The VMguy » Support Updates

Release: Final patch rollup for ESX 3.0.2

The VMguy — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 05:44:31 +0000

My apologies to my readers as I tried to put out a quick blog on the final 3.0.2 patch rollup on Saturday morning. I posted an article on 3.0.3 as I scanned the downloads quickly without reading slowly. 3.0.3 has been out a year. Nice one.

What I wanted to post was that 3.0.2 had it’s final patch rollup released. You can find all of the details here. You can also find the 713MB download here.

You can find the support matrix for End of Life here. If you are still on 3.0.2 on any of your hosts, now is the time to plan on getting to 3.0.3 , 3.5 or 4.0. The patches are now done for 3.0.2. Minor releases (like 3.0.2) are supported for 1 year after the next minor release (3.0.3 was released 8/8/08).

Making the Safe Passage from Virtual Iron

The VMguy — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 12:55:15 +0000

By now you’ve probably heard of the Virtual Iron Safe Passage program from VMware (which has been very successful so far). A request was emailed to me (thanks Alan!) for more information on how to actually convert those VM’s from Virtual Iron once you purchase the VMware software. As luck would have it, there’s a KB article for that.

You can use standalone converter or converter in vCenter. There are two main points to remember:

The source VM cannot be para-virtualized.
You must disable the VS Tools Installed setting on the configuration tab within the source VM before starting.

At this point you can do cold cloning or hot cloning (depending on your software versions). The conversion works about the same as a standard physical machine at this point. Please make sure to review the KB article fully, it will allow you Safe Passage from Virtual Iron.

New Technical White Papers from the week

The VMguy — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 11:00:13 +0000

Some new technical whitepapers this past week. Here’s a listing and their breakdown:

Managing Custom ESXi Extensions – A short paper on tips on how to add or remove or troubleshoot customer ESXi Extensions. These can be things like VMKernel module, driver, or Common Interface Module (CIM) Providers.
DMZ Virtualization Using VMware vSphere 4 and the Cisco Nexus 1000V Virtual Switch – The title indicates this Paper is for a DMZ deployment but in reality this is a very good overall paper on many of the capabilities of the Nexus 1000v Software switch from Cisco. If you are thinking about the 1000v, definately take a read thru this.
Software and Hardware Techniques for x86 Virtualization – This is an outstanding history lesson about how virtualization has evolved from the early days to today. It’s very technical in nature describing Binary Translation to Paravirtualization and hardware extensions. These are things we, as VMware engineers, have known for a long time. This gives our technical customers and partners a better understanding of many of the concepts around virtualization and where they come from.

New Technical Papers posted last week

The VMguy — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 14:19:48 +0000

There were 5 new technical papers published last week. Some really good reading for administrators and architects.

VMware VDI Storage Considerations <-A great paper which discusses which protocol to use, how to lay out datastores, etc for View implementations.
Running Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 on VMware Infrastructure <-A great paper for those wanting to virtualize Sharepoint.
Automating SharePoint Provisioning and Deployment on VMware vSphere <- This paper describes how you can setup sharepoint sites in templates for rapid deployment of new sharepoint instances.
Virtualizing a Windows Active Directory Domain Infrastructure <- I know many have already done this but it is still a great reference and includes best practices. Definately want to confirm your settings against this white paper
SAP Solutions on VMware vSphere: High Availability <- A good white paper on the availability options for SAP implementations and the benefits of each.

New website section added: KB Bookmarks

The VMguy — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 16:03:07 +0000

In going thru the KB articles for the week this week, I noticed something that I say alot: “Definately an article all admins should bookmark.” So I decided to add a new page to the website that has bookmarks to all of the KB articles that if I were an admin, I have those in my bookmark folders to reference when I need them. I apologize, the list is somewhat small at this point but I will continue to add to it every week when I go thru the KB articles and I will also break it into catagories as the list grows.. If you have a KB article that you use regularly, please send it to me on the email page and I’ll get it added to the list. Go here to check out the new page.

Notable KB articles for the week ending June 13

The VMguy — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 15:36:31 +0000

Whew! Much easier to manage when you have a smaller list to choose from. Here’s the week’s selection from the 94 KB articles new or updated in the past week:

VMotion wizard fails when migrating a virtual machine from an ESX 3.x host to an ESX 4.0 host <-The VM has to be on hardware version 4 at a minimum to vMotion to ESX4
Determining if Intel Virtualization Technology or AMD Virtualization is enabled in the BIOS without rebooting <-You must have these enabled for 64-bit guest OSes or to use Enhansed vMotion Compatibility
Control+Alt key combinations in the vCenter Service Console <-Nice keyboard trick if you need to send ctrl-alt commands
vShield Zones resource utilization and latency statistics <-Zones utilization and footprint info.
Which ports are required for vShield Zones operation? <-Also good to know for Zones operation
Setting up vCenter Server in a Microsoft Cluster Service Cluster <-Great reference to know, updated last week
A Windows 2003 virtual machine high CPU usage after a conversion from physical to virtual
Sysprep file locations and versions <-anyone who deploys VMs from templates should bookmark this one
Stopping, starting, or restarting VirtualCenter services <-updated to include v4
Enhanced VMotion Compatibility (EVC) processor support

Notable KB articles for the two weeks ended June 6

The VMguy — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 02:36:33 +0000

Sorry, was out two days last week from a death in the family and still catching up. Here’s the latest selection from the 268 articles new or updated in the last two weeks ended June 6:

VMware View Client requires HTTP 1.1 to be enabled in Internet Explorer <-had no idea on this one, good to know
Unable to Open Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel Attachments in a Captured Microsoft Outlook Application <-Another great tip for ThinApp
Multipathing policies in ESX 4
Mounting a virtual disk as a MacOS volume <- Nice tip for Fusion
Licensing Site Recovery Manager <-If testing or installing SRM, please read.
Upgrading an ESX 3.x virtual machine to ESX 4.0
Installing ESX 4.0 and vCenter 4.0 best practices <- A must read before upgrading
Processors and guest operating systems that support VMware Fault Tolerance
Disabling VMware Web Access on an ESX host
Does fragmentation affect VMFS datastores? <-a great one I get asked about when I discuss thin provisioning
Determining if multiple virtual CPUs are causing performance issues
Microsoft Cluster Service (MSCS) support on ESX

Notable KB articles for the week ending 5/23

The VMguy — Mon, 25 May 2009 14:53:06 +0000

WOW. Release vSphere and a whole bunch of KB articles come with it. Glad I didn’t wait two weeks to post this one.

Here’s this week’s selection of the 300 Knowledgebase articles new or updated in the past 7 days :

vCenter Update Manager 4.0 port requirements <-Many customers are deploying UM to roll out vSphere.
Installing vCenter Update Manager 4.0 best practices
Licensing ESX 4.0, ESXi 4.0, and vCenter 4.0 <-Licensing mechanisms in vSphere are completely different in 4.0 from 3.x.
Configuring IPv6 on ESX 4.0.x <-don’t have a lot of customers doing it, but many are preparing
Configuring a Virtual Machine Communication Interface (VMCI) on a vSphere ESX host <-you can configure a very fast way for two VM’s to talk on a single host without going thru the network
Installing Linked-Mode and ADAM <- for linking multiple vCenter servers together
Configuring Virtual Switch VLAN Tagging (VST) mode on a vNetwork Distributed Switch
Best practices for using PowerPath/VE with VMware vSphere 4.0 <-If you’re going to use powerpath for multipathing in ESX, read this
Upgrading VMware Tools on multiple virtual machines
Disabling vNetwork Distributed Switches <-good to know, had to figure this out on my own in the lab
Configuring a legacy license server
vSphere 4.0 upgrade options
Upgrading an ESX 3.x virtual machine to ESX 4.0
The Turn on Fault Tolerance option is disabled
Understanding VMware Fault Tolerance <-Very nice overview of FT and what’s required
VMware High Availability slot calculation <-how HA’s overhead requirements are determined
Configuring vNetwork Distributed Switch using vCenter
vNetwork Distributed Switch on ESX 4.x – Concepts Overview
Downgrading vSphere 4.0 License to ESX 3.5 version <-Good to know if you buy 4.0 licenses but want to run 3.5 still
VMware ESX 4.0 and VMware ESXi 4.0 require 64bit servers <-this is somewhat obvious but make sure you are aware for older servers
Required VMware vCenter Converter ports <-for P2V’s thru a DMZ for instance
vCenter Server Installation Worksheet <-nice checklist for installation of vCenter
vCenter Required Ports
Cannot create a new linked clone automatic pool with a custom OU <-ran into this at a customer, specific syntax needed and listed
Installing ESX 4.0 and vCenter 4.0 best practices
Upgrading to ESX 4.0 and vCenter 4.0 best practices
Choosing a network adapter for your virtual machine <-great article that every virtualization admin should understand
EVC and CPU Compatibility FAQ <-If you have different classes of CPU’s, please read.

When does support end of life on my VMware products?

The VMguy — Mon, 18 May 2009 16:15:01 +0000

A great question that I get asked often and one that is on the rise with the impending release of vSphere.

For VI, there are 3 levels of support over time and I’m quoting them directly from the VI Support Lifecycle policy :

General Support – (will be provided for two years from general availability of a Major or Minor Release, or one year after the next Major or Minor release, whichever is longer) Starting with General Release, customers will receive support from VMware as described in the table below. As new hardware is released by third party platform manufacturers, VMware will update the Hardware Compatibility Guide with platforms that have been tested and certified. However, VMware cannot guarantee that all new hardware will be certified and supported.
Extended Support – (will be provided for three years following General Support.) New hardware platforms are no longer supported, new guest OS updates may or may not be applied, and bug fixes are limited to critical issues. Critical bugs are deviations from specified product functionality that cause data corruption, data loss, system crash, or significant customer application down time and there is no work-around that can be implemented.
Technical Guidance – (will be provided for two additional years following Extended Support.) Assistance is available through the self help page. Customers can also open a support request online to receive support and workarounds for low-severity issues on supported configurations only. There will be no new hardware support, guest OS updates, security patches or bug fixes. The phase is intended for usage by customers operating in stable environments with systems that are operating under reasonably stable loads. Telephone support is not provided during Technical Guidance.

Now I could list all of the dates themselves for vCenter, VCB, ESX, etc. However I think it’s best to provide you a link to the chart which can be found on the VI End of Support Matrix Page . I think the most important date is the end of General support because that’s when you will probably want to consider upgrading your version, or at least, start to think about it. Once general support is over, no hardware platforms are added and only critical patches are written.

For all of the other products (Fusion, Workstation, SRM, Lab Manager, etc) the policy is: upon the GA of a major release, VMware will support the immediately preceding major release for an additional 18 months. You can find all of the details and the dates in the General Support Life Cycle Policy .

Notable KB articles from the two weeks ended 5/16

The VMguy — Mon, 18 May 2009 15:07:48 +0000

Here’s this week’s selection from the 176 articles new/updated in the last two weeks. One note, I’m added some comments in-line in the list where appropriate on why I chose that article.

Sysprep on Windows Server 2003 does not run
Support for Windows 7 and the Aero theme <- For workstation, Fusion, etc.
Unable to deploy linked clones and provisioning fails with the error reject prepare
Conversion of a physical source with software mirrors fails
Using stack trace information to diagnose purple screen errors
Migrating virtual machines between ESX hosts without shared storage
VirtualCenter 2.5 database upgrade fails
Failure to create LUN snapshots when performing a Site Recovery Manager test failover
Uploading the License file to the License Server <-Going away with the new license key model in vSphere
Deleting Parallels tools <-For Fusion
Diagnosing a VMware High Availability cluster configuration failure <-Great article for troubleshooting, bookmark it.
Troubleshooting the VMware VirtualCenter Server service when it does not start or fails <-Great article for troubleshooting, bookmark it.
Choosing a Network Adapter for Your Virtual Machine <-If you wondered the differences between the adapter types, please read.
Using performance collection tools to gather data for fault analysis <-another good article on troubleshooting ESX crashes
Extracting the log file after an ESX or ESXi host fails with a purple screen error
Forcing a virtual machine to power off <-for Fusion
Sysprep file locations and versions <-if you ever want to build a VM from a template, this is a keeper.
Moving a managed ESX host from one VirtualCenter to another VirtualCenter
Changing the download location for VMware Update Manager <-perhaps if you did not plan on enough disk space
Configuring name resolution for VMware VirtualCenter

Notable KB articles for the week ending 5/2

The VMguy — Sat, 02 May 2009 12:44:04 +0000

Here’s this week’s selection of the 75 articles new or updated this past week:

Notable KB articles for the two weeks ended 4/24

The VMguy — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 03:43:27 +0000

Here’s a sampling of the 142 KB articles new or updated in the last two weeks ended 4/24:

Notable KB articles for 2 weeks ended 4/11

The VMguy — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 13:45:21 +0000

Two weeks of KB articles built up here today. Happy Easter to all who celebrate it. I should have some good articles next week as I’ll be out at Partner Exchange all week.

Here’s this week’s selection of the whopping 214 articles new or updated in the last two weeks:

Notable KB articles for 2 weeks ending 3/28

The VMguy — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 13:18:15 +0000

Sometimes I get caught up with family stuff on the weekends and don’t get to the KB report. So this week I have two weeks worth. Here’s this week’s selection from the 165 KB articles new or updated in the last two weeks:

Notable KB articles for the week – plus explanation

The VMguy — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 15:21:30 +0000

I’m going to add two points this week to clarify my KB article summary. First off, readers have been asking me, "Where do you get your list of KB articles from?" Well, the answer is quite simple, I go to http://kb.vmware.com, search based on date ranges (typically the last Sunday to Saturday.) Then I comment on how many total articles that were new/updated in the date range. At this point I review all of the articles one by one. I look for articles with 4 or 5 star ratings (anyone can rate them, if you find one you think is good, please rate it appropriately.) I look for ones that have been created new in the past week, those are given some additional preference. I review the ones that have been updated in the last week, I only try to add those if it’s something I get asked about often. Lastly, I look for tips for new VMWare administrators. My site, after all, is "Virtualization for the little guy," many of my customers and readers are new to VMware so I try to point out KB articles that new admins should bookmark and hang onto (troubleshooting, best practices, tips and tricks, etc).

Second point for this week’s review is to let you know that the VMware team also has a blogging site where they do their own weekly review of new articles. You can always check out their weekly report.

Now onto this week’s selection from the 90 new or updated articles for the week ending 3/14/2009. There are a number of new additions on vCenter Heartbeat because it was just released last week.

Notable KB articles for the week

The VMguy — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 17:42:38 +0000

I was out a bunch last week and have not done the KB articles in 2 weeks so this issue will be a bit larger than normal. Here’s this week’s selection of the 170 KB articles new/updated in the last 2 weeks:

New IPv6 and ESX Whitepaper

The VMguy — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 20:57:38 +0000

Came across a new whitepaper today of ESX and Virtual Infrastructure and the ins-and-outs of running IPv6 in that enviornment.

Many of my customers and Partners have begun evaluating IPv6 and are starting to deploy it. Definately some good reading if you are beginning to evaluate the upcoming standard.

You can find the whitepaper here .

Notable KB Articles from the week

The VMguy — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 04:59:23 +0000

Have a few to report of the 55 new/updated articles from the week.

Notable KB Articles for the week

The VMguy — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 15:31:08 +0000

Some interesting things to know in the selection from the 93 KB articles new or updated this past week. I definitely noticed a number of new articles on Linux Conversions now that Converter 4.0 supports them .

Unable to download latest ESX patches using VMware Update Manager <- this one happened to me last week in my lab.
ESX Server host requirements for link aggregation
Using HP’s Flex-10 VirtualConnect Technology with VMware ESX/ESXi 3.5 Update 3
VMware VI3 support with NetApp MetroCluster
Enabling the Use of Non-root User for Hot Cloning of Linux Source Machines
Sample configuration of virtual machine(VM) VLAN Tagging (VGT Mode) in ESX
Enable Retention of Sparse Files During Linux Conversions
NFS mounts are restricted to eight by default in ESX 3.5.x
Storage IO crash consistency with VMware products
VMware Tools status reports OK even though the tools build number is older than the ESX build number
Virtual machines do not shut down gracefully
Enabling Belkin network USB hub in a virtual machine <- Good lead-in for an article I’m writing this week "USB options for VMs"

What do 8 cores mean for ESX licensing?

The VMguy — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 22:14:21 +0000

I honestly don’t know the answer to this question but I’ve already been asked by a few customers so I’m opening it for discussion. If you read VMware’s current EULA (Section 1.6), it describes a processor to include up to 6 cores.

Intel has announced a sweet 8-core Nehelem-EX Xeon and it will be interesting how this will apply to ESX. As mentioned, I don’t know how ESX will license on it but with the processors hitting the street this quarter , we won’t have to wait long to find out.

I will, of course, post additional information as soon as it becomes publically available.

Notable KB articles for the week

The VMguy — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 20:55:03 +0000

The support team was busy writing 78 Articles this past week. Here’s this week’s rather large selection that I found most relevant:

VDM managed Virtual Machines must not be moved within VirtualCenter
IP address and AD account of a desktop remain after it is deleted from a pool
SRM Server Migration Workflow
Verifying ESX Server hardware (System, Storage, and I/O) devices are supported <- I know for those using VMware for a while, this is obvious. For the VMware newbies: I can’t stress this enough.
Updating the SQL login credentials for VirtualCenter
Requirements When Using Trusted Certificates with SRM
Identifying causes of not being able to power cycle ESX Server virtual machines
Diagnosing a VMware High Availability cluster configuration failure <-A great one to bookmark, many ideas to try.
VMotion CPU Compatibility – Migrations Prevented Due to CPU Mismatch – How to Override Masks <-An article that’s been around a while but was just updated this past week.
Renaming the virtual machine disk file
The Guided Consolidation button is missing in VirtualCenter 2.5
Configuring SNMP on an ESX host
Troubleshooting iSCSI array connectivity
Forcing the virtual machine’s real-time clock to match its host on each power cycle <-an interesting one that mentions something I didn’t know, that the VMware tools will not set a VM clock backwards, only forward.
Linux virtual machine does not boot after being converted from a physical machine
Timekeeping best practices for Linux
Repairing boot sector problems in Windows NT-based operating systems

Notable KB Articles for the week

The VMguy — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 16:17:44 +0000

Some good info in the 108 articles new or updated since Sunday. Here’s this weeks selection:

Notable KB articles from the week

The VMguy — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 14:42:00 +0000

Sorry, better late than never. Here’s last week’s collection from the 71 New/Updated KB Articles:

Notable KB articles from the week

The VMguy — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 16:06:38 +0000

Apparently the VMware support team got back to work full steam ahead this week. 81 articles were new or updated this week. There are some really good troubleshooting ones this week. Here’s this week’s selection:

Microsoft SVVP program updated

The VMguy — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 12:00:41 +0000

Thanks to Mike D for posting this one and thanks to MS for not having a RSS feed for me to follow or I would have caught it myself. Microsoft has updated the SVVP Program to include the largest VM configurations currently available from VMware. The SVVP Program is basicly approved VM configurations that Microsoft will support. MS will now support VMs on Xeon and Operton running 32-bit or 64-bit VMs on ESX 3.5 Update 2 up to 4-way smp and 64GB of RAM.

Mike mentions that ESX 3.5 U3 and ESXi 3.5 U2 and U3 will appear soon (Awesome news!).

For a great set of links explaning the program check out Mike’s blog here .