profile for Gajendra D Ambi on Stack Exchange, a network of free, community-driven Q&A sites

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Incident : esxi 4.x lun not detected.

Issue : Some of the esxi 4.x hosts arent seeing 2 luns.
What we tried:
suggested to connect to the host via vSphere client bypassing the vCenter server and try adding the luns retaining the same signature but it only gives an options to reformat it and the re-signature options are grayed out.
fdisk -l /vmfs/devices/disks/naa.<xxxxxxx>. The partition table was listed as vmfs (confirming whether the partition table was corrupt or not and it was not corrupt)
esxcfg-volume -M naa.<xxx> but it said no matching naa.<xxx> found!.
~ # esxcfg-volume -l
VMFS3 UUID/label: <xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> /NAS_ESX2
Can mount: Yes
Can resignature: No (the volume is being actively used)
Extent name: naa.600508b4000ad2c800004123452345346:1     range: 0 - 511743 (MB)

VMFS3 UUID/label: <yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy>/NAS_ESX1
Can mount: Yes
Can resignature: No (the volume is being actively used)
Extent name: naa.600508b4000ad2c80000478675676578787:1     range: 0 - 511743 (MB)

~ # esxcfg-volume -M <xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Persistently mounting volume <xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
~ # esxcfg-volume -M <yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy>
Persistently mounting volume <yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy>
issue resolved.

Tuesday, September 24, 2013

How Should you get VMware Certified Professional 5 - Infrastructure as a Service (VCP5-IaaS)

Assuming that you have already earned your VCP5-DCV and you are already aware of which is a per-requisite for this exam let us get on with the subject right away. 
If you have seen my VCP5-DT series then you will know that i like to begin with the blueprint first. so first and foremost download the vcp5-iaas blueprint from the vmware website.
Download all the pdfs which are mentioned in the blueprint.
Make a note of the product versions which are covered in the blueprint and then go get some CBTs online.
Apart from
and
I also highly recommend (not necessarily in the same order but if you can then all of them)
from VMware education services hosted on http://vmwarelearning.com/
Building a Lab with vCloud Director 5.1
VMware vCloud Director Installation 

Best Practices and Troubleshooting Guide for vCenter Chargeback Manager 2.5



SRM Incident : cannot selectively recover with array based replication

Issue: there are 2 VMs.
They want to bring down 1 of the 2 VMs in production storage system and bring it up in the DR site but while doing so it throws an error.
Test Recovery Plan
<aaaa.bbb.cccc.com>
Virtual machines [data.vmN-ame] that are not protected by this protection group use datastores [data.dsNa-me] that are in this protection group. <xxxx>\yyy aaaa.bbb.cccc.com>

T/S : checked the recovery group configuration and it seems okay.
Array based replication works for all the VMs in that array but not selectively for few VMs where they want to recovery only few of the VMs of the array excluding the others.
Currently we can either recover all the VMs in that array or none
Resolution: the error what he was getting was indicating that the hard disk 2 of the VM being recovered on the local storage is missing. Hence the only way was to either remove the vmdk from the vm or move the vm out of the datastore.

Wednesday, September 18, 2013

Everything about VMware vNetwork Distributed Switch ( VDS or dvswitch )

If you are moving to VMware vcloud or getting ready to get certified with VMware VCP5-IaaS then you must have realized how important it is to be aware of VMware networking concepts especially the VMware vNetwork Distributed Switch (VDS or dvSwitch) . I thought the same for myself and collated some of the materials that I am planning to go through and if you know I love videos more than text. So here you go....
VMware vSphere: Networking - Distributed Virtual Switch
VMware Networking | Creating a vSphere Distributed Switch
VMworld 2011: VSP3864 - Best Practices for Virtual Networking

Using the vSphere Distributed Virtual Switch dvswitch) 

Configuring LACP on a vSphere 5.1 Distributed Switch
Migrating VMs and ISCSI from vSS to vDS without service interruption in vSphere 5
VMworld 2011: VSP2894 - Virtual Distributed Switch Best Practices 
Creating a Distributed Virtual Switch and Portgroups with the vSphere Web Client 

additionally you might also like to see the following if you are not me...
If you are done with all these materials now you are an official rockstar with dvswitches...hell yeah !

Tuesday, September 17, 2013

How Should you get VMware Certified Professional 5 - Desktop (VCP5-DT)

Recently I got my VMware VCP 5 - DT and I think I should share what path one must take to get it. without further delay lets get on with the way to answer those 85 questions.

1. Know What you need to study

Get the VMware VCP5 - DT blueprint and download all the pdfs which are in that blueprint which will let you know what version of vmware view are you concentrating on for the exam.

2. Training Videos

A) Quality comes at a costUsually train signal has done a great job when it comes to training videos on the subject of vmware but for this it seems they have not kept their own standards. I have been told that the trainers fail to keep you interested in the subject especially if you don't like to see (or hear) your trainer yawn a few times during your training.
I highly recommend Mastering VMware View 5 and Preparing for the VCP510-DT Exam
by Greg Shields who is known for his very famous training videos for his networking certification videos (CCNA, CCNP etc.,) under cbtnuggets. The videos are presented in a very lively manner by gregg shields and especially for someone with a very short span of focus like me it greatly helped.

B)  Quality comes for free toowatch
What is Desktop Virtualization and VDI?

Make sure you watch and go through all these videos too on youtube. I recommend you to rather download them using a Video DownloadHelper addon in firefox and keep them for re view.
Deploying VMware View 5 - Part 1 Configure Active Directory and Deploy VMware Connection Server

 

Deploying VMware View 5 - Part 2 Configure Windows 7 to be a VMware View Desktop
Deploying VMware View 5 - Part 3 Creating a 'Manual Pool' and Connecting a View Client
Deploying VMware View 5 -Part 4 Installing and Configuring SQL 2008 R2 and VMware Composer
Deploying VMware View 5 - Part 5 Deploying Linked Clone View Desktops

 Now you are not done yet. Go to youtube and search exactly for these keywords "vmware view 5 vmworld" and under filters choose 20 minutes to show videos which are more than 20 minutes. Make sure you watch all these vmworld videos which are nearly an hour and they are worth it.
Once you are done doing all these you are ready to write the exam but if you want to excel in it then you might want to search for a many different vce files on the net as you can for vmware vcp 5 dt exam and understand each question and the answers for it. After this you can finish the exam in less than an hour even though it is meant for 90 minutes (i guess 20 minutes extra for those whose native language isnt english). You might wonder why I have not mentioned about going through the admin and user guides for vmware view 5.1 ! but hey after this you might not feel the need of it but if you do then its a great bonus for you.






Monday, September 16, 2013

Browser Optimization for VMware View 5.x for End User Computing Environment

If you are new to this topic then I advice you to please first refer VMware Horizon View Optimization Guide first and then also note that I don't work for mozilla or firefox browser. :)
Following are the view implementations that you want to have on your base image. This Will greatly save on bandwidth of the browser, my estimation is atleast 20% but hey you are the one who will run a benchmark and will let me know the results...
  • Use AdBlock Plus addon and place the icon in the traybar of the firefox in case users want to add some exceptions. Disable non intrusive ads too since adblock accepts payment from bigwigs like google to be added to their non intrusive ad list which appear during search. So on every search you are saving around 20% of the bandwidth used to display that webpage. Use all the following features except typo protection.
    https://adblockplus.org/en/features
  • Use AdBlock Element Hider add on and inform users on how to use it if you can pull this off.
  • Install flashblock add on which will block all the flash on a page and displays an icon instead upon clicking that alone you can make the flash load. It will be useful on almost every site where users visit that site for something else and they care less about the flash ads or animation or promotions on it.
  • Install Black Youtube Theme if your business is into content creation or users need to access youtube some or all the time. It will help their eyes and also since the background is going to be black (only for black color the pixels of a monitor are turned off ) so now the youtube page layout itself will save you atleast 50% of the bandwidth (not the video of course).
  • Leave the default behavior of the firefox to download pdf unchanged rather than opening them in the browser itself since after reading the pdf if the users want to download it then it may have to re download the pdf from the website to the desktop all over again inspite of it being available in the browser already.
    Users may not like their pdfs being downloaded to a directory and then they having to go there to open it everytime. You can circumvent this by making the firefox to open the pdfs in adobe reader when they click on a pdf file.
  • Enable or Disable hardware acceleration in the browser based on your preference. I would disable it by default if the users daily task doesnt involve too much of multimedia task on the web itself. The difference is negligible but still very efficient.
  • Brain-Hack Of Firefox :
    In the address bar "about:config" and enter the world of firefox interiors.
    browser.tabs.animate => False
    network.http.pipelining => True
    network.http.proxy.pipelining => True
    network.http.pipelining.maxrequests => 8
    network.dns.disableIPv6 => True
    content.notify.backoffcount => 5
    config.trim_on_minimize => True
    plugin.expose_full_path => True
    ui.submenuDelay => 0
    javascript.options.jit.chrome => True
    javascript.options.jit.content => True
    browser.download.manager.scanWhenDone => False
    If you are interested to now what all this will do (well as an admin you should be interested to know) then please refer the following.
    http://kb.mozillazine.org/About:config_entries
After going through the article please don't blame if I recommend you to make the firefox as the default browser since it will let you customize in a way that best suits your business or personal needs to give you a most efficient usage of your bandwidth by a browser and if you are using html blast or planning to use, then I must say you should give it a try.
If you think your job is done here, hey there are always areas of improvement and you want to make sure that your users dont get prompts about updates of addons, browser and other configs that you have changed or added. So, please go through https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-stop-firefox-automatically-making-connections and trust me it will be worth it. You might want to stop all these updates and want to do it only when you refresh, recompose a desktop and that makes sense too since in cases of persistent desktops the user's addons on his browser might get updated where as the parent VM's firefox addons are still the same and here you might start to see 2 different destinations of bandwidth consumption since adblock ver.x might send a page to the user's desktop with certain ads blocked but the updated adblock add on on the user's desktop might want to block an additional add too.
The best thing would be to install firefox on your desktop/laptop or whatever that you are using and do all these changes and see how it goes with your business applications and sites. If needed make certain changes and when you feel like a king of the firefox customization and configuration or get some confidence then you can implement it in a view environment. Just imagine an IE sending a webpage as it is to the user from your parent VM and a firefox sending the same webpage with ads, trackers, flash blocked (not removed) and all those great about:config optimization; you will definitely save on some bandwidth. You may also look at many other addons to optimize it further like 'no script security suite' which blocks all the untrusted scripts from a webpage. You can preconfigure your parent VM browser addons to exclude your business webapps or other websites which may seem necessary.