vSphere 5 Best Practices: Dell PowerEdge R710 BIOS
Posted: November 9, 2011 Filed under: Dell, VMware | Tags: best practices, bios, bios settings, dell, memory, memory slots, power edge, poweredge, r710, slots, vsphere, vsphere 5 13 CommentsI’ve had occasion recently to implement many vSphere 4.1 environments for a customer. There’s a lot to learn during these deployments and many worthy blog posts are just waiting to be written. But one especially comes to mind mainly because of its temporal relation to a recent query I had regarding a BIOS setting for a Dell PowerEdge R710. The exact query doesn’t matter, but what’s important is that I ran across Marek.Z’s blog, Default Reasoning, and this post in search of an answer. His post regarding vSphere 4.x BIOS settings and best practices interested me in writing a BIOS best practices post for vSphere 5. This is going to be very similar to vSphere 4.x, but you’ll notice I’ve included explanations as to why these settings are best suited to vSphere 5 environments. Some of these settings may be obvious, while others, like NUMA, C1E, and Memory, may not be. Especially for these, I’ve included the results of my research.
Add e-mail alerts to all 41 default vSphere 4.1 alarms
Posted: November 3, 2011 Filed under: PowerShell / PowerCLI, VMware | Tags: add email alerts, alarms, alerts, email, Get-AlarmAction, Get-AlarmDefinition, New-AlarmAction, New-AlarmActionTrigger, notification email, powercli, script, scripting, vcenter, vsphere 4 CommentsTowards the end of a customer’s virtualization implementation we’re doing some clean-up of the environment. During the initial setup I was using my own local email address to test various alerting processes, of which there are several. For instance, every SQL Server maintenance task sends a success/failure e-mail alert, the NetApp Virtual Storage Console plug-in can be configured to e-mail an administrator after snapshots are taken, and the Dell iDRAC can send e-mails on hardware status changes. All those are fairly quick to configure or lack a way to script a quick solution. But with 40 default alarms in vSphere, three vCenters, and being lazy as I am, I knew there must be a better solution than right clicking 120 alarms and copying-and-pasting an email address. As the proverb goes, if you repeat it, script it. So I set out to find how PowerCLI could help me.
Ever heard of ARP Stuffing? Me neither.
Posted: November 1, 2011 Filed under: Tid-bits | Tags: access, access APC, access PDU, APC, arp, arp -s, arp stuffing, assign, assign IP address, configure apc, configure pdu, distribution, how to configure apc pdu, PDU, ping -l, power, power distribution unit, rack mount pdu, rack mounted apc pdu, unit 7 CommentsSo I’m looking at a metered APC PDU, model 7811, that I need to access. It’s fully racked and stacked, boxes on top of and below it. I don’t have the RJ-11 to serial cable that came with it and I don’t feel like making one. There’s currently not a DHCP scope on the subnet it will belong to so it will likely assign itself an APIPA address assuming it’s set to DHCP by default. It’s essentially an out-of-the-box config – which is nothing. What’s the easiest way to gain access to it?
vSphere Compliance Checker on ESXi 5
Posted: October 25, 2011 Filed under: VMware | Tags: 4.1, checker, compliance, compliance checker, esx, esxi, vmware, vsphere Leave a commentAt a customer’s site towards the end of a deployment, we decided to see what this new fan-dangled vSphere Compliance Checker could do. We ran it against an ESXi 4.1U1 host and it spit out some nice colors and information. The quick and dirty of it is that it was easy to install, easy to use, and provided useful information. So I decided to run it against my ESXi 5 hosts in a test lab and write up a quickie post.
Part III – Update Manager Patching Guide
Posted: October 23, 2011 Filed under: VMware, Windows | Tags: 7-zip, patching, split into volumes, update manager, vcenter, vmware, vum 2 CommentsThis post is the third in a series dedicated to helping you set up your update infrastructure in vSphere 4.1. Part I is about installing and configuring Update Manager. Part II shows you how to install and configure the Update Manager Download Service. As the last in this series, this post will explain how to patch your ESX/ESXi hosts.
Part II – Update Manager Download Service (UMDS) Installation and Configuration Guide
Posted: October 23, 2011 Filed under: VMware, Windows | Tags: configuration, download service, installation, umds, update manager, update manager download service, vcenter, vmware 5 CommentsThis walkthrough is part II of a series of guides on installing and configuring VMware’s tools for updating and patching ESXi 4.1 hosts. You can find Part I here and Part III here. The Update Manager Download Service (UMDS) is used in an air-gap environment where the vCenter Update Manager server (VUM) does not have access to the Internet to download patches itself – instead it relies on UMDS to download the patches. Once patches are downloaded, they’re manually copied via removable media, usually a CD/DVD, to VUM. Once VUM has the patches, it then works through the vSphere Client and the Update Manager plug-in to update the hosts. Although VUM can download operating system patches for Windows and metadata for Linux patches, we’re not using this configuration in this guide. We’re assuming the environments are updated via WSUS or SCCM.
Part I – Update Manager (VUM) Installation and Configuration Guide
Posted: October 23, 2011 Filed under: VMware, Windows | Tags: configuration, installation, update, update manager, vcenter, vmware, vum Leave a commentSo during my first data center virtualization project, I had to write up a series of documents for internal reference. These documents were to help us perform a standard installation at each site we migrate. I thought it would be helpful to post them for anyone else looking to perform these tasks, as well. This series of posts is about VMware Update Manager 4.1U1 and its associated Update Manager Download Service. It appears in three posts because the topic can be logically separated into three steps: installing and configuring VUM, installing and configuring UMDS, and a patching guide once your initial update infrastructure is in place. This post, as you can see, is part I. Let me know if it helps you out or if I missed something. All the best!
SQL Server 2008 backups for VMware databases
Posted: October 14, 2011 Filed under: SQL Server, VMware, Windows | Tags: 2008, backups, server, sql, sql 2008, sql server, vcenter, vcenter server, vmware Leave a commentAt a minimum, you’ll want to perform regular backups of your vCenter, Update Manager, and System databases. You don’t have to be a DBA to perform simple backups. You don’t need to know T-SQL or database programming to perform these steps. There’s an easy wizard that walks you through a standard Windows Next-Next-Finish set up.
There are a couple things to note in the walkthrough below. We’re using SQL Server 2008 Enterprise Edition 64-bit on a 64-bit Windows Server 2008 SP2 Enterprise Edition. The SQL server is also a virtual machine in a vSphere 4.1 environment.
Restoring vCenter Database on SQL Server 2008
Posted: October 13, 2011 Filed under: SQL Server, Windows | Tags: database, restore, restore database, server, sql, sql server, vcenter, vcenter database Leave a commentHopefully you’ll never have a disaster hit your datacenter, but if you do, this guide can show you how to restore your vCenter database to your latest backup. Your vCenter database holds all the information you see in the vSphere Client and more. Although your VMs will still run your ESXi hosts without vCenter and its associated database, you lose a lot of enterprise functionality.
In my testing, I found the SQL server to which you recover can have a different name. I did not change the name of my vCenter server. All machines involved had different IP addresses and resided in a different domain. All domain service accounts were recreated in the test domain. I’m leaning towards the possibility that the vCenter server can have a different name, as well.
Trouble installing SQL Server 2008 on Windows Server 2008?
Posted: October 13, 2011 Filed under: SQL Server, Windows | Tags: 2008, highly secured, install failed, installation failed, security, server, sql, sql server, Windows, windows server 2008 Leave a commentA highly secured Windows installation can make your SQL installation fail
There are some highly modified default installations of both Windows desktops and servers that certain institutions use to increase the security of their networks. These versions of Windows are focused on security and are locked down from the ground up, which is a good thing. But all these security settings can give an IT guy headaches if you’re trying to get things accomplished. One such feature can make your SQL install fail. I happened to come across this recently in a test lab.
If you’re driving along with a standard SQL install, everything will be going fine until, towards the end of the installation process, you see the gem below. And SQL installs take a little time to complete. Having to reinstall can be a real pain.
VirtuallyMikeBrown 