vCenter Server Linked Mode

Any computer which runs vCenter Server Linked Mode must be a member of a Windows domain. Linked Mode vCenter Servers may be in different domains but a two-way trust must exist between the domains involved.
More vQuotes

New in VMware vSphere 4.1

What's New in VMware vSphere 4.1

Updated Deployment Environment in vSphere Management Assistant (vMA) - The updated deployment environment in vMA 4.1 is fully compatible with vMA 4.0. A significant change is the transition from RHEL to CentOS.

http://www.vmware.com/support/developer/vima/
More vQuotes

License per CPU

SMBs searching for cost effective VMware licensing should look at VMware vSphere Essentials and Essentials Plus. While other tiers are licensed per host socket, these editions are licensed for up to three hosts at competitive list prices.
More vQuotes

Security Tip

Security Tip: Disable Copy & Paste Operations Between the Guest Operating System and
Remote Console (disabled by default in vSphere 4.1)

Provide the following advanced parameters for the VM's configuration (stored in the .vmx file):
isolation.tools.copy.disable = true
isolation.tools.paste.disable = true
isolation.tools.setGUIOptions.enable = false

http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/vi35_security_hardening_wp.pdf
More vQuotes

IDE drives

With the introduction of vSphere, IDE drives are supported in VMware virtual infrastructure. Another change is that when creating a new Windows XP VM, the wizard now defaults to utilizing an IDE virtual hard disk instead of SCSI which was the case prior to vSphere. Both Vista and Windows 7 default to using a SCSI drive.
More vQuotes

TCP Wrappers Flowchart

TCP Wrappers Flowchart
When a remote connection is requested, the access control software consults 2 files. The search stops at the first match:
-Access will be granted when a (daemon,client) pair matches an entry in the /etc/hosts.allow file
-Otherwise, access will be denied when a (daemon,client) pair matches an entry in the /etc/hosts.deny file
-Otherwise, access will be granted

ESXi doesn't use TCP wrappers
More vQuotes

New in VMware vSphere 4.1

What's New in VMware vSphere 4.1

Load-Based Teaming - Allows dynamic adjustment of the teaming algorithm so that the load is always balanced across a team of physical adapters on a vNetwork Distributed Switch.

http://bit.ly/bNrQRZ
http://bit.ly/9a2NoE
More vQuotes

Linux Guest Operating Systems

Whitepaper: Installing and Configuring Linux Guest Operating Systems

This whitepaper talks about installing, configuring, updating, and administering Linux guest operating systems in virtual machines running on VMware Infrastructure 3 version 3.5. In addition, it also provides a collection of useful tips and tricks in fine-tuning your Linux virtual machines:

http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/linux_install_config.pdf
More vQuotes

New in VMware vSphere 4.1

What's New in VMware vSphere 4.1

USB Device Passthrough from an ESX/ESXi Host to a Virtual Machine - You can configure a virtual machine to use USB devices that are connected to an ESX/ESXi host where the virtual machine is running. The connection is maintained even if you migrate the virtual machine using vMotion.

http://vmware.com/pdf/vsphere4/r41/vsp_41_vm_admin_guide.pdf
More vQuotes

Make vCenter highly available

Make vCenter highly available. Deploy vCenter in a Windows VM hosted on a VMware VI cluster. A few reasons why:
-It’s a VMware best practice.
-You may already have a VI cluster in your environment you can leverage.
-Avoiding Microsoft Cluster Services removes a 3rd party infrastructure complexity, additional licensing costs, and dependency which requires an advanced skill set to support.

http://kb.vmware.com/kb/10087
More vQuotes

VMware ESX

VMware ESX: Detect problems with your .vmx files with the following Service Console command:
vmware-configcheck | grep -v PASS
The command walks through the inventory and checks whether each virtual machine in the inventory matches the set of rules on configuration that is indicated in the rules file on the host: /etc/vmware/configrules
More vQuotes

VI3 License File Locations

Network traffic between 2 VMs on the same vSwitch on the same ESX(i) host flows over the host hardware system bus and will not traverse the physical network. The processing of intra-vSwitch traffic is handled by CPU0 in the host. This is why it is possible for 2 VMs on the same vSwitch to communicate at greater than conventional speeds.

All of the above assumes there is no VLAN tagging involved.
More vQuotes

What's New in VMware vSphere 4.1

What's New in VMware vSphere 4.1

Boot from SAN - Enables ESXi boot from SAN (BFN). iSCSI, FCoE, and Fibre Channel boot are supported. Refer to the Hardware Compatibility Guide for the latest list of NICs and Converged Adapters that are supported with iSCSI boot.

http://bit.ly/4vdw3b
http://bit.ly/cIzuuK
http://bit.ly/bih9kD
More vQuotes

SAN Zoning Best Practices

SAN Zoning Best Practices

Take a look at Brocade's Secure SAN Zoning Best Practices document. Although it contains the Brocade name throughout, the principles can be applied to any vendor’s fabric. Please keep these best practices in mind when designing and configuring SAN fabrics for your VMware virtual infrastructure.

Download it here:
http://bit.ly/aNIf9d
More vQuotes

VMware IPO

On this day in 2006, EMC Corporation released 10% of the company's shares in VMware in an initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange. The stock debuted at $29 per share and closed the day at $51 per share.
More vQuotes

2-for-1

2-for-1
On this day in 2008, VMware customers were impacted by a "time bomb" bug in ESX 3.5 U2 build 103908 & 103909 that prevented VMs from being powered on or vMotioned. -@vinternals
http://bit.ly/bhJdfW

When utilizing the "Use Explicit Failover Order" vSwitch Load Balancing policy, all Active Adapters are used in the failover sequence before the hypervisor resorts to using adapters in the Standby Adapters list.
More vQuotes

RDM versus a traditional non-RDM

In most cases, there are no performance benefits to using an RDM versus a traditional non-RDM virtual disk in a VM. There are 2 exceptions:

1) For sequential reads and writes, RDM provides slightly better I/O performance at smaller I/O block sizes.

2) As I/O block size increases, CPU cycles per I/O increases for VMFS compared to RDM.
More vQuotes

SpringSource

On this day in 2009, VMware announced its intent to acquire SpringSource, a 5 year-old company rapidly becoming a leader in enterprise & web application development & management for approximately $362M cash plus $58M in stock. There are many reasons why this makes sense. Read more from Steve Herrod at http://bit.ly/TPr0y

Trivia: An April Fool's Day rumor circulated in 2008 stating Microsoft would purchase SpringSource.
More vQuotes

DRS: Decisions.. Decisions...

The "Virtual Machine Administrator" vCenter role was removed from vSphere. Good riddance! The name of the role was misleading as it has a lot more permissions than virtual machine administration. For example, this role had the ability to destroy datastores!
More vQuotes

Fusion 1.0

VMware vMotion & CPU Compatibility
This document discusses CPU compatibility & outlines the checks performed by VMware vCenter before allowing migration with vMotion. It details differences in features & extensions in current CPUs & describes procedures that could be used to relax some CPU compatibility constraints to facilitate vMotion.
http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/vmotion_info_guide.pdf
More vQuotes

ESX vSwitch Network Load Balancing

Script to Configure ESX vSwitch Network Load Balancing

Xtravirt, the VMware gurus that they are, published some useful information for scripting vSwitch load balancing (4 available policies) using the vimsh command. Take a look at the following URL:

http://xtravirt.com/xd10066

See also: http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1019864
More vQuotes

ESX Memory Configuration

Default ESX Service Console Memory Configuration

ESX 4.x = Dynamic allocation based on total physical host memory
ESX 3.5 u5 = 512MB
ESX 3.x (through Update 4)= 272MB

The maximum memory for all versions of ESX is 800MB. The minimum configurable for ESX 4.1 is 256MB although the configuration maximums documentation specifies 300MB.

Read more here: http://bit.ly/8FUQNn
More vQuotes

Extended verbose

One might think the most verbose log file setting for vCenter is "verbose".
It's not. It's actually "trivia (extended verbose)" and can be changed in the vCenter Administration pulldown menu, Logging Options section.

This can also be changed by editing the vpxd.cfg file, however, a vCenter service restart would be required using this method.
More vQuotes