vSphere

Another VMware Cloud in Action — The Hut Group…

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Another VMware Cloud in Action — The Hut Group Maximizes Online Retail and Minimizes Revenue Loss with Cloud-Based Disaster Recovery

Another VMware Cloud in Action — The Hut Group…

With more than 60 websites ranging from health and beauty to fashion, The Hut Group needed to reduce downtime to zero. As one of the fastest growing companies in the United Kingdom, The Hut Group has a lot to lose — up to £500,000 a day — if its sites were to go offline. The […] The post Another VMware Cloud in Action — The Hut Group Maximizes Online Retail and Minimizes Revenue Loss with Cloud-Based Disaster Recovery appeared first on VMware vCloud Blog .

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The Power of Partnership in the Cloud Era

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The Power of Partnership in the Cloud Era

The Power of Partnership in the Cloud Era

Enterprise IT has a near-impossible strategic task. It must ensure that the company has the tools and capabilities it will need, without knowing for certain what those needs will be. Two VMware cloud executives explain the need for partnership and how global is the new neighborhood in the cloud era and how a new mindset […] The post The Power of Partnership in the Cloud Era appeared first on VMware vCloud Blog .

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VMware Delivers New Public Cloud Enhancements…

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#VMware Delivers New Public Cloud Enhancements for Its Unified Hybrid Cloud

VMware Delivers New Public Cloud Enhancements…

Today at VMworld 2015 Europe, VMware, Inc. announced enhancements to the company’s unified hybrid cloud platform that will accelerate application development, delivery and deployment, while also providing deeper insights into customers’ hybrid cloud deployments.

VMware Advocacy

vSphere 6 Update 1 Breaks Veeam Backups

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So after updating my vSphere 6 home lab to Update 1 I noticed that when I woke this morning that all my Veeam jobs had failed over night…bugger.

Screenshot 2015-09-19 08.31.51

After digging around in the logs (C:ProgramDataVeeamBackup)  I discovered the following errors.

Screenshot 2015-09-19 08.25.35

I then did a bit of searching on the internet and found the following VMware KB and Veeam Post

So I edited the /etc/vmware/config file with WinSCP and added in the vmauthd.ssl.noSSLv3 = false at the end of the file.Screenshot 2015-09-19 08.30.56

I then restarted the rhttpproxy service  by enabling SSH on the host and using putty to run the following command

/etc/init.d/rhttpproxy restart

Screenshot 2015-09-19 08.31.32

Once the service has been restarted I repeated this on the remaining on hosts in the cluster, I was then able to successfully re-run the Veeam jobs.

Screenshot 2015-09-19 08.34.11

So to summarise Gostev on the Veeam forums posted saying the following on Monday.

“As far as the original issue that created this topic, the research has now been completed.

SSL usage seems to be isolated to NFC API, and is caused by a bug in parsing the list of supported SSL/TLS protocol versions on our side. Despite TLS was added at some point, this bug went unnoticed, as things continued to work normally over SSL – until now.

The good news is that this will be very easy for us to fix – so, we are planning to provide the hotfix for v8 Update 2 soon, and also include this fix into v8 Update 3 scheduled to be released late September (with the main feature being Windows 10 support). Thanks”

 

It’s good to see Veeam reacting so quickly to this as it appears to have even caught VMware themselves off guard as it also affected View Composer connectivity as per the above VMware KB.

Veeam also have released their own KB it can be found here

Horizon View Composer Service (4 of 7)

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VMwareHorizonView

The View composer service is responsible for the creation and provisioning of the Virtual Desktops within vCenter.

viewcomposer

Provisioning

  • Create a VM in vCenter with the View Agent installed (the Parent VM),
  • Shutdown the VM and create a Snapshot,
  • In View Manager, create a new Automated linked-clone pool.

What happens next (KB 1021506);

  1. View Manager creates the linked-clone entry in View LDAP and puts the virtual machine into the Provisioning state.
  2. View Manager calls View Composer to create the linked clone
  3. The View Composer Server creates the machine account entry in Active Directory for the new clone and creates a random binary password for the newly created computer account.
  4. If a replica for the base image and snapshot does not yet exist in the target datastore for the linked clone, View Composer creates the replica in the datastore. If a separate datastore is configured to store all replicas, the replica is created in the replica datastore. (In View 4.5 and later, replicas can be stored in a separate datastore.)
  5. View Composer creates the linked clone using the vCenter Server API.
  6. View Composer creates an internal disk on the linked clone. This small disk contains configuration data for QuickPrep or Sysprep. The disk also stores machine password changes that Windows performs every 30 days, according to the policy setting. This disk data ensures that domain connectivity is maintained when a checkpointed desktop is refreshed.

Recompose

A recompose operation lets the administrator preserve the View Composer persistent disk and all user data inside this disk while changing the operating system disk to a new base image and snapshot. With recompose, an administrator can easily distribute operating system patches and new software to users. Recomposing between major operating system versions are not supported (XP >Vista, XP >Windows7, Vista >Windows7).

Because a new operating system  disk is created during a recompose, the clone is also customized again during the recompose operation. When the customization is completed, View Manager takes a new snapshot.

These steps occur during a recompose operation:

  1. View Manager puts the linked clone into the Maintenance state.
  2. View Manager calls the View Composer resync API for the linked clones being recomposed, directing View Composer to use the new base image and snapshot.
  3. If a replica for the base image and snapshot does not yet exist in the target datastore for the linked clone,View Composer creates the replica in the datastore. If a separate datastore is configured to store all replicas, a replica is created in the replica datastore.
  4. View Composer deletes the current operating system disk for the linked clone and creates a new operating system disk, linked to the new replica.
  5. The rest of the recompose cycle is identical to the customization phase of the provisioning and customization cycle.

4kn & 512e vSphere Support

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Just a reminder for people not to create volumes with a 4K sector size with vSphere or VSAN, allot of the newer firmware revisions are now allowing 4K sector sizes for example Dell EqualLogic.

See the below screenshot as an example although the 512byte sector size is the default the adventurous or hungover IT admin amongst us may end up going with the 4K option without considering the consequences.

Screenshot 2015-09-02 10.20.28

VMware have made their support statement quite clear on this over the last few months but I thought I would repost this for the benefit of others who might not of seen this KB.

What are 4K Native and 512e drives?
Industry standard disk drives have been using a native 512 bytes sector size. However, due to the increasing demand for larger capacities, the storage industry introduced new advanced formats, which are 512-byte emulation (512e) and 4KB Native (4Kn).

4Kn is the advanced format in which the physical sectors and logical sectors are both 4,096 bytes in size.

512e is the advanced format in which the physical sector size is 4,096 bytes, but the logical sector size emulates 512 bytes sector size.

This table compares Native 512-byte sectors to the new advanced formats:

Format Logical Sector Size Physical Sector Size
512n 512 512
512e 512 4,096
4Kn 4,096 4,096

Does current GA version of vSphere and VSAN support 4K Native drives?

No. 4K Native drives are not supported in current GA releases of vSphere and VSAN.

Does current GA version of vSphere and VSAN support 512e drives?

No. 512e drives are not supported with the current versions of vSphere and VSAN due to potential performance issues when using these drives.

For further reading please see VMware KB2091600

VMware OS Optimization Tool

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Just thought I would remind people of a great VMware Lab tool that has been out for a while now which optimizes Windows 7/8/2008/2012 systems for use with VMware Horizon View.

screenshot-1Mediu (1)

The optimization tool includes customizable templates to enable or disable Windows system services and features, per VMware recommendations and best practices, across multiple systems. Since most Windows system services are enabled by default, the optimization tool can be used to easily disable unnecessary services and features to improve performance.

You can perform the following actions using the VMware OS Optimization Tool:

  • Local Analyze/Optimize
  • Remote Analyze
  • Optimization History and Rollback
  • Managing Templates

https://labs.vmware.com/flings/vmware-os-optimization-tool

 

ESXi Embedded Host Client

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Check out the latest fling to hit VMware Labs it’s still in development but VMware are keen to get some user feedback on it, the article is copied below.

This version of the ESXi Embedded Host Client is written purely in HTML and JavaScript, and is served directly from your ESXi host and should perform much better than any of the existing solutions. Please note that the Host Client cannot be used to manage vCenter. Currently, the client is in its development phase, but we are releasing this Fling to elicit early feedback from our users to help guide the development and user experience that we are creating. As such, the client is not fully featured and only implements a hand full of the most important features. Some of these include:

  • VM operations (Power on, off, reset, suspend, etc).
  • Creating a new VM, from scratch or from OVF/OVA (limited OVA support)
  • Configuring NTP on a host
  • Displaying summaries, events, tasks and notifications/alerts
  • Providing a console to VMs
  • Configuring host networking
  • Configuring host advanced settings
  • Configuring host services

ESXiHostClientFlingScreenShotLargest

https://labs.vmware.com/flings/esxi-embedded-host-client

Virtualisation investment boosts Bernicia

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A nice article has just been published by network communications news on a recent VDI and vSphere project I have just completed for Bernicia Group, I have copied the article below.

Bernicia_HQ-fill-492x327

Bernicia Group, the housing organisation, has completed a major overhaul of its IT infrastructure, adopting a virtualised environment and reducing its disaster recovery (DR) period from days to less than 30 minutes. The development hopes to cut costs, speed up its processes and bolster security.

Bernicia, which has over 8,000 homes in the North East of England, worked with SITS to virtualise over 80 physical servers and switch from Microsoft Hyper-V to VMware software. The organisation’s storage architecture has been reduced from 18 rack units to three and, with a second virtual infrastructure deployed securely off-site. 

SITS has also implemented a resilient Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) using VMWare Horizon View, providing a faster and universal experience for remote and in-office staff.

More than 300 users can now access software via a virtual PC operating centrally on Bernicia’s servers. Existing PCs are being converted into thin clients and are now centrally managed by IGEL’s Universal Management Suite. Horizon View software has been installed on laptops, tablets and off-site PC’s, increasingly used by Bernicia staff as the organisation expands and remote working rises.
Gary Hind, head of ICT at Bernicia, said: ‘Overall, our new technology infrastructure has allowed us to make major savings in several areas, including in licensing, power consumption and DR contracts, as well as significantly improving our productivity.’

SITS specialises in using best-of-breed products to provide a range of services, including server and desktop virtualisation, business continuity, enterprise storage, data centre facilities and health check and planning services. Earlier this year the business won the coveted Customer Choice Award from Data Protection Specialists Veeam Software.

Source : http://www.networkcommunicationsnews.co.uk/index.php/1624-virtualisation-investment-boosts-Bernicia

TCP/4002 View 6.1 & Horizon View Enhanced Security Mode

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One to watch out for since the introduction of Horizon View 6.1 VMware have introduced a new port for JMS TCP/4002 Horizon 6.1 Documentation

Screenshot 2015-08-11 21.15.34

Screenshot 2015-08-11 21.12.30

 

Also be aware before enabling enhanced mode…

If you plan to change an upgraded View environment from Enabled to Enhanced, you must first upgrade all View Connection Server instances, security servers, and View desktops to Horizon 6 version 6.1 or a later release. After you change the setting to Enhanced, the new setting takes place in stages.
1
You must manually restart the VMware Horizon View Message Bus Component service on all View Connection Server hosts in the pod, or restart the View Connection Server instances.
2
After the services are restarted, the View Connection Server instances reconfigure the message security mode on all desktops and security servers, changing the mode to Enhanced.
3
To monitor the progress in View Administrator, go to View Configuration > Global Settings.
On the Security tab, the Enhanced Security Status item will show Enhanced when all components have made the transition to Enhanced mode.
Alternatively, you can use the vdmutil command-line utility to monitor progress. See Using the vdmutil Utility to Configure the JMS Message Security Mode.
View components that predate Horizon 6 version 6.1 cannot communicate with a View Connection Server 6.1 instance that uses Enhanced mode