Plain Virtualization

Have a question posted by one of my customer on iSCSI datastore extend. In Linux, if you have two LUN created every time this machine is rebooted, sometimes the LUNs get mixed up e.g. sda for LUN1 and sdb for LUN2 which could be vice versus unless a udev is used to statically map the drive to ensure the path remains the same. So now if we compare that in ESX, if we reboot an ESX server which has two LUN of iSCSI datastore which one extend to the other, would this cause any confusion placing the 2nd extend to be the 1st extend of datastore?  If not, how does ESX know the iSCSI datastore extended order? I wasn't able to answer this and got reply from Cormac Hogan in VMware. No – no confusion would occur. From a LUN perspective, vSphere uses NAA id (SCSI identifiers) rather than relying on any controller/target/LUN numbering convention. This way, if the LUNs were presented differently, or were discovered in a different order, we know about them from this NAA id. From a V...

Some people asked me this question: Will HA be activated if datastore is lost on a host due to iSCSI connection failure or FC connection on just one host without losing the host server from the management network? Though I know the answer however I was curious myself and decide to find out by performing this on a iSCSI connection to see the results.   From my understanding, HA protects hosts failure however as long the host primary detection method (management network) is still alive, the host is considered alive in such, even though the VMs that the host is hosting is "gone" due to perhaps a nic failure for iSCSI connection or a HBA failure for FC connection, HA will not be activated even though datastore heartbeat (only in vSphere 5.x and its a secondary detection if primary failed) is lost. I realize vCenter will initialed a migration of the VM however this will get the process halt.  We have to kill the process and wait for a timeout in order to take...

At time where you need to install update or install drivers on ESXi/ESX servers where new devices like Network cards or HBA drivers are not embedded in the base image. In vSphere 5 you can of cause recompile your own image.  However for existing servers, we would need to learn the commands. Here I have attached the screen shots with steps to do the installation using the VMware vCLI. Requirements: VMware vSphere CLI installed on your workstation which can be found here under VMware vSphere 4.0 CLI VMware vSphere 4.1 CLI VMware vSphere 5 CLI Open VMware vSphere  CLI Command Prompt on workstation.   Check the current Maintenance Mode of the ESXi server by using: vicfg-hostops.pl –operation info –-server   –-username e.g. vicfg-hostops.pl –operation info –-server 192.168.1.1 –-username root   Enter password when prompted. Put ESXi server into maintenance mode by using: vicfg-hostops.pl –operation enter -–server [server_name_o...

This video will demostrate how to upgrade your ESXi or ESXi 4.x server to ESXi 5.0 using the Update Manager 5.0 plug-in on vCenter 5.0.  Procedures to upgrade your vCenter is in the previous post . Tested with ESX 4.x and ESXi 4.x which has a local datastore with VM in it.  Both upgrade with VUM complete successfully with datastore still intact and VM still exist. The only different is that, when you browse the local datastore which was upgraded from ESX 4.x, you will find the esxconsole folder in it which you would not see this if it was upgraded from an ESXi 4.x. Local datastore from ESX 4.x Local datastore from ESXi 4.x Update: Test with local datastore to test if it will be removed. Next Post: vSphere 5 Migration White Paper and Tools  Other related posts: vSphere 5 vRAM Licensing vSphere 5 ESXi 5 Installation Upgrade vSphere vCenter 4.x to 5.0 Upgrade ESX/ESXi 4.x to ESXi 5.0 using Update Manager Upgrade VMware Tools and vir...