Category Archives: 3i

Dell ESXi Management

Unlike the traditional ESX software, the ESXi software does not have a service console. It helps reduce the installation footprint of the software and can allow the hypervisor to be directly installed on the system’s internal flash storage or a USB key.

At the moment I am investigating moving to ESXi from ESX, after resolving the DSET issue I was then faced with the management of the ESXi hosts, currently the full fat ESX hosts have the Dell open management agent installed on them and SNMP configured, this allows the Dell management server to keep track of the underlying hardware and report any hardware issues or firmware updates.

But what happens with ESXi 4.0 and the removal of the service console ?

Earlier with ESXi 3.5, OpenManage component were integrated with the downloadable Dell ESX3i ISO image
but from ESXi 4.0 onwards, VMware introduced a new concept called vSphere Installation Bundle (VIB), this allows the end users to download VIB files and install it directly into ESXi 4.0. Dell are now posting their OpenManage component as a VIB on support.dell.com.

To help reduce the system footprint and to simplify deployment, the ESXi software does not have a traditional service console management interface where Dell OpenManage agents are installed. Instead, to provide the required hardware manageability, VMware has incorporated the standard Common Information Model (CIM) management profiles into the ESXi software.

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vSphere 4.0 Quick Start Guide is here

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Its here, I’m an author, watch out JK Rowling !

Its been a while coming but the vSphere 4.0 Quick Start Guide is now available to buy on Amazon (US), we are working at getting it on the UK site but I’m just pleased to see it out there and available to buy.

This book is a co-authored publication bought to you from some of the leading names in VMware bloggers and admins, and they also asked me to contribute too 🙂

The book is designed for you to carry around with you, its not a heavy duty full novel but more of a VMware admins help book which can be referred to when you are in the damp dark datacenter at 4am in the morning with no internet connection !

Having said that there is definitely something in there for everyone, whether you are new to VMware or a seasoned Pro.

Throughout the book you will find great tips, real life situations and numerous PowerCLI examples.

If you haven’t yet heard of this book then please read these wonderful comments already left on the Amazon post.

If you have read it then please, leave your comments along with the others.

Buy your copy now ! in fact buy two !

Veeam Monitor 3.0 Free Edition

The guys over at Veeam have released an early Christmas present for us all and its a cracker (sorry).

Head over to the Veeam site now to get your free copy of Veeam Monitor 3.0. Very useful for monitoring ESX3i

The Veeam Monitor Free Edition is an easy-to-use VMware monitoring solution designed to meet the day-to-day needs of VMware administrators who need real-time performance monitoring and alerting. Built from the ground up specifically for the virtual world, Veeam Monitor provides a bird’s-eye view of key performance metrics across your virtual ESXi infrastructure.

With Veeam Monitor, you can view real-time resource usage data for any virtual infrastructure object or collection of objects, as well as known infrastructure events, all on a single screen. This allows you to finally see your virtual infrastructure as a unified entity, not just a collection of isolated hosts and guests.

Veeam Monitor provides comprehensive data on resource consumption and workload, from VirtualCenter, or ESX and ESXi hosts all the way down to the individual virtual machine level. Detailed real-time statistics are provided for key parameters critical to the health of the virtual environment, such as CPU and memory usage, disk and network I/O, and swap usage. Real-time data for multiple VI objects can be viewed in a convenient consolidated view for each ESX host, resource pool or cluster. This speeds up analysis and troubleshooting, and helps you identify potential resource bottlenecks faster than is possible using the Virtual Infrastructure Client.

  • Correlation of event and performance data

Veeam Monitor helps you understand how virtual infrastructure activities affect your VM performance, and solve resource usage mysteries with real-time monitoring graphs displaying known virtual infrastructure events, such as VMotion, snapshot creation and deletion, or backup activities, directly on the performance graphs.

  • User interface optimized for monitoring

The Veeam Monitor user interface was designed and optimized specifically for monitoring tasks. You can switch easily between different views to quickly find the VMware Infrastructure component you are looking for, or you can perform an integrated search. Drill down to an individual VM and find out how much CPU and memory it is consuming, and even connect to the VM console – all right from the Monitor user interface. Find out at a glance which components of your VMware infrastructure are the largest resource consumers: the Tops section of Veeam Monitor helps you identify which virtual machines are consuming the most CPU, memory, disk I/O and network resources.

  • Advanced alerting and flexible alarms

Veeam Monitor provides comprehensive alerting with custom alarms that can be based on many sources. You can easily set up e-mail notifications or SNMP traps for important events such as a given number of running VMs is exceeded, VM heartbeat is lost, a specific event is generated by VirtualCenter etc. Being alerted on such events allows for faster administrator response to critical issues, helping you to maintain better health and uptime of your virtual infrastructure. The Free Edition allows you to set and use up to ten alarms.

  • Scalable architecture

Veeam Monitor is an enterprise-level client-server application that enables multi-admin access to performance data without affecting ESX server and VirtualCenter performance or changing your access policies. It gathers all performance information into a local or remote SQL database, allowing users to access infrastructure-wide performance data and reporting as needed. While you are using the Free Edition, this data is still gathered, so that if you later choose to upgrade to the full Veeam Monitor, you will have access to this historical data for capacity planning, chargeback and trend analysis.

  • Support for multiple VirtualCenters

Veeam Monitor can be optionally integrated with VMware VirtualCenter to provide cluster-aware monitoring of your virtual machines. Veeam Monitor supports and extends VMware’s management framework, offloading the monitoring burden from VirtualCenter for enhanced VC performance. And with support for consolidating performance data from multiple VirtualCenters, Veeam Monitor shows performance data from your entire virtual infrastructure on a single screen – no matter how large your VMware deployment is.

  • Easy to deploy and use

While providing you truly enterprise-scale architecture, Veeam Monitor has extremely low system requirements comparing to other VMware monitoring solutions. Veeam Monitor takes minutes to deploy and use in any size environment. Installation package contains everything you need to start using the software right away, minutes after you download it!

  • Simple upgrade to the full version

Running ESX and ESXi in VMware Workstation

We have been able to run ESX and ESXi in VMware workstation for a while now, I find it particularly useful for testing and for the odd demonstration.

If you are unsure how to do this I came across a nice article today which includes a step by step video on how to configure this useful feature…

http://www.petri.co.il/running-vmware-esx-and-esxi-in-workstation-on-your-desktop-pc.htm

It reads…

In the following new video, I demonstrate, step by step, how you can run VMware ESX Server 3.5 and ESXi 3.5 inside VMware Workstation 6.5. This is also shown in my Train Signal VMware ESX Server video training course.

While you wouldn’t run ESX in Workstation for a production server, running ESX in Workstation is an excellent way to test and demonstrate ESX Server (and the entire VMware Virtual Infrastructure suite) on a single PC. Think about it – what if you had a single PC with 2 ESX Servers, an iSCSI virtual SAN, and a Windows Server running Virtual Center. With that, you would have “VMware Infrastructure in a box” and be able to run powerful features like VMotion, SVMotion, VMHA, and Update Manager, all on a single PC.

How to enable SSH on ESX 3i

This one has been around for a while but I thought I would document it on my blog as I just used it and there is a growing demand for 3i help due to it now being free !

How to enable SSH on VMware ESX 3i.

After reading the VMTN forum use the following steps to enable SSH

  • From the console press ALT-F1
  • Type unsupported and press ENTER
  • Enter the root password
  • Enter the following command vi /etc/inetd.conf
  • Search for the #SSH settings
  • Remove the # from the SSH row
  • Save the config by using :wq!
  • Type ps | grep inetd on the console
  • Send a hangup signal by using the following command kill -s HUP

You can now use Putty to SSH to your 3i server.