A few weeks after VMwares announcement, the new release of its flagship server virtualization product is now available for everyone. Grab your copy here (You… Read More »vSphere 5.1 Download - Public Available!
If you change your hardware configuration without reinstalling your hypervisor you might run into an issue with the nic or hba port numbering. The ESXi host writes the PCI bus to vmnic mapping to a special configuration file. If you change the pci slot from your dual port nic for example you end up with 2 new vmnics.
The configuration file is located at /etc/vmware/esx.conf
Change vmnic numberingRead More »ESXi: Change vmnic / vmhba numbering
VMware is about to release vSphere 5.1 with great enhancements. There are many great papers about the new features and enhancements. This is a short… Read More »VMware vSphere 5.1 - What's new?
VMware vCenter 5.0 U1a has been released. This patch has a permanent fix for the Storage vMotion/dvSwitch bug which caused HA to fail in a… Read More »Storage vMotion / dvSwitch patch released (but manual fix required)
VMware has publish a security fix for their current ESX Server. There is a vulnerability which might allow an attacker to manipulate the traffic from… Read More »VMware released a Security Patch for ESXi 5
The first thing i check on every vSphere environment is the version or build number which is currently installed. It is always good to know… Read More »ESX(i) Build List
Since PowerCLI has gotten so powerful, the vSphere Management Assistant (vMA) seems to be obsolete. But it is still a great management tool and indispensable… Read More »Getting started with vMA 5
Life is easy if you are running Windows because if you want to create image-based VMware Backups with Veeam Backup & Replication, Quest vRanger, PHD… Read More »Filesystem consistent Linux Backups with VMware
Today I tried to explain why this Storage vMotion / dvSwitch / HA problem actually existis, how the virtual machines getting affected and what I… Read More »Storage vMotion and dvSwitch / HA problem explained
Without a shared storage it is quite hard to deploy a reasonable test scenario. Within vSphere 5 VMware introduced the vSphere Storage Appliance (VSA). The VSA transforms the local storage from up to 3 servers into a mirrored shared storage. This sounds really great for a testing environment because it supports plenty VMware Features like vMotion, HA and DRS.
Prior to installation there are a few things to check because the VSA has very strict system requirements. As it is only a testing environment and I do not consider getting support, so the main goal is getting the VSA up and running. The server requirements are:
I deliberately ignored all the vendor/model or hardware raid controller requirements, as this are only soft-requirements. The HP Proliant N40L supports all above requirements, except the 2GHz CPU. But there is a little XML File which contains the host audit configuration the installer uses during the installation. I am going to tweak this file a little bit to get the installation done.
Read More »HP N40L Shared Storage with vSphere Storage Appliance (VSA)