• Drobo
• Hewlett-Packard
• Iomega
• Netgear
• QNAP
• Synology
• Thecus

http://searchstorage.techtarget.com.au/articles/42004-VMware-vSphere-shared-storage-guide

Every once in a while you will experience problems that only can be fixed by visiting the ESX console, at least I do. When you finally have found the IP address or hostname and you’re using your favourite browser to load the MKS java applet, the information is scrolling fast and your keyboard isn’t mapped correctly. These two problems can be fixed easily, you have to fix the real problem yourself.

First let’s start with the scrolling problem. When you issue a command like esxcfg-vswitch because you want to check out your vSwitch configuration, you only see the last part and can’t scroll back. You might want to redirect the outcome of your command into a file and use nano to walk through it.

esxcfg-vswitch -l >> network.txt
nano network.txt

This type of redirection pipes the output into the file network.txt.  The difference between this and the single-'>' redirection is that the old contents (if any) of network.txt are not erased.  Instead, the esxcfg -l output is appended to the file.

The second problem I have experienced a lot it an incorrect mapping of the keyboard. This problem can be easily fixed by loading a different keyboard translation table. The program loadkeys reads the file or files specified by filename.... Its main purpose is to load the kernel keymap for the console. 

Loadkeys us will do the trick.

Fellow vExpert Jakub Felinski over at the weblog “Virtualization in Practice” has posted a really nice article about using Nagios to monitor a VMware vSphere environment. Nagios is a popular open source computer system and network monitoring software application. It watches hosts and services, alerting users when things go wrong and again when they get better. Jacub has added all the necessary VMware modules to the Nagios virtual appliance which can be downloaded in OVF format at his website. He also created a description with the configuration changes at ESX level, it’s real easy to get it up and running. The original Polish article with download link can be found here and the Google translation can be found here.

By default, each ESX host gets a set of basic tests which include:

•  CPU usage
•  Disk latency (read write)
•  Hardware sensors
•  Disk operations canceled
•  State of network cards
•  Memory swapping
•  Free space in each Datastore

VMware vCenter Configuration Manager's (formerly EMC Ionix Server Configuration Manager) policy-driven automation detects deep system changes and identifies whether that change is within policy - an expected and acceptable behavior based on industry, regulatory, or your own self-defined best practices - or whether that change has created a compliance violation or security vulnerability.

http://www.vmware.com/products/configuration-manager/

Automate configuration management across virtual and physical servers, workstations, and desktops with VMware vCenter Configuration Manager. Increase efficiency by eliminating manual, error-prone and time-consuming work.

• Avoid configuration drift by automatically detecting and comparing changes to policies
• Maintain continuous compliance with out-of-the box templates and toolkits
• Automate and optimize server provisioning and application stack deployment in the datacenter

Also take a look at:

VMware vCenter Application Discovery Manager

Quickly and accurately map your application dependencies to accelerate datacenter moves, precisely plan infrastructure consolidations and confidently virtualize your business critical applications.

VMware Service Manager

VMware Service Manager develops a 100% web architected solution that automates IT Service Management processes in enterprise organizations.VMware Service Manager is independently verified to the highest level of ITIL compatibility for Incident Management, Problem Management, Change Management, Release Management, Configuration Management, Service Level Management and Availability Management.

During my weekly VMware training sessions, I’m always getting a bit excited when we reach the module where the ESX and virtual machine memory is covered. I’m trying to explain how important it is; not to use the virtual machine memory limit setting and very often students believe me after checking out their own production environment for ballooning activity and 9 out of 10 times they find a few virtual machine which have a memory limit configured. The memory limit is the upper limit on memory the ESX host makes available to virtual machine. Host memory reclamation happens regardless of the current host free memory state. For example, even if host free memory is in the high state, memory reclamation is still mandatory when a virtual machine’s memory usage exceeds its specified memory limit. If this happens, the ESX server will employ ballooning and, if necessary, swapping to reclaim memory from the virtual machine until the virtual machines host memory usage falls back to its specified limit.

I’ve recorded a video which shows you the Proofpudding and collected some useful links about this topic.

Scott Herold: Memory Behavior when VM Limits are Set
VMware KB: Virtual machine boots very slowly when Memory Limit
Arnim van Lieshout: PowerCLI: Reset CPU and Memory Limits

The Synology DS1010+ runs on the renewned system firmware, Synology DSM 2.3 offering comprehensive applications and features designed specifically for SMBs. Comprehensive network protocol support assures seamless file sharing across Windows, Mac, and Linux platforms. Windows ADS integration allows the Synology DS1010+ to quickly and easily fit in an existing business network environment with no need to recreate users accounts on the Synology DS1010+. The User Home feature minimizes the administrator’s effort in creating a private shared folder for a large amount of users. The sub-folder privilege settings further extend the flexibility to allocate permissions for different workgroups.

Using the NFS protocol or with iSCSI target support, within Synology DSM 2.3, the Synology DS1010+ is a storage asset when serving VMware.

•CPU Frequency: 1.67GHz, Dual Core
•Floating Point
•Memory Bus: 64bit@DDR800
•Memory: 1GB10
•Internal HDD1: 3.5" SATA(II) X5 or 2.5" SATA/SSD X5
•Max Internal Capacity: 10TB (5x 2TB hard drives)9
•Hot Swappable HDD
•Size (HxWxD): 157mm X 248mm X 233mm
•External HDD Interface: USB 2.0 port X4, eSATA port X1
•Weight: 4.25kg
•LAN: Gigabit X2
•Wireless Support11

"We are pleased that the Synology DS1010+ qualifies for the VMware Ready™ logo, signifying to customers that it has passed specific VMware testing and interoperability criteria and is ready to run their mission-critical business applications and operations," said Bernie Mills, senior director, alliance programs, VMware.

Explore the cloud now with the free version of CloudSwitch Explorer. Move up to five VMware virtual machines to the Amazon EC2 cloud simply and securely with no modifications. Supports Windows and Linux apps.

This two day hands-on training course covers the requirements and effects of transitioning your VMware vSphere™ environment to VMware® ESXi. It provides the knowledge and skills necessary to make fundamental design decisions and successfully add ESXi to a deployed vSphere environment. The course is based the future version of ESXi.

Course Outline
Working with VMware ESXi
• Identify differences between ESX and ESXi
• Recognize tasks and procedures when moving to ESXi
Installing and Configuring VMware ESXi
• Analyze ESXi Installable and ESXi Embedded
• Install and configure ESXi Installable and ESXi Embedded
• Recognize the steps for upgrading to ESXi
Performing Management Tasks
• Identify hardware monitoring techniques
• Discuss system management and backup methodology
• Distinguish the log files
• Recognize security methodologies
• Employ file management practices
• Perform basic troubleshooting with the direct console user interface
Large-Scale Deployment of VMware ESXi
• Identify scripted installation programs for ESXi (SDK and Weasel)
• Analyze the commands to perform scripted installation
• Discuss best practices for large-scale deployment
Using Scripting Interfaces
• Identify the scripting interfaces for ESXi
• Discuss primary scripting interfaces
• Install VMware vSphere Management Assistant
• Identify differences between commands used with ESX and those used with ESXi
• Recognize custom commands and how to substitute VMware vSphere Command-Line Interface commands or vSphere PowerCLI cmdlets for them.

At the end of the course, you should be able to: Analyze ESXi and its benefits for your environment, Identify ESXi installation and configuration procedures, Use scripted installations for large-scale ESXi deployments, Employ scripting interfaces to manage ESXi and Identify risks when migrating to ESXi.

This three day course with 60% lecture and 40% lab exercises shows you how to follow best practices for secure design, deployment, and operation of a VMware vSphere™ environment. Through lecture, discussion, and hands-on practice, you will gain the knowledge and skills necessary to meet the security and compliance goals of your organization.

Course Outline
Module 1: Course Introduction
• Introductions and course logistics
• Online resources for security and compliance
Module 2: Security in a Virtual Environment
• Review of information security and risk management concepts
• How virtualization affects security and compliance
• Top vulnerabilities in a virtual environment
• Basic guidelines for securing a virtual environment
• Security tools and technologies
Module 3: Secure Virtual Networking
• vNetwork security architecture
• Network segmentation and traffic isolation
• Secure virtual network configuration
• Traffic isolation with private VLANs
Module 4: Protecting the Management Environment
• vCenter Server authentication, authorization, and accountingWorking with SSL certificates
• Hardening the vCenter Server system
Module 5: Protecting VMware ESX/ESXi Host Systems
• ESX and ESXi security architecture
• Controlling access to storage
• Hardening ESX and ESXi hosts.
Module 6: Hardening Virtual Machines
• Virtual machine security architecture
• Configuring security parameters
Module 7: Configuration and Change Management
• Configuration and change management goals and guidelines
• Maintaining the proper configuration of vSphere components
• Monitoring logs for security-related events
• Configuration and change management tools and technologie

Members of this group have gained the in-depth skills and industry-recognized certification on VMware technology. The VMware Certified Professional Program is designed for everyone who wants to demonstrate their expertise in virtual infrastructure and increase his potential for career advancement. If you are a VCP you can join this group.

If you don’t know what a LinkedIn group is, here is a short explanation : Many professionals advance their careers and business goals by counting on industry and professional groups, alumni organizations, industry conferences and corporate alumni groups to help them make vital new business contacts. The VMware LinkedIn Groups offers extra features stay in touch with one another and discover powerful new business contacts within their groups and beyond.

2X Software has announced the release of its Linux-based 2X CloudClient operating system. It can easily be used as a VMware View Client running from USB. I didn’t had the time to check it out, but it looks great.
 
Go to http://www.2x.com/ccos and instantly install your FREE personal 2X CloudClient operating system on a USB device (no larger than 512 MB). Your portable CloudClient operating system can then be run from any computer that can boot from a USB device, allowing you to instantly connect to hosted virtual desktop applications, such as Google Apps, Microsoft Hyper-V or VMware. It serves as your personal cloud client you can carry in your pocket wherever you might need it.
Alternatively, burn the 2X CloudClient OS to a bootable CD-ROM, or install it on a local hard drive and run it as a Network Boot OS from your local network.

Features:

• Supports Web applications, such as Google Apps, Microsoft Live, Web browsers, and more.
• Installs and boots from any type of USB device, or from a CDROM and hard drive.
• Converts standard PC’s, laptops, netbooks or thin clients to a cloud device.

Includes virtual desktop and application clients, such as Microsoft RDP, VMware View, Citrix XenApp and the 2X VirtualDesktopServer Client.

Storage IO Control allows cluster-wide storage IO prioritization. This allows better workload consolidation and helps reduce extra costs associated with over-provisioning. Storage IO Control extends the constructs of shares and limits to handle storage IO resources. The amount of storage IO that is allocated to virtual machines during periods of IO congestion can be controlled, which ensures that more important virtual machines get preference over less important virtual machines for IO resource allocation.

When Storage IO Control on a datastore is enabled, ESX/ESXi begins to monitor the device latency that hosts observe when communicating with that datastore. When device latency exceeds a threshold, the datastore is considered to be congested and each virtual machine that accesses that datastore is allocated IO resources in proportion to their shares and is set per virtual machine. The number can be adjusted for each based on need. Low priority VMs can limit IO bandwidth for high priority VMs and storage allocation should be in line with VM priorities.

This feature enables pre-datastore priorities/shares for VM to improve total throughput and has Cluster level enforcement for shares for all workload accessing a datastore. Configuring Storage I/O Control is a two-step process:

1. Enable Storage I/O Control for the datastore.
2. Set the number of storage I/O shares and upper limit of I/O operations per second (IOPS) allowed for each virtual machine. By default, all virtual machine shares are set to Normal (1000) with unlimited IOPS.

This article is based on the following sources and contains product features that are currently under development. This article about the new technology represents no commitment from VMware to deliver these features in any generally available product. Features are subject to change, and must not be included in contracts, purchase orders, or sales agreements of any kind. Technical feasibility and market demand will affect final delivery. Pricing and packaging for any new technologies or features discussed or presented have not been determined.

Duncan Epping        : Storage IO Control, the movie
Scott Drummonds    : Storage IO Control
VirtualMiscellaneous : Storage IO Control - SIOC

If you don’t have a fancy physical iSCSI target in your lab but still want to do some testing with the esxcli command, Starwind software offers a great iSCSI alternative with their StarWind iSCSI SAN software. It can be used as shared storage for almost any application, it is fully compatible for use with VMware.

After you have created a StarWind iSCSI target, it’s ready to service connections. You can established a connection to an iSCSI target and it appears as a new datastore on your ESX server. I’ll show the operations you need to complete to create and format the datastore in the way your ESX server can create virtual machines on it.

I’m also going to show how the esxcli command can be used for PSA (pluggable storage architecture) management and explain how to use the vSphere Client to manage the PSA, the associated native multipathing plug‐in (NMP).

In this online training we’re going to take a look at the multi pathing policy, in this particular case we’re using round robin. For this setup, because multipathing plugins do not have direct access to physical NICs on your host, you first need to connect each physical NIC to a separate VMkernel port. You then associate all VMkernel ports with the software iSCSI initiator using a port binding technique. As a result, each VMkernel port connected to a separate NIC becomes a different path that the iSCSI storage stack.

http://www.starwindsoftware.com/iscsi-san-for-microsoft-windows-multipathing
http://www.starwindsoftware.com/download-free-trial