VMware ESXi 5.5, Patch Release ESXi550-201412001 (2096281)

VMware ESXi 5.5, Patch Release ESXi550-201412001 (2096281)
http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2096281

"This release contains general and security-only bulletins"

Patches can be downloaded from here: https://www.vmware.com/patchmgr/findPatch.portal

VMware ESXi 5.1, Patch ESXi510-Update03: ESXi 5.1 Complete Update 3 (2086278)

VMware ESXi 5.1, Patch ESXi510-Update03: ESXi 5.1 Complete Update 3 (2086278)
http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2086278

"This release contains general and security-only bulletins"

Patches can be downloaded from here: https://www.vmware.com/patchmgr/findPatch.portal

VMware ESXi 5.0, Patch Release ESXi500-201412001 (2088715)

VMware ESXi 5.0, Patch Release ESXi500-201412001 (2088715)
http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2088715

"This release contains general and security-only bulletins"

Patches can be downloaded from here: https://www.vmware.com/patchmgr/findPatch.portal

VMware ESXi 5.1, Patch Release ESXi510-201410001 (2084619)

VMware ESXi 5.1, Patch Release ESXi510-201410001 (2084619)
http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2084619

"This release contains general and security-only bulletins"

Patches can be downloaded from here: https://www.vmware.com/patchmgr/findPatch.portal

VMware ESXi 5.5, Patch Release ESXi550-201410001 (2087358)

VMware ESXi 5.5, Patch Release ESXi550-201410001 (2087358)
http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2087358

"This release contains general and security-only bulletins"

Patches can be downloaded from here: https://www.vmware.com/patchmgr/findPatch.portal

VMware ESX 4.0 Patch ESX400-201410001 (2090853)

VMware ESX 4.0 Patch ESX400-201410001 (2090853)
http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2090853

"This patch updates Bash libraries in ESX to resolve multiple critical security issues, also referred to as Shellshock"

Patches can be downloaded from here: https://www.vmware.com/patchmgr/findPatch.portal

VMware ESX 4.1, Patch ESX410-201410001 (2090859)

VMware ESX 4.1, Patch ESX410-201410001 (2090859)
http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2090859

"This patch updates Bash libraries in ESX to resolve multiple critical security issues, also referred to as Shellshock"

Patches can be downloaded from here: https://www.vmware.com/patchmgr/findPatch.portal

VMware ESXi 5.5 Complete Update 2 (2079725)

VMware ESXi 5.5 Complete Update 2 (2079725)
http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2079725

Patches can be downloaded from here: https://www.vmware.com/patchmgr/findPatch.portal

VMware ESXi 5.0, Patch Release ESXi500-201408001 (2080838)

VMware ESXi 5.0, Patch Release ESXi500-201408001 (2080838)
http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2080838

Patches can be downloaded from here: https://www.vmware.com/patchmgr/findPatch.portal

VMworld 2014 - Sights to See

San Francisco sights to see, within walking distance of the Moscone Center.

San Francisco Bay

Golden Gate Bridge

Alcatraz

Pier 39 and Fisherman's Warf

San Francisco City Hall

Chinatown

Grace Cathedral

Cable Car Museum

Coit Tower

Lombard Street

Ghirardelli Square

VMworld 2014 - Getting the Most out of vMotion - Architecture, Features, Debugging

Getting the Most out of vMotion - Architecture, Features, Debugging

"Getting the Most out of vMotion - Architecture, Features, Debugging vMotion is a key, widely adopted technology which enables the live migration of virtual machines on the vSphere platform. It enables critical datacenter workflows, including automated load-balancing with DRS and DPS, hardware maintenance, and the permanent migration of workloads. Each vSphere release introduces new vMotion functionality, and significant performance improvements to address key customer requests and enable new use cases. In this session, join engineers from the development and performance teams to get an insiders' view of vMotion architecture, cutting edge features, best practices, and tools for performance troubleshooting. Performance studies will be presented for some of the hot topics including Monster VM migrations, migrations over IPv6, and Metro migrations over Distributed/Federated storage deployments. Finally, take a sneak-peek into the future and performance directions for vMotion including long distance migrations and migration to public clouds".

• Gabriel Tarasuk-Levin - Staff Engineer 2, VMware
• Sreekanth Setty - Staff Engineer, VMware

vMotion

Transperent move of VM to another host.

vMotion requires shared storage

vMotion enables features like DRS and FT

vMotion Workflow

1. skeleton vm on destination
2. copy vm memory state - most complex portion of workflow
3. quiesce vm on source
4. transfer device state and transfer remaining memory changes
5. resume vm on destination
6. poweroff source vm

How does the memory copy work? Pretty complex. Uses iterative memory pre-copy. Cycle through memory pages, copy and monitor for changes (dirty pages). Repeat until converges on equality.

Storage vMotion

Flip side of vMotion, only care about disk state.

VM remains on same host.

Storage vMotion has similar workflow as vMotion

1. skeleton vm on destination
2. copy vm cold data, such as snapshots
3. copy vm hot data content
4. quiesce vm on source
5. transfer device state and hand off memory state
6. resume vm on destination
7. free vm resources on source

vMotion without Shared Storage

Available since ESXi 5.1

Only available from the Web Client

Moving VM atomically to another host without shared storage!

Workflow looks like Storage vMotion

Current transfers cold data across management network - architectural decision that VMware is trying to fix

Works with any storage type (NFS, SAS, etc)

Technology written by presenter

Features

History:

• vMotion (2003)
• v5.0: Multi-NIC vMotion, Sun during Page send (DPS)
• v5.1: vMotion without shared storage
• v5.5: Metro VPLEX support, IPv6 improvements

Performance

Performance metrics:

• migration time (memory/disk)
• switch over time
• application impact (throughput and latency)

Monster VM Migration Performance

• 2 NICs shows significant benefit. 3rd NIC not so much (due to vMotion helper threads limitation).

vMotion Across Metro Distances

Metro has up to 10 ms round trip time

EMC VPLEX optimizes vMotion duration

VPLEX uses some caching features for syncing across Metro

What's Next for vMotion

• vNIC improvements - such as 3rd NIC performance
• support Array Replication with VVOLs
• Long Distance vMotion
• vMotion within/to the Hybrid Cloud (vCHS)

VMworld 2014 - Virtual SAN Best Practices for Monitoring and Troubleshooting

Presentation Notes

Virtual SAN

Virtual SAN - software-based storage built into ESXi

• Aggregates local Flash and HDDs
• Shared datastore for VM consumption
• Distributed architecutre
• Deeply integrated with VMware stack

VSAN GA with ESXi 5.5 Update 1

RVC

RVC - started as a VMware Labs "Fling"

• Interactive command line, with lots of VSAN commands
• Included in VC since 5.5 (windows and appliance)
• Presents inventory as a file structure

HCL

Verify Hardware against VMware Compatibility Guide (VCG)

HCL Guides:

• vSphere general compatibility guide (Servers, NICs, etc)
• Virtual SAN compatilibyt guide - adpaters, Flash and HDDs

show adapters using RVC:

vsan.disk_info --show-adapters <cluster>/hosts/*

Virtual SAN HCL - http://vmware.re/vsanhcl

HCL steps:

• Step 1 - collect hardware information
• Step 2 - check HCL - http://vmware.re/vsanhcl
• Step 3 - verify your drivers

When viewing HCL entry, also check the "Class" and performance is important

Network

Network - Misconfiguration Detected

• VSAN requires 10GBe (or 1G dedicated)
• Single L2 network among ESX hosts
• IP Multicast

Show ESX configuration:

esxcli vsan cluster get
RVC: vsan.cluster_info <cluster>

Ensure all hosts have VSAN vmknic configured

WebClient: host -> manage -> networking -> vmkernel adapters
esxcli vsan network list
RVC: vsan.cluster_info <cluster>

Ensure VSAN vmknics are on right subnet

WebClient: host -> manage -> networking -> vmkernel adapters
esxcli ?
RVC: vsan.cluster_info <cluster>

Ensure Multicast is configured

tcpdump-uw -i <vmknic> udp port 23451
tcpdump-uw -i <vmknic> igmp

Issues

VM shows as non-compliant / inaccessible / orphaned

• non-compliant - maybe one mirror down
• inaccessible - really bad
• orphaned - VC has forgotten about the VM

VSAN object accessible:

• at least one RAID mirror is fully intact
• quorum: more than 50% of components need to be available (witnesses count here)

RVC Reports

VSAN RVC state reports:

vsan.vm_object_info <vm>
vsan.disks_stats <cluster>
vsan.obj_status_report <cluster>
vsan.obj_status_report --filter-table 2/3 -print uuids <cluster>
vsan.cluster_info <cluster>
vsan.resync_dashboard <cluster>
vsan.check_state --refresh-state <cluster>
vsan.disks_stats <cluster>
vsan.check_limits <cluster>

Diagnostics

Use the vSphere Web Client - the C# desktop client doesn't show VSAN or VSAN errors

VM Provisioning Started Failing -

• don't use: Cluster - Manage - Settings - Disk Management (where dissk were setup, it is not the right place to check disk health)
• Use: monitor - virtual SAN - physical disk

Proactive approach, try creating vm on every host on the cluster:

web client: standard method
rvc: diagnostics.vm_create -d <statstore> -v <vmfolder> <cluster>

VMware believes in "Dog Fooding" - have many internal VSAN clusters running

Benchmarking

VSAN Observer (vsan.observer in RVC)

• collects stats every 60 seconds
• web interface
• HOL Plug: check out VSAN Observer Hands On Labs

Outstanding IO chart in Observer is a good indicator that SSD speed is not sufficient (affects latency)

VSAN implements a priority traffic scheduler

Good References

Webinars on Monitoring/Troubleshooting:

• How To Monitor Virtual SAN (VSAN) - YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHofTkK6K40
• How to Troubleshoot Your Virtual SAN (VSAN) - YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASL3WVqy65o

VMware Blogs:

• RVC series:
  • Managing Virtual SAN with RVC: Part 1 - Introduction to the Ruby vSphere Console | VMware vSphere Blog - VMware Blogs - https://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2014/07/managing-vsan-ruby-vsphere-console.html
• VSAN blog:
  • Official VMware Virtual SAN Blog Index | VMware vSphere Blog - VMware Blogs - https://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2014/07/official-vmware-virtual-san-blog-index.html
  • VMware Virtual SAN Quick Monitoring & Troubleshooting Reference Guide - https://communities.vmware.com/servlet/JiveServlet/previewBody/25934-102-2-34323/VMware_Virtual_SAN_Quick_Monitoring_Reference_Guide.pdf

Community Blogs:

• Troubleshooting, Automation, Nested ESX: http://virtuallyghetto.com/category/vsan
• All kinds of things VSAN: http://vmwa.re/vsan

Useful References

VMworld 2014 - Virtualizing Databases and Doing It Right

Presentation Notes

Book:

• Virtualizing SQL Server with VMware: Doing IT Right - by Michael Corey, Jeff Szastak, Michael Webster

Presentation covers Microsoft SQL and Oracle

Microsoft SQL people don't want to talk to Oracle people, and vice a versa - we are going to do it anyway

DBAs shouldn't care about the infrastructure. You don't care about the Cell Phone towers, you just expect them to work.

Number #1 issue that causes BSOD - drivers. With Virtualization, the driver depth is minimized

Virtualization is an incredible return on investment

Able to adjust resources with a click of the button (assuming there are additional shared virtual resources available to add)

If you adjust memory, you will need to restart the database to take advantage

"Any Resource, Any Server, At Any Time" in the (Pool)

Is your database too "Big" to virtualize? - doubt it

Virtualization has about a 5% overhead, but if your setup doesn't have at least 5% wiggle room, you are doing something wrong anyway

Management expectations - need to set correctly, and explain the costs and what it actually will take

If asked to meet an SLA, make sure it can be meet, and set the expectations. If you can't meet it, let management know as soon as possible.

Optimize optimize optimize - the defaults on servers, applications, etc are not tuned for performance

Read the documentation from all vendors!

Professional Association of SQL Server - join it if you are doing SQL Server - http://virtualization.sqlpass.org/

Oracle VMware users group - http://ioug.org/VMware/

http://longwhiteclouds.com/ - good blog

SLAs:

• two nines - 99%
• three nines - 99.9%
• four nines - 99.99%
• five nines - 99.999%

If it doesn't perform will in physical, don't expect it to perform will in virtualized - garbage in, garbage out

Baseline, baseline, baseline - "there are no silver bullets"

slow storage array equates to slow database

When baselining, make sure your sample set is reasonable (seconds). A lot can happen in minutes.

SLOB (Silly Little Oracle Benchmark) - good free tool to look at

"Check It Before You Wreck It" -- Jeff Szastak

"Build New" - when migrating from Physical to Virtual, take the opportunity to "Build New"

VMware http://tsanet.org/ - hardware or software - VMware can setup support calls that can include Oracle

If your OS and database don't know they are virtualized, don't tell them

Understand your workload types - if you don't know, how can you tune and configure??

• Also allows you to combine VMs that may have offset time workloads (gaining more for my investment)

Seperate development from test from production environments

Trivia:

• First use of the word "Nerd" - Doctor Seusse (If I ran to the zoo)
• Americans eat the most food on Super Bowl Sunday

Have more VMs than less. Giant VMs with everything in it are harder to manage then smaller VMs. Better resource management and tuning options.

Storage - Spindle count and RAID configurations still rule

Know where your bottlenecks are at

VMFS vs RDM - perform about the same, valid reasons for using either

• VMware recommends VMFS unless you have a really good reason

Thin Provision - first write penalty - use Thick Eager Zeroed for performance

Microosft recommends 1 datafile per CPU

PVSCSI adapters are high-performance - use them

80% of issues are performance or storage misconfiguration

1. 1 issue is not enough spindles to support the app

vCPUs - count hyper threading as only .2 of a CPU (nearly nothing) when doing your calculations

Recommendation: 1-1 Ratio physical cores to vCPUs

Ntirety Rule - for SQL server

NUMA - Non-Uniform memory Access - size VMs to fit within a socket realm (ex. 128GB with 4 sockets would be <32GB optimal performance)

vNUMA (exposed to OS) is better than yNUMA (interleaving)

Swapping:

• Guest VM
• ESXi host level

Ballooning abd memory compression slows things down

• Ballooning is good, don't shut it off, but there is a performance hit when it kicks in

How many VMs can fit on a host? As many as fit within active memory

Memory Reservations can lock out memory for critical VMs

Jumbo Frames are good, if you use them correctly

• Have to configure on ESX, network switch, and application
• If there is a constriction point, breaks down. Don't set Jumbo Frames larger than smallest bottleneck in the network path

• Use VMXNET3 - reduces physical CPU overhead)

WSFC - Cluster Validation Wizard - should run before you call Microsoft Support

blog:

• http://michaelcorey.ntirety.com/
• http://www.dbtablog.com

VMworld 2014 - GB Annoyance

Minor gripe: it annoys me when a speaker/presenter says 'GB of memory" instead of "Gigabyte(s) of memory".

-1 point for each repeated use.  Current speaker is down to -23 already...

VMworld 2014 - Backpack SWAG

Backpack SWAG

As silly as this sounds, the VMworld backpack SWAG is significantly better quality than last year's, and that makes me happy.  My old laptop bag was getting pretty old, so now I have a decent replacement.

VMworld 2014

VMworld 2014

Arrived at VMworld 2014 - excited to see what new things await us...

VMware ESXi 5.1, Patch Release ESXi510-201407001 (2079117)

VMware ESXi 5.1, Patch Release ESXi510-201407001 (2079117)
http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2079117

Patches can be downloaded from here: https://www.vmware.com/patchmgr/findPatch.portal

VMware ESXi 5.5, Patch Release ESXi550-201407001 (2077405)

                http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2077405

Patches can be downloaded from here: https://www.vmware.com/patchmgr/findPatch.portal

VMware ESXi 5.0, Patch Release ESXi500-201407001 (2078807)

                http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2078807

Patches can be downloaded from here: https://www.vmware.com/patchmgr/findPatch.portal

VMware ESXi 5.5, Patch Release ESXi550-201406001 (2077359)

                http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2077359

Patches can be downloaded from here: https://www.vmware.com/patchmgr/findPatch.portal

VMware KB: VMware ESXi 5.0, Patch Release ESXi500-201405001

VMware KB: VMware ESXi 5.0, Patch Release ESXi500-201405001

                http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2075521

Patches can be downloaded from here:  http://www.vmware.com/patchmgr/download.portal

VMware OpenSSL (Heartbleed) Security Issue

VMware Security Advisory

VMware Security Advisory VMSA-2014-0004.6 reports that a number of VMware product suffer from the OpenSSL "Heartbleed" security vulnerability.  This includes ESXi 5.5, vCenter Server, VMware Workstation and a number of other products.  Patches are now available for download.

The ESXi 5.5 patch is available for download here: https://www.vmware.com/patchmgr/download.portal

The vCenter Server patch is available for download here: https://my.vmware.com/web/vmware/info/slug/datacenter_cloud_infrastructure/vmware_vsphere/5_5

One can sign up for Security Advisory notifications by visiting: http://www.vmware.com/security/advisories

VMware ESXi 5.5, Patch Release ESXi550-201404001 (2076120)

VMware ESXi 5.5, Patch Release ESXi550-201404001 (2076120)

 http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2076120

Note: This patch includes the fix for the OpenSSL Heartbleed issue.

Patches can be downloaded from here:  http://www.vmware.com/patchmgr/download.portal

VMware ESX(i) 4.x Patches Released - ESXi410-201312001

VMware ESX(i) 4.x Patches (ESXi410-201312001) have been released

• ESXi 4.1 (ESXi410-201404001) - http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2072477
• ESXi 4.0 (ESXi400-201404001) - http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2068805
• ESX 4.1 (ESX410-201404001) - http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2072476
• ESX 4.0 (ESX400-201404001) - http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2068798

Patches can be downloaded from here:  http://www.vmware.com/patchmgr/download.portal

Release: VMware VSAN GA

VMware VSAN GA was officially released with the VMware ESXi 5.5 Update 1 Release.

The VSAN GA bits are available as part of vSphere 5.5 Update 1:

• vCenter Server Update 1 | release notes
• ESXi 5.5 Update 1 | release notes

Release: VMware ESXi 5.5 Update 1

VMware ESXi 5.5 Update 1 has been released

VMware KB: VMware ESXi 5.5, Patch ESXi550-Update01: ESXi 5.5 Complete Update 1
http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2065832

NOTE: ESXi 5.5 Update 1 also includes the GA release of VMware VSAN

vSphere can be downloaded from here: http://www.vmware.com/go/download-vsphere

Patches can be downloaded from here:  http://www.vmware.com/patchmgr/download.portal

vSphere 5.5 Update 1:

• vCenter Server Update 1 | release notes
• ESXi 5.5 Update 1 | release notes