Planet vSphere-land

Every time a vendor releases a new hypervisor, it’s always more reliable and stable than all the previous versions and certainly better than the competition. But was the previous version all that bad? Of course with the addition of more and more advanced features it becomes more and more difficult to create a reliable and [...] Leave A Commentposted in ESX/ESXi by Erik Scholten

As I said earlier this week, VMware memory management is still a topic which a lot of VMware administrators don’t understand. Tuesday I discussed the virtual machine memory allocation graphs. Today we will deal with  VMware vSphere uses transparent page sharing (TPS), memory compression, host swapping and ballooning. VMware ESXi, a crucial component of VMware [...] Leave A Commentposted i...

VMware memory management is still a topic which a lot of VMware administrators don’t understand. I often come across people who have no idea when VMware vSphere uses transparent page sharing (TPS), memory compression, host swapping or ballooning. They even mention disabling or removing the ballooning driver without knowing why.  I also meet a lot of [...] Leave A Commentposted in ESX/ESX...

I noticed that in PowerShell V3.0 some CIM cmdlets were introduced which allowed PowerShell to be able to interact with CIM providers and gather information, when importing the CIM Cmdlets into my session you can see we have a number of new cmdlets to work with: Even though I know PowerCLI 5.1 R1 (Current release on 29th Oct 2012) does not support PowerShell v3.0 I thought I would check ou...

At VMworld 2012 VMware announced the newest version of vSphere, version 5.1. Today this new version is finally available! So, in DOLBY DIGITAL available NOW You can download VMware vSphere 5.1 from the VMware download site. If you’re wondering what’s new in vSphere 5.1, check out Alex’s article from August 27th. One of the major [...] by Erik Scholten

As a vExpert, we have a special place with VMware. Not just socially, but really, in the community pages. Usually this place is filled with news about new stuff coming out, reviews about software, technical questions, opinions and so on. A few months ago Mike Laverick, one of the valued members and a vExpert, posted [...] by Alex Muetstege

Breaking News: RVTools 3.3 from Rob de Veij is now generally available to the public.  Release notes for this build: GetWebResponse timeout value changed from 5 minutes to 10 minutes (for very big environments) New tabpage with HBA information On vDatastore tab the definition of the Provisioned MB and In Use MB columns was confusing! This is changed now. RVToolsSendMail accepts now multiple re...

Finally there’s a second VMware partner who decided to create a third part distributed virtual switch for VMware vSphere. On February 14th IBM announced their IBM 5000V Distributed Virtual Switch. The planned availability date for this product is February 23, 2012. The IBM System Networking Distributed Virtual Switch 5000V, which  requires a VMware vSphere 5.0 Enterprise [...] by Erik Sc...

Just released on the VMware Flings site is a fling which is designed to help when you make the move from ESX to ESXi, this tool will help you check hardware software and also that there are no lingering scripts or locally stored VMs etc. A great tool to download and run against your environment to ensure you have caught everything before the move to the next version of ESXi. From the official d...

    Today I attended session VSP1682 ‘VMware vSphere clustering Q&A‘ hosted by Frank Denneman, Duncan Epping and Chris Colotti. After a short introduction the Q&A started and below you will find my top 10 questions. Q1. Are the old, vSphere 4, constraints in vSphere 5 still current? Until vSphere 5 the best practice is [...] by Erik Scholten

During VMworld most people I talked to were either moving to ESXi or excited by the new features of vSphere 5 and were investigating what they would need to do to upgrade and get the latest and greatest. Those who attended the Hands on Lab were lucky enough to grab a poster bought to you by VMware Technical Marketing, this year VMware were giving out two posters, the first is the “VMware Manag...

After the release on July 12th, you can now download VMware vSphere 5 and enjoy the 150 new features. You can find the downloads here. For more information visit: VMware ESXi and VMware ESX Info Center VMware vSphere 5 release notes. If you want to upgrade your existing VMware vSphere installation, check out my previous [...] by Erik Scholten

On July 12th, VMware announced the release of vSphere 5. With the release comes the challenge to upgrade your existing installation. However, there are a few caveats: vSphere 5 is the first version which comes in a ESXi version ONLY! ESXi 5 is available in an embedded or installable version. If you’re running ESX 3.x [...] by Erik Scholten

For putting together a business case costs and revenues are an important part of it. If you want to calculate the direct resource costs associate with hosting a server in  your data center, you want to know the direct power consumption by the server in electrical costs and the costs associated with cooling the environment [...] by Edwin Weijdema

Earlier this week I already told you that I’ve build a new ESXi whitebox but I had some problems installing it. OK, first of all, what was the situation? I wanted to install VMware ESXi 4.1 Update 1 to a USB stick which is VMware certified.I plugged the USB stick into one of the USB ports [...] by Erik Scholten

Last week I decided to buy a new lab server and I doubted between a HP or Dell mini server or an ESXi whitebox. Because most mini servers only have 8GB memory, I decided to collect specific parts to build my own VMware ESXi whitebox. To find parts which are compatible with VMware ESXi 4.1, [...] by Erik Scholten

14 years ago, on May 11, 1997, IBM’s Deep Blue II chess-computer won a six-game match by two wins to one with three draws against world champion Garry Kasparov. In June 1997, Deep Blue was the 259th most powerful supercomputer achieving 11.38 GFLOPS running 30 parallel RS/6000 SP Thin P2SC-based system nodes, with each node [...] by Erik Scholten

Yesterday Anne Jan linked me to an article on the VMware website which contained information on a free online training course. The title is Transition to ESXi Essentials. The course is dedicated to ESXi and depending on your learning style it takes about 3 hours to complete. It’s broken up in several chapters so you don’t have [...] by Sander Martijn

I just fiddled somewhat with the ‘fling’ from the VMware site: PXE Manager. Well, if you ask me, it’s not just a ‘fling’, but it is really, really useful. It’s easy to install and easy to use. Here’s the summary from the ‘fling’:   PXE Manager for vCenter enables ESXi host state (firmware) management and provisioning. Specifically, [.....

Tonight VMware released Update 1 for vSphere 4.1 and vCenter server 4.1. Update 1 for ESX/ESXi contains a few new/improved features: Enablement of Trusted Execution Technology (TXT) — ESXi 4.1 Update 1 can be configured to boot with Intel Trusted Execution Technology (TXT). This boot option can protect ESXi in some cases where system binaries [...] by Erik Scholten

In May 2010 HP introduced the new HP Storageworks IO Accelerator modules for HP Blade and ProLiant servers. So what is this IO module. It is a mezzanine card that is available for HP C-class Blades or a PCI-e I/O card for HP ProLiant servers. It is available in three different capacities: 80GB, 160GB and [...] by Erik Scholten

Last week I visited a new project at which the client wants to virtualize their desktops. During the kickoff the client mentioned that they use a variety of applications, clients and operating systems and want to deliver all these desktop flavors to their users. Nothing new so far. But this variety of clients and operating [...] by Erik Scholten

Last week we got a question concerning the licensing options around vSphere and how to choose the correct edition and options from all the flavors and options offered by VMware. So while answering the questions concerning the licensing I thought back to a nice overview picture we had available a few years back from VMware. [...] by Edwin Weijdema

Some of you might already have been there. I know I have: You have a large organization with more than 10 remote or branch offices. You have virtualized your entire back-end but those nasty site servers still remain a physical nuisance. Some regional offices have a complete data center with more than 20 servers just to [...] by Alex Muetstege

Last month I regularly received requests from colleagues concerning VMFS block sizes. Although it’s a simple setting, it still raises a lot of questions and the introduction of vSphere 4.1 has somewhat changed the game. The block size on a VMFS datastore defines two things: The maximum file size; The amount of space a file occupies. First of all, the [...] by Erik Scholten