Storage comparison

One of Cormac Hogans posts provides a good basis for compares of different storage types for vmware Vsphere and how they stack up.

He discusses the comparisons of iSCSI,  NFS,  Fiber Channel, and FCoE (Fiber channel over Ethernet)

http://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2012/02/storage-protocol-comparison-a-vsphere-perspective.html

Somethings worth noting:

NFS easiest to setup / no load balancing./need vlan to secure / NO RDM

FC 16GB is throttled to 8GB by vsphere

ISCSI use CHAP and Vlan to secure

MSCS : only supported on FC.

FCoE: cant redirect protocol to vm.

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shutdown your esxi host using powercli

if you want to shutdown a host using powercli:

Set-VMhost -VMhost HOSTNAME -State Maintenance

get-vmhost HOSTNAME | Foreach {Get-View $_.ID} | Foreach {$_.ShutdownHost_Task($TRUE)}

 

 

here is a  way to shutdown all the hosts in your vcenter:

#Shut down the host

$currentesxhost = get-vmhost $esxhost

 Set-VMhost -VMhost $currentesxHost -State Maintenance

 Sleep 55

 $currentesxhost | Foreach {Get-View $_.ID} | Foreach {$_.ShutdownHost_Task($TRUE)}

 

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Esxi : Ping vs vmkping : same thing

This site pointed out that in ESXI they point to the same binary


Just to check I ssh'd to my esxi host and did a md5 comparison on the binaries of the commands









They are the same
Just a small fyi for those coming from a esx site.

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Vmware esxi : Intel Pro/1000 ET quad port adapter and ISCSI

I've seen issues pop up with intel quad ports here and there on the forums so I thought it would be good to note down what worked here.

Though I have not experienced this myself hopefully it can assist someone.

Example problems from one specific thread:

One solution was to replace the nic card. That’s pricey.

Another from: aqualityplacem

"

Solved, the default interuppt rate for this driver is set as adaptive. After talking to VMware (took 3 weeks to get to someone who knew their stuff) I have had much better results setting this at a fixed rate

esxcfg-module -s InterruptThrottleRate=8000,8000,8000,8000 igb

esxcfg-module -g igb showes what setting you have

this will require a reboot.

The higher rate may use more CPU, but when running a sequential IO test the CPU hit 750mhz

you have 8000 in four times becuase you have four ports on the card.

I have tried other values, 4000 was about 10% slower, I didnt record the CPU hit. Going to stick with 8000

write speed as gone from 35MB/sec to 105MB/sec"

Pasted from <http://communities.vmware.com/message/2136642#2136642>

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Check if a datastore is part of a datastore cluster. Remove datastore from datastore cluster

Check if a  datastore is part of a datastore cluster
Go to Home- > Inventory-> Datastores and Datastore Clusters









On the left hand side you will see your datastores and datastore clusters.
Datastore clusters should come up first under your Datacenter and have a different Icon then other datastores
See how the datastore cluster icon cluster looks like it has 3 disks









Now expand your datastore cluster to see if your datastore is listed under the datastore clsuter









If you want to remove  a datastore from a datastore cluster


Highlight the datastore cluster
Go to the datastores tab on the right
Select the datastore.
Click Move out of datastore cluster. Example: 250stor01









Now the datastore is outside the cluster

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Which esxi host will be my HA master?

Want to predict which host will become your high availability master?


According to Duncan Epping's deep dive here


 The host that is participating in the election with the greatest number of connected datastores will be elected master. If two or more hosts have the same number of datastores connected, the one with the highest Managed Object Id will be chosen. This however is done lexically; meaning that 99 beats 100 as 9 is larger than 1


Pasted from <http://www.yellow-bricks.com/vmware-high-availability-deepdiv/>




So the host with the most datastores should win
And if they have equal stores
The host with the highest moid should win.




Test A
Here I have 4 hosts.
Host 3 has 4 datastores every other host has 1
Host3 should become the ha master


Currently there is no HA master as it is off













Turning on HA
It installed on host 1 first so it came up first so it was the master.







This is after it finished









So the first host to have ha installed is the one that gets to be the master


TestB
What if we bump that one off?
Will  #3 then become the master?

















Yes. As predicted #3 is the master




TestC


Now the other 3 hosts have the same number of datastores.
So if we bump off 3 then when one will be the master?
Lets look at the MOID
Host 1 should be the master since it has a moid of 98.  remember lexically 94 > 103
Host 3 moid 98 is already the master so it doesn’t count in our guess of who the master will be.














Bump off #3


Number 1 is the master







Yes. As predicted #1 is the master

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Get vm ips via powercli

Needed to get the ip addresses for some of my virtual machines and wanted to use powercli to do it.

Found this

get-vm | select Name,@{N="IP Address";E={@($_.guest.IPAddress[0])}} | export-csv c:\VM_IP_Addresses.csv

Changed out-file to export-csv so I could sort it.

Out-file dumps the entire line into one cell, while the export-csv let me use columns in excel.

Thanks Dan Hayward ::  Pasted from <http://www.spug.co.uk/?p=259>

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notes: HA responses to storage failure

Thread here: http://communities.vmware.com/message/2135864

User as wondering why HA didn’t kick in when a host of his was disconnected in vcenter, and VMs  were not responsive. The host had lost it's connection to the datastore.

So user was thinking, no datastore heartbeats, how come HA didn’t fail over the vms until the host was manually powered off?

They key to note was that he was able to ssh in to the host with an error.

As mention by eziskind:

"HA currently only responds to total host failures and network isolation/partition. You can ssh into the host which indicates this is a different kind of failure (storage failure perhaps?). HA doesn't respond to these kind of failures yet - we're working on it though."

For a better understanding of HA check out Duncan Epping's HA deep dive:

http://www.yellow-bricks.com/vmware-high-availability-deepdiv/

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notes: Check VAAI status with VCLI and VAAI hardware offload cannot be used when..

Thread Post in forums the by mcowger  <http://communities.vmware.com/message/2134534#2134534>

He was responding to a question on vaai appearing to not work,

If you see the vaai plug in name after running this command

esxcli storage core device vaai status get

 for example:   VAAI Plugin Name: VMW_VAAIP_CX

"Then VAAI is being recognized as available and being used when relevant.  Its definitly working.

Don't forget that VAAI acceleration is not used in all cases (especially clone operations):

VAAI hardware offload cannot be used when:

• The source and destination VMFS volumes have different block sizes <-- common issue
• The source file type is RDM and the destination file type is non-RDM (regular file)
• The source VMDK type is eagerzeroedthick and the destination VMDK type is thin <-- also common
• The source or destination VMDK is any sort of sparse or hosted format
• Cloning a Virtual Machine that has snapshots (or doing a View replica or recompose), since this process involves consolidating the snapshots into the virtual disks of the target Virtual Machine.
• The logical address and/or transfer length in the requested operation are not aligned to the minimum alignment required by the storage device (all datastores created with the vSphere Client are aligned automatically)
• The VMFS datastore has multiple LUNs/extents spread across different arrays

Lastly, even with VAAI enabled and in use, we'd still expect the # of commands issued against the LUn to increase, because the VAAI commands still have to be sent.  We'd expect the actual THROUGHPUT against the LUN to be low, however."

Pasted from <http://communities.vmware.com/message/2134534#2134534>

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Suppress esxi shell and ssh warnings for your esxi host

By default esxi shell (tech support mode) and ssh to your esxi host have been disabled.
When you enable them you get a yellow icon on your host and your get this error in your summary.





If you choose to leave your host with open ssh ports or the esxi shell enabled this will lead you to have the warnings on your host consistently,
The problem with this is when there is a warning that you should be aware of it may not come to your attention.


Here is how to disable the warning.




1. Go to the Configuration Tab of your host
2. Go to Software->Advanced Settings









3. The advanced settings box will pop up. Go to Uservars
4. Scroll down to UsersVars.SuppressShellWarning
5. Change it to 1
6. Hit OK









Now your summary tab no longer shows an error for having ssh or esxi shell.

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Vmware Converter : P2V : which controller to select for the VMDK when you do a conversion?

When you convert a server from a physical box to a virtual one, which controller do you select when using vmware converter ?

Normally the default is fine.

Noticed in this thread this is the config that continuum uses

I use vmscsi for 2000, XP and 2003 32bit

LSI for 2003 / 64

LSI-SAS for Win7 and 2008 R2

Pasted from <http://communities.vmware.com/message/2134800#2134800>

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Find your esxi High availability (HA) Master

Curious which host is the HA master?
Here is how to look at it in the vmware vsphere VI client
Powercli I further in the page


Use the client
 Select your cluster
Go to the hosts tab
You should see the vsphere HA state









If you don’t see the vssphere HA state
Right click the name  column
Select vsphere HA state











Use PowerCLI


Use command
get-cluster clustername | get-haprimaryvmhost





 http://www.vmware.com/support/developer/PowerCLI/PowerCLI501/html/Get-HAPrimaryVMHost.html

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VM stuck while powering on? Have a raw disk?

Actually this issue can be any due to a vmdk  also if it has an error.


If you have a bad disk It will prevent the vm from powering on
But, if there is a bad vmdk,  esxi or vcenter will tell you which disk is your problem
When you have a problem with the path to a raw mapping (RDM), 
for example when the path to your lun is dead, you will just get the vm hanging on the virtual bios/black screen


It has been like this for 10 mins. Itll stay this way.





If we look at the path for the lun its dead
I turned off the lun for the example to simulate  a  downed access path
You can also see the cpu go crazy





 After removing the raw map the vm started to boot.
So either
Fix the path issue
Or if you need the vm up immediately remove the hard disk to let the vm boot.


In production I've seen this issue take out the management agents of a host so don't worry, but be aware.

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Powercli : get list of powered off virtual machines and date of shut down

Here is a good script that I came across

http://communities.vmware.com/message/2133377

The script connects to your vcenter or esxi host and checks to see if you have powered off vms and when they were powered off.

@"
===============================================================================
Title:         vminventory.ps1
Description:   Exports VM Information from vCenter into a .CSV file for importing into anything
Usage:         .\vminventory.ps1
Date:          10/15/2012
===============================================================================
"@

#### Get Virtual Center To Connect to:
$VCServerName= Read-Host "What is the Virtual Center name?"

$ExportFilePath = Read-Host "Where do you want to export the data?"

$VC = Connect-VIServer $VCServerName

$Report = @()

$VMs = get-vm |Where-object {$_.powerstate -eq "poweredoff"}
$Datastores = Get-Datastore | select Name, Id

$VMHosts = Get-VMHost | select Name, Parent

### Get powered off event time:
Get-VIEvent-Entity $VMs -MaxSamples ([int]::MaxValue) |
where {$_ -is [VMware.Vim.VmPoweredOffEvent]} |

Group-Object -Property {$_.Vm.Name} | %{
  $lastPO= $_.Group | Sort-Object -Property CreatedTime -Descending | Select -First 1

  $vm = Get-VIObjectByVIView -MORef $lastPO.VM.VM

  $report += New-Object PSObject -Property @{
    VMName = $vm.Name

    Powerstate = $vm.Powerstate

    OS = $vm.Guest.OSFullName

    IPAddress = $vm.Guest.IPAddress[0]
    ToolsStatus = $VMView.Guest.ToolsStatus

    Host = $vm.host.name

    Cluster = $vm.host.Parent.Name

    Datastore = ($Datastores | where {$_.ID -match (($vmview.Datastore | Select -First 1) | Select Value).Value} | Select Name).Name

    NumCPU = $vm.NumCPU

    MemMb = [Math]::Round(($vm.MemoryMB),2)
    DiskGb = [Math]::Round((($vm.HardDisks | Measure-Object -Property CapacityKB -Sum).Sum * 1KB / 1GB),2)
    PowerOFF = $lastPO.CreatedTime

    Note = $vm.Notes  }
}

$Report = $Report | Sort-Object VMName

if ($Report) {
  $report| Export-Csv $ExportFilePath -NoTypeInformation}
else{
  "No PoweredOff events found"

}

$VC = Disconnect-VIServer $VCServerName -Confirm:$False

Pasted from <http://communities.vmware.com/message/2133377#2133377>

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Powercli script to check vmotion compatibility to another host

This thread here shows you how to test vmotion compatibility to a specific host.
It’s a good starting point.
The return value are using the managed objet id's so you would need to convert them into the  vm name if you don’t know them and are using a looping script.


## name of VM to check for VMotion compatibility
$strMyVMNameToCheck = "myVM0"
## name of destination VMHost to check for VMotion compatibility for this VM
$strMyVMHostNameToCheck = "myDestinationHost.mydomain.com"


## get the ServiceInstance object
$viewSI = Get-View 'ServiceInstance'
## get the VMProvisioningChecker object
$viewVmProvChecker = Get-View $viewSI.Content.VmProvisioningChecker


## query the VMotion Compatibility
$viewVmProvChecker.QueryVMotionCompatibilityEx((Get-VM $strMyVMNameToCheck).Id, (Get-VMHost $strMyVMHostNameToCheck).Id)


Pasted from <http://communities.vmware.com/message/2133414#2133414>






IN the pic the first vmotion test gave no error so vmotion is green light.
The second is giving some errors, as expected.









Here is some code to get the name of a vm from the vm's MOID


$vms = Get-VM
$vmidtofind="VirtualMachine-vm-25"
foreach($vm in $vms){
$test=get-vm $vm | %{$_.id}
if($test -eq $vmidtofind) {write-host "vmname is " $vm}
}

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someone else's Pros and Cons for NFS vs iSCSI for datastores.

Question on the forums about NFS vs ISCSI
http://communities.vmware.com/message/2133427
someone brought up this zombie thread but its makes some good points.

Thoguh a  little pro-NFS, I liked J1mbo's post.

"The real difference is that with iSCSI, the file system is at the vSphere host end (VMFS), whilst with NFS the file system is at the other end (i.e. the storage server).  On the wire, packet overheads for block access is almost identical.

NFS has the real advantage that the NFS server process controls what's going on; it's very easy to hook up new hosts (just an nfs share mapping obviously) and similiarly pretty difficult to damage the file system (since the NFS server decides what is an isn't allowed).  Also there are no capacity limits, i.e. a 12TB NFS datastore can be mounted even on v4 (although there remains the irritating 2TB VMDK size limit).  When a file is deleted, just like on a Windows file server, the space is immediately available for something else.  VMDKs on NFS are also naturally thin provisioned (although they can be manually inflated, if required).

iSCSI on the other hand is a co-operative approach (a bit like co-operative multitasking in Windows 3) - there's no real gatekeeper over what is going on and access control is simply "you can, you can't".  So for example a Windows machine that has been granted rw permissions to a LUN could potentially damage it and the iSCSI target would be quite happy; this is the point - the iSCSI target (server) is dumb in the sense that it has very little knowledge of what it's sharing; it's just block access.  Write to block zero?  Permission to do so?  Yes - that's fine.  By-bye to whatever file system is on it.

Another problem with iSCSI is that where the storage vendor enables thin-provisioning at the storage layer, those LUNs tend to grow over time and it's very difficult to reclaim that space on the underlying storage since there is essentially no delete command - after all SCSI is an ancient protocol for 8-bit spinning disks that's been tunned over IP, so why would there be.  After a period of years this can lead to quite high proportions of storage being masked out and effectively unusable.

OTOH certain applications are explicitely not supported from NFS storage (Exchange 2010 database servers for example), although in practice we all know it will work perfectly well."

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VMs with snapshots boot faster than without snaps

Weird

continuum brought this up in this thread that he noticed that virtual machines on esxi with snapshots were booting faster than vms without a snap.

<http://communities.vmware.com/message/2132946#2132946>

I ran some tests.

Used the same vm windows 2008 , had a clean shutdown each time, vmware tools is installed, using a stopwatch

without snapshot the boot times were

1:18

1:12

1:07

1:14

took snap. shutdown. startup

1:03

:57

1:01

delete snap

1:09

So the vm with a snap always booted faster then a vm without  a snap by a few seconds.

I would have thought the vm with out a snap would boot faster since it does not need to refer to the base disk and change disk.

See thread for continual updates.

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Get all the ips , mac addresses, and other network data for your hosts

Want to quickly get the ip and mac address for your esxi hosts?
Use this powercli command


get-vmhost | Get-VMHostNetworkAdapter | select  VMHost, DeviceName, Mac, IP, ExtensionData


You get the hostname, device name, mac, ip and see if it's physical or virutal









Other useful options to select are:
WakeOnLanSupported, VMHostId, DhcpEnabled, SubnetMask


See : http://www.vmware.com/support/developer/windowstoolkit/wintk40u1/html/Get-VMHostNetworkAdapter.html

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How to tell if your cpu and bios is Intel VT or AMD-V capable or enabled in the BIOS

Log on to your esxi host
Type in esxcfg-info|grep "HV Support"


Here ar e the values you can receive
0 - VT/AMD-V indicates that support is not available for this hardware.
1 - VT/AMD-V indicates that VT or AMD-V might be available but it is not supported for this hardware.
2 - VT/AMD-V indicates that VT or AMD-V is available but is currently not enabled in the BIOS.
3 - VT/AMD-V indicates that VT or AMD-V is enabled in the BIOS and can be used.


The example below shows that the cpu doesn’t not support







Why would you want to know this?
If you want esxi to virutalize esxi. VT/amd-v allows for better virtualization of objects assisting the hypervisor. If you are having issues installing 64bit guests this can also be an issue.

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How to get a drive in windows larger than 2tb when a vmware esxi vmdk is limited to 2tb

A vmware vmdk is limited to 2tb-512b.
With data these days being big that might not fit the needs of certain individuals or requirements.
You can use a raw disk but that isnt always an option.




Here is what you can do:
Create a striped volume in windows made out of multiple vmdks.


Add 2 or more vmware virtual hard disks to your virtual machine.
See here I have 2 drives of 1.5tb each







In windows  go to disk management
Right click and initialize the disks














GPT is fine





Now right click one of the disks and select New Striped Volume














Add the disks you want to add to the striped volume
Click next





Assign drive letter









Format and next





Finish









Yes









Now I have a 3tb disk made from only vmdks

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