VMware have launched a CloudCredibility website, what’s your Cloud Cred?, you get points for completing various Cloud Tasks (some with a VMware twist!).
I’m currently in team vExperts2 – (there are only 6 of us at present, hopefully more will join!)
My Team Members are:-
Andreas Peetz – http://www.v-front.de
nielsengelen – http://foonet.be
Update: I got 50 Cloud Cred Points for blogging this!
Why not try the Windows Server 2012 “Early Experts” Challenge
The Windows Server 2012 “Early Experts” Challenge provides a FREE online study group with certification exam preparation materials for quickly learning about the latest version of Windows Server! The Challenge involves a series of Knowledge Quests – starting with the Apprentice Quest – and each Quest ends with a special completion certificate for you to promote your new knowledge! To make it easy to participate, each Quest is developed in a modular format that you can complete based on your own schedule and availability.
The first six Knowledge Quests are available now – Apprentice, Installer, Explorer, Networker, Virtualizer and Cloud.
After you’ve completed the “Early Experts” Apprentice Quest, keep going with these additional Knowledge Quests to continue your preparation for the MCSA on Windows Server 2012 Exams:
I’ve completed all six Knowledge Quests, and here are my Certificates, it takes a few days to complete all the Knowledge Quests, and boosts your overall knowlegde of Windows Server 2012, the Cloud Quest is very good. – Highly Recommended and FREE!
Thanks to Keith Mayer and Microsoft.
In this series of basic VMware articles for the Novice, I’ll be showing you the basic VMware skills required to install, configure and deploy virtual machines using VMware’s FREE VMware vSphere Hypervisor (ESXi).
This article will show you how to connect and complete some basic configuration of the VMware vSphere Hypervisor 5.1 on a computer. VMware vSphere Hypervisor 5.1 is also known as ESXi 5.1.
If you have missed the first article in the series, it’s here: HOW TO: Install and Configure VMware vSphere Hypervisor 5.1 (ESXi 5.1)
You can obtain the VMware vSphere Client software package (VMware-viclient-all-5.1.0-786111.exe) from the VMware website, as detailed in the first article of this series:
HOW TO: Install and Configure VMware vSphere Hypervisor 5.1 (ESXi 5.1) or you can download the software from the VMware vSphere Hypervisor (ESXi 5.1) .
Make a note of the IP Address of the server which is displayed on the console, and using a web browser, browse to the web URL http://192.168.10.128. (This is the IP Address displayed on the console screen; your IP address will be different).
The following screen will be displayed, because VMware’s SSL certificate has been “self-signed” the warning is normal. Click Continue to this website. In this example we are using Internet Explorer 10.
For the sake of this article, we are going to download the vSphere Client from VMware, using the web link included on the Welcome to VMware ESXi 5.0 page. At the following prompt click Save.
Once the download has been completed click Run. The setup files will be extracted, and the VMware vSphere 5.1 Client InstallShield Wizard will appear.
Click the VMware vSphere Client icon on your computer Desktop, or click Start > Programs > VMware > VMware vSphere Client icon
In this tutorial the IP address of the ESXi 5.1 server is displayed on the console in Step 1. The IP address is 192.168.10.128. Enter the IP address, and username root, followed by the password. Click Login.
In this step, we will complete a simple task using the vSphere Client, this task is to Create a new VMFS datastore, so we can store VMs. This is the minimum configuration requirement for your ESXi host.
At the Add Storage screen select Disk/LUN followed by Next to Continue, personally we feel the dialgoue box should be called Add New Storage e.g. it’s storage which has never been allocated or presented for use with a VMware server.
You are now ready to use your ESXi server.
Congratulations you have successfully installed the VMware vSphere Client, Connected to your VMware vSphere Hypervisor 5.1 server, and Created your first VMware VMFS-5 datastore ready to store Virtual Machines.
In the next article in the series, we will connect and continue to configure the VMware vSphere Hypervisor 5.1.
In these series of basic VMware articles, I’ll be showing you the basic skills required to install, configure and deploy virtual machines using VMware’s FREE VMware vSphere Hypervisor.
This article will show you how to install and configure the VMware vSphere Hypervisor 5.1 on a computer. VMware vSphere Hypervisor 5.1 is also known as ESXi 5.1.
The FREE version of ESXi 5.1 is limited to 32GB per server.
A full list of the ESXi 5.1 Hardware Requirements can be found in the VMware ESXi 5.1 Install Guide
Check the VMware Hardware Compatability Lists (HCL), to discover if your computer is certified for use with ESXi 5.1.
If your computer is not listed on the VMware HCL, it may still be possible to install and run VMware ESXi 5.1 on your laptop, desktop, or server. The HCL exists because the server vendor and VMware have certified and tested ESXi 5.1 will function correctly, on the servers listed on the HCL.
Open the following link in your web browser
https://my.vmware.com/web/vmware/evalcenter?p=free-esxi5&lp=default
Click the License and Download Tab
The following page will be displayed when you have successfully logged into the VMware Download Center.
Click the download link for VMware ESXi 5.1 (CD ISO) Installable to download the software required to install ESXi 5.1 and also download the VMware vSphere Client 5.1. The VMware vSphere Client 5.1 software is the client software that allows us to connect and manage the ESXi 5.1 server, this will be required in a later article.
Either use the Download Manager or Manually Download button (which uses your web browser). The CD ISO is only 301MB so should not take too long to download. We have a very slow internet connection, at approx 350 kB/sec, and it takes us approximately 10 minutes to download.
Once the downloads have been completed using your favourite MD5 and SHA1 checksum utility, confirm the downloads have been downloaded correctly, using the published MD5 and SHA1 checksums from the VMware website. We use the MD5 & SHA-1 Checksum Utiliy 1.1 from http://raylin.wordpress.com/downloads/md5-sha-1-checksum-utility/.
Many VMware vSphere Hypervisor 5.1 installations fail due to corrupt downloads.
Write (Burn) the VMware-VMvisor-Installer-5.1.0-799733.x86_64.iso downloaded in Step 1, to a blank CDROM, using your favourite CD writing software. We use ISO Recorder (http://alexfeinman.com/isorecorder.htm). If you are using remote server utilities, e.g. HP iLo or Dell iDRAC,. you can attach the virtual CDROM drive in the server to the VMware-VMvisor-Installer-5.1.0-799733.x86_64.iso ISO, so there is no requirement to write a CDROM.
This is a step which is often missed, ensure the BIOS BOOT order is set to BOOT from the CDROM Device or ATAPI device in the server, otherwise the computer will not BOOT from the CDROM.
Power on the Computer, the computer will BOOT from the CDROM, and the following BOOT screen will be displayed
We have written an Article here on How to Backup an ESXi installation on an USB Flash Drive or SD card, for security or redundancy. After you have completed the ESXi 5.1 installation, shutdown the server, remove the USB flash drive or SD card, and duplicate it using our Article.
When prompted select a disk to install ESXi on, in the following example, we have two disks connected to this computer, a single 1GB disk, and a 40GB disk. We are going to use the small disk for the OS. The larger 40GB disk will be used later for the storage of virtual machines.
ESXi 5.1.0 will operate in evaluation mode for 60 days. This is the same mode as a FULLY LICENSED ESXi 5.0 server. If you wish to evaluate all the bells and whistles that ESXi 5.0 has to offer, do not register your FREE license. for 60 days, this will allow you to evaluate ESXi 5.0 server fully. On day 59/60, Apply your FREE license to continue using the product, or you will not be able to power on any virtual machines.
The following screen is displayed when VMware ESXi 5.1.0 first boots
Press F2 to Customize System, you will be prompted to enter the root username and password.
Press Escape, the following screen will appear, select Y(es) to apply changes.
You will notice on the console screen, the server now has a hostname configured, and correct static IP Address.
Congratulations you have successfully installed and configured VMware vSphere Hypervisor 5.1.
In the next article in the series, we will connect and continue to configure the VMware vSphere Hypervisor 5.1.
Part 2 of the Series has now been published here
HOW TO: Connect to the VMware vSphere Hypervisor 5.1 (ESXi 5.1) using the vSphere Client
It’s official, I received 7 emails last night, I’ve won six awards this year at Experts Exchange.com.in the 9th Annual Expert Awards, this is my second year as Expert of the Year.
I started the year with 4,688,803 points, and ranked 84th.
This year I totaled overall 5,369,940 this year and I’m currently Ranked 29th! I’ve been ahead for most of the year, with a clear, 2,500,000 points over 2nd place! 250,000 points ahead in the Articles (Authors), and No.1 in VMware and Virtualisation Zones. (by 5,500,000 and 2,000,000 points ahead of the No.2!)
All this answering questions on VMware and Virtualisation ONLY!
A Happy VMware & Virtualisation year to you!
48GB of RAM in a Desktop PC, that’s a server I here you say, other than virtualisation with VMware Player 5.0 or VMware Workstation 9.0, or Client Hyper-V in Windows 8.0, or Oracle Virtualbox 4.0, it does seem a bit extreme, even the latest games, or Adobe Photoshop, you will be hard pushed to utilise all the memory.
Those that are old enough, once upon a time, in year DOS! we used a driver called – ramdrive.sys, that you could load into system memory, and turn some system memory into a ramdrive. RAM was expensive years ago, and only a few kilobytes or megabytes could be used as a ramdrive, but system access was almost instantaneous.
about eight years ago, a company wrote a ramdrive driver for Windows 2000 for clients, to use as a Windows 2000 profile drive for the storage of user profiles for a large terminal server project, to speed up the logon and logoff of users. I’ve been searching for an updated version since, that works with the modern Windows OS, now I’ve found one.
Now with the cost of memory for desktop PCs falling, the following company DR Dataram have produced a new RAMDisk for modern operating systems, and it’s FREE, and allows you to create RAMDisks up to 4GB, if you want to create RAMDisks larger than 4GB, you will need to part with 18.99 USD! It supports Windows XP, Windows 7 and Windows 8, Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2012.
Install the software, specify the size
Specify Load, Save and Autosave options
and Hey Presto! you’ve got a ramdrive, out of system memory, and the magic of a ramdrive compared to an SSD, checkout the following benchmarks!
Performance of DR Dataram RAMDisk versus 4 x SATA 3 Kingston 200v+ SSDs in RAID 10
Comparison SSD versus RAMDisk
and for the geeks in the audience, that like IOPS
Comparison of IOPS
Comparison of IOPS - the numbers!
So, this Christmas if you want a fast data disk for your OS, spend your money on RAM for your computer, and bin that SSD (they wear out anyway!)
The same procedure can be followed to tag a SSD, correctly, if it’s not recognized by the VMware ESXi server.
With the current fall in prices for consumer SSDs, it can give a real performance boost to a VMware ESXi 5.x server which is short on memory. Consumer SSDs e.g. Kingston SSDNow V+200 Drive Model SVP200S37A/60G are generally cheaper than server memory. We recently purchased this model for £29.99 GBP.
The commands we will be using in this Tutorial, are the esxcli commands, these commands can be executed on the ESXi shell, through the vMA or PowerCLI esxcli remote version. In this tutorial I’ll be logging into the ESXi server, and executing the commands on the ESXi shell.
Using the VMware vSphere Client, Login and Connect to the ESXi server, using IP address or hostname of the ESXi server, using root username and password credentials. If you have a VMware vSphere vCenter server, you could also specify IP address or hostname of the vCenter server.
Check there is a VMFS volume already formatted on the storage device, you want to present to the Host ESXi server, as a SSD and record the device name for later in Step 4.
Select Host > Configuration > Storage
In the example above, the local storage device mpx.vmhba1:C0:T0:L0 is a local disk, formatted with the datastore name datastore1 as VMFS5. Record the storage device name mpx.vmhba1:C0:T0:L0.
Using PuTTY a free telnet and SSH client or another SSH client Login and Connect to the VMware Hypervisor ESXi server, using IP address or hostname of the VMware Hypervisor ESXi server, using root username and password credentials.
At the console or SSH session type the following commands to create a new SATP rule.
confirming the creation of the rule.
At the console or SSH session type the following commands
I have seen the following error messages when trying to claim devices, either restart the server or use the “unclaim” device command.
you can unclaim the device by specifying the device name.
I usually reload the claim rules and run the rules using the following commands:
Use the following command at the console, to check if the device has successfully been tagged as a SSD
Check the output states “Is SSD: true”
You have successfully configured and tagged a local device as a SSD. If you now repeat Step 2 above, you will see the device now states SSD.
In my next Article, I show you how to configure Host Cache Configuration.
Further reading can be found here in the VMware
vSphere 5 Documentation Center :- Tag Devices as SSD
I’ve blogged about the fabulous product earlier, see here https://andysworld.org.uk/2012/08/24/fantastic-altaro-hyper-v-backup-for-windows-2012-because-andy-says-so/
but those nice guys at Altaro are giving away 50 free licenses of their desktop backup solution – End December 24th
Altaro giving all Hyper-V admins 50 free licenses of their desktop backup solution – End December 24th
Altaro, developers of Altaro Hyper-V Backup, are giving something back this holiday season and are giving every Microsoft Hyper-V admin 50 licenses of their desktop backup software, that’s up to $2,000 worth of software.
There’s no catch! All you need to do is send them a screenshot of Hyper-V that proves that you use Hyper-V and they will send you the licenses which you can use on your own machines or give out to friends, family or colleagues, to use at work or home.
The giveaway ends on Dec 24th 2012.
To claim your 50 licenses check out
http://www.altaro.com/hyper-v/50-free-pc-backup-licenses-for-all-hyper-v-admins
To check out their Hyper-V portal check out http://www.altaro.com/hyper-v/
For more info about Altaro Hyper-V Backup check out http://www.altaro.com/hyper-v-backup/?LP=Xmas
I’ve got a new project to complete, more on that over the next coming months (secret squirrel stuff! cannot say any more at present) , so it’s time to build a new desktop computer, it’s been a while the last desktop computer I purchased was in 2007, and that was an Dell XPS 720 H2C, which had an Intel Core 2 Extreme Processor QX6850.
It’s rather strange building a physical computer, because I deal alot with the virtual.
The processor on the new Desktop computer has an Intel Core i7 990X Extreme Edition (Gulftown) processor. It has 6 Cores and 12 Threads.
this is the worst case of Snapshot Hell, I’ve ever seen! It’s not the largest snapshot, the total is only approx 83GB in snapshots, but the number of snapshot files!
A Total of 79 snapshots per virtual machine disk, see screenshots (I’ve obscured the server name for privacy!)
According to this VMware Knowledge Base article the maximum number of snapshots is 32 in a snapshot chain.
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