Monday, September 27, 2010

vRanger Error

Ran across this error on a client running vRanger:

Message: Failure creating VM datastore lock Host: ESXHostNameha-host VM: MVName


After investigating, the root of the issue was that the ESX host had run out of memory - there were too many VMs running on this host. This was keeping the VMs from quiescing long enough to get a good snapshot. When they would try, the memory would spike and balloon all over the board. After thinning out some memory, the problem disappeared.

This particular client is growing faster than they were paying attention to, hence the increase in memory utilization across the board.The client is ordering more memory for all the hosts in their cluster and looking at ordering another host or two so that they can get back to N+1 (where they actually started at).

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Dustin Shaw
VCP
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Here's some books that should help out:
VMware vSphere 4 Administration Instant Reference
VMware Fusion 3
VMware Cookbook: A Real-World Guide to Effective VMware Use

Sunday, September 26, 2010

View Pool Options: Reset, Recompose, Rebalance, Refresh

Thought I'd give a quick note on the different options that you have in a View pool, and a breakdown to what they do:

Reset:
Reset the VM that you are on.

Recompose:
Allows you to change the snapshot either within the same base VM or select another base VM and snapshot. This new replica image will be pushed out to all the linked clones in the pool.

Rebalance:
Rebalances all the linked clones to use the available space on the LUNs efficiently

Refresh:
Take the linked clone back to the same image as the original image. If there is a persistent data disk, that will be kept, but everything on the "C:" disk will go back to where it was.

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Dustin Shaw
VCP
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Here's some books that should help out:
Mastering VMware vSphere 4 (Computer/Tech)
VMware Cookbook: A Real-World Guide to Effective VMware Use

Thursday, September 23, 2010

Office 2010 ThinApp

So I've been struggling in my spare time to get Office 2010 ThinApped on Windows 7, and here's what I found:

You can't do it yet.

Found a forum here talking about it. You can get it on XP (I don't care about XP right now in my test View environment), but not Win 7.

The issue is that you run into a licensing error when you deploy, because of the way that MS has changed licensing for Office 2010.

So as of right now there are two solutions for my View environment - require everyone to be on 2010 (include it in the base image) or make 2 base images, and move people over as possible.

Either way a pain, but whatever works.

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Dustin Shaw
VCP
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Here's some books that should help out:
VMware vSphere 4 Administration Instant Reference
VCP VMware Certified Professional on vSphere 4 Study Guide: Exam VCP-410

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

vRanger Error

Here's a random vRanger Error:





Message: An internal error occurred during execution, please contact Vizioncore support if the error persists.  Error Message: VM's host could not be identified

Got this on one of my client's install's today. vRanger 4.x.

The solution? Go refresh the inventory. Go edit your backup job and keep all the same settings.

Easy fix.

-Update-

I ran into the error again on vRanger 5.3.x, and posted an update here.

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Dustin Shaw
VCP

Monday, September 20, 2010

ThinApp "Error: GetFileAttributes"

I was ThinApping Office 2010, and ran into the following error:

"Error: GetFileAttributes for file <filename> failed?

I poked around, but didn't find much on the internet for it, so I thought I'd post the solution.

The problem is that the path is too long. I believe the limit for the path and filename are 256 characters. In this case it was 263 characters:
\\server-name.domain.local\ThinApp\Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010\%SystemRoot%\assembly\GAC_MSIL\Microsoft.VisualStudio.Tools.Applications.ServerDocument.v10.0\10.0.0.0__b03f5f7f11d50a3a\Microsoft.VisualStudio.Tools.Applications.ServerDocument.v10.0.dll

ThinApp Office 2010

Found a good post for how to ThinApp Office 2010:
http://blogs.vmware.com/thinapp/2009/12/microsoft-office-2010-beta-recipes.html

Make sure you download the office2010-1.vbs script and put it in the root of your ThinApp project for everything to work right.

UPDATE 3/24/11:

I was reviewing my traffic, and noticed that this page still gets a lot of traffic.

For everyone that stumbles across it, I thought I'd point out that as of today, Office 2010 still shouldn't be ThinApped in a production environment. From my experience and testing, it looks like it will run for around 30 days, then it will time out looking for activation.

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Dustin Shaw
VCP
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Saturday, September 18, 2010

View 4.5 is Alive!

So I finally had to make time to put in View 4.5 on my 2 test Datacenters (one is a Demo environment, the other for play).

Went in like a breeze on both. Run the installer for View Manager, update the View Composer, and boom. I'm up to 4.5.

The only real issue I ran into was with my existing XP Linked Clone pool on my test Datacenter (the Demo datacenter was fine...). I went in and removed and re-added the View Agent and updated my Snap and pointed the Pool to it. No joy. I got a blank screen.

Did some research, and saw some notes about ESX 4.0u2 with View 4.0 causing this issue, so I thought I'd start there.
Here's two links I found:
http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1016753
http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1022830

Besides, I felt like updating the datacenters to ESX 4.1 anyway, since I had held off because View 4.0 doesn't like ESX 4.1.

So I went through and upgraded vCenter, vCenter Update Manger, then used Update Manager to update my hosts. If you've not used Update Manager for it, you should - it's cool to watch. Apply your baseline with 4.1, tell it to remediate, and sit back and enjoy. That is, assuming of course, that all of your vms can migrate on their own (aka, you don't have them attached to CD drives, etc).

So once I had them updated, I once again updated my vmTools on the XP image, removed and readded the View Agent for good measure, then updated my Snap and Linked Clones. Still no joy.

So I though, ok, maybe something is wrong with my pool.

I created a new desktop pool (based off the same Snap) and it worked!

Since these were just Demo/Test datacenters, I just blew away my old pools and created new ones. If this was a live environment, then I'd have to worry about keeping the persistent disks and reattaching them.

After XP was successful, I built myself a Win 7 image, created a pool off of it, and awesome! It works great.

I love the dual monitors! I have two different resolution monitors at home, and two different aspect ratio monitors at work, so I can now take full advantage of them with View 4.5.

Now I'm going to proceed with testing out the ThinApp stuff integrated into View 4.5, and some performance testing, but so far it all looks awesome!

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Dustin Shaw
VCP
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Here's some books that should help out:

Thursday, September 16, 2010

Really?

Really?

The View 4.5 Client for local mode can't even install on a computer that is running another VMware product (like VMware Workstation).

I understand all the reasons behind, but Really?

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Dustin Shaw
VCP
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Here's some books that should help out:
VCP VMware Certified Professional on vSphere 4 Study Guide: Exam VCP-410
VCP VMware Certified Professional vSphere 4 Study Guide (Exam VCP410) with CD-ROM (Certification Press)
VCP4 Exam Cram: VMware Certified Professional (2nd Edition)

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

VM Shuts Off When Taking Snapshot

Here's a really cool one :-)

Have a client that just did a P2V - they took all of their 5 servers and did a P2V of them into a new vSphere implementation. Naturally, they also purchased vRanger so that they could get the best bang for their buck.

They had been continuing to backup using their good old Symantec method after the P2V project, and just now got around to the point of switching over to vRanger. They're a small shop, so they can take a while to move from Point A to Point B.

Well, vRanger ran for the first time last night, and kicked out the following errors on two VMs:

Message: An internal error occurred during execution, please contact Vizioncore support if the error persists.  Error Message: API Call failed with message: Error encountered while restarting virtual machine after taking snapshot.  The virtual machine will be powered off.

Took a quick glance, and remembered that these two boxes were the ones that were already running 2008r2 before the P2V. Because of this, we couldn't use the standard VMware Standalone Converter that we typically use for small shops - it doesn't support 2008r2. Instead we used Acronis to do the P2V using their True Image Echo software. 

Not my first choice, and not my decision either. I didn't even get to play on this project... One of my other techs kept saying "Can I do one? Can I do one? You get to have all the fun! Can I do it?" Obviously I got tired, and said sure; plus I wanted a weekend off to spend with the family. I found out after words what happened, but they were up and running and happy, so I didn't bother following up.

Think it's a coincidence? Not so, according to Quest's tech support - the second call my guys made to get the VMs back up (the first was to me: "HELP!" "I'm at a VMware View Presentation in front of 10 prospective companies. Call Quest or VMware; they have support on both." "Right!")

Apparently, when the Acronis P2V was done, it split up the vmdk files into 2GB chunks, rather than one big one. Not sure if this was an option they picked or if it was default - if the guy who did it was still working for us I would ask... He's gone for different performance reasons.

When the vmdk file is like this on vSphere, snapshotting doesn't work right, and kicks the box off line.

So the fix is to run vmkfstools to convert the multiple vmdk files down to one, then you're good to go. Alternatively, you can just Clone the VM to let it consolidate them for you, then remove the old one.


Ain't life fun!

Next time I'm going to verify the work done a little closer...

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Dustin Shaw
VCP
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Here's some books that should help out:
Maximum vSphere: Tips, How-Tos, and Best Practices for Working with VMware vSphere 4
VCP VMware Certified Professional on vSphere 4 Study Guide: Exam VCP-410
VMware vSphere 4 Implementation

View 4.5 Features

Here's a quick breakdown on what's new in VMware 4.5 - these are the features that didn't exist in View 4.0:


  1. Offline Desktop - This is a biggy. It allows you to use a laptop that's not always on the network. This means "Yes, you are a candidate for VDI, Mr. CEO."
  2. Windows 7 - Another biggy. Fully supports Win 7. You can now get rid of your legacy XP boxes :-)
  3. Support for vSphere and vCenter 4.1 - Like this required any thought. vSphere 4.1 came out, and didn't support View Composer - obviously because they knew they were about to release View 4.5.
  4. More View Clients - they extended this to Mac OS X
  5. Easy ThinApp Delivery - It's all integrated, so you don't have to worry.
  6. Administration Based on Roles - You can define who can administer what; something View 4.0 was missing. Big deal for Enterprises.
  7. Support added for Tiered Storage - You can now take advantage of more storage options for your VDI clients to improve performance and control costs.
  8. A bunch of other stuff

Needless to say, there's some cool new stuff. If you want to see the full list, check out the release notes:
http://www.vmware.com/support/view45/doc/view45_releasenotes.html

We're getting ready to install / play with View 4.5 in our lab so that we can figure out the caveats. I'll post back about those when we figure them out.

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Dustin Shaw
VCP
------
Here's some books that should help out:
VMware vSphere 4 Implementation
VMware vSphere 4 Administration Instant Reference
Mastering VMware vSphere 4 (Computer/Tech)
VMware Cookbook: A Real-World Guide to Effective VMware Use

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

View 4.5 is out!

For anyone who wasn't paying attention yesterday, VMware View 4.5 hit the market.

There are a lot of cool new features - especially the offline desktop one. I'll post them later; until then you can check it out here:
http://www.vmware.com/products/view/overview.html

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Dustin Shaw
VCP
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Here's some books that should help out:
VMware Cookbook: A Real-World Guide to Effective VMware Use
Mastering VMware vSphere 4 (Computer/Tech)

Monday, September 13, 2010

ESX File Systems Error on boot

Ran into this recently, though it might help someone else:

We have a Demo vSphere environment that gets banged around a lot, including getting shut down dirty often ("Look! I can yank the plug and it keeps running!"). One of our ESX hosts in the cluster came up with this fun error:

fsck.ext3: Unable to resolve 'UUID=####'
An error ocurred during the file system check. Dropping you to a shell; the system will reboot when you leave the shell.

The rest of the details in the message will tell you exactly which volume you've got issue with.

Usually, this is an easy enough fix; just force fsck.ext3 to clean your problem volume. I actually like to use it as an opportunity to check all my volumes. Here's what I do:

df     ---  get a list of all your volumes, they will as /dev/sdxx where xx is a hex number
fsck.ext3 -f /dev/sdxx          ---- run this command on each volume on the df list

You'll have the problem volume prompt you about "Do you want to fix this?" "Do you want to fix that?" Just answer yes (after reviewing what you're about to do, of course), and you'll be good to go.

Reboot your host, and you should be up and running.

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Dustin Shaw
VCP
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Here's some books that should help out:
Computer File Systems: Computer File, File Archiver, Fsck, 8.3 Filename, Root Directory, Working Directory, Comparison of File Systems
VMware vSphere 4 Administration Instant Reference
Mastering VMware vSphere 4 (Computer/Tech)

Saturday, September 11, 2010

We'll miss you ESX!

For those of you who haven't been paying attention in VMware, with the advent of vSphere (over a year ago), the official recommendation is to no longer use ESX, but now to use ESXi.

Why would I do something silly like that?

I'm glad you asked :-)

ESXi is lighter - not so heavy on the host box
No security console - aka, less security risk and things to patch
Less configuration options - easier to setup a new host

What are the downsides?


Oh, those... Well, if you believe VMware, none! If you listen to third party vendors, then you will hear a long list of agents that they've had to scramble to figure out new methods of doing. Some (like Quest's vRanger Pro) are switching to a VA (Virtual Appliance) format. Others are just pulling from the remote API calls. And others (like HP Systems Insight Manager or Dell OpenManage) are switching their management tools to use SNMP and CIM based calls for managing the hardware.

Why can't I just keep using ESX?

Oh, that's because ESX is going to disappear in "future major releases," so why wait until you are forced into the situation. Try to be a little forward looking; after all, isn't that why you're Virtualized in the first place? :-)

If you want to read more from VMware, you can go here:
http://www.vmware.com/products/vsphere/esxi-and-esx/overview.html
http://www.vmware.com/products/vsphere/esxi-and-esx/faqs.html

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UPDATE 3/29/11

VMware made it official that as of vSphere 5 (coming out July-August 2011), ESX will no longer be included. ESXi will be the only way to go. Better start migrating!

Read more about it here.

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Dustin Shaw
VCP

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

vRanger Recommended Settings

I had the pleasure of sitting through one of Quest's (formerly Vizioncore) webinars today, and had a chance to review all of the best practices that they have with vRanger 4.5.

One thing that always stands out is the settings in vSphere 4.x for the Service Console. You should set 1500Mhz CPU reservation and 800Mb memory reservation. This will give you optimal performance on your hosts for the best/quickest backups. Then you also need to make sure you adjust your settings inside vRanger to match what your equipment can handle (how many jobs one host can handle, how much throughput your data store can take), so that you can do what vRanger does best and push data as fast and hard as you can to your backup store. That is, unless you are a 24 hour shop; then you might want to throttle it, depending on how cheap your equipment is :-)

This obviously only applies to ESX. ESXi doesn't allow vRanger to get in and work the same way, so they have some other fancy tricks for ESXi using the vStorage API. You can read about it here:
http://vcommunity.vizioncore.com/dataprotection/vrangerpro/b/backup20/archive/2010/09/02/scalable-and-high-performance-data-protection-on-esxi-backup-replication-and-recovery.aspx

Cool stuff. And it all works awesome. I ran across a comparison chart the other day in Quest's blogs that show that vRanger outperforms competitors by 3-4x on LAN-based backups, and by 1.75x on LAN-free backups. Check it out:
http://vcommunity.vizioncore.com/dataprotection/vrangerpro/b/backup20/archive/2010/07/28/more-performance-data-for-vranger-pro-4-5-unrivaled-backup-speed-in-real-world-tests.aspx

And in the interest of full disclosure, I don't work for Quest. I'm actually an agnostic when it comes to this (as I am with most software; I like what works, don't like what doesn't), and have implemented and managed multiple different VM backup software - including Acronis and Symantec. They all have their good sides and their bads (some more than others) but if I have a client that prefers a particular product due to loyalty, existing service contract, or the classic "I am already familiar with their console," I'm happy to help them go with whatever they want. Ultimately, it's their job, not mine, that's on the line if the product doesn't work as advertised by the manufacturer - and I always list the caveats so that they are aware going in.

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Dustin Shaw
VCP
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Here's some books that should help out:
Mastering VMware vSphere 4 (Computer/Tech)
VMware vSphere 4 Administration Instant Reference
VMware vSphere 4 Implementation

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Disabling IPv6 on Server 2008/2008r2

As an outsource IT professional, there is one thing that I've run into over and over again in SMBs - IPv6 doesn't play well unless FULLY integrated. That means if you try to simply "uncheck" the box for IPv6 to disable it, you've just hosed yourself. Similarly, if you just left it checked because you don't know what your doing, you've just hosed yourself.

There are a number of issues that I've seen because of the idiocracy above:

- Slow XP performance on every task when joined to a domain with a 2008 server with IPv6

- Broken SBS 2008 server when you uncheck the box (things that break are "Applying Computer Settings" for a long time, Exchange won't start, Network Icon shows offline in error)

- Exchange 2010 won't install when IPv6 is unchecked (but not disabled)

- Exchange 2007 and Exchange 2010 won't start when unchecked (but not disabled)

- Other "random" issues that can't be pinned down

So basically you have two solutions:

  1. Implement IPv6 on EVERYTHING - aka get a new switch, router, firewall, etc. that supports IPv6, configure it and everything else with IPv6 (that includes any legacy XP or 2003 boxes in the network), and get it all working. Then you just translate to the IPv4 world for the rest of your internet until everyone jumps on that bandwagon. Oh, and by the way, you'll probably need to replace all your gear before it gets to that point.
  2. Go the cheap route and completely disable IPv6. I say cheap because it's not only cheaper in hardware (you don't have to replace all your infrastructure just because of IPv6 compatibility - granted, it can give you a good bullet point to show the boss if you want to anyway...), but it's cheaper in labor because you don't have to teach all your geeks (umm, I mean IT professionals...) how to read and understand the new subnets.

Since I'm betting that most people like to go the way of "cheap," I'll detail that one for you :-) If you'd rather go balls-to-the-walls, go for it. Just make sure you understand the animal first.

--

On your new, shiney Server 2008 / 2008r2, first you want to Uncheck the box that says "IPv6" (DUHH!)

Once that's done, go to Regedit***. You'll want to navigate here:

HKEY_Local_Machine\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip6\Parameters

Create a DWord (32-bit) value named "DisabledComponents" and Click OK. Note: There is no space in the DWord name - and no quotes either ;-)

Double Click you're new "DisabledComponents" DWord and put in the following value to completely disable ALL of IPv6 (except IPv6 loopback interface):
ffffffff --- Hex
or
4294967295 --- Dec

Click OK.

There are also other options to do with this DWord, as detailed perfectly by MS here:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929852

Once done, restart your server to make sure that everything takes full effect. I've seen it take effect without restart, but restart is always best practice when playing with the registry.

If you have additional servers running 2008 or 2008r2: rinse, lather, repeat.

Now you should have smooth sailing with just IPv4 on the network. And if it's not smooth, at least you know that IPv6 wasn't your problem :-)


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Dustin Shaw
VCP

~~~~***~~~~
Danger! Danger!

Don't go playing with the registry unless you actually know what you're doing.
If you don't know what you're doing in the registry, bad bad things ensue.
If you insist on playing in the registry anyway, you should also go update your resume and notify your boss that they will soon need a replacement that can rebuild a server.

Danger! Danger!
~~~~***~~~~


Here's some books that should help out:
IPv6 Essentials
Understanding IPv6, Second Edition

Monday, September 6, 2010

Virtualization Notes

Here's my take on Virtualizing servers:

Prove to me that your server isn't a good fit for virtualizing, and then I'll believe you. There are always the normal exceptions that have an outdated PCI card (phone systems are the prime example here), but for the most part, I fail to see why you wouldn't virtualize EVERYTHING else.

Take the following scenario:
You have a server sitting on Hardware. That hardware tanks (bad MB, bad Proc, etc) as will happen in 100% of servers before they are canned. You now have to wait for parts, rebuild, or worse, start over from scratch.

Had you though ahead and had your server sitting on Virtual Hardware, when that hardware tanked, worse case scenario (aka, your too cheap for a real solution), you load up another piece of hardware with ESX, crank it up, and copy over your VMDK files, and WOOHOO! You're up and running withing a few hours instead of a few days. Best case, you had Fault Tolerance turned on, and no one even knew it happened in the first place.

- Now you're the hero -

Just my viewpoint, but what do I know. It's not like I'm certified or anything... Oh wait, I am :-)

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Dustin Shaw
VCP
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Here's a book that should help out:
VCP VMware Certified Professional on vSphere 4 Study Guide: Exam VCP-410