VMware vsphere 5 with ESXi and vcenter - Boot Camp

Transcription

1 Boot Camp VMware vsphere 5 with ESXi and vcenter - Boot Camp A step by step approach to successful virtualization planning, deployment and administration. Featuring VMware vsphere with VMware ESXi 5, VMware vcenter 5, and related products February 2012

2 VMware vsphere 5 with ESXi and vcenter Boot Camp Copyright 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 by ESXLab.com All rights reserved. No reproduction by any means, mechanical, electronic or otherwise, without prior written permission from the authors. Published by: Larry Karnis, ESXLab.com 15 Claypine Trail Brampton, Ontario Canada L6V 3L8 Phone: Toll Free: Facsimile: Web: Twitter: (905) (888) (905) Larry.Karnis@esxlab.com First edition published October 2009 Second update for vsphere 4.1, December 2010 Fourth edition updated for vsphere 5, April 2012 To find out more about our products and services including consulting services, renting our remote lab facilities, running your own VMware class or custom training and content solutions, please visit our website or the author: larry.karnis@esxlab.com. This document was prepared in its entirety using the open source LibreOffice office suite. LibreOffice can be freely downloaded for free from Microsoft Visio 2007 was used to create some of the slide graphics. Final PDF assembly was performed with PDFFactory Pro available at Screen grabs were captured with Snagit from TechSmith. This document, the images, screen shots, etc. are original works. This document is copyright 2009 by ESXLab.com. All rights reserved. No reproduction by any means including photo-copying or electronic imaging is permitted without prior written authorization from the copyright holder. This training material is provided 'as is', without any warranty either expressed or implied. ESXLab.com prepared this material with due care for accuracy and completeness, but does not warrant that the content is either error free or suitable for any specific use. By using this courseware, customer agrees to accept responsibility for all results desirable or otherwise. Customer agrees that all lab exercises are for illustration purposes only, and assumes all risks including but not limited of data damage or loss, resulting from such use. Microsoft, Microsoft Windows, Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows 2003 Server, Microsoft Exchange 5.5, Microsoft Exchange 2000, Microsoft Exchange 2003 and Microsoft Exchange 2007 are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. GroupWise and NetMail are trademarks of Novell Inc. Lotus Domino is a trademark of IBM Corporation. RedHat and Fedora Core are trademarks of RedHat Inc. VMware, VMware Workstation, VMware Server, VMware Player, VMware ESX, VMotion, vsphere, etc. are registered trademarks of VMware Corporation. All other marks and names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective owners. ESXLab.com is an independent training and content development company that is in no way affiliated with or in any way related to VMware Inc. In no case is any such relationship either implied or intended.

3 2011 ESXLab.com. All rights reserved. - i - February, 2011 Photocopying this document in whole or in part is not permitted.

4 Time Line & Table of Contents Day 1 Topics Chapter 0 - Overview Chapter 1 VMware vsphere Overview Chapter 2 Standalone ESXi Chapter 3 Virtual & Physical Networking Chapter 4 NAS Shared Storage Chapter 5 Virtual Machines Day 2 Topics Chapter 6 vcenter Chapter 7 Virtual Machine Rapid Deployment Chapter 7.1 Advanced Virtual Hardware Chapter 8 Permission Model Day 3 Topics Chapter 9 Using Fibre and iscsi Shared Storage Chapter 10 VMware File System Chapter 11 Alarms Chapter 12 Host Profiles Chapter 13 Resource Pools 2011 ESXLab.com. All rights reserved. - ii - February, 2011 Photocopying this document in whole or in part is not permitted.

5 Day 4 Topics Chapter 14 VMware Converter Standalone Chapter 15 VMware Data Recovery Chapter 16 VM Migration Chapter 17 Distributed Resource Scheduler Chapter 17.1 VMware DRS Power Management Chapter 18 VMware High Availability Clusters Day 5 Topics Chapter 18.1 VMware Fault Tolerance Chapter 19 VMware Update Manager Chapter 20 Performance Monitoring and Tuning Chapter 21 vcenter Linked Mode Chapter 22 Advanced Virtual Networking Final Thoughts Appendix Appendix 1 Definitions & Acronyms 2011 ESXLab.com. All rights reserved. - iii - February, 2011 Photocopying this document in whole or in part is not permitted.

6 Author's Note Twenty five years ago, I started my IT career as a UNIX/C programmer. By 1992, I was working as a very busy UNIX administrator so I gave up the safety of fulltime work for consulting. As a hedge against down time, I contacted a major training company and offered my services. Soon, I was teaching their UNIX and C programming classes (very popular at the time). Over time, my love of UNIX morphed into a love of Linux so by 2002 I was teaching Linux for RedHat. In 2004, I had the very good fortune to be contacted by VMware. Would I like a job working as a trainer? I said no and asked if they wanted a contractor. They said no. I had this conversation with VMware three times in 2004 until they finally agreed to hire me as a contractor. I sat the ESX I & II classes and earned my VMware Certified Professional on ESX 2.0 (VCP# 993). I worked as a contract resource for VMware for about 4 years. I got to watch ESX grow from a niche product used primarily for testing into a full blown production platform. VMware was a young, company creating technical magic (VMotion was absolutely unbelievable in 2003). IMHO, their software magicians were, and still are without equal. They have since delivered Storage VMotion, High Availability, DRS clusters, Fault Tolerant VMs and much, much more. In 2008, I left VMware to work again as an independent. I enjoy training and was still a huge advocate of VMware's technology, so I decided to start a company to provide vendor independent VMware training courses that anyone could run. The result is this book set. This Study Guide fully explains how each vsphere feature works. The accompanying Lab Guide takes you through the mechanics. Each lab starts at the very beginning and takes you through all the steps needed to complete the job. There is no magic in this course because nothing is done for you. In most cases, you can perform the labs at work exactly the same way and get the same result (just be careful and don't break anything!). Developing courseware is much like developing software (my first job). You write, re-write, review, edit update, test until you truly believe that it is bug free. The reality is that bugs exist and no doubt, some are lurking in this book set. If you find one, please let me know. I'll fix the issue and the next version of the courseware will be better for your input. As a bonus, I will provide a free ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam voucher to the first person who reports each unique bug VMware vsphere has rekindled my love of IT, and I've seen it do the same for others. Demand for VMware vsphere skills is growing and so will your career once you master VMware vsphere 5. My hope is that this class will help you get there much faster. Larry Karnis larry.karnis@esxlab.com Phone: 1 (905) x ESXLab.com. All rights reserved. - iv - February, 2011 Photocopying this document in whole or in part is not permitted.

7 vsphere 5 & 4.1 Ready Servers Rentals for Class or Individual Use ESXLab.com has over 150 servers available for rent... Rent our servers if you: Purchased our course books from one of our publishing partners, and need servers to run through the labs Would like to run through the labs a 2 nd time to improve your familiarity and skill with vsphere Would like to offer VMware vsphere 5.0 or 4.1 training at your company or training center, but don't have local hardware on which to run the labs To practice migrations, upgrades, etc. before trying them on your own production machines What's Included in my Server Pod Rental From 1 to 12 HP DL365 enterprise class servers Servers includes Quad Core CPU (FaultTolerant compliant), 6-8GB RAM, GB of disk, 3 GB NICs, HP ILO 2 remote management 2GB Ethernet segments for NFS, iscsi SAN, management, VMotion, Fault Tolerant logging and general VM network use An NFS service with all media images needed to complete our labs An iscsi SAN service for shared access storage Live support to help run our labs Get a Quote Prices start at just $225 for 2 servers for a full 7 days, and includes our Boot Camp Lab Guide in PDF. To get a kit rental quote, please call or it us with your needs and preferred dates: Toll Free: 1 (888) Phone: 1 (905) Fax: 1 (905) sales@esxlab.com Web: Revised: April 2012

8 Revised: April 2012

9 Chapter 0 - Overview ESXLab.com VMware vsphere 5 with ESXi and vcenter Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class. 0-1 Chapter 0 Introduction

10 Introduction to Virtualization Introduction to vsphere 5 Class Overview Virtualization Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class. 0-2 Chapter 0 Introduction

11 Virtualization App O/S App O/S App O/S VMware vsphere A software abstraction that creates virtual hardware & maps it to physical hardware Is completely transparent to guest OS and applications Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class. 0-3 Traditional PC Server Deployments One O/S and Application per server Captive local disk Workloads locked to server Virtual Deployment Require fewer physical servers Can run many workloads as Virtual Machines Workloads not locked to server (cold migration, VMotion, Storage VMotion) Load balancing and high availability options depend on shared disk Higher hardware utilization rates Lower marginal cost to deploy new workloads (just make a new VM) Better reliability and performance due to more capable hardware New options for Disaster Recovery, Back Up Chapter 0 Introduction

12 Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class. VMware vsphere VMware ESXi Enterprise class server virtualization software Management, Performance, Monitoring vcenter Workload Resource Balancing VMotion, DRS Clusters Storage Resource Balancing Storage VMotion, Storage DRS High Availability HA Clusters, Fault Tolerance Workload Migration and Back Up vcenter Converter VMware Data Recovery 0-4 VMware provides a complete suite of products both for virtualization as well as for management, back up, disaster recovery, testing, replication and much more. These products make migrating to virtualization deployments very beneficial. The primary risk of virtualization is too many eggs in one basket... That is, you create risk if you consolidate workloads into virtual machines but lack the ability to: - Load balance your VMs across physical servers - Load balance storage capacity and performance across storage volumes - Rapidly recover VMs that fail when a physical host fails - Easily manage and monitor VMs - Deploy VMs from known good images If you cannot load balance, then you run the risk of poor VM performance (due to host resource over-commit). If you cannot automatically place and restart VMs due to a physical server failure, then you may have critical production VMs down for hours if a host fails. Furthermore, if a physical host that supports a large VM population fails catastrophically, then your VMs might be down for days (until the hardware can be repaired). VMware Virtual Infrastructure provides all of the above features. Other products are maturing but do not yet offer the same breadth or depth of functionality as VMware. Chapter 0 Introduction

13 Key Topics Virtualization Overview Stand Alone ESXi Virtual & Physical Networking Virtual Machines, Rapid Deployment vsphere Management Shared Storage VM Migration & Load Balancing High Availability Physical to Virtual (P2V) Conversions Back Up, Recovery & Disaster Recovery Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class. 0-5 The above items are key topics in this class but not a complete list of topics. For a complete list of topics, please consult the table of contents. Chapter 0 Introduction

14 Public Class Daily Timetable Schedule 09:00 a.m. Start 10:30 a.m. Break 12:00 p.m. Lunch 01:00 p.m. Resume 03:00 p.m. Break 05:00 p.m. End of Day Informal Ask questions any time Cell phones on vibrate please Take calls outside class Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class. 0-6 The above schedule is for public classes based on our standard timetable. Your training company/partner may set a different schedule. Chapter 0 Introduction

15 Problems & Opportunities Business or IT problem we face Identify common pain points. E.g. Provisioning Deployment Management Imaging Back Up & DR Etc. Virtual Solution Explain how Virtual Infrastructure addresses the problem New methods Streamlined procedures Less risk Faster results Reduced costs Simplify Etc. Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class. 0-7 Virtualization addresses most of the common pain points experienced by modern PC server deployments. As we go through this class you will learn how virtualization delivers the above benefits and much more. Chapter 0 Introduction

16 Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class. Introductions Who Name and current job Why are you here? Official reason Honest reason Personal goals for this class Experience with Windows Linux/UNIX VMware hosted products (Player, Server, etc.) vsphere 4.x, ESX 3.x, VirtualCenter 2.x 3 rd party Virtualization (Xen/Hyper-V) Favorite vacation destination? 0-8 Experience with virtualization is not a prerequisite for this class... If you do have prior virtualization experience either with VMware products or other products please feel free to share them with the class. Chapter 0 Introduction

17 Vendor Neutral Certification ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist, Technician Exam based certifications for virtualization professionals Score 80%+ and earn ECVS Score 60-79% and earn ECVT About the exam Available at the end of class 75 questions in 90 minutes Multiple choice or True/False For more information see the brochure at the back of this book Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class. 0-9 VMware will not award certification to candidates unless you attend their class and then pass their exam. In response, ESXLab.com has created verifiable, vendor neutral VMware vsphere certifications so that attendees of ESXLab vsphere classes can achieve certification. Our exam fully tests a candidates knowledge and skill with VMware's vsphere products. There are two certifications you can earn. ECVS is awarded to candidates who, by scoring 80% or higher in the exam, demonstrate a superior level of knowledge and experience. ECVT is awarded to candidates who, by scoring 60% to 79%, demonstrate a solid understanding of the skills needed to effectively manage vsphere. The ECVS exam is free to any one who attends an ESXLab.com class. Your instructor should make the exam available to you on Friday afternoon at the end of the lecture/lab portion of the class. If you cannot stay for the exam (or if it is not offered), you can make arrangements with your local training center to sit the exam at a later time (note: a fee may apply). To be successful in the exam, we strongly suggest you: - Review the course book daily giving extra time to topics you found challenging - Review and/or redo the labs so that you fully understand the mechanics - Ask questions in class - Review VMware official product documentation available at Chapter 0 Introduction

18 Chapter 0 Introduction

19 Chapter 1 - Introduction Introduction to VMware vsphere 5 Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class. 1-1 Chapter 1 - Introduction to vsphere

20 VMware vsphere Introduction to vsphere Common IT problems vsphere solutions vsphere deployment options Storage, Network and server cloud computing Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class. 1-2 Chapter 1 - Introduction to vsphere

21 Problems & Opportunities Low server resource utilization Data center costs, space, power, cooling Application, OS deployment Back Up & Recovery Server Refresh Remote access and support Hardware maintenance Operating system license costs Disaster Recovery Test, Development, Training, QA Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class. 1-3 Chapter 1 - Introduction to vsphere

22 Server Resource Utilization Pre-virtualization server resource utilization rates are very low Typically, one OS/application per server Fortune 1,000; 8% avg. utilization Typical utilization % Usually one critical resource Other sub-systems mostly idle Why 1 OS, application/server? Political, administrative isolation Application, DLL isolation Simplify backup, recovery, DR Perception is that PC servers are cheap to buy, license, run Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class. 1-4 The most common method of deploying PC servers is one application per server. The reason for this is many-fold but is based on the belief that the complexities, risks and inflexibility of running many applications on a single server and operating system are simply not worth the cost savings of running many applications or services on a single PC server. Chapter 1 - Introduction to vsphere

23 vsphere Server Consolidation Many VM's/physical server VMs compete for available host CPU, RAM, Disk, Network VMs get needed resources Not declared resources Idling VMs may give up CPU, RAM Ensures active VMs run well under CPU, memory over commit (i.e.:when vcpu count > physical core count) Share network, storage bandwidth Administrators can tune VMs Weighted scheduling, memory management and disk I/O Ensures critical VMs get resources as needed Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class. 1-5 Virtualization solves the one-workload/server problem without the traditional costs, risks or complexities of installing many applications on a single server. A PC server running VMware ESXi is capable of running many virtual machines concurrently. Each virtual machine is an independent software entity that functions as a complete, generic PC server. Each virtual machine has: - A virtual hardware layer that includes a generic motherboard, chipset, keyboard, mouse, video controller, IDE controller, CD/DVD device, NIC, PCI bus, SCSI controller, SCSI disk(s), CPU(s) and memory sized appropriately for the intended operating system and application - An operating system that recognizes and can drive virtual hardware - One or more applications Chapter 1 - Introduction to vsphere

24 Problems Power, cooling costs Square foot costs Out of rack space Expensive to build out Additional concerns Networking costs Shared SAN storage Back up procedures, time, costs Disaster Recovery Administrator time Config. consistency Datacenter Issues Virtual Solutions Consolidation rates of VMs/host Relieves rack space congestion Reduces power, cooling costs Leverages existing networking, storage resources (SAN switches) Fewer physical servers to administer, back up, network, etc. Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class. 1-6 Data center power and cooling costs are substantial and are expected to continue to rise. Here are some sobering facts about what it takes to power a server in a data center: - A 1U PC Server can draw 300W to 1,200W of power - A 2U PC Server can draw W of power on each of its power supplies - A 42U rack of 1U servers at just 200W/server will consume 8+kw/hr of power - Many data centers double their power consumption every 3 years - As servers become more powerful, the power draw per server increases - Data centers often run out of power/cooling before running out of rack space - Idle servers often consume more than 50% of their maximum power draw - It can take up to 2 times the energy to cool a server as the server uses to operate - Servers with 32+GB of RAM use more power to run RAM than they do to run CPUs (especially true of servers that run high frequency FB memory) Chapter 1 - Introduction to vsphere

25 OS, Application Imaging Problems Bare metal installs Complex Drivers, agents, etc. Time consuming Introduce needless variation, risk Imaging solutions not universal Tied to manufacturer, hardware components Images may not help if maker changes hardware configuration Virtual Solutions VMs get generic hardware, not physical hardware Easy to create VM master images Clones, Templates Copy & customize... Easy to create a VM Image Library Easy to maintain Not tied to hardware Easy to change H/W vendors Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class. 1-7 OS and application imaging solutions ease the task of deploying operating systems and their applications. Typically an administrator installs their preferred OS and apps onto a PC server and then uses an imaging tool to harvest a deployment image for future use. This works great if you need to deploy the same image onto the same hardware but can cause problems if: - Your vendor changes underlying hardware (chipsets, storage controllers, etc.) - Your images require frequent maintenance - You change hardware vendors Virtual machines don't suffer from these problems because their virtual hardware is independent from the physical hardware seen by ESXi. So, even if you change hardware (or hardware vendors), you can still deploy VMs from your pre-built VM images. Chapter 1 - Introduction to vsphere

26 Problems Backup tools are expensive, complex Backup, recovery, application, open file agents Speed limited by network bandwidth Limited back up windows Virtual networking not as fast as physical networking Back Up & Recovery Virtual Solutions Most LAN backup tools are supported File system back ups VM snapshots Data synchronized Disk image backup Data Recovery VM back up, recovery Guest OS File level recovery capability Virtual appliance Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class. 1-8 VMs work with traditional LAN based back up tools so you can continue to use these if you like. However, VM networking is not as efficient as pure physical networking, so you should expect your back up windows (time to complete a back up) to increase when using network based back up tools in a VM. There are a number of solutions to this problem... VMware Data Recovery (DR) performs snapshot based back ups with full virtual disk deduplication, so backups are fast and complete. And Data Recovery provides you with the ability to do both file level and full virtual machine level recoveries. VMware Consolidated Backup was officially retired as of vsphere 4.1 and is not available for vsphere 5.0. Third party back up tools such as VRanger Pro ( PHD Virtual Back Up ( or Veeam Backup & Replication ( leverage ESXi storage APIs to quickly and safely back up VMs. These tools are easy to install and use, are (relatively) low in cost (unlike traditional network back up tools) and make it easy to recover individual files or complete VMs. Chapter 1 - Introduction to vsphere

27 Problems PC servers have a short life span 3-5 yrs depending on available maintenance support contracts OS, application migrations are time consuming, risky Workload down during migration Done off hours Hard to do remotely Inherently risky Server Refresh Virtual Solution Virtual hardware VM H/W is independent of physical hardware Easy to migrate VMs to another ESXi host Hot, cold VM migration Limits down time 4 simple steps... Provision new server Install ESXi, join cluster Migrate VMs to new host Shut down, wipe server Can be performed remotely Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class. 1-9 Virtual Machine hardware is a software abstraction that is independent of physical PC server hardware. ESXi maps virtual hardware operations to physical hardware activity. Virtual machines see: A virtual motherboard with a chipset, keyboard, mouse, IDE, floppy controller A virtual PCI video controller One to four virtual IDE CD/DVD devices One to two virtual floppy drives A virtual PCI bus Up to 10 virtual Network Interface Cards (NICs) One to 4 virtual SCSI Host Bus Adapters (SCSI HBAs) Up to 15 virtual SCSI disks per SCSI HBA Up to 8 virtual CPUs that map to physical CPU cores (subject to licensing) Virtual memory that is indistinguishable from physical memory Virtual hardware presented to VMs is the same regardless of the underlying physical hardware. Therefore a VM can migrate from ESXi host to ESXi host (even if the ESXi hosts are different makes or models of hardware) without issue. The only exception is CPU. The make, model and stepping, but not cores or hyperthreading, of the physical CPU is exposed to the Guest OS at boot time. These properties must not change (due to VM migration) as the VM runs. Chapter 1 - Introduction to vsphere

28 Problems HW maintenance requires down time Short maintenance windows Weekend vendor support is costly Must be on site 7x24 4hr response Expensive Often no guarantee of a fix within 4hr window Without top tier contract, hardware issues may keep a server down for days Hardware Maintenance Virtual Solutions To perform H/W tasks on ESXi host Evacuate ESXi host of Virtual Machines VMotion, cold migrate VMs to other ESXi hosts Patch, upgrade, repair, reconfigure host No VM down time during maintenance If ESXi capacity permits, maintenance can be done during production hours Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class Before virtualization, server hardware maintenance was a costly and risky task that was usually performed on weekends. With virtualization, server hardware maintenance is greatly simplified and risk is eliminated. To perform physical server maintenance on ESXi hosts: - VMotion all VMs off the host that will be maintained - Shut down and power off the host when all fully evacuated of VMs - Add, upgrade, fix hardware - Power on the server - Rejoin clusters - Migrate VMs back to the fixed host Chapter 1 - Introduction to vsphere

29 High Windows OS Costs Problems Windows 2003, 2008 Server licenses are expensive Host licenses, CALs May have to buy more expensive editions for needed features E.g. Microsoft Cluster Services not available on Windows Server Standard Editions Solution Windows Enterprise, Datacenter have VM friendly pricing Enterprise 4 VM at no additional charge Datacenter unlimited VMs at no additional charge Check your License agreement for entitled instance count Volume purchase agreements Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class Microsoft may grant you the right to run additional instances of Windows 2003/2008 Server depending on the base license installed... Windows 2003/2008 Standard does not permit additional VM instances so every VM would require a unique Windows Standard license. Windows 2003/2008 Enterprise permits a limited number of Windows VMs (up to 4) to be run on the same machine running the original license without additional charge. Windows 2003/2008 Datacenter permits an unlimited number of Windows VMs to run on the same host running the original Windows license at no additional cost. As VM consolidation rates go up (more VMs/ESXi host), the cost to license Windows per VM can go down dramatically if you select the appropriate Windows edition (Enterprise or Datacenter). You also get the added benefit of the enhanced features (e.g.: Clustering) offered by premium Windows editions). Windows Datacenter simplifies license compliance because you are entitled to run an unlimited number of VMs/server. You are also entitled to downgrade your Windows editions in the same family (e.g.: If you have W2k3 Datacenter, you can deploy W2k3 Standard or Enterprise in your VMs). Note: Posted prices are accurate retail prices as of September, Chapter 1 - Introduction to vsphere

30 MS Virtualization Calculator Part A License cost by average VM/s per server Part B License cost by actual VMs per server Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class This calculator, published on Microsoft's web site shows the US Manufacturer's Suggested Retail Price (MSRP) of Microsoft Windows Server operating system licenses (both Windows Server 2008 and 2003) and Virtual Machine instance counts as permitted by the three Windows Server editions; Standard, Enterprise and Datacenter. This calculator shows that, under certain conditions, substantial savings can be had by purchasing either Windows Enterprise or Windows Datacenter editions over individual Windows Standard editions. With the premium Windows editions, the higher base cost is offset by the lower marginal cost per Windows VM. To gain the lowest cost per Windows VM, you must have high Virtual Machine to physical machine ratios (e.g.: VMs per physical server). With today's high core count CPUs (i.e.: CPUs with 4, 6, 8, 12 and 16 cores per physical CPU) and low RAM costs, such consolidation rates are not just attainable, but actually quite reasonable. In the example above, there are 2 ways to calculate license costs; Average VMs per host and actual VM's per host. The example was worked so that both methods correlate (i.e.: actual VMs in the bottom (Blue) part match the average VMs in the top (Green) part), and prices mostly match as a result. Please check your own volume license agreements before changing your licensing strategy! Note: Posted prices are accurate retail prices as of September, 2011 and apply to the US only. Chapter 1 - Introduction to vsphere

31 Disaster Recovery Problems Ensure business continuity Replication is costly Duplicate all HW, SW at remote site Complex DR procedures must be tested, reviewed, refined, retested Risky Failure of DR plan puts business at extreme risk Virtual Solutions ESXi + SAN Shadow SAN LUNS to DR site ESXi host(s) at DR site set to run VMs ESXi only solution Snapshot VM, copy to DR site Can be scripted and scheduled Snapshot guest OS sync ensures valid, consistent, reliable virtual disk image Use 3 rd party tools Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class The traditional approach to disaster recovery is to duplicate all of your expensive hardware and software at a second datacenter. This is costly and must be carefully planned and tested before being trusted. With virtualization, you can simplify disaster planning by replicating VMs and storage at your DR site. If you have SANs that support LUN shadowing, you could shadow critical LUNs from your production SAN to your DR SAN. If you have a primary site failure, just boot the VMs at your DR site's ESXi hosts and SAN. If you don't have LUN shadowing capabilities, you can still replicate VMs at a DR site. In this case, you need to decide how you are going to replicate your VMs. You could: - Perform off line replication of VMs from nightly back up images. There are many 3 rd party products available that perform this task (but this is not a feature built in to vsphere - Use VMware Consolidated Back Up to snapshot and copy running VMs to your DR site - Use 3 rd party tools to do on-the-fly VM replication at your DR site. A number of 3 rd party tools are available to perform VM hot replication including: - Veeam Backup & Replication ( - Vizioncore vreplicator ( Check out a comparison of these two products here: Chapter 1 - Introduction to vsphere

32 Test, Development & QA Problems Development, test environments don't match production environment Too costly to deploy an exact match Differences introduce variation, risk Hard to validate changes, test software, catch errors if production, test/development environments differ Virtual Solutions Clone production VMs Clone - Exact copy of original VM Test changes on clone Configuration changes OS patches Application upgrades Validate procedures VM snapshots let you back out of changes Saves VM state No need to re-image if problems encountered Revert back to original Try again! Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class Chapter 1 - Introduction to vsphere

33 IT Technical Career Benefits Indeed VMware job tracking graph According to Dice ( Candidates with one completed virtualization project are considered experienced Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class As a IT technical professional, having ESXi and vcenter skills is good for your career! VMware vsphere virtualization skills remain in demand even though demand for skills for many other aspects of IT are flat. Chapter 1 - Introduction to vsphere

34 Virtualization Over Time ESX 1 ESX 2.x ESX(i) 3.x ESX(i) 4.x VMware VMs have become bigger and faster over time Goal is to eliminate all hardware limits to virtualizing workloads including Size make VMs any size you want Performance VMs more than fast enough ESXi 5.0 Number of vcpus GB RAM per VM 2GB 3.6GB 64GB 256GB 1024GB Network Throughput (Gb/s).5GB.9GB 9GB 30GB >36GB Storage I/O Ops/sec < 5,000 7, , ,000 1,000,000+ Max CPU Cores/ESXi host Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class VMware's goal is to make VMs so big and so fast that neither virtual hardware size nor the performance of virtual hardware will be a factor forcing you to deploy physically rather than virtually. Over time, VMware has significantly increased the maximum virtual hardware available to a VM (more vcpus, more RAM, more NICs, etc.). They've also worked to improve the throughput of virtual networks and virtual disks (as vcpu speed is determined by the speed and capabilities of the physical CPUs and virtual memory speed is determined by the speed of physical RAM). Virtual networking performance is dependent on the capabilities of the underlying physical network. For fastest virtual networking speed, deploy teamed 10GB NICs. Virtual storage performance is improved through the use of very high speed storage adapters (8GB Fibre cards, 10GB iscsi adapters) and through the use of virtualization aware Storage Area Networks (SANs). For example, VMware can now delegate many storage operations directly to the back end SAN (including file copy for VM cloning). This dramatically improves storage performance because the VM being copied can be copied within the SAN (and doesn't have to be copied to the ESXi host and back to the SAN as part of the copy operation). Source: Chapter 1 - Introduction to vsphere

35 VMware ESXi Enterprise class virtualization Bare metal install Lean hypervisor Dynamically load balances VMs Assigns CPU, RAM resources when needed, as needed If resources are scarce, idling VMs get little service Dynamically tunable Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class ESXi is a bare metal hypervisor. It is bare-metal because ESXi is installed upon and owns the physical PC server. A hypervisor is an operating system whose primary task is running virtual machines rather than normal operating system tasks. Chapter 1 - Introduction to vsphere

36 VMware vsphere 5.0 Editions vsphere vsphere vsphere ESXi Standard Enterprise Enterprise Plus ESXi + VSMP + VMFS Thin Provisioning Update Manager Data Recovery High Availability VMotion Virtual Serial Port Concentrator Hot Add Hardware vshield Zones Fault Tolerance Storage VMotion DRS Load Balancing DRS Power Management Distributed vswitches Host Profiles Network, Storage I/O QoS Auto Deploy ESXi Hosts Storage DRS (Load Balancing) Storage Policy Support Price per CPU Socket $0 $995 $2,875 $3,495 Subscription & Support Per Inciden mandatory mandatory mandatory Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class VMware licenses are expensive. To get the best value out of them, you should plan for high server consolidation rates. Consolidating legacy physical PC servers onto one ESXi host is very reasonable (the author has seen 50+ VMs on a single ESXi host, delivering great performance, on a number of occasions). By consolidating many workloads onto a single PC server you avoid: - The cost of refreshing older PC servers - The cost of maintenance contracts for these PC servers - The labor cost of physically migrating the OS and apps to a new server - Administrative and power costs running more PC servers - Reduced network switch and SAN switch port use VMware now licenses ESXi by the socket so a two physical CPU machine would require two licenses (2 x the price shown above). Subscription and Support (SnS) is mandatory at the time of purchase. vcenter is also needed to take advantage of many advanced features such as VMotion, Storage VMotion, Update Manager, High Availability, DRS, Fault Tolerance, Distributed Power Management, Distributed vswitches and Host Profiles. vsphere pricing is explained here and is current for the USA as of Sept, Chapter 1 - Introduction to vsphere

37 vsphere Hardware Limits Free vsphere vsphere vsphere ESXi Standard Enterprise Enterprise+ Max Cores per Physical CPU unlimited unlimited unlimited unlimited Max vram 32GB/Server 32GB/CPU 64GB/CPU 96GB/CPU Max RAM per Physical ESX Server unlimited unlimited unlimited unlimited Max Virtual CPUs per VM VMware has license imposed hardware limits on physical servers and VMs Physical servers Unlimited Cores/CPU Unlimited RAM/server Virtual Machines Max 8 Virtual CPUs per VM on most editions Enterprise + allows up to 32 vcpus/vm Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class VMware imposes limits on the maximum number of virtual CPUs you can add to a VM For Virtual Machines, you should select the VMware vsphere edition based on the number of virtual CPUs (vcpus)you need to present to your biggest VMs (i.e.: can you get by with up to 8 vcpus/vm or will your enterprise workloads, such as SQL and MS Exchange need more than 8 vcpus per VM). All vsphere editions have the same VM RAM limit, which is 1TB/VM. Chapter 1 - Introduction to vsphere

38 Small Business Bundles vsphere 5.0 vsphere 5.0 Essentials Essentials Plus ESXi Servers (2 sockets) 3 3 Processor Cores/socket no limit no limit vcenter Server Nodes 3 3 VSMP (Max vcpus/vm) 8 8 Total vram Entitlement 192GB 192GB Update Manager VMware HA Data Recovery VMotion Package Price $560 $5,439 Prices from vmware.com as of September, 2011 See: store.vmware.com/store/vmware/en_us/displayproductdetailspage/productid Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class VMware has created special license bundles that are targeted at small business. These license bundles provide smaller customers with virtualization and management capabilities for less than the cost of one (competent) PC server. The Essentials Plus bundle adds hot migration (VMotion) rapid VMware failure recovery (VMware HA), automated patching and updating capability for ESXi hosts and Windows (Update Manager) and simple back up and recovery (Data Recovery). These added features make Essentials Plus a compelling offering. VMware publishes full pricing information on their web site: Chapter 1 - Introduction to vsphere

39 vram Licensing vram license restriction on the amount of declared VM memory (virtual RAM) per licensed CPU socket vsphere Edition Enterprise Plus Enterprise Standard vsphere Essentials + vsphere Essentials Free ESXi vsphere Desktop / View vram Entitlement 96GB / socket 64GB / socket 32GB / socket 192GB Total 192GB Total 32GB / server unlimited Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class VMware requires you purchase extra vsphere licenses if the total declared RAM used by VMs on a host exceeds that host's vram license entitlement... To determine a host vram license entitlement, take the license (i.e.: one of vsphere Enterprise Plus, Enterprise, Standard, Essentials Plus or Essentials) and multiply by the number of CPUs licensed. For example if you own 2 Enterprise Plus licenses which are applied to a single host, you can boot and run a mix of VMs that declare no more than 192GB of RAM regardless of how much physical RAM you have on the host. If you intend to run VMs with more than 192GB of total declared vram, you would need to purchase an extra vsphere license to increase your vram license entitlement for that host even though you have no more sockets on the host to add physical CPUs! Please see the next slide for further details. Chapter 1 - Introduction to vsphere

40 vram Explained vsphere socket licenses entitles you to run a mix of VMs that use no more than the entitled amount of vram: (Sum of declared VM RAM) Sockets * vram/socket Exceptions: vsphere Essentials, vsphere Essentials + vsphere for VMware View (virtualized desktops) Free ESXi where vram vram limits are 12 month moving averages Not enforced in software OK to clone VMs for test/dev/qa, etc run over vram limit, then delete when no longer needed Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class For more information on vram, please see: Chapter 1 - Introduction to vsphere

41 Individual VM vram Explained vram license exemptions for VMs with a lot of virtual memory: Any VM can declare/use up to 1TB of RAM No need for 9 Enterprise+ licenses for that VM Goal is to efficiently run Tier-1 applications Each large VM essentially consumes a vsphere socket license Need a vsphere license for each large VM Use vsphere to Licensing view to track vram used vram entitlement Then true-up with VMware on over-use Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class For more information on vram, please see: Chapter 1 - Introduction to vsphere

42 VMware vcenter Management Console for vsphere Manage host, VM, network, storage Administer, monitor, tune, review Schedule jobs, review activity, resource maps Host Profiles and VM specifications P2V migrations Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class Chapter 1 - Introduction to vsphere

43 Single Host Deployment Single ESXi host VMs share host CPU, RAM, Disk, Network of the host system Manage with vsphere Client Low-cost or free ESXi or vsphere Standard Edition Benefits Lower capital cost Lowers power use Faster deployments Easier upgrades Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class The primary benefit that moves most organizations to virtualization is server consolidation (replacing physically deployed servers/workloads with virtual machines). While there are many benefits to consolidating onto ESXi there is one major risk you have many workloads now dependent on the health of a single machine. In the past, if a server failed, only one group of users were inconvenienced. With virtualization, a physical server failure has the potential to impact many more users. Chapter 1 - Introduction to vsphere

44 Multiple ESXi w. Shared Storage Migrated VMs onto shared SAN storage VMs still run on single host No VMotion, DRS, HA without vcenter Some fault tolerance If an ESXi host fails Use Datastore Browser to import VMs onto surviving host(s) Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class By moving your VMs onto shared storage, you untie your VMs from a single physical host. You also break the storage limits that may be imposed on you by your server platform. But, best of all, you now have a simple way to recover VMs that fail due to a server failure. As we will see later, VMware provides a piece of software called the Datastore Browser. The Datastore Browser has the ability to reassign ownership of powered off VMs to other hosts. So, if a server does fail... - Log into a surviving ESXi host - Launch the Datastore Browser - Identify the VMs that failed when the ESXi host failed - Take ownership of these VMs using the Datastore Browser by adding them to the surviving ESXi host's inventory - Power on these VMs on the new host While this approach is somewhat labor intensive, it does solve the problem of VMs being down because a host is down. You can automate VM recovery with VMware HA. Chapter 1 - Introduction to vsphere

45 vsphere Private Cloud Add vcenter ESXi and VM management Includes Cold migration Consolidation Converter Enables VMotion Storage VMotion High Availability Load balancing Fault Tolerance Back Up etc. Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class Chapter 1 - Introduction to vsphere

46 Cloud Computing Dynamically provision hardware on demand Provision what's needed, when needed Physical hardware abstracted, shared Storage Shared Storage Appliances (SANs) Provision, grow LUNs on demand LUNs visible to many ESXi hosts PC Servers run ESXi to deploy, run VMs Size for reasonable VM workload Provision additional servers as VM population grows Dynamically load balance to maintain performance Networking vnetwork Distributed vswitches Virtual switches that span ESXi hosts Add physical uplinks to improve ESXi > LAN speed Consistent configuration, metrics across ESXi hosts Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class Chapter 1 - Introduction to vsphere

47 Storage Cloud Storage Area Networks (SANs) Aggregate physical disks into LUNs Presents LUNs to ESXi VMFS cluster filesystem Safe concurrent access Grow LUNs as needed Provision LUNs on demand Snapshot, back up LUNs Shadow (replicate) LUNs Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class Chapter 1 - Introduction to vsphere

48 Server Cloud Provision PC Servers to meet growth, performance needs Buy a new PC server Install ESXi, join vcenter Add to DRS cluster VMs rebalance onto new server Reduces CPU, memory use on other servers Add to HA cluster Restarts VMs if an ESXi host fails Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class Chapter 1 - Introduction to vsphere

49 Network Cloud Distributed vswitches span ESXi hosts Unified view of all Port, Port Group settings Simple, consistent, VMotion compatible configuration Common MAC address table Supports internal Private vlans Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class Distributed vswitches are software objects that emulate a standard layer 2 switch. Distributed vswitches span two or more ESXi hosts and provide consistent network functionality across all VMs, etc. that are plugged into the distributed vswitch. A distributed vswitch has a single common MAC table and a unified set of performance counters. Because a vnetwork Distributed Switch configuration spans all ESXi hosts, they are especially helpful for VMotion because VMs will find exactly the same Port Group (configured exactly the same way) on any ESXi host that shares the distributed vswitch. Distributed vswitches are created and managed with the vsphere Client. You must have vcenter to create a distributed vswitch. You must have VMware vsphere Enterprise + to create and use vnetwork Distributed Switches. For organizations that run Cisco enterprise networking products, VMware offers the Cisco Nexus 1000V distributed switch. This is an upgrade to VMware's default vnetwork Distributed Switch. The Nexus 1000V offers full Cisco IOS compatibility and can be managed and monitored with standard Cisco tools. Chapter 1 - Introduction to vsphere

50 What's New in vsphere 5.0 Bigger VMs and more VMs Up to 32 vcpus, 1TB of RAM Support for Dual/Quad Core vcpus Up to 512 VMs/ESXi with up to 2048 vcpus Better USB support VM USB 1.1, 2.0 and 3.0 support USB devices can be plugged into the ESXi host or your vsphere Client PC Storage Load Balancing New Storage DRS load, capacity balanced storage volumes Helps ensure you don't slow down on over worked volumes or run out of space Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class Chapter 1 - Introduction to vsphere

51 VMFS and SSD New VMFS 5 supports Single volumes up to 64TB Raw Device Maps for volumes > 2TB Smaller sub-block allocations that improves the storage efficiency of very small files Unlimited blocks per file Solid State Device support vsphere 5 can detect SSDs and use them to accelerate storage Can be used for VMkernel paging to dramatically reduce paging overhead when memory is scarce Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class Chapter 1 - Introduction to vsphere

52 More vsphere 5 New Features Storage vmotion can now hot move VMs that have snapshots Stronger ESXi built-in firewall New, web based vsphere Client VMware vcenter Appliance SuSE Linux based vcenter server No Windows server license needed Use embedded IBM DB2 license or connect to external Oracle databases Does not currently support vcenter Linked mode Auto-deploy ESXi host capability Simplifies install and upgrade of ESXi hosts Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class Chapter 1 - Introduction to vsphere

53 Chapter 1 - Introduction to vsphere

54 Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class Chapter 1 - Introduction to vsphere

55 Chapter 2 VMware ESXi VMware ESXi 5 Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class. 2-1 Chapter 2 - Standalone ESXi

56 Stand Alone ESXi ESXi Overview ESXi Installation Procedures Best Practices Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class. 2-2 Chapter 2 - Standalone ESXi

57 Project Plan By the end of this chapter, we will have Installed ESXi onto a stand alone server Partitioned local storage for ESXi and VMs Connected to ESXi using the vsphere Client and Secure Shell Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class. 2-3 Our first step in this class is to install ESXi onto stand alone PC servers and then connect to those newly installed ESXi hosts using the vsphere Client and SSH. In future chapters we will add to our original implementation. Our ultimate objective is a scalable, highly redundant, load balanced Virtual Infrastructure implementation that supports a large community of Windows 2000, Windows 2003, Windows 2008, desktop and Linux VMs. Chapter 2 - Standalone ESXi

58 Problems & Opportunities Problems Server consolidation DNS, DHCP, Web, File & Print, AD, DC Reduce costs Capital $ Hardware support $ IT staff admin time Free up rack space Increase server utilization rates Position for future growth, flexibility Virtual Solution ESXi or vsphere hosts Up to 2TB RAM No CPUs core limits Up to 32 1gb NICs Up to 8 10gb NICs Local, shared storage volumes, file shares Consolidate many workloads onto one ESXi host Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class. 2-4 vsphere Standard Edition is a low cost version of VMware ESXi especially intended for entry level virtualization deployments that offer the following hardware capabilities One or more physical CPUs 4 or 6 core CPUs supported (up to 12 core CPUs on vsphere Enterprise(+)) Will use up all available physical memory up to 256GB Local disks or RAID volumes on supported SATA, SCSI or SAS controllers Up to 32, 1gb NICs including dual and quad NICs Up to 8, 10gb NICs iscsi hardware and software initiators Fibre host bus adapter support and Use of NFS shares. With the ability to run up to 8 light duty or 2-4 medium duty VMs per CPU core, ESXi or vsphere Standard Editions are excellent choices for entry level server consolidation projects. Chapter 2 - Standalone ESXi

59 ESXi Block Diagram Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class. 2-5 VMware ESXi is a bare-metal virtualization hypervisor solution. As such, it must install on an industry standard PC server. Please check VMware's Hardware Compatibility Guide (portal on web site) for the most up to date list of supported PC servers. Because it owns the hardware, ESXi is in full control of resource assignments to running VMs. The VMkernel, allocates hardware resources on an as-needed basis. In this way, the VMkernel can prevent idling VMs from wasting CPU cycles that could otherwise be used by busy VMs. Likewise, the VMkernel keeps track of needed RAM, not just requested or allocated RAM. It can dynamically re-assign RAM to memory starved VMs, thereby ensuring that VMs get the memory they need to run. Chapter 2 - Standalone ESXi

60 Scalable ESXi Deployment Local storage for Boot, VMs, VM paging SAN LUNs ESXi boot, swap, VMs SAN advantages High performance Higher availability Capacity management LUN Backup, replication Disaster Recovery Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class. 2-6 As your ESXi deployment matures (technically) you will want to introduce: Different LAN (virtual) segments to isolate network traffic. You could use different LAN segments for things like IP Storage, Management and production systems Shared storage solutions including iscsi, Fibre SAN and NFS shares Hardware redundancy in the form of multipath storage solutions and teamed NIC configurations You may even wish to consider a Boot From SAN solution so you don't need to configure servers with local storage. Boot from SAN is available on supported Fibre SAN controllers and also with iscsi SAN controllers (using iscsi hardware initiators). Chapter 2 - Standalone ESXi

61 CPUs 4, 6, 8, 10, 12 or 16 core physical CPUs Max 160 cores/host Intel 64-bit Xeon only Hyperthreading Not old EMT64 CPUs AMD Opteron NUMA local memory All Opteron CPUs supported Memory Min 2GB to boot All remaining physical RAM used for VMs ESXi Server Hardware Network Up to 32 GB NICs Up to 8 10GB NICs VLAN, NIC Teams Storage Local volumes SCSI, SAS, SATA RAID, non-raid SSD iscsi SANs Fibre SANs File Shares NFS only No SMB support Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class. 2-7 ESXi is capable of using the largest PC server hardware platforms. Apart from what is stated above, ESXi is limited to: No more than 160 CPU cores (includes Hyperthreaded logical processors) for CPU scheduling purposes All available RAM Furthermore the following implementation limitations need to be considered: Very limited selection of supported 10GB Ethernet controllers Jumbo Frames supported, which will dramatically improve software iscsi performance. Chapter 2 - Standalone ESXi

62 ESXi Embedded, Installable ESXi Embedded Burned into flash on the motherboard Host boots ESXi after POST Boots from flash drive ESXi configuration can be on local storage or retrieved from the network via PXE ESXi Installable Local disks RAID or JBOD Can run on SSDs USB boot No RAID controller No hard disks Install and boot from low cost USB 2.0 device Easy to duplicate Most servers have internal USB stacks so USB drive cannot be accidentally removed Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class. 2-8 JBOD Just a Bunch of Disk. Physical disks in a non-raid configuration. VMware has officially retired ESX. That is, VMware will no longer release ESX for future releases of their software just ESXi. ESXi comes in two forms Embedded and Installable. Embedded is baked into firmware on the motherboard of select PC servers. This lets you boot your server without any local storage. ESXi Installable is a version of ESXi that can be installed onto local storage, USB memory keys or SAN storage. It is installed from CD media that you can download from ESXi does away with the Service Console. This provides a smaller, leaner hypervisor than full ESX. It is also more secure because there is less software (to exploit) and fewer services running on ESXi than there is on ESX. Chapter 2 - Standalone ESXi

63 ESXi Install Steps Install steps... Boot your server from ESXi install media Accept the EULA Select target disk for installation Select keyboard language Set the root (administrator) password Agree to partition and format disk Reboot server when install complete Post install steps... log in to DCUI and Select NIC for management traffic Set static IP, host name, domain name Test network configuration Review (enable) local, remote Tech Support Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class. 2-9 Chapter 2 - Standalone ESXi

64 ESXi Boot Screen To begin your ESXi install, boot from CD Hit ENTER to launch the installer Customized installs Serve media from HTTP or NFS Scripted installs simplify deployment Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class ESXi is installed in text mode so your PC server doesn't need to have graphics capability. VMware makes it possible to set up an install server for ESXi so you can perform network based installs. Using Linux' KickStart capabilities, ESXi installations can be automated/scripted so you can install and configure new servers hands-off. VMware also offers an ESXi automated deployment capability. This is part of the VMware vcenter Appliance that is new with vsphere 5.0. Chapter 2 - Standalone ESXi

65 Accept the VMware EULA You must accept the VMware End User License Agreement before you install ESXi Hit F11 to proceed to the next step Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class The ESXi installer uses your Video Card's VESA mode for hardware independent graphics. The good news is that VESA is almost universally supported (and consequently should work). The bad news is that VESA is the slowest mode of operation. The overall sluggishness of VESA mode is exacerbated by the use of remote management cards such as: HP Integrated Lights Out (ilo) IBM Remote Management Module (RMM) Dell Dell Remote Access Controller (DRAC) While useful, remote graphics consoles over slower WAN links will require patience and a steady hand. To minimize the sluggish (drunk) mouse behavior, use key sequences like Tab move to the next clickable region Enter invoke a clickable action or Space select a clickable option. In fairness to ESXi, graphics mode is only used during installation so graphics performance (or lack of it) is an installation time only issue. Chapter 2 - Standalone ESXi

66 Select the Target Volume Installer displays available storage volumes Categorized as Local or Remote Local volumes are visible to just your host and consist of local RAID or physical volumes Remote volumes are visible SAN LUNs Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class Normal ESXi installations occur in graphics mode. Consequently, the installer must get your preferences/settings for the install language, keyboard and mouse. These settings are used only during installation. Since, once it is in service, ESXi runs in text mode (with no native graphics capabilities), your language, keyboard and mouse preferences are discarded once the installation has completed. Chapter 2 - Standalone ESXi

67 Keyboard, root Password Next, you specify: The keyboard connected to your server The password for the ESXi 5.0 root (local administrator) account There is no password reset tool for ESXi 5.0 so do not forget your root password Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class Chapter 2 - Standalone ESXi

68 Hardware Virtualization Assist Modern CPUs have H/W virtualization assist capabilities Intel VT technology and AMD-V Significantly reduces VM overhead Best Practice Enable H/W virtualization features in the machine's BIOS if present Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class Virtualization abstracts the physical hardware to the VM. The VM guest operating system normally expects to own all hardware and also expects to be able to execute privileged CPU instructions that are not available to applications. If ESXi allowed guest operating systems full access to these instructions, then the guest OS could manipulate hardware directly, possibly interfere with virtual memory page translation tables and perform other operations that could compromise the ESXi host. To avoid this problem, VMware blocked guest OS' from privileged/dangerous instructions and CPU features through software that emulated (and controlled) what the guest OS could do. This worked but added significant overhead to some operations. In 2006, both Intel and AMD introduced virtualization hardware assist technology in their updated CPUs. These new CPUs added sophisticated memory management capabilities, better hardware emulation features and other improvements that dramatically reduced the overhead of virtualization while maintaining compatibility with Guest OS'. ESXi probes physical CPUs for Intel VT or AMD-V technology and attempts to use it if available (and warns if it isn't). Please be sure to turn on this feature in your machine's BIOS. For more information see: Chapter 2 - Standalone ESXi

69 Ready to Install The installer is ready to proceed... Selected volume is re-partitioned, formatted All existing partitions on the selected volume are deleted All local storage is used for ESXi No partition customization options are available Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class The installer will now install ESXi onto your selected storage volume. To do this, the installer: - Wipes all partitions on the selected target storage volume - Creates partitions as needed (normally 8 partitions are created) Useful information about the installation disk: - ESXi consumes about 6GB of disk space in overhead. The rest is for VM use - partition 4 is the boot partition and is located at the front of the disk (behind the Master Boot Record and partition table) - partitions 2 and 4, 5, 6 & 8 are for ESXi use and occupy the front of the disk - partition 7 is a vmkcore partition (partition code 0xfc) and is a ESXi partition used to hold crash dumps - partition 3 consumes all remaining disk space and is partitioned and formatted as a VMware File System (VMFS) Note: ESXi 5.0 can now install on > 2TB volumes. Chapter 2 - Standalone ESXi

70 Installation Completed Once your installation has completed, hit Enter to reboot to ESXi Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class It only takes about 3-5 minutes to install ESXi 5.0 onto your PC server. The install proceeds non-interactively. A status indicator updates a percent completed horizontal bar. Chapter 2 - Standalone ESXi

71 ESXi 5.0 ESXi is a small footprint, bare metal hypervisor Default FQDN and IP properties acquired via DHCP Use F2 at the boot screen to set up your ESXi 5.0 host Use F12 to shutdown or reboot your host Simple BIOS like interface Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class ESXi has a simple, BIOS-like interface that makes it very easy to configure. To configure your ESX host, simply hit F2 at the greeter screen. Chapter 2 - Standalone ESXi

72 Log In for the First Time The administrator account for ESXi is root The root password is set during install Do not lose the root password there is no way to gracefully recover it! Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class The ESXi administrator account is root (the traditional Linux administrator account). When you install ESXi, the system defaults to: - The root password is set during installation - IP properties set via DHCP - No command line access (either locally or remotely) In the next few slides, we will discuss how to change these values. Chapter 2 - Standalone ESXi

73 ESXi Configuration Menu Configure ESXi through a simple text menu Current menu item settings displayed on the right side of the screen Hit Enter to activate a menu function Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class The ESXi configuration menu is a simple text interface where you complete your server's customizations. Use the up/down arrows to move to a function. When a function is highlighted, its properties and the command keys used to modify that function are displayed on the right. Chapter 2 - Standalone ESXi

74 Default Management IP Settings By default your ESXi host uses DHCP Host name, domain name and the IP address is assigned using an IP address out of your lease pool Example above reclaims a desktop PC lease! ESXi needs static IP properties Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class You must set the IP properties of your ESXi host before you can manage it. Select Configure Management Network to set the: - Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN) - IP address - Netmask - Default Gateway and other properties. You can set these values statically or dynamically using DHCP. DHCP servers can send static properties to a host. To do this, configure your DHCP server with the MAC address of your ESXi host management NIC and then set the static properties to server whenever that NIC broadcasts for a DHCP lease. Be sure to Restart Management Network after all changes to ensure your updates take effect. Chapter 2 - Standalone ESXi

75 Configure Management Network The Configure Management Network submenu let's you set key network properties Management NIC IP V4 and IP V6 properties DNS settings DNS search domain list Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class It is a best practice to use static network settings for your ESXi host. To complete this task, you must: 1. Select the correct NIC for management networking 2. Set a static IP address and Netmask and Default Gateway values 3. Identify your local DNS server(s) and the default DNS search domains Chapter 2 - Standalone ESXi

76 Select Management NIC(s) Physical NICs are used to carry mgt. traffic Select Network Adapters to view/change NICs Avoid disconnected NICs Means they have no link to the network switch Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class You manage your ESXi host through your network. To communicate with your ESXi host (using either the vsphere Client directly or vcenter indirectly), you must have network connectivity to it. Since modern PC servers may have many NICs and these NICs may be connected into different physical and/or virtual LAN segments, you may have to select the correct physical NIC (rather than the default NIC) before you can manage your machine. NIC Teams The Network Adapters screen lets you review and select the NIC or NICs you wish to use to carry network traffic. If you select more than one physical NIC, you automatically create a NIC team. NIC teams afford better speed and redundancy. Tip It can be difficult (or impossible) to tell which RJ45 jack is associated with which MAC address. A simple way of selecting the correct physical NIC(s) is to unplug all NICs from their switch except for the NICs you wish to use for management. Then use the Status column (Connected means the NIC has a link to the switch) to determine which NICs you should for management. Chapter 2 - Standalone ESXi

77 IP Configuration Best Practice - use Static IP properties No chance your server could lose its IP lease and therefore it's IP address Static IPs required for vcenter Management Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class Complete this form to set your ESXi host management NIC IP properties. vcenter cannot manage an ESXi host whose IP address changes. For this reason it is best to give all of your ESXi, ESXi hosts fixed IP properties. You must select Set static IP addresses... and complete all three fields to complete your static IP address properties assignment. Chapter 2 - Standalone ESXi

78 DNS Configuration You must set DNS and FQDN properties Enter the IP of your DNS server(s) You MUST enter the FQDN of your ESXi host Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class ESXi and vcenter require DNS services to function properly. So it is critical that you have DNS name servers set up and accessible from your local LAN segment. It is a best practice to have both primary and secondary DNS servers available... but ESXi will function with just primary DNS. You must set a fully qualified domain name for your ESXi host. The ESXi FQDN must be resolvable forward (host name IP address) and backward (IP address FQDN). Chapter 2 - Standalone ESXi

79 Custom DNS Suffixes DNS suffixes help resolve host names DNS look ups that contain only a host name append domain suffixes from this list, before a DNS look up is attempted Use spaces, commas to separate multiple domains Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class DNS Suffixes are used to enable DNS to look up the IP address of a host specified only by it's host name (and not qualified with a domain name). An example might be a look up request for a host called esxi5. DNS needs a full domain name. Custom Suffixes will append domain names from the list set on this screen to simple host names and then perform a DNS query. This continues until either: - a matching FQDN is found and it's IP address is returned - no matching FQDN is found and all suffix Domain names have been tried It is a good practice to add at last one domain name to this list! Chapter 2 - Standalone ESXi

80 Apply Network Changes Network changes are applied en mass NIC, IP and DNS changes are activated by restarting Management Network services Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class All network changes are applied at one time when you leave the Configure Management Network sub-menu. First the new settings are applied to the appropriate configuration files and then the ESXi hosts' management network is brought down and back up again. For this reason it is best to be at the physical server's console when updating management networking properties. You should be brought back to the System Customization menu. Your network changes should be visible. Chapter 2 - Standalone ESXi

81 Test Management Network Basic connectivity test with Ping, DNS Pings gateway, DNS server Tries to resolve the server's FQDN Each test reports OK or Fail Do not proceed until all tests pass! Verify your DNS server is ping-able Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class Chapter 2 - Standalone ESXi

82 Local/Remote Tech Support Tech Support mode enables command line access to your ESXi host ESXi Shell Command line access from the physical server console SSH Secure Shell access to your server Default is Disabled for both services May need to turn on for VMware/partner access Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class Tech Support Mode enables functions used by support providers who are comfortable working on the ESXi command line. By default, all local and remote command line access to your ESXi host is disabled so you can only access your ESXi host through: - the vsphere client pointed directly at your ESXi host - vcenter if vcenter has management control over your ESXi host - The VMware Management Assistant service (VMA), if installed Enabling Local Tech Support allows physical console command line access. Support personnel who have access to the physical console (directly or via remote console services such as Dell DRAC, HP ILO or IBM RMM) would be able to log in to your server. Enabling Remote Tech Support enables the Secure Shell Daemon (sshd) and supports network based administrator access to your box without the need for remote console services. Warning Enabling Remote tech support enables direct root access to your ESXi host through a TCP/IP connection. This is a potential security threat. Turn on this feature only if needed. If this feature is turned on, set a strong root password. Never expose your machine to an untrusted network like the Internet if Remote Tech Support is turned on! Chapter 2 - Standalone ESXi

83 Restart Management Agents ESXi uses agents (services) to communicate with vcenter and the vsphere client If agents fail, your server is unmanageable Use this feature to reset management agents Does not interfere with running VMs Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class It may happen that the management agents (services) on your ESXi host become unstable or crash. If this occurs, your ESXi host will not respond to vcenter or the vsphere client. In vcenter your host will grey out and report as disconnected. You could reboot the ESXi host but that would bring down all running VMs. A more acceptable option is to simply restart the management agents on your ESXi host. This function can be done at any time. Any connected vsphere Client sessions will be closed. Once this function completes, your host should become active in vcenter and should accept direct vsphere Client login requests. Chapter 2 - Standalone ESXi

84 ESXi Ready for Service ESXi server is ready for use Additional hot keys are active Alt-F1 command line access to your machine Alt-F2 this screen Alt-F12 VMkernel log records Use the vsphere Client to manage ESXi Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class Once ESXi has rebooted, it is managed through the web or via VMware's vsphere Client. You can download the vsphere Client from There are additional hot keys active on the ESXi console: Alt-F1 first command line log in screen Alt-F2 the ESXi greeter screen (screen shot above) Alt-F3 to Alt-F10 no function Alt-F11 Grey scale status screen/greeter screen with no F-key prompts Alt-F12 VMkernel log dump Chapter 2 - Standalone ESXi

85 Alt-F12 VMkernel Log Entries Hit Alt-F12 to view the VMkernel log file Displays the most recent VMkernel log contents Look here to see detailed error messages File - /scratch/log/vmkernel.log on the command line Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class The VMkernel records detailed log entries into a file called /var/log/messages. You can view this file by logging into the Local/Remote tech support prompts (as root) and issuing the command: # less /var/log/messages You can see the most recent entries by hitting the Alt-F12 keys on your machine's console. This display shows one screen full of the most current additions to the VMkernel log file. You should check this file if you are troubleshooting problems and need more information than is available in the vsphere client. Hit Alt-F2 to go back to the ESXi greeter screen when done. Note All command line commands entered using Local or Remote tech support are logged to /var/log messages. In this way, it is possible to reproduce the activities of prior command line sessions. Chapter 2 - Standalone ESXi

86 Login with vsphere Client Launch vsphere Client Use ESXi IP or FQDN ESXi User name (root) ESXi Password Chatty, but low bandwidth application Runs well over corporate LAN, WAN Can run over Internet Selectable session timeout values Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class You manage your ESXi host directly with the vsphere Client. This is a separate download and install available from VMware ( Alternatively, you can just point your web browser over to your ESXi host and follow the vsphere Client download link found there. All VMware client to server connections are encrypted using strong encryption. The encrypted link is set up before any data is exchanged between the client and the back end server. Chapter 2 - Standalone ESXi

87 Security Warning All VMware client/server connections use 256-bit AES symmetric key encryption ESXi uses self-signed Digital Certificates No Certificate Granting Authority to verify authenticity Since host is local, ignore warning Check Install this certificate... Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class ESXi uses self-signed digital certificates to support end-to-end encryption. All communications between VMware client and VMware server software is encrypted using strong encryption. Since the digital certificate cannot be independently verified by a 3 rd party Certificate Granting Authority, a warning is issued. It is (usually) safe to permanently disregard this warning. It is possible to purchase an SSL certificate from a Certificate Authority (CA) and then install that certificate onto your ESXi host. This would eliminate the warning messages because a trusted certificate can be used to verify that the host is who it says it is. Normally trusted certificates are used on Internet facing hosts to ensure the integrity of web requests (e.g.: for secure banking/payment systems, etc.). Since your ESXi hosts won't be directly on the Internet, there is no need (and no benefit) to purchasing a trusted certificate for your machine. Chapter 2 - Standalone ESXi

88 vsphere Client > ESXi Host vsphere Client presents a task launch page Inventory work with your ESXi host Roles define user categories System Logs review, save ESXi log files Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class Chapter 2 - Standalone ESXi

89 vsphere Client Menu,Button Bars Tabbed Interface Items being Managed Recent Actions 4 Sections: Menus, Inventory, Tabs, Recent Tasks Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class Chapter 2 - Standalone ESXi

90 ESXi >Configuration Hardware links to review/set HW settings Software links to review/customize ESXi Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class Most ESXi hardware and software configuration is done using the vsphere Client. Use the Configuration tab and the appropriate boxes (Hardware, Software) to review and/or configure your server. Chapter 2 - Standalone ESXi

91 Local ESXi Users & Groups Users & Groups Tab Define ESXi users Right click on background, Select Add... Set user login, password and group (optional) Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class You can create local ESXi user accounts with passwords to allow for local authentication (for both the vsphere client and Local/Remote Troubleshooting if enabled). To do this click on the Users & Groups tab and then right-click the back ground and select Add... You can make new groups by clicking the Groups button and then rightclicking the background. Best Practice You would create local accounts only if you do not have an Active Directory service available. Otherwise, it is a best practice to join an AD domain and use domain accounts. Tip To command line log into ESXi over the network (from Windows, ESXi Remote Troubleshooting Mode must be enabled) download the putty Secure Shell terminal emulator at Chapter 2 - Standalone ESXi

92 ESXi Host Roles Roles determine privileges by user, group Default role: No access no rights on ESXi host Read-only: look but cannot modify Administrator: full control of local ESXi host root, dcui (local configuration) and vpxuser (for vcenter) hold the Administrator role Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class Chapter 2 - Standalone ESXi

93 Joining a Domain ESXi can join an Active Directory domain Navigation: Software > Authentication Services > Properties... Specify domain, then domain user/password with rights to add hosts to a domain Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class ESXi 5.0 can now join an Active Directory domain. AD authentication allows you to set up access rules for ESXi login without having to create local user accounts on ESXi. FYI Joining an AD domain is the first step to allowing AD defined users to access ESXi directly. The second step is to select inventory items (your ESXi host, folders, VMs, Resource Pools) and assign these users rights on these items. Without specific permission assignments, AD based users will not be able to interact with ESXi. Chapter 2 - Standalone ESXi

94 Review/Set Time Configuration Configuration > Software > Time Configuration ESXi owns the hardware clock Provides clock services to VMs Use Network Time Protocol to ensure a very accurate clock Use Properties... to enable/configure NTP Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class ESXi uses Network Time Protocol to ensure that it's clock remains accurate. This is important because the ESXi host provides clock services to all VMs it runs. So, any clock drift in the ESXi host will result in clock drift in VMs. If VM clocks drift by more than 5 minutes they may not be able to join or remain members of Active Directory domains. Click the Properties... link to review and configure NTP. Best Practice Always set your server's BIOS clock to UTC and ensure you select Server Clock is UTC when you install ESXi. That way, VMs will get a UTC clock and can then set their local time zone to any region they like. If you set the hardware clock to your local time, then VMs must all operate in your local time zone only (because they cannot calculate time zone offsets from any time zone other than UTC). Chapter 2 - Standalone ESXi

95 Licensing ESXi 5.0 License options Evaluation Mode 60-day evaluation Cannot be extended All features available Serial Number 25 character code Get from VMware Enables entitled licensed features Click Edit... to add an ESXi license License entitlements can also be obtained from vcenter Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class ESXi now ships with an unrestricted use 60-day evaluation license. This eliminates the need to contact VMware for temporary evaluation licenses. ESXi can be activated using a stand alone host license. A host license is issued on a host by host basis and unlocks access to feature entitlements purchased for that host. Alternatively, ESXi can draw a license entitlement for needed features from vcenter. Chapter 2 - Standalone ESXi

96 System Health Status Click Configuration > Health Status to review host hardware health Uses CIM to poll hardware Reports back issues found Issues propagate up to the host Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class The vsphere Client can report on most aspects of your system's hardware health including: - CPU sockets, cores and cache size - Power supply, motherboard, CPU and add-on card temperatures - Fan location, health and speed - Hardware firmware and driver health including chipset, NIC, storage controller, BIOS functionality - Power supply count and health (connected, disconnected, missing, etc.) and - System boards. Use this view to get a quick assessment of your server's physical health. Chapter 2 - Standalone ESXi

97 Physical CPU Properties Click Configuration > Processors to review host CPU properties. Verify: CPU socket, core and Hyperthreading status matches expectations Click Properties... to enable Hyperthreading Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class ESXi reports on the properties of the CPUs found in your server, including: - The make/model of the machine - Make/model and speed of the CPUs - Number of populated sockets - Number of cores in the CPU - Number of Logical Processors (sockets * cores * HT logical processors) - Presence/Absence of Hyperthreading (Intel CPUs only) - Presence/Absence of power management capabilities (newer CPUs only) If you have Intel CPUs and Hyperthreading is reporting N/A you should check to see if Hyperthreading is active. To do this, click: Properties > Hyperthreading > Enabled This will turn on Hyperthreading support even if the machine's BIOS is set to disable it. You will need to reboot ESXi for this change to take effect. Chapter 2 - Standalone ESXi

98 Physical Memory Properties Click Configuration > Memory to review host RAM configuration. Note: System (VMkernel) RAM is reserved All remaining RAM available for VM use Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class ESXi uses memory in 2 ways: 1. For the VMkernel hypervisor (approximately 400MB), and 2. For virtual machines (all remaining RAM). ESXi needs a minimum of 2GB of RAM or it will refuse to run. Adding more RAM means more room for VMs to run which should result in good performance as your VM population and RAM requirements grow. ESXi is very frugal and hands out memory to VMs only when needed and only for as long as needed. We will explore ESXi memory scavenging techniques later in this class. Chapter 2 - Standalone ESXi

99 Network Adapters All recognized NICs are displayed in the Network Adapters view Speed, Assigned vswitch, physical MAC address and Observed IP ranges reported Observed IP range - helps you determine which sub-net a physical NIC can see and consequently what traffic it should carry Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class Observed IP Ranges This value displays the IP address range observed by ESXi as frames flow through each physical NIC. Here's what it's used for. In most corporate networks, different physical LAN segments are used to isolate different types of traffic such as Production traffic, storage traffic, management traffic, back up traffic, etc. It is a common practice to use different sub-net address blocks for each physical segment. For example, your company may subnet its network traffic as follows: /16 Production traffic including servers /16 Desktop PCs and printers /16 Management LAN segment for direct PC server management /24 Back Up LAN /24 IP Storage LAN (for iscsi servers) In the above scheme, if a physical NIC reported Observed IPs in the 10.1/16 range, you would know it was physically connected to the management LAN. If another physical NIC reported Observed IPs in the /24 range, then it should be used to carry back up traffic. Chapter 2 - Standalone ESXi

100 Network Properties Click Configuration > DNS and Routing to review ESXi management settings: Verify Host, Fully Qualified Domain Name, IP address, DNS IP and Gateway Click Properties... to make any changes Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class It is important that your Service Console OS network settings are correct. After installation, it is a good idea to review these settings and fix any errors you find. Click Properties... to edit network settings for the Service Console. You will need to reboot your ESXi host before these changes take effect. Chapter 2 - Standalone ESXi

101 ESXi System Logs Review, save ESXi system logs Home > Administration > System Logs hostd.log: host management service log Licensing, cluster mgt., vcenter mgt., etc. Use Export System Logs to save log files locally as text files Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class Chapter 2 - Standalone ESXi

102 Sizing ESXi CPU, Memory Physical CPUs service Virtual CPUs About 2-5% CPU virtualization overhead Plan for between 2-8 vcpus per physical CPU core Maximize CPU cores, speed & cache size Don't expect Intel Hyperthreading to help Physical core restrictions removed vsphere 5 Memory Must have 2GB RAM to install/boot ESXi Once booted, the VMkernel uses 40+MB of RAM All remaining RAM free for VM use VMs given RAM as needed, not declared x memory over commit is reasonable Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class Chapter 2 - Standalone ESXi

103 Sizing ESXi Storage, NICs Storage Controllers ESXi is inherently multipath aware Vendor supplied multipath drivers now supported Better I/O performance to LUNs Improved reliability through path redundancy NICs Virtual Switches use physical NICs Physical NIC uplinks vswitch to physical LAN segments Virtual NIC traffic consumes CPU cycles Faster ESXi CPUs give faster virtual network speed Benchmark network performance before deploying network heavy production workloads Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class Chapter 2 - Standalone ESXi

104 Lab 2 Install ESXi 5.0 In this lab we will perform an install of ESXi 5.0 onto a physical PC server Install onto dedicated HP DL360/5 servers Use RDP to access our kit central server From there, use Remote ILO console to power on and install ESXi Our server pod Is located in a remote Class-A data center Accessed by Microsoft Terminal Services Has one server/student Uses real PC server hardware Not simulation, emulation or PCs running ESXi in a VM Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class Chapter 2 - Standalone ESXi

105 Chapter 2 - Standalone ESXi

106 Chapter 16 VM Migration Virtual Machine Cold, Hot and Storage Migration Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class Chapter 16 Virtual Machine Migration

107 Virtual Machine Migration The act of moving a VM Cold migration - moving a powered off VM Hot migration - moving a powered on VM Storage migration moving a VM's files to a new datastore Cold migration lets you move a VM to A new ESXi host A new datastore A new ESXi host and datastore Hot migration lets you move a VM to A new ESXi host (VMotion) A new datastore (Storage VMotion) But not both at the same time Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class Migrating physical Windows and/or Linux machines to new hosts or storage is a complex, risky and time-consuming task. Fortunately, moving VMs to a new ESXi host or datastore (or both) is easy. vcenter provides VM migration capabilities as an inherent part of the product. vcenter can move a VM to a new: ESXi Host This reassigns ownership of the VM to the new ESXi host. Depending on your configuration and licensing, this could be either hot or cold Datastore - Moving a VM to a new datastore entails copying the VMs constituent files from one datastore to the next. Cold datastore migration can be done at any time and on any VM. Hot datastore migration requires a Storage VMotion license Host & - vcenter cannot move a VM to both a new ESXi host and a new datastore Datastore at the same time. Host & Datastore migrations are always done cold and entail a TCP/IP file transfer of the VMs files and a reassignment of VM ownership to the target ESXi host. Alternatively, you perform a two step Host & Datastore migration that doesn't involve down time: - Start by using Storage VMotion to move the VM files to a shared LUN - Once the files are on shared storage, VMotion the VM to a new host Chapter 16 Virtual Machine Migration

108 Project Plan Migrate VMs to new ESXi hosts/datastores Load balance VMs across ESXi servers Evacuate an ESXi host prior to maintenance Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class Chapter 16 Virtual Machine Migration

109 Problems & Opportunities Problems VM performance degrades if a host is over committed on CPU or RAM VMs on local storage cannot be restarted if the host fails Virtual Solutions Hot migrate a VM to a host with free resources Cold migrate a host from a local VMFS to a Shared VMFS Hot migrate VMs files to a new datastore Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class VM migration solves two problems; deployment and resource contention. Deployment - In many shops it is considered good practice to completely isolate Production VMs from all other VMs (test, development, QA, training, etc.). In this case, when it is time to move a fully tested VM to Production, the VM would be migrated from the Test environment to the Production environment. Resource - Most IT shops have strict service level agreements with their customers. Management This could include guaranteeing a minimum level of responsiveness and also a minimum level of availability. Hot migration helps IT departments meet their service agreements because, if an ESXi host is suffering resource stress, VMs can be hot moved to ESXi hosts with free resources to even out resource load. Chapter 16 Virtual Machine Migration

110 Cold Migration Act of moving a powered off VM Involves a change in either the host, the datastore, or both host and datastore Cold migration to a new host If VM is on a shared volume then migration simply re-assigns ownership of the VM to the target ESXi host If a VM is on a local volume then: The VM's files are TCP/IP file-transferred to a datastore visible to the target machine Uses VMkernel Management port connection Ownership of the VM is then re-assigned to the target machine VM unavailable for use until migration completes Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class Cold migration is the act of moving a powered off VM from one host to the next. What actions are taken when a cold migration is requested depends on VM, ESXi host and storage configuration. If the VM lives on a shared storage volume that is visible to both the source and target ESXi host, then cold migration is nothing more than the transfer of ownership of the VM from the source to the target ESXi host. In this case, the cold migration requests complete in seconds. If the VM resides on a storage volume that is not visible to the target ESXi host then vcenter has more work to do. In this case, vcenter must: - File transfer the VMs constituent files from the source ESXi host to the target ESXi host. This is done using an encrypted connection between the two hosts Service Consoles and will likely occur at no more than 10-40MB/s. - Once the files have been transferred, the target machine will take on ownership of the VM - Then, the source machine will remove the VM's constituent files from its own datastore(s) and remove the VM from its VM roster Chapter 16 Virtual Machine Migration

111 Why Cold Migrate Moving a VM from Test to Production No LUNs in common Moving a VM from local to shared disk E.g.: When you add a SAN or NFS share Hosts are not VMotion compatible Lack CPU compatibility Target machine not in same Datacenter Clone VM or Template to a new datacenter Off-site back ups Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class There are many scenarios where it makes sense to cold migrate a VM. The most popular reasons are identified in the slide (above). Cold migration can be time consuming because virtual disk files can be very large and the VMs files are transferred through Ethernet, TCP/IP. The actual file transfer is conducted between the Service Consoles of the source and target ESXi hosts. Note: All network connections between ESXi hosts and VMware clients are encrypted. This ensures data privacy but adds overhead which makes the transfer take longer You should expect no more than megabytes/second of file transfer speed even on a GB NIC (your mileage may vary). Make sure you have an appropriately sized maintenance window before you attempt a cold migration. Chapter 16 Virtual Machine Migration

112 Lab 16 Part 1 Please complete Lab 16, Part 1 only Select one Windows Server 2003 VM Cold migrate it to the Production LUN Monitor progress... Power it back on again Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class In this Lab, we will cold migrate a Windows 2003 VM from local ESXi RAID storage to our Production shared SAN volume. Because we are migrating the VM over Ethernet and TCP/IP, it will take some time for the VM to complete the move. Please initiate the move by following the steps outlined in Lab 16, Part 1 only. Once you have initiated the migration and you can see that progress is being made (watch the Recent Tasks pane), please tell your instructor. Chapter 16 Virtual Machine Migration

113 VMotion Migration Hot migration of a VM from one ESXi host to another without the risk of Guest OS crashes Application failure or loss of responsiveness Available to any Guest OS VMware feature on ESXi since 2003 VMotion included in vsphere Standard Citrix/XenServer - Live Migration since 2007 Microsoft/Hyper-V - Live Migration since 2010 Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class VMotion is the act of migrating a hot or running VM from one ESXi host to another. To be effective, hot migration must be capable of completing this task without introducing undesirable side effects such as OS instability, application instability or guest OS/application unresponsiveness. VMware has offered VMotion since 2003 and is widely regarded as having the most robust, SAN friendly, production ready implementation of hot VM migration available. VMware protects its products with patents. As VMware conceived, implemented and refined VMotion technology, it is likely that it's patent claim on this technology is solid. This may prevent or restrict the hot migration capabilities of competing products because VMware can always claim patent infringement. For all of the above reasons, VMware's host migration technology is the preferred hot migration technology that is being actively deployed in production at this time. Chapter 16 Virtual Machine Migration

114 VMotion Benefits Resolve resource contention problems Hot move VMs from a busy to less busy host Facilitate server maintenance Evacuate a host in preparation for server maintenance, replacement Hardware upgrade, repair ESXi patching, updating Simplifies ESXi server hardware refresh If resources permit, ESXi host maintenance can be performed in the middle of a production day! Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class VMotion provides two key benefits: dynamic VM load balancing and the ability to do ESXi host maintenance without the need to take VMs down. Resource balancing with VMotion is critical to controlling PC server costs. Before VMotion, servers would need to be over provisioned to meet any possible future resource demands. With VMotion, an IT department can deploy the right amount of PC servers to meet their needs (right sizing) and then monitor resource load growth over time. As resource demands begin to exceed available resources, IT departments can provision and deploy new ESXi hosts and then use VMotion to balance VM load across all ESXi hosts. In this way, IT departments can, for the first time, conduct proper PC server capacity planning and deployment. The second advantage of VMotion is that it, for the first time, enables PC server hardware and software maintenance during production hours. This results in cost savings for IT departments because hardware maintenance, patching, configuration updates, etc. can be conducted during normal business hours rather than during off hours (when consultants cost more and when employees may be accumulating time off for working over time). Chapter 16 Virtual Machine Migration

115 VMotion Requirements vcenter initiates, manages, monitors VMotion is coordinated by vcenter VMotion license needed on source/target ESXi A shared SAN LUN or NFS share Visible to both source, target ESXi host A common VM LAN segment Because VM IP, MAC addresses are preserved, VMotion cannot cross a router Consistently named vswitch Port Groups Compatible CPUs Same vendor, CPU features Dedicated VMotion LAN segment For moving the VMs memory pages, context Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class VMotion is a separately licensed feature that is included in many ESXi Editions. Currently VMotion is included in these ESXi 4 Editions: - Standard - Enterprise - Enterprise Plus - Small Business Essentials+ Also note that Storage VMotion is now a separately licensed product. Chapter 16 Virtual Machine Migration

116 VMotion Scenario Configuration: 2+ ESXi hosts Shared SAN LUN VMotion LAN segment Production LAN segment VM is booted Applications running Users actively using VM No need to Quiesce the application Have the user pause their work Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class To enable VMotion, you must provision and deploy your virtual infrastructure with VMotion in mind. This means that at minimum you must have: - vcenter. VMotion cannot be initiated directly from ESXi - Two or more VMotion compatible ESXi hosts (compatible CPUs) - Common LAN segments for VM use (e.g.: the Production LAN above) - An isolated VMotion segment - A SAN/NAS storage volume that is visible to the source and target ESXi hosts As will be explained later in this chapter there are additional requirements that must be met before you can perform VMotion migrations. Chapter 16 Virtual Machine Migration

117 Memory Pre-Copy Target ESXi builds VM's virtual hardware VM's memory pages are copied to target ESXi host Memory bitmap keeps track of page transfers If VM updates the page after transfer The bitmap bit is reset Invalidates the page copy Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class VMotion is completed in a number of discrete steps. An unmentioned step here is that your VMotion request must pass a number of validation steps before vcenter will even attempt to conduct the VMotion. You will see these validation steps in the upcoming Labs. The first step is that the target host creates virtual hardware for the new VM. This hardware is an exact duplicate of the VMs hardware on the source ESXi host. VMotion works by copying the VMs memory image through the VMotion LAN segment to the target ESXi host. Since a VM could have many MB or GB of RAM (VMs can have up to 1TB of RAM) is is not practical to pause the VM and copy all of its RAM through the VMotion network. Instead, the source and target ESXi hosts cooperate by precopying the running VMs memory image through the VMotion LAN segment while the VM is running. Pre-copy is tracked through a memory bit map that the source ESXi creates at the beginning of a VMotion request. The bit map allocates one bit for each page of VM memory. When the page is successfully copied to the target ESXi host, the bit is set. If the page is changed (because the VM is still running) after being copied the bit corresponding to the page is reset to indicate that the page on the target system is no longer valid. Chapter 16 Virtual Machine Migration

118 Progress is Monitored Memory precopy will copy most of the VM's RAM If running VM changes pages, bitmap bit is reset to invalidate the copy Progress is tracked When marginal progress drops to near zero, it's time to move on Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class VMotion copies memory as fast as it can. However, because the VM is still running, memory updates in the VM will invalidate some previously copied pages. vcenter and both ESXi hosts monitor page copy progress. At some point, the running VM will change (and therefore invalidate) memory as fast as it is being copied. When this happens, it is time to move to the next phase of VMotion. Chapter 16 Virtual Machine Migration

119 VM is Descheduled VM stops running No different than if VM loses its turn at CPU Memory bitmap is transferred to target Now, target machine knows which memory pages are valid Transfer very fast Bitmap size: 1-bit per memory page Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class Once it is determined that no more benefit can be had by attempting to copy pages, the source ESXi box de-schedules (stops running) the VM. This is no different than if the VM were to lose it's turn at the CPU and be forced to wait while other VMs get a chance to run. Next, the memory bit map (which identifies successfully copied memory pages) is transferred through the VMotion network to the target ESXi host. This lets the target ESXi host know which pages in the VM are valid and which pages still need to be copied. Since the bit map is very small (one bit for every 4kB of VM memory), it can be transferred to the target host very quickly (in milliseconds). Chapter 16 Virtual Machine Migration

120 VM Context is Transferred VM context (CPU registers, status bits, etc.) sent to target Needed to restore the running state of the VM Pending I/Os sent to the target machine Ensures no loss of keystrokes, screen updates, disk I/O activity, etc. Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class When the VM is de-scheduled (loses its turn at the CPU), the VMkernel performs a context save. A context save is a save of the VM's CPU register contents, status bits and other CPU state information needed to restore the VMs CPU to the exact state it was in when the VM stopped. Since the VM will be resumed on the target ESXi host, this context needs to be transferred. VMotion cannot wait until the VM is completely quiet before contemplating performing the VMotion. Busy VMs may have to deal with an ongoing number of network, screen, keyboard, mouse, CD/DVD, Floppy and/or disk I/O events. The VMkernel tries to judge the most opportune time to perform the actual migration but there may be pending I/Os on the source machine that need to be completed. If this is the case, these incomplete I/Os are transferred over to the target ESXi host where they can be completed once the VM is given a chance to run. Chapter 16 Virtual Machine Migration

121 Switch Over Target ESXi host has CPU registers, status bits All incomplete IO events Most VM virtual memory Source ESXi releases exclusive VM file lock Target machine assumes ownership, locks files Physical switch notified of VM vnic MAC relocation Via Reverse Address Resolution Protocol (RARP) Ensures correct packet delivery during migration Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class Once the VMs memory (or a substantial portion thereof), context, pending I/Os and bit map have been transferred to the target ESXi host we are now ready to perform the actual transfer of ownership. There are two final steps before that transfer can be completed: The source ESXi host must remove its exclusive lock on the VM. When ESXi hosts power on a VM, they place an exclusive file lock on the VM. The host machine must release this lock so that the target ESXi host can assert its own lock on the VM. The target ESXi host must inform the physical switch that handles the VMs network traffic that the VM's MAC address has moved to a new port on the physical switch. The target ESXi host does this by sending a Reverse Address Resolution Protocol (RARP) packet to the switch. RARP packets inform the switch which MAC addresses are behind which ports (as many VM MACs are behind a limited number of physical NICs used to uplink vswitches to the physical network). RARP updates allow the physical switch to update its own MAC-to-port tables. This is needed so that the physical switch can forward any network packets destined for the VM to the VMotion target ESXi host. Chapter 16 Virtual Machine Migration

122 VM Scheduled to Run VM added to run queue Runs on target machine like any other VM VM RAM is incomplete Needed pages copied over VMotion LAN Dynamically inserted into VMs virtual memory image If VM needs a page due to a memory reference That page gets priority Effectively page-faults all remaining memory across VMotion LAN segment Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class The VM is now set to run on the target machine. Its virtual hardware exists exactly as it did on the source machine. The VM has it's complete CPU context. Its pending I/Os are waiting to be processed, and the physical switch knows where to deliver any inbound network packets... The only problem is that there are still needed memory pages on the source ESXi host. The VMkernel makes very clever use of VM demand paged virtual memory management to solve this problem. While the VM is running on the target ESXi host: - Memory references to valid pages complete as normal - Memory references to not-yet-copied pages force a page fetch to the source host The two ESXi hosts cooperate to bring the remaining pages from the source to the target ESXi host. The two machines: - Use low priority, background page copies through the VMotion network to push needed (but not currently referenced) pages to the target ESXi host - Use high priority page copies to immediately transfer any memory pages currently being referenced by the running VM Chapter 16 Virtual Machine Migration

123 Housekeeping When memory is up to date, VMotion is finished Source machine deletes all traces of VM Reclaims VM's RAM Destroys virtual hardware Removes VM from VM roster Target ESXi cleans up Removes memory bitmap Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class Once the final pages of of the VMs memory have been copied to the target ESXi host, the VMotion transaction has effectively been completed. All that remains is some final housekeeping tasks to remove all traces of the VM from the source ESXi host and all VMotion artifacts from the target ESXi host. Chapter 16 Virtual Machine Migration

124 VMotion Experience VM unresponsive for 1.5s or less VMotion speed increased in vsphere 5.0 Fail safe strategy abandon VMotion Re-schedule VM to run on source machine Target machine removes all traces of VM What about lost network packets? Packets received for VM by source ESXi after VMotion are discarded TCP detects loss, retransmits RARP used to update physical switch MAC table Switch then knows to deliver packet to target ESXi host Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class VMware's own objectives for VMotion are very aggressive. For example, a VMotion has only 1.5 seconds of transition window (the time from when the VM stops running on the source ESXi host to when the VM must run on the target ESXi host). This is to ensure that any latency experienced by applications, network connections and users on the VM is sufficiently small as to not cause any stress or failures to the guest OS or running applications. Fail safe for VMotion is very simple... If the VM takes too long to transfer or, if anything goes wrong between the cooperating ESXi hosts, the VMotion request is abandoned. In this case, the source ESXi host simply reschedules the VM to run while the target ESXi host tears down all traces of the VM. TCP/IP provides an elegant solution to lost network packets. Packet loss can occur if the VM transmits a packet to a physical peer and is immediately moved to the target ESXi host. If the physical peer replies quickly, it is possible that the physical switch may not (yet) have received the RARP update (informing the switch that the VM has moved) and will try to forward the packet to the source ESXi host. Since the source ESXi host no longer owns the VM, it can do nothing with the packet (cannot reject it, cannot deliver it, etc.). The originating machine would detect the packet timeout and retransmit. By the time this happens, the physical switch knows the new location of the VM and would forward the packet to the new ESXi host who would then forward it to the freshly VMotioned VM. Chapter 16 Virtual Machine Migration

125 Failed Validation VMotion requests are validated first Use of any host exclusive resource will cause VMotion to fail validation: Virtual NIC connected to Internal vswitch Virtual CD/DVD or virtual floppy device connected to physical device or local media file CPU affinity set Virtual/Physical bus sharing is enabled in the VM E.g.: VMs participate in an MSCS cluster relationship Different Security properties in the source and target ESXi vswitch port groups Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class VMotion requests go through an extensive validation process before any action is taken. In essence, the validation process attempts to determine if there is any reason that VMotion will fail or will leave the VM in an unsafe state. Running VMs can access removable media (floppies/cds), connect their virtual NICs to vswitch Port Groups, etc. The OS or applications running on the VM can use these resources. For VMotion to succeed, the currently active configuration must be completely reproducible on the target ESXi host. If VMotion were attempted while a VM was using a local resource (local vswitch port group, local floppy media or local CD/DVD media) the loss of this resource after VMotion would leave the VM or application in an indeterminate state; risking data loss, application instability or even a VM crash. For this reason VMotion validation will fail if the VM is actively using any resource that is available on the source ESXi host but not on the target ESXi host. VMs in a MSCS cluster configuration cannot be VMotioned due to the nature of MSCS shared disks. VMs with CPU affinity cannot be VMotioned because there is no guarantee that the affinity setting can be honored on the target ESXi host. Any differences in vswitch security settings will also prevent VMotion. Chapter 16 Virtual Machine Migration

126 Validation Warnings Some conditions will generate a warning VMotion allowed to proceed References to local resources Disconnected VM vnic configured to use a Port Group on an Internal vswitch Disconnected reference to physical CD/DVD device or local ISO image Disconnected reference to physical floppy device or local floppy image Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class VMotion validation will generate warnings on references to (but not use of) host specific resources. For example, if a VM is configured to use a CD ISO image that is available to the source ESXi host but is not available to the target ESXi host, and the ISO file is disconnected (defined but not in use), then a warning is generated and VMotion will be allowed to proceed. In this case vcenter is advising you that once VMotion completes the VM won't have access to the media. VMotion validation also warns you if the VM has snapshots. The presence of snapshots will not directly cause VMotion to fail. However, VMs with snapshots do incur extra disk I/O overhead and this overhead may result in more time needed to complete VMotion. Any delay in completing VMotion increases the risk of a VMotion failure, which is the reason for the warning. Chapter 16 Virtual Machine Migration

127 Host Compatibility ESXi VMotion peers must have Access to shared storage resources (Fibre, iscsi or NAS) used by the VM VMkernel ports with VMotion enabled Must be on a common GB LAN segment Compatible vswitch configurations Same Port Group name(s) Case sensitive VMotion compatible CPUs Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class It is important to configure ESXi hosts, that will act as VMotion peers, consistently so that the same resources are available on both systems. The cooperating ESXi hosts should see: - The same datastores including common VMFS volumes and NFS datastores - The same vswitch Port Groups (case sensitive). While these port groups do not need to be on the same vswitches or have the same NIC Team configuration, they do need to connect to the same virtual or physical LAN segments (no router between the source/target ESXi hosts), and - VMotion must be configured correctly on both systems. This includes: - Physical connectivity to an isolated VMotion network - The network should be GB, not 10/100mb - A vswitch uplinked to this VMotion network - A VMkernel port defined on the vswitch with VMotion enabled Surprisingly, the make or model of the machines involved is not important. That is, you can VMotion to/from HP/Dell/IBM/Sun/White Box servers with no issues if all other VMotion requirements are met. Chapter 16 Virtual Machine Migration

128 CPU Compatibility VMotion compatible CPUs must Come from the same manufacturer Intel or AMD Support the same instruction set Match AES encode/decode instructions Must support the same level of SSE instructions Both CPUs must have Execute Disable (XD) or No Execute (NX) feature settings Mask away on individual VMs or turn off in the ESXi host BIOS VM > Edit Settings > Options > Advanced > CPUID Mask > Hide NX/XD flag from Guest Features that don't matter CPU frequency, cache size, number of cores Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class VMware provides a CPU compatibility tool in the form of an ISO image. Simply download this image and burn it to a CD. Then boot your physical server off the CD to have the tool report specific CPU features such as: - CPU Maker - CPU Family - CPU Model, Stepping - Number of Cores - SSE Instruction Set level (SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSE4a, SSE4b, etc.) - Availability of hardware AES Encrypt/Decrypt instructions (currently Intel CPUs) - Execute Disable / No Execute support (yes, no) - Hyperthreading support built in (yes, no) - Support for 64-bit supervisor-mode instructions - Support for 64-bit user-mode instructions Download the ISO at: Chapter 16 Virtual Machine Migration

129 CPU Identification Utility VMware CPU identity test ISO Displays VMotion properties including EVC Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class The bootable CPU reporting tool identifies key features of your host CPUs. Download the image, burn it to CD (it's only 3MB in size) and boot the physical host from the CD. Properties that must match across CPUs include: - Same Vendor. You cannot mix Intel/AMD cpus - Same SSE support. Cannot mix CPUs with different SSE levels - 64-bit Long mode. Must all support 64-bit user mode instructions - 64-bit VMware. Must all support 64-bit supervisor (OS) instructions Properties that should match across CPUs - NX/XD flag. Used to prevent stack overwrites common with viruses. The NX/XD flag is a hardware feature that prevents viruses from over writing the return address of a subroutine (and thereby taking control of the CPU). In Microsoft Windows, this feature is called Data Execution Protection or DEP Note at the bottom of the screen grab that EVC modes are reported. When building a DRS cluster of nearly-compatible CPUs, you would need to set the cluster to the highest common value for CPU EVC compatibility across all machines in the cluster. In this case, that would be 3 rd Generation Opteron CPU. Note: It doesn't matter who manufactured your server as long as all VMotion CPU properties match! Chapter 16 Virtual Machine Migration

130 Storage VMotion Hot move a VMs VMDK, other files to a new datastore Need vcenter, ESXi VMotion licenses As files move VMkernel performs move I/Os directed to the appropriate location Files removed from source volume upon completion Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class Storage VMotion lets you move a VMs constituent files from one datastore to another while the VM is live. Storage VMotion works as follows: - Storage VMotion is integrated into the Migration Wizard - Select the Move Storage option when the wizard launches - Select the target datastore and complete the wizard The ESXi host VMkernel then creates the appropriate directory on the target datastore and begins to copy the VMs files. Special action is needed when copying the VMs virtual disk (VMDK) files... - The VMkernel begins a VMDK copy - If the VM performs an I/O to a part of the VMDK that has not (yet) been copied, the VMkernel completes the I/O on the source volume - If the VM performs an I/O to a part of the VMDK that has been copied, the VMkernel completes the I/O on the target volume In this way, I/Os are completed in the appropriate location and all VM data remains consistent. Once the Storage VMotion request completes, the source files/directory are removed. Chapter 16 Virtual Machine Migration

131 Storage VMotion Scenarios Hot migrate VMs and disks from Local storage to shared SAN storage No down time while moving to SAN Old SAN LUN to new SAN LUN No down time during SAN refresh Shared LUN to a new dedicated LUN No down time on LUN-LUN move on same SAN Frees up space on originating LUN Reduce need to over-allocate SAN LUNs Avoids hours of down time due to cold VM migrations Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class Storage VMotion has many practical uses as outlined in the slide above. The key advantage to Storage VMotion is that it eliminates the downtime normally associated with cold migration. Chapter 16 Virtual Machine Migration

132 Lab 16 Part 2 & 3 Lab 16 Part 2 Add a second ESXi host to vcenter Power on the VM you cold migrated to the Production SAN LUN Hot migrate it to the second ESXi host VMotion Stress Test Hot Migrate again while the VM is in use and try Continuous ping of the VM Use Notepad and move the VM Run qpi.exe and move the VM Be prepared to report your experiences Lab 16 Part 3 Use Storage VMotion to hot migrate a powered on VM to the iscsi SAN Get Certified now. Sit the ESXLab Certified Virtualization Specialist exam at the end of your class VMotion stress tests are suggested so that you can verify for yourself that VMotion is not fragile. If you have extra time in this lab, please take some time and run any of the above stress-test suggestions. Feel free to think of additional stress tests and give them a try. Be prepared to share your observations with the class. Chapter 16 Virtual Machine Migration

133 Chapter 16 Virtual Machine Migration