Virtual Insanity - Latest Comments

Re: Build Your Very Own VMware Hands-On-Labs! (with vRA and NSX)

Tom — Mon, 06 Feb 2017 03:10:15 -0000

This is AWESOME!!! Thanks for posting it.

Re: Keep SRM From Renaming Datastores on Recovery

Igot Dealz — Tue, 17 Nov 2015 15:14:34 -0000

Awesome, thanks!

Re: You Down With NTP?

Askar Kopbayev — Sun, 06 Sep 2015 08:40:54 -0000

Thanks. Awesome post. Never had an idea the VMs still sync its time with host even though you believe you disabled this feature.

I also noticed that most of the operations that triggers time sync will only sync VM's time forward. The only two cases when the time in Guest VM is synced backward is when VMware tools start or when you disable/enable time sync with the host. In all other cases the VM will never sync its time backward.

Re: Renumbering a VEM on the Cisco 1000V

Marc La Porte — Fri, 13 Mar 2015 09:12:32 -0000

You don't have to shut down the host. You can just stop/start the VEM process (vem stop, vem start) from the ESXi CLI. Also handy to keep an eye on "show module vem missing" to confirm the vem is offline before you start.

Re: Tintri – Get Thin for the Win!

scottdsauer — Thu, 22 Jan 2015 07:24:56 -0000

Craig,
Yes compression is a feature only on the T800 series platform, T540 and T600 series do not have compression.

Re: Tintri – Get Thin for the Win!

Craig Muller — Wed, 21 Jan 2015 21:32:57 -0000

Are these features only in the 8000 series? Or will my T540 be included?

Re: Building a Home Lab with ESXi 5.5, VSAN, and Mac Mini Server (6,2) (Part 1 of 3)

samsonite801 — Sun, 18 Jan 2015 13:37:53 -0000

Your setup looks awesome with the Minis! I happened to notice you are using LACP (dynamic etherchannel) for your networking. I recently set up my own 3-node VSAN cluster on 3 Intel 1U blades at home, and for VSAN (over vDS) I use LBT with excellent results. Vsphere hosts and vswitches are not capable of looping so LAG/LACP is pointless. Do a Google search for 'LACP vs LBT' and you can find articles about this. Just food for thought is all... If you have specific reasons to run LACP in your environment then that's fine. I do know that on mine with LBT, I am running my managed switch but there are no ehterchannels set up at all. I have all the VSAN ports plugged in with absolutely no switch configuration (default, I could use a dumb-switch for this). Vsphere doesn't cause broadcast loops. It just works, and is simpler to set up.. It will also better utilize the uplinks for traffic balancing.

Re: Upgrading SRM from 5.0 to 5.5

Georgi Ikonomov — Thu, 16 Oct 2014 11:14:21 -0000

A solution that worked for me was to login to vCenter with an account that is part of
"Administrators" group that you see in the dbo.pd_acedata table. That
group is actually the local Administrators group on the local server itself -
it's not the Administrators group of domain (which will show up as
CONTOSO\Administrators) or part of vCenter SSO. So, I logged in as a local
server user that was part of that Administrators group (in my case it was a renamed
account from the original Administrator account) and was able to load SRM
plugin. From there I went to permissions tab and added the domain group that
should have correct permissions and was then able to login SRM with a domain
user that was part of that domain group as expected. If you are able to fix it this
way, you don’t need to fumble with SQL entries.

Re: Configure vCenter Operations to Remove Deleted vCenter Objects

Michael Monberg — Thu, 01 May 2014 09:30:59 -0000

Thanks for the post - I use it frequently when I forget which file to edit.
The in vCops 5.8 there are a few new settings that you could write about as well.

Re: Building a Home Lab with ESXi 5.5, VSAN, and Mac Mini Server (6,2) (Part 1 of 3)

David Cunliffe — Mon, 17 Mar 2014 10:43:51 -0000

Is this going to be updated anytime soon I'm dying to see the next part??????

Re: Building a Home Lab with ESXi 5.5, VSAN, and Mac Mini Server (6,2) (Part 1 of 3)

Cyril — Thu, 20 Feb 2014 20:27:27 -0000

Where are part 2 and 3 ? I am building the same type of lab.

Re: Performance Troubleshooting VMware vSphere – Memory

Dag Wieers — Tue, 10 Dec 2013 06:18:05 -0000

If you are interested in these performance counters from within a Linux guest, good news.

I recently implemented a python-vmguestlib wrapper that ships its own tool vmguest-stats for displaying those performance counters. And I have added 3 new plugins in Dstat specifically for those VMGuestLlib SDK counters.

So correlating these counters with other performance data is as simple as:

dstat -c –vm-cpu -m –vm-mem –vm-mem-adv

You can find the python wrappers and Dstat at:

http://github.com/dagwieers...
http://github.com/dagwieers...

Feedback and improvements welcomed !

Re: Building a Home Lab with ESXi 5.5, VSAN, and Mac Mini Server (6,2) (Part 1 of 3)

Keith W. — Wed, 27 Nov 2013 17:57:03 -0000

Hi, I recently picked up some 2950s from work and I also have built a home lab with 2 white boxes and shared storage. Do you think have the 2 2950s around is beneficial or should I continue trying for the smaller footprint though these were free?

Re: Building a Home Lab with ESXi 5.5, VSAN, and Mac Mini Server (6,2) (Part 1 of 3)

darkdavid — Thu, 21 Nov 2013 21:15:53 -0000

How did u cluster the 3 mac?

Re: Set Your MaxHWTransferSize for vSphere Hosts on VMAX

Bohiti — Tue, 03 Sep 2013 15:34:00 -0000

You actually can set this with PowerCLI (thank goodness!)

$myhost | Get-AdvancedSetting -Name "DataMover.MaxHWTransferSize" | Set-AdvancedSetting -Value 16384

Re: PowerPath VE Versus Round Robin on VMAX – Round 3 (TKO)

Jeffrey Thompson — Sun, 09 Jun 2013 10:43:45 -0000

Hi Brandon,

I was recently searching around for some good independent case studies on PowerPath vs native, and thought this was fantastic from a vmware perspective. I loved your testing methodology and data reporting. That being said, you made the comment "PowerPath for physical servers is a no-brainer." - and I was wondering if you did direct testing yourself or otherwise knew of a report you trust that would validate those in more data-oriented terms? Our use case / focus area is physical right now for MSSQL OLTP DBs.

Here's the popular EMC one, but I take all vendor published information with a grain of salt - http://www.emc.com/collater...

We'll be testing with similar methodology ourselves, but it might be valuable to see independent results in the wild. Thanks!

Re: If it sounds too good to be true, it can still be true – PernixData FVP

BrandonJRiley — Tue, 21 May 2013 11:56:43 -0000

Fletcher: I asked Satyam about this, and he said it is the very next thing on their plate. No real indication of when, but I would assume we'd be seeing it shortly after release.

Re: If it sounds too good to be true, it can still be true – PernixData FVP

Fletcher Cocquyt — Sun, 12 May 2013 13:05:17 -0000

Any ETA when NFS datastores will be supported? thanks!

Re: My next chapter…

Rick Vanover — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 03:39:23 -0000

Congratulations, Scott. Tintri is excellent technology and excellent people are there.

Re: My next chapter…

Ryan Johnson ☁ — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 19:37:54 -0000

Congratulations on the next adventure!

Keep in touch. Or else.

Re: Set Your MaxHWTransferSize for vSphere Hosts on VMAX

Joe — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 13:53:54 -0000

That command is depreciated. Use Set-AdvancedSetting instead.

Re: Set Your MaxHWTransferSize for vSphere Hosts on VMAX

John F — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 08:26:03 -0000

Any idea if this will work with Host Profiles in an AutoDeploy Environment?

Re: PowerPath VE Versus Round Robin on VMAX – Round 3 (TKO)

BrandonJRiley — Sat, 26 Jan 2013 09:36:58 -0000

Cam:

ALUA is used for midrange arrays that are not active / active. These tests were done on a Symmetrix, which is active / active. It might be interesting to see these tests done on a VNX or EVA with ALUA.

Re: PowerPath VE Versus Round Robin on VMAX – Round 3 (TKO)

cam — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 15:51:35 -0000

This thread is over a year old now but I also noticed that ALUA was not discussed in the testing. RR will alternate between multiple storage paths presented to the host, but it doesn't take into account the latency on a single path; thus, it doesn't prefer faster access paths over slower ones. When ALUA is enabled, RR should always prefer the path(s) with the lowest latency and thus the tests with PowerPath would be more meaningful.

Re: Set Your MaxHWTransferSize for vSphere Hosts on VMAX

Rubeel Iqbal — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 13:15:11 -0000

it is sad cuz i get the value using Get-VMHostAdvancedConfiguration -VMHost (Get-VMHost $vmhost) DataMover.MaxHWTransferSize but cant set it :(