Looking for VMware Tools?

Looking for VMware Tools? Look no further than your ESX host under /vmimages/tools-isoimages. There you’ll find the .iso files that mount as images into the virtual CD-ROM tray when the “Install/Upgrade VMware Tools” command is passed to the ESX host for a VM. Under the floppies folder you’ll find vmscsi-1.2.0.2.flp which is the optimized BusLogic SCSI driver for legacy Windows guests.
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VMbook

VMbook: Practical Guide to Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery with VMware Infrastructure featuring Hardware and Software Solutions from:
AMD, Cisco, Dell, Emulex, Intel, NetApp, Sun Microsystems

Once you have VI installed, this is a fantastic 230 page manual for jumpstarting your VI BCP/DR planning and execution.

http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/practical_guide_bcdr_vmb.pdf
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su command

At the ESX Service Console, use the su command to change users. su is short for substitute user or switch user and is typically used for the elevation of privileges. I liken it much to Windows Fast User Switching. The bottom line is that su provides a method for admins to log on with their own accounts and to use su - for root privileges when needed, while providing an audit trial. It's a good security measure.
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VMware vSphere 4.0

What's New in VMware vSphere 4.0
Power Management — ESX/ESXi 4.0 supports Enhanced Intel SpeedStep® and Enhanced AMD PowerNow! CPU power management technologies. With dynamic voltage and frequency scaling (DVFS), ESX/ESXi can save power consumed by ESX hosts when they are not operating at maximum capacity. See the vSphere Resource Management Guide http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vsphere4/r40/vsp_40_resource_mgmt.pdf
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Clearing The Air On Shares

Clearing The Air On Shares

Share values are a method of allocating CPU and memory resources to VMs with preference in an over commit situation. Shares can be assigned individually in the VM configuration, or more globally at the resource pool level. What's often forgotten is that shares only come into play when a shortage of CPU or memory actually occurs. Outside of a resource shortage, shares don't do a darned thing.
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Fence A Configuration

Lab Manager: When To Fence A Configuration?

-You have a configuration with one or more servers and you anticipate cloning the configuration numerous times
-You have a configuration involving a difficult and complex setup, and cloning the configuration is an easier solution than repeating the setup process
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Performance Overview Plug-In

Installing the Performance Overview Plug-In in vCenter 2.5 Update 4

VirtualCenter 2.5 Update 4 introduced new Performance Overview charts which resemble the old vmkusage/vmktree of the ESX2 days. However, the plugin is not installed automatically. Follow the KB below for the many required steps. Fortunately, the new charts are installed automatically in vSphere with no manual steps.

http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1008296
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Why ESXi?

Why ESXi?
-Smaller hypervisor means faster deployment times
-Smaller hypervisor means less code vulnerability, risk to the environment, and time spent patching the hypervisor
-Smaller hypervisors can be embedded in server hardware
-ESXi free edition lends itself well to rapid and wide spread implementation
-Automation efforts are moving away from the COS (PowerShell, Host Profiles, Distributed Virtual Switch, etc.)
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VMUG

Join A VMware User Group (VMUG)
VMUGs are run by the users, for the users. This isn’t corporate propaganda jammed down our throats. These are peer level meetings with a wide range of expertise and experience. It’s straight talk about VMware virtualization benefits, strategies and related 3rd party products, and we don’t sugar coat, overlook, or ignore VMware issues.
http://www.vmware.com/communities/content/vmug/
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VMware Tools

Before attempting to install the VMware Tools on a Linux VM, be sure to have the GCC Compiler and Kernel Source installed. More often than not, these components are required during the VMware Tools vmware-config-tools.pl configuration script.
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Native partitions

Native partitions can not be manually created or sized during ESXi 3 installation. The short ESXi 3 installation routine consumes approximately 4.7GB of disk spanning six partitions which are automatically created based on VMware best practices. The remaining disk space is allocated as block unaligned VMFS for use with virtual machines and VMkernel swap.
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VMware vSphere 4.0

What's New in VMware vSphere 4.0
vStorage VMFS Volume Grow — Allows dynamic expansion of a VMFS volume extent to add capacity to an existing datastore without disrupting running VMs. See the ESX Configuration Guide and the ESXi Configuration Guide http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vsphere4/r40/vsp_40_esx_server_config.pdf http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vsphere4/r40/vsp_40_esxi_server_config.pdf
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What's New in VMware vSphere 4.0

What's New in VMware vSphere 4.0
VMkernel Protection — Mechanisms were introduced to assure the integrity of the VMkernel and loaded modules as they reside on disk and in memory. See the ESX Configuration Guide and the ESXi Configuration Guide http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vsphere4/r40/vsp_40_esx_server_config.pdf http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vsphere4/r40/vsp_40_esxi_server_config.pdf
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Configuration Maximums

Configuration Maximums Comparison

RAM per VM:
ESX(i) 4.0: 255GB
ESX(i) 3.5 Update 4: 65,532MB (64GB - 4BM)
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On this day in 2003

On this day in 2003, Hopkinton, Mass. based EMC Corporation announced its plans to purchase VMware, Inc. for $635 million. The purchase was completed January 9th 2004 for $625 million in cash.
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Display the full path

ESX script to display the full path in the Service Console
Example:
In your ESX console, instead of seeing this:
[root@host vmware]#
You’ll see this:
[root@host /etc/vmware]#
Paste the following into PuTTY on your ESX host:
mv /etc/bashrc /etc/bashrc.old
sed -e “s/\\h \\\W/\\h \\\w/g” /etc/bashrc.old > /etc/bashrc
Close your PuTTY session and re-open to see the change take effect.
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Cost Per Application Calculator

VMware offers an online Cost Per Application Calculator. The tool was designed to accurately estimate and compare acquisition cost of a virtualization solution. VMware has labeled this metric Cost Per Application.

Take the tool for a spin and see how much you can save with VMware:
http://www.vmware.com/technology/whyvmware/calculator/
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Lab Manager Garbage Collection

Lab Manager Garbage Collection is the automatic detection and freeing of images that are no longer in use in a disk chain or otherwise. Lab Manager does not immediately delete files associated with a deleted VM. Each pass of the garbage collector involves an attempt to delete nodes without dependencies. Several passes over time may be required. The default Garbage Collection frequency is 120 seconds.
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On this day in 2005

On this day in 2005, VMware releases Player 1.0, a FREE desktop hypervisor for Windows and Linux platforms. It's purpose was the running of existing VMs, however it lacked the ability to create VMs and as such it was often likened to Adobe Acrobat Reader. Shortly after its release, users engineered clever ways to create VMs to be used in Player without paying VMware for a licensed VM creation product.
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Virtualization Quote of the Day

Lab Manager virtual machines are more or less pinned to the datastores they were originally created on which brings the importance datastore capacity management and planning to the forefront. However, the Lab Manager utility SSMove.exe (located in C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware vCenter Lab Manager\Tools\SSMove) can be used to move an entire datastore, or a specific tree of virtual machines to another datastore.
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On this day in 2007

On this day in 2007, VMware releases ESX 3.5 and VC 2.5 and introduces ESXi, the industry's first ultra-thin hypervisor. More than two months later it was discovered that a corrupted ESX 3.5 ISO image (as indicated by a false MD5SUM hash) had been released into the wild causing issues in some customer datacenters. VMware released a new ISO correcting the problem on 2/20/08.
http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1003801
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Who command

At the ESX Service Console, the who command will display a list of users who are currently logged on to the host, as well as the network host they are connecting from in the case of a remote session.

i.e.
[root@esx3l /etc]# who
root pts/0 Jul 26 14:53 (workstation.boche.mcse)
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vCenter Statistics Rollups

vCenter Statistics Rollups

Real Time = 1 hour of real time stats refreshed every 20 seconds. Not stored in the vCenter database
Past Day = Real Time stats rolled up w/ 1 data point for every 5 minutes
Past Week = Past Day stats rolled up w/ 1 data point for every 30 minutes
Past Month = Past Week stats rolled up w/ 1 data point for ever 2 hours
Past Year = Past Month stats rolled up w/ 1 data point per day
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Use a "one-two punch" approach

Use a "one-two punch" approach to backing up your virtual infrastructure by implementing both file level and image level (.vmdk) backups. File level backups will facilitate the day to day restore requests. Image level backups offer rapid recovery options in disaster recovery scenario. The best backup products available will offer both types of protection.
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Virtualization Quote of the Day

Features no longer supported in the ESX4.0 Service Console:
Service Console net-snmp no longer supported; Deprecated /proc/vmware nodes; Migration from /proc to /sys file system; Custom IPMI drivers no longer supported; Booting into Linux or debug mode no longer supported; ESX4.0 Service Console is not a development environment (no longer ships with development packages and libraries)
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ESX3

Starting with ESX3, virtualized Citrix Presentation Server (XenApp) workloads with a reasonable amount of users became a reality. I've virtualized many Citrix servers in production with great success. The content based page sharing mechanism really shines here. Following is a great 'Citrix on VMware' best practices article from Sven Huisman:

http://virtualfuture.info/2008/10/more-xenapp-45-on-vmware-recommendations/
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MAC address prefixes

The following OUIs (MAC address prefixes) are registered to VMware through the IEEE. These are the possible MAC address prefixes you will see assigned in the first three octets of VMware virtual network adapters:

00:05:69
00:0c:29
00:1c:14
00:50:56
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What's New in VMware vSphere 4.0

What's New in VMware vSphere 4.0
Enhanced ESX Error Reporting — Per-host network, storage and VMFS issues reported to the vSphere Client in the Events tab. Each error event also provides a link to a specific Knowledge Base article that explains the event and provides detailed remediation steps to resolve the error. See vSphere Basic System Administration http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vsphere4/r40/vsp_40_admin_guide.pdf
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What's New in VMware vSphere 4.0

What's New in VMware vSphere 4.0
Native SATA — Support for internal SATA disks that are connected through the SATA interface. This choice allows administrators to reduce storage costs by supporting the lowest cost type of disk storage available. See the ESX Configuration Guide and the ESXi Configuration Guide http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vsphere4/r40/vsp_40_esxi_server_config.pdf
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@VMwareKB on Twitter

Be the first to see new an updated VMware KB articles by following @VMwareKB on Twitter and subscribing to the following RSS feed:

http://feeds2.feedburner.com/VMwareKnowledgebaseWeeklyDigest

Or visit the VMware Weekly KB Digest with your browser at:
http://blogs.vmware.com/kbdigest/
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