VIOPS: Proven Practices for Deploying and Managing VMware : Popular Threads - Community

VIOPS Special Interest Groups (vSIG)?

schambers — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 18:45:02 GMT

Do you think we should have vSIGs that "manage" their own community on VIOPS? Vote now!

We currently have five communities - Strategy, Applications, Security, Management and Availability - which were chosen at the launch of VIOPS but now need some revision (e.g. Management is too high-level, and there are multiple topics in it)... so while we are planning a change, why not think bigger...

There is a growing demand from users to find expertise quickly and their view, expressed to us at VMware, is that forums are too hard to search/find information and that there are so many blogs out there they have similar problem finding information but more importantly, difficulty trusting that information.

On the other hand, there is a growing band of fantastic experts on virtualization that are looking for ways to share their expertise with other virtualization folks... so what's the answer?

Inside VMware we have Specialist Interest Groups (SIGs) who focus on things like Security, Availability etc.

Is it time to bring all of these together and have vSIGs on VIOPS?

I started a simple proposal document off and will be reaching out for the advice and guidance of the community.

Proposal: VIOPS Specialist Interest Groups (vSIGs)

Please let me know what you think!

Steve

Converter error

kanoute696 — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 16:42:28 GMT

Hi Kelly,

I've put this on a different thread but said I would ask you as you have been of such help in the past

Converter errors

Im running vmware converter standalone, ran on a W2k3 server (importing an online physical server,i.e itself ) . I am trying to P2V itself and send it to out to our ESX3.5 server\datastore (destination)

sorry I cant explain it any better than this.

Hi All, I'm getting this error

Unknown error returned by Vmware convertor Agent

and in the logs its saying

2009-10-29 15:18:11.119 'ClientConnection' 5028 info Making sure that UFAD interface has version vmware-converter-4.0.2

2009-10-29 15:18:11.135 'ClientConnection' 5028 info UFAD interface version is vmware-converter-4.0.2

2009-10-29 15:18:11.150 'P2V' 5028 info task,277 Task execution completed

2009-10-29 15:18:11.181 'P2V' 5028 info ufaSession,129 DoImport called

2009-10-29 15:18:11.181 'P2V' 4256 info task,275 Starting execution of a Task

2009-10-29 15:18:11.181 'P2V' 4256 info ufaTask,207 Successfully connected to VMImporter

2009-10-29 15:19:20.149 'P2V' 4256 error task,296 Task failed: P2VError UNKNOWN_METHOD_FAULT(sysimage.fault.ImageProcessingTaskFault)

Is there no way I can P2V it to itself and then copy it to the datastore

(when i try this, it just doesnt see a file the file even though its there)

What is the best P2V tool out there?..

Thanks for any help provided

vSRM VLAN configuration?

vikash_roy — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 10:14:15 GMT

I am planning to start POC for vSRM using ESX3.5 U2. I have done demo and it went through but could not show all the functionality. Currently for POC purpose I need to design VLAN.

My question what kind of approach should I take for VLAN. Shall I use "streached VLAN's" as few/NetApp says or shall I re-ip those machine?

If someone can point me to understand from pros/cons as well as "How To" that would be great help.

Thanks,

Vikash

VDI Justification

bckirsch — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 13:30:34 GMT

Good Morning,

I am a little new to the VIOPS so hopefully this won't be a repeat to anyone. Currently I am an IT Architect at a very large Children's Hospital located in Wisconsin. One of my current projects is writing a business case for VDI. Now I came from a fortune 500 company before this so writing white papers is not foreign to me but I am struggling with this one a bit.

Server virtualization is pretty easy to justify due to the high cost of servers but on a desktop side the hardware costs of a desktop are so cheap and the server side hardware and software licensing for VMware View are such a high initial capital cost it's a very tough sell in today's economy. Currently I am focusing on the power savings of the thin clients, however that savings is in a operational budget and not a IT budget. Of course it saves the entire organization money but saving money for another group is a hard sell sometimes.

If I focus too much on the labor savings to re-provision desktops I get the desktop teams scared they are going to lose their jobs (and I have stressed to them that they will get busier since there will be more thin clients because they are cheaper to put in).

Any thoughts, insight or suggestions would be helpful...additionally I would be happy to share the documents contents with the VIOPS site if it can benefit anyone else.

New site layout and imagery

Rodos — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 22:04:05 GMT

Congratulations to the VI:OPS team and the web people for getting the site updated.

The new layout looks great and I like the coloured background on the documents (more like VMTN).

Great to see this space of VMware land moving forward more every day!

Tweep?

schambers — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 10:43:15 GMT

If you use Twitter, then put your ID on here and I'll add you to the VIOPS Twitlist, and update your profile because it now has a new "@Twitter" field - check mine out!

Whitepaper ideas

daniel_uk — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 14:21:21 GMT

Steve,

Some material ideas which I would like to throw into the ring to see if you feel it has mileage;

Building a business case and ensuring solid ROI predicition - This goes into more indirect benefits such as remote site server consolidation and DR benefits
Tips for Implementing a successfull PoC - Highlights how to ensure you start on the right foot with your board and grab as much attention to detail as possible without blinding them with science for the first phase.
Virtual Governance - Based on setting policies and procedures for Virtualisation in an IT workplace
Service Oriented Infrastructure and Vmware - Explains details on how VMware enables "On demand" computing based on workload demand
DRS up the stack - Predictions on how the Beehive acquisition could possibly change VMwares reputation as just a Virtualisation platform company

Let me know if any of the above could be of use for VIOPS.

Kind regards

Dan

Deploy ESX 3.5 Update 3 via Kickstart Script

ron999 — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 16:16:50 GMT

Hello all together,

i hope anyone can help me. I have created a Kickstart Script but the whole %post section doesn't work. I have now idea why. I have searched through the www but found nothing that helps me in my problem.

Thanks a lot for any help.

Regards

ron999

Signature blocks in profile

virgilwashere — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 14:31:02 GMT

There's no way that I can see to save a signature in my profile. This would be nice.

Virgil

Virgil
Endless Consulting
Brisbane VMware User Group: http://tinyurl.com/VMUGBRIS

new design looks great

virgilwashere — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 09:20:25 GMT

Steve,

Like the new web design.

Avatars

Rodos — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 22:21:16 GMT

Is it possible to get more Avatars loaded? What about people loading their own.

I notice that the VMware logo Avatar is available for anyone to select, any way of restricting it, probably no big deal though.

Rodos

http://rodos.haywood.org

Importing VMDK file created on ESX2.5 to ESX3i

myemmi — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:37:05 GMT

Hi Everyone,

First time in this community. I was just wondering if anyone tried or knows if we can import VMDK files created using ESX2.5 enterprise version into ESX3i (free version)?

Thanks You very much.

Mourad

VI:OPS FAQ on the Homepage

fwegner — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 06:43:43 GMT

I have trouble understanding the exact difference between this VI:OPS site and our existing sources of information like community forums,technical papers, whitepapers, product documentation, email distribution lists, and various wikis. The VI:OPS FAQ document helps somehow, but it is hidden in the Pilot Project section. The FAQ should be visible on the home page. Actually, the mission statement would be sufficient. It could have a direct link to the FAQ.

The FAQ currently does not explain the added value of the VI:OPS portal sufficiently IMHO. Maybe an explicit example of a best practice would help. We should also mention the relationship to all the other sources of information we have. This VI:OPS site must not be isolated. Here is an example of I think of:

Emails/Forum postings >process-and-review> VI:OPS Best Practice >process-and-review> VMware Documentation

The review bit is importent. I assume all practices here will be reviewed (by VMware PSO and/or VMware engineering and/or VMware Support). There should be a flag indicating who has reviwed a piece of advice. Otherwise you end up with the same trouble which you have with all the information in the community forums: You never know if it will work, or if it will even harm your systems.

Emails/Forum postings are unstructured and random. And finding valuable pieces of information is a matter of luck sometimes. This must not happen at VI:OPS, because otherwise there is no point in having this site.So I assume every best practice is labelled as such and also reviewed. There must be a moderator who approves a best practice. Also, meta data is very important. I.e. which VMware products and product versions does this apply to, which third party software, which hardware (if applicable), etc.

Also, I guess we only need the VI:OPS site because the official VMware documentation does not (and most likely cannot) cover all use cases of the product usage. But some practices may be good to include into our official docs.

I repeat my most important point: Do not treat VI:OPS content like a community forum. If you do that I do not see any added value, because I can have this in the official VMware communities. (General comments like this post are well suited for a forum post, but not best practices I think.)

My 2c.

Ideas or feedback?

schambers — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 10:54:24 GMT

Got an idea to improve VI:OPS? Got some feedback?

We're all ears!

RSS feeds

Rodos — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 21:28:09 GMT

The RSS feed on the new homepage goes to http://vpp-dev-1.vmware.com/home/community/feeds/allcontent?community=1 is this right? Is vpp-dev-1 a temporary site?

Is there a feed that provides all comments and documents for all sections?

Many are like me and use RSS to track or keep up to date on sites, like VMTN.

Ta, Rodos

VMworld 2009

bckirsch — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 14:59:22 GMT

Time is ticking, who is planning on going? I just got the okay today to starting looking at travel costs and permission to start begging my vendors for tickets to the event

New community zone - Availability!

schambers — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 14:52:08 GMT

*NEWS*

We have changed things a little bit to reflect demand for content... we have moved Automation into the Management zone and created a new zone called Availability.

In this zone we'll put backup, HA clusters, zero-downtime maintenance (thanks to vMotion, which Microsoft calls a gimmick!) and DR / SRM.

Whadya think about that?

Steve

Meaning of "Proven Practice"

fwegner — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 17:31:17 GMT

I just wondered about the meaning of "Proven Practice". In article The specified document was not found. I found this quote: "Note: This is not an official VMware whitepaper or document. This is simply a record of one man’s journey to satisfy the quest for knowledge. Please use at your own discretion."

To me this sounds like a contradiction to the term "Proven Practice". In the end it means that any content you find here is not approved by VMware, and if you use this and run into issues afterwards you will at most get best effort support from VMware. I thought that the Proven Practices here have some sort of VMware stamp on them so customers can safely use them.

Or do I just suffer from a misunderstanding?

Partition sizing via Kickstart script

ron999 — Fri, 29 May 2009 08:13:54 GMT

Hello everybody.

I'm a little bit confused with the partition sizing under vmware via Kickstart script. I created a script with following parameters.

# Partitioning
part /boot --fstype ext3 --size 251 --ondisk sda --asprimary
part swap --size 2047 --ondisk sda --asprimary
part / --fstype ext3 --size 5122 --ondisk sda --asprimary
part /var/log --fstype ext3 --size 4095 --ondisk sda
part /tmp --fstype ext3 --size 1020 --ondisk sda
part None --fstype vmfs3 --size 126590 --ondisk sda
part None --fstype vmkcore --size 110 --ondisk sda

After installation i checked the size with the Infrastructure Client and saw that the partition size is not the same as in the script. As example the partition size of the VMware Diagnostic is 101.98 MB and should be 110 MB. I thought that the size parameter is in MB? The same is for all the other partitions (see attachment).

Any idea?

ron999

IE 7 Issue

fwegner — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 06:26:18 GMT

When I use Internet Explorer 7 I cannot post messages. The body text window does not display. Firefox works fine, and I assume IE6 is fine as well. Maybe you should mention on the start page that the current version of the VI:OPS portal is not compatible to IE 7.

What are projects

Rodos — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 22:43:26 GMT

I notice that their are "Projects" in the site now (maybe they were there before).

You can search for projects (http://viops.vmware.com/home/projects?query=&sort=search) and when you create a discussion you can load it into a project as well.

According to the clear space website.

http://www.jivesoftware.com/products/clearspace/work

Project management - done

In Clearspace, projects help you coordinate with coworkers toward a common goal. You design them the way that makes the most sense for you. Add a calendar, milestones, assign tasks, create and upload content. Or just make it a simple place to have conversations and track progress. However you do it, you'll get the job done.

Are projects something useful that we can use for collaboration on larger bits of work, such as the blue print? If its outside the scope of VI:OPS as a public site (rather than an internal company intranet with project teams) should it be removed, to reduce confusion and complexity. Or should it be left just in case it comes in handy in the future; crystal balls are always a little fuzzy.

Just a thought for discussion.

Cheers Rodos

http://rodos.haywood.org/

"The specified key, name, or identifier already exists"

stepupccs — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 15:34:13 GMT

While attempting to deploy a guest os vm, my colleague received an error near the end of the deployment process. Upon retrying the deployment, he received an error message stating:

"The specified key, name, or identifier already exists"

We've browsed the datastore and deleted all entries pertaining to this partially deployed VM but continue to get the same message. Apparently there are still some entries somewhere causing VC to think the VM already exists on the host. Does anyone have any ideas how to resolve this issue? Are there any command line functions we can perform to locate and delete any lingering entries of this failed deployment?

Improved RSS feeds for VI:OPS

Rodos — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 21:30:14 GMT

For those who like to use RSS to keep up with the flood of information that comes your way each day you will appreciate that VI:OPS now feeds in full text rather than truncated summaries.

This means you can keep up to date on all of the VI:OPS content in your favorite RSS reader which give you more time to contribute!

Rodos

VOXWare on VMware

myovish — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 15:50:16 GMT

Has anyone implemented or have experience in performance improvements for VOXWware application running in a virtualized environment?

Thanks

Mark

After installation of ESXi update 4 patches, VMs Hang/crash

Naseer — Tue, 12 May 2009 12:09:46 GMT

1. Have many HP blade servers installed with ESXi 3.5 Update3 (installed on local HDD and not USB key).

2. Have upgraded some baldes with ESXi 3.5 Update 4 using update manager.

3. After the upgrade (1-2 days), all the VMs on the host hangs (does not ping also) and only option is to reboot the ESXi host.

4. This happened with all the VMs of the hosts that were upgraded to ESXi3.5 U4, the Hosts that were not upgraded did not see this issue.

5. Suspecting this to be an issue with upgrade process (update manger) , re-installed the ESXi 3.5 U4 fresh directly, but the issue re-occured.

6. This looks to be bug with ESXi 3.5 U4 as I have seen similar issue with few other customers (all who upgraded to ESXi 3.5 U4). This issue is not seen with ESX 3.5 U4 classic.

Has anyone faced any similar issue and have got any solution/workaround ?

Or is there any PR created for this?

Video/Audio Podcasts

josh.c.williams@baesystems.com — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 13:41:46 GMT

Does VMware have any available pod casts that could be synced to a portable device?

VM SLA's

daniel_uk — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 09:52:33 GMT

Hi,

Out of interest what do people apply SLA's to when aggreeing and applying to an application environment within the VM in the Virtual world? I have a co-lo facility with two dynamic datacentres connected via Fibre with a SAN on either side replicating between each.

In this type of technical setup do you apply SLA's for applications based on SAN Replication response and availability due to VM's all residing on SAN storage or do you apply it to the OS environment from within the VM or do you apply to all number of scenarios.

My thinking is SLA's on storage replication provide quicker RPO than restoring the application environment from the latest backup for example OR having a standby VM on a higher SLA, i.e. why would you have a Hardware resource on hot standby when a VM is replicated every 10 Minutes via SRDF and can be brought up with a product like VMware SRM in a matter of minutes or a manual script activity for individual VM's.

Dan