Plain Virtualization

Recently, I was asked to setup vSphere Bitfusion on a set of VxRAIL servers. This was running on vSphere 7.0. Hit into some issues and manage to resolve it. I followed the video demo from this blog but realize there are some things different from the official installation guide . You can also refer to the summary for the system requirement for the vSphere Bitfusion Server. This article is to bring you to all the resources you will need and not hit into such problems that I did. Before we start, the requirement for vSphere Bitfusion is to have vSphere Enterprise Plus licensing and vSphere Bitfusion Add-on per CPU/Processor licenses. Here is a video of the installation. Overview for vSphere Bitfusion Server Download the vSphere Bitfusion binary from VMware Prepare your host to make sure the GPU are added in PCI Passthrough as stated here Import vSphere Bitfusion OVA and deploy into vCenter with the follow information: vCenter login credential If not using DHCP: IP address, subnet mask...

Constantly even myself, we found difficult to setup the vSphere web client.  Often I always forgot what to do again and again from vSphere 5.0, 5.1 and now 5.5.  I decide to just document this down so that the web client can work as a breeze.   The first thing after setting up your vCenter 5.5, you would need to: Log into the web client using the SSO administrator: Change the password for the SSO administrator account (administrator@vsphere.local) Change the password expiry to from the default 90 days to your requirement (Note: '0' will not work although the message state so when you click on the textbox, instead do a 9999 if you require no expiry. Refer to KB ) Add your domain into the Identity Sources under Administration>Single-Sign-On>Configuration Set it to Default Domain by clicking on the Global Icon Add your accounts or groups to be SSO administrator going to Administrators under Groups in Administration>Single-Sign-On>Users and Gr...

It has been sometime that I last did any installation and decide to rebuild my home lab.  I will skip the installation or upgrade of ESX server as this is pretty straight forward either using VMware vCenter Update Manager or via booting up from CD. I will document the vCenter components as well as the databases requirements.  The SQL query are all tested during my installation.  I have record a simple video to show that the SQL query are error free and allows vCenter to install without any errors. I might miss out some stuff here since I am not a DB guy or a SQL expert so to speak. vCenter 64bit DSN after user and rights assigned Check out support Database from here Adobe Flash required for machine access web client  Similarly to what I have documented year before on vCenter 5.1 here , the SQL scripts did not change other than the requirements of SSO database is no longer required. Extracted from vCenter installation guide which can be found in t...

The release of the vCenter Multi-Hypervisor Manager allows vCenter 5.1 to be able to manage Hyper-V 2 servers based on Windows 2008 and Windows 2008 R2. I decide to give it a try so I install a nested Hyper-V2 server and try to create a Windows XP VM it.  However I receive the following error: Description: The Virtual Machine Management Service failed to start the virtual machine '%machinename%' because one of the Hyper-V components is not running (Virtual machine ID %ID_of_the_virtual_machine%). Apparently, I would need to add in this advanced setting to the vmx file which I can also use the web client to add that. hypervisor.cpuid.v0 = "FALSE" After adding that, my Hyper-V VM is able to start up. Now let's head back to vCenter Multi-Hypervisor Manager.  This is a 1.0 release so do not expect too much on it.  This can be found in your normal vCenter download page. Please note that this plug-in is only available for vCenter Standard edition.  vCe...

There are a few good resources on using the vCenter Web Client.  One of them contains the use of the whole web client interface which you can find here . This KB states the requirements for the Web Client. This blog shows you the installation of Web Client. To access the web client the URL address would be as follows with the default port: https:// :(hostname or ip):9443/vsphere-client Below is a video on a simple setup of the Web Client and installation.  Do note that the Web Client would require Adobe Flash to access via any of the web browsers namely Firefox, Internet Explorer and Chrome. Features now available in Web Client but not on C# Client vSphere Replication vMotion with no shared storage SR-IOV, BDPU, Port allocation to Elastic Network Healthcheck Backup and Rollback for vDS Port mirroring (IPFX) and Netflow new enhancements for vDS (ESPAN, RSPAN) I came across this blog post on the vDS enhancements on vSphere 5.1.  Do take a look. 1...

After the installation of vCenter 5.1, you can then proceed with the Update Manager if yu do use it and its strongly you use it to scan and check for update and apply these updates or patches to your VMware environment. Refer to the vCenter Update Manager documentation page .  Here you will find the installation guide and the requirements for the database rights requirement.  I am using MS SQL in my demo here.  For other database please refer to the installation document.  In short for MS SQL, you need either a sysadmin role or db_owner of the database for the upgrade or installation.  In a corporate environment, typically sysadmin role is not allowed that leads to only the db_owner. Also the requirement for MSDB is need as sysadmin or dbo_owner during installation or upgrade only. Create vCenter Update Manager database with the rights.  The revoke of dbo role for the vumuser is at the bottom of the script commented out. ==========================...

To upgrade, you can refer to the Best Practice KB here . If you have any problem hit installing SSO, you can refer to this KB .  If you hit an error for vCenter installation after installing SSO, vCenter Inventory Service successfully, you may want to refer to this KB .   If you encounter an error during vCenter Installation and its show in vm_ssoreg.log "java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: The local OS identity source is not registered with the SSO installation" Resolution: You might need to quit and rejoin your domain for the vCenter server if time on both the vCenter and Domain Controller is within not more than 5 minutes difference. For a more detailed installation including certificates installation you may refer to this other blog . To start with, I have make this guide simply easy for someone who have not done any vCenter installation before and using MS SQL for the database. Here is a video on the installation and below are the detailed instructions and ...

Attached with this post is a sample BOM and high level architecture details on how you can setup a vCloud lab with 4 hosts (16GB of RAM, 1TB of storage and 2 CPU - Quad core). The lab will be useful for System Integrators (or individuals with the monetary resources) to build a lab that can be used for the following: 1. Sales can use it to demonstrate VMware solutions. 2. Pre-sales can use for demonstration or learning the capabilities of vCloud. 3. Post-Sales can use the setup for design validation/testing. Caution/Disclaimer: 1. This is a lab and the setup is not a reference design for a vCloud deployment or for production use. 2. The lab architecture described here is also not setup based on best practices but for individuals to be able to install and get familiar with VMware solutions using spare or old hardware. Link to Document: https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B6ewbl4byY17bVBFRktMbXBKc2M

This video shows you how to setup the vCenter Operations Manager Standard also known as VCOPS. You will first need to download the .ova vApp from VMware and sign up for a trial license. The following credential will be needed: Web console ID & Password: admin, admin VCOPS vApp ID & Password: root, vmware Note: To return to the Standard Administration Page to set SMTP, view/collect logs, change admin password, etc. https:// /adminMain.action This mark my last post for 2011.  A Happy New Year to all! VMware has release a new version of vCenter Operation Manager 5.0.  Installation and configuration setup can be view below from VMwareTV.

I am very new to vCloud Director and in such have a hard time learning how to install this.  I have to rely on reading the installation guide but this cannot beat anything that have been written by someone who have gone through the installation and listed down some of the requirements.  This was all done in my home lab in such, the FQDN here may not apply for production case. I am no linux nor oracle expert so I am going to stick most of my work on Windows wherever possible.  As vCD has released to 1.5 that comes with SQL support, I am lucky that I can drop oracle completely.  As for the requirement for linux, I have used RHEL 5.5. Do not that RHEL is supported for 5.4, 5.5 and 5.6 also know as RHEL 5 update 4 to update 6. Here are some of the reference I used to get my vCloud Director working. Installation of vCD on RHEL (vCloud Director 1.5 Installation Guide, Pg 26-17) Installing vCloud Director 1.5 on SQL 2008 (vCloud Director 1.5 Installa...