests you to collect diagnostic information. You can create this log bundle with a special command line tool (vm-support), with the vSphere (Web-)Client or with the API. No matter how you create the bundle the result is always the same: a .tgz file containing your ESXi Host name and the creation date with a size of about 30 - 300MB.
This post explains what's inside this log bundle, but instead of simply extracting the file and looking at the result, I am going to take a look on how the file is created and what's part of the process.
Why is it important to know? Because it does not only contain data that allows VMware GSS to identify your issue, but also to help yourself to enhance your troubleshooting skills. The script gathers the output of many useful commands and there is nearly no black magic involved. You do not need special tools or internal VMware knowledge to make use of this log bundle.
