vSphere 5

A number of vSphere 5 official announcements came out today. You can check them out on VMware's official site.


------
Dustin Shaw
VCP

View Pool Issues

Had a client call me this morning with an issue with one of his VMware View 4.5 pool. He said that his users were having issues logging into their desktops. They could login, but it was taking a long time to login. When he went to double check the settings in the pool he found that his vCenter Settings tab was red and the error it stated:
Cannot find host or cluster for this pool.

Since I set it all up for him initally, he stopped there and thought he'd better differ to the expert. Oh, and yes it does say "Data-Denter" - he's dislexic (aren't we all?)

I dug in further and found the following other errors. When clicking on "Browse" to chose Host or cluster, I received this error:
Server Error
One of the required objects is not found in vCenter Server vcenter.

When I looked at the desktops, they all had the same error listed:
Status
Resource Cluster \'/Data-Center/host/Cluster/Resources\' not found for pool: Poolname

Since it was a Floating resource pool with no persistent desktops, I decided the quickest and easiest thing to do for him would be to just create a new pool based of the same image (I'm going to have to give him a refresher on Recomposing; it looks like he is still running off the image I helped him create over a year ago). I disabled his old pool and told him to delete it once he felt comfortable that everything was running good on the new one.

Afterwords, I decided to glance around for an answer, and found this VMware KB article:
Editing an existing pool in the VMware View web admin interface fails with the error: One of required objects is not found in the VirtualCenter server <IP address>

Nothing has changed on his environment. He only has the vSphere Essentials bundle (he has a small shop with only 2 hosts), so he doesn't have any actual Resource Clusters. This is my thought as to where the corruption came from, but I've got nothing to confirm my suspicions. If anyone has some thoughts on this, I'd love to hear them.


------
Dustin Shaw
VCP

Purple Screen of Death - Dell issues

You may notice I don't post a lot of issues on here. That's because we frankly don't have a whole lot of issues. I personally attribute it to using Best Practices, and regular maintenance. That said, things will still get lost in the weeds occasionally.

We ran into the Purple Screen of Death on one of our ESX 4.1 boxes yesterday. It is a Dell R610, and apparently had a hardware hiccup, and kicked out errors stating:

		Tue Apr 19 21:09:15 2011		PCIE Fatal Err: Critical Event sensor, bus fatal error (Bus 1 Device 0 Function 1) was asserted		0xA10002FBF9AD4DB1000413186FAA0101h
		Tue Apr 19 21:09:15 2011		Err Reg Pointer: OEM sensor, OEM Diagnostic data event was asserted		0xA00002FBF9AD4DB10004C11A7E011610h
		Tue Apr 19 21:09:15 2011		PCIE Fatal Err: Critical Event sensor, bus fatal error (Bus 1 Device 0 Function 0) was asserted		0x9F0002FBF9AD4DB1000413186FAA0001h
		Tue Apr 19 21:09:15 2011		Err Reg Pointer: OEM sensor, OEM Diagnostic data event was asserted		0x9E0002FBF9AD4DB10004C11A7E011610h

We rebooted the box, and it came back online just fine, but we didn't feel comfortable with it, so we stuck it in maintenance mode and had someone contact Dell. Dell reports that we need to update the Bios on it:

-----

Yes, it appears your system is affected by some of the microcode updates released from Intel on the 5500 and 5600 series processors.  That is likely the cause of these PCI errors.  The course of action we need to take is:

·         Update the BIOS

·         Update the iDRAC

·         Clear out the old log entries

·         Monitor for re-occurance.
------

So it's sitting in maintenance mode until someone has some time to love on it. The awesome thing is that we run N+1 (one more box than we need) so we have that luxury. I know plenty of people that refuse to listen to why you should go N+1 who would be scrambling to make a maintenance window to update it.

The downside to this whole fiasco was that when it hiccupped, it stayed online (as is the default with ESX), and held onto the Storage of it's VMs. Therefore, HA couldn't restart them on another box until someone manually SHUT OFF the pretty Purple-VM-Eater. As soon as they did that, all was well in the world and the phone stopped ringing.

Since I'm not fond on relying on manual intervention to make HA work, I found the command for auto-restart when a PSoD happens and applied to ALL our hosts:

esxcfg-advcfg -s X /Misc/BlueScreenTimeout

Were X = number of seconds before restart

I went with 30 seconds, that way I have the opportunity of seeing the screen if I so happen to be looking at it when it dies.

 
------
Dustin Shaw
VCP

vSphere 5 Around the Corner!

VMware recently announced vSphere 5 will be coming July-August time frame 2011.

Three big new features will be included when it does come:

Storage DRS

Just like you use DRS to help you manage the workload on your hosts, Storage DRS will help you manage the workload on your SANs. The essential workup is that you'll be able to group your storage into storage pods that you can allow Storage DRS to manage what goes where based on capacity. Pretty cool, if you are dealing with some complicated storage situations.

SRM Host-Based Replication
This buys you the ability to use SRM even if you have disparing storage at your different locations.

Network I/O Control for VMs

This allows you the option to reserve bandwidth for high-priority VMs when you've got a congested network. Very useful control to have, depending on your network layout and configuration.


Another anouncement that VMware has made about vSphere 5 - it's ESXi all the way. That's right, ESX will be discontinued in favor of it's lighter, tigher cousin. I mentioned that this was coming before, but now it's actually here. Hope you are ready for migration!

VMware won't leave you figuring it out on your own, though. They recommend that you start migrating off ESX to ESXi now in preparation for the move to vSphere 5. Here is their Info Center about it, and here is their Migration Guide.
------
Dustin Shaw
VCP

Basics of Installing VMware View 4.6

We just got View 4.6 up and running in our Demo environment, and here are the basic take-aways that we have.

1. Windows 2008R2 is the minimum for VMware View Secure Gateway. Or Demo Environment was previously on 2003R2, so we had to do an upgrade.
2. You have to update all of your View Base Images to the View 4.6 Agent.
3. You have to install the latest version of VMware Tools in your View Base Images
4. A number of Microsoft Patches need to be installed on your View Base Images:
• KB961501
• KB968389
• KB975467
• KB971657
• KB944043
5. You must remove all previous Snap Shots, and start fresh for your Linked Clones

------
Dustin Shaw
VCP

VMware View released for iPad

VMware released the VMware View App for the iPad this week.

This allows you to use PCoIP on the iPad; the only App previously was the Wyse PocketCloud, which limited you to using RDP through View.

You can see the app in iTunes here.

VMware has also created a forum for the VMware View for iPad App to discuss feature requests, issues, and ideas.

The new app will work with VMware View 4.6 or later, not with View 4.5, so if you aren't yet upgraded to View 4.6 (which came out at the end of Febrary), you'll need to first.

------
Dustin Shaw
VCP

VMware View 4.6 Released

With very little fanfare, VMware slid View 4.6 onto the market yesterday.

One of the noticeable improvements in View 4.6 is the support for PCoIP connections through the Secure Gateway. There are also some USB compatibility addressed for iPhones, iPads, and scanners; keyboard mapping improvements, and updated timeout settings for SSO users. Plus a minor 160 bug fixes.

You can download View 4.6 from VMware with a free 60 day trial if you want.

For your convenience, here's the "What's New" section of the Release Notes:

What's New in View 4.6

VMware View 4.6 includes the following new features:

• Security servers can now accommodate PCoIP connections - Security servers now include a PCoIP Secure Gateway component. The PCoIP Secure Gateway connection offers the following advantages:
  • The only remote desktop traffic that can enter the corporate data center is traffic on behalf of a strongly authenticated user.
  • Users can access only the desktop resources that they are authorized to access.
  • No VPN is required, as long as PCoIP is not blocked by any networking component.
  • Security servers with PCoIP support run on Windows Server 2008 R2 and take full advantage of the 64-bit architecture.
• Enhanced USB device compatibility - View 4.6 supports USB redirection for syncing and managing iPhones and iPads with View desktops. This release also includes improvements for using USB scanners, and adds to the list of USB printers that you can use with thin clients. For more information, see the list of View Client resolved issues.
• Keyboard mapping improvements - Many keyboard-related issues have been fixed. For more information, see the list of View Client resolved issues.
• New timeout setting for SSO users - With the single-sign-on (SSO) feature, after users authenticate to View Connection Server, they are automatically logged in to their View desktop operating systems. This new timeout setting allows administrators to limit the number of minutes that the SSO feature is valid for.
  
  For example, if an administrator sets the time limit to 10 minutes, then 10 minutes after the user authenticates to View Connection Server, the automatic login ability expires. If the user then walks away from the desktop and it becomes inactive, when the user returns, the user is prompted for login credentials. For more information, see the VMware View Administration documentation.
• VMware View 4.6 includes more than 160 bug fixes - For descriptions of selected resolved issues, see Resolved Issues.
• Experimental support for Microsoft Windows 7 SP1 RC operating systems

------
Dustin Shaw
VCP