Plain Virtualization

Recently recent questions on the impact with license expiry. Especially important when most licensing are going into subscription model. But regardless of the license type, the effect are the same. Let just dive right in. During vSphere 5, I did an article regarding this issue where license expires on vCenter Server. The KB that was describing it has also been removed. The functions are partially working as stated. In fact, in vSphere 5.5, this has been documented . Today with vSphere 7, vCenter Server expiry of license is now shown in the doc . As well for the ESXi Server is documented . It is a now a clear cut that all ESXi hosts will be disconnected which also means no vSphere HA or vSphere DRS will work since this requires the hosts to be managed by vCenter Server. For other solutions, please check the respective documentation of the products to have a better understanding.

I treat this as an important post as it affects a lot of design today when upgrading to vSphere 7.0 and as well as new deployment. In the release of vSphere 7.0, there are a few things that are removed or deprecated. To name a few obvious ones below: External PSC (removed) vCenter Server for Windows (removed) vSphere Web Client (removed) vCenter Server .next Image based backup (deprecated) And yes, you read it correctly the last one. vCenter Server Image backup. Thanks to Michael White for pointing this out. I beg many of us did not read the release notes. Here I am going to direct you to the release notes of vCenter Server 7.0 release notes . Deprecation of Image-Based Backup and Restore Support for vCenter Server Image-based backup and restore for vCenter Server is deprecated in vCenter Server 7.0 and will not be supported in a future vSphere release. What the above statement in layman terms: the image-based backup is going to sunset in 7.0. Which means version 7.0 will be the last ...

Recently a colleague hit into an issue with his setup on vCenter due to the expiry of license. A new license will be used however he is still hitting some problems. A quick check, he was using vCenter ROBO edition license and ESXi is running vSphere Enterprise Plus. So here is to clarify the different editions of vCenter from VMware and the features available and limitation. Do note some features is dependent on the vSphere editions. Refer to this KB for some of vSphere 6.x features comparison. I have also previously illustrated in vCenter 5.x here which basically stays the same other than new features in vCenter 6.x. For vCenter Desktop that would be another article here . vCenter Edition Essential Foundation Standard Availability Bundled in Essential/Plus Kit Sold separately. Manage up to 4 hosts (3 prior to 6.5 U1) Sold separately. Manage vSphere Essential/ Plus vSphere Standard and above vSphere St...

Yes the official announcement for VSAN has been made.  I was not able to catch as it was 2am Singapore time.  However you can watch the launch recorded video here .   You can read about the release notes here . Do note of a known error which some might encounter when enable VSAN without any disk group and after removal the error message remain persistent.  I admit many like myself so not read release notes. Error Message: "vsan datastore datastore1 in cluster **** in datacenter **** does not have capacity" Cormac Hogan has also did a summary of the launched which is pretty lots of supported feature beyond what was release in beta.  E.g. from 8 nodes to 32 nodes and from 120,000 IOPS to 2 Million IOPS.  Vicardo has done upa nice table here on comparison.  David Hill has a very long table of limit for Public Beta here which I made some correction in my table below: Description Public Beta GA Minimum nodes ...

Have you ever wonder or encounter when asked about network ports requirements for each and individual solutions from VMware?  Whether as a presales, an architect or even a VMware support engineer. No fear!  VMware has just release a very informative network diagram show casing all the network ports and communications in between vSphere and vCloud Director components in a diagram format which makes it easier to understand than just text based. The only catch?  This is based on the current release at the time of writing and likely it would not be updated as frequent so you might have to do your own updating whenever a new release is out. At least it's better than none and going through all the installation guides or KBs would be a killer. Now you can spend more time doing other things. Here is the KB to the network diagram.  This is based on four other KBs as listed: TCP and UDP Ports required to access vCenter Server, ESXi/ESX hosts, and other n...

In vSphere 5.1, vMotion without shared storage was introduced.  Frank Denneman has mentioned here there is no named to this features though many has given names like Enhanced vMotion, etc. Some have tried to perform this but realize even though they have upgraded to vSphere client 5.1, it still show greyed out and given a message to power off the VM.  This is because, in vSphere 5.1, all new features enhancement will only be found in the Web Client.  In such, the C# client will not have this option. So using the Web Client, I was able to perform this vMotion in my home lab where I do not have any shared storage other than the local disk of each ESX servers or across two different clusters which have shared storage within there respective cluster. Do note that you can only perform 2 concurrent vMotion without shared storage at one time, any additional will be queued.  Also the total of such vMotion adds to the total of concurrent vMotion (max of 8) and Storage ...

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 ...

As the virtualization has grown more mature during the years, many users has asked me this  question, especially users who have just ride on the virtualization journey.  There isn't a right or wrong answers however what do you want to achieve at end state.  Do you have what you wanted keeping it at the current state? Let us take look why run the vCenter as physical machine. - Do not feel comfortable running management server as a virtual machine, prefer all management server as a physical machine - Uncomfortable to run the vCenter as part of the virtual infrastructure - Easy to locate the vCenter physical server when required Why run the vCenter as a virtual machine? - Able to enjoy protection from VMware Hight Availability - Able to have DRS perform on vCenter (consider DRS exception or DRS infinity on vCenter) - Less hardware maintenance and better utilize hardware - For higher availability, run vCenter Heartbeat however two set of vCenters is required. So...

So you have been running the evaluation license.  The evaluation period would be 60 days for ESXi server and 30 days for vCenter. Say you like to run on evaluation while getting your license and you couldn't get the license in time and 30 days has reached and your vCenter is expired. What happens after the evaluation period? I did a test and these are my findings. vCenter remain to be operational. All features are still enabled. You will receive a notice below once in awhile. Any action that result in disconnection of the ESXi servers will not be able to join back to vCenter e.g. reboot of ESXi server.  A direct connection using vSphere client is required to manage the VMs on the host. Any changes in configuration will not be possible and can cause any licensed functions not to function. Powered Off VMs cannot be power on.  Refer to KB . In summary, after license expired, all operations remains as it is and no changes even with simple things like power on ...

Today will do an installation of the web client server on the vCenter.  I will also compare the vCenter 4.1 web access with the new web client access to see the improvement that was done. Do note that the requirements for the web client access would require the following below.  I have also include the links to the offline package for Adobe Flash which many have problem locating it. Internet Explorer 7,8 Mozilla Firefox 3.5, 3.6 Adobe Flash 10.2 Offline package for Latest Adobe Flash IE: http://fpdownload.adobe.com/get/flashplayer/current/install_flash_player_ax.exe Firefox: http://fpdownload.adobe.com/get/flashplayer/current/install_flash_player.exe   1 Mar 2012 Update: Alternatively, you can make use of the free vCenter vApp and used it as a web client. Michael Webster has a post on the steps.  You can install the web client on a separate Windows VM and it is able to register to multiple vCenters to enable the web client ac...

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...

vCenter 5.0 Upgrade Part 1: vCenter & vSphere Client vCenter 5.0 Upgrade Part 2: Update Manager Reference: Upgrading vCenter Server 5.0 Best Practice Installing vCenter Server 5.0 Best Practice Migrating to vCenter Server 5.0 using the Data Migration Tool Next post: vSphere 5.0 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 virtual hardware with Update Manager