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We filed support requests with IBM and VMware and went through a very lengthy process without any results. Each of our hosts had the following iSCSI HBAs: QLA4010 QLA4050C A while ago we found out QLA4010 is not on the ESX 3.5 HCL even though it runs with a legacy driver. As our virtual environment grew we noticed storage performance lagging. This was particularly evident with our Oracle 10G Database server running our staging instance of Banner Operational Data Store....

Yesterday I made a mistake. We have a virtual machine set up to test Spacewalk which runs CentOS. It has a virtual disk for this OS on datastore1 and a virtual disk for the data on datastore2. datastore1 had 11 gb free and datastore2 had 300 gb free. I snapshotted the VM, we did some work, and I committed the snapshot. Except it didn’t work. Now the machine won’t stay booted....

AutoPager is a Firefox extension which follows the “Next” links on lots of pages and loads them inline. If you’re already using the extension, go to AutoPager -> Update Setting -> Update Setting Online. The authors just added VMTN forums and NetApp Technology Network to their supported sites. This means if you’re reading a long thread you don’t have to click next. You can just keep scrolling – the next page is loaded inline....

In our organization, the storage administrator is completely separate from the VI Administrator. This process requires some coordination with the storage administrator. Here is our process for restoring a VM from our SAN snapshots. A lot of this information was gleamed from Scott Lowe’s posts on FlexClones. Unfortunately, we do not have SMVI (the jaw dropping video demo is here) at this moment. It appears NetApp has made this process trivial with that application....

Here’s my PlanetV12n Wish List (in no particular order): Provide feed customization. Strategy/Administration/Business Case/etc. Virtualization has turned into an extremely broad topic. Too much noise in the feed reader is a loss of value to PlanetV12n. Provide more virtualization related feeds from vendors like EMC, NetApp, Dell, and IBM. Require full articles. If there is resistance on this, just politely remind publishers that advertising is available via RSS Give us the option of having OPML output of PlanetV12n....

I have no problem making it clear I’m relatively new to the virtual world. That doesn’t mean you can’t learn fast. Here are a few tools I’ve used to become a better VI Administrator: Training. Pros: Certified knowledge from the source. We hosted a VMware Jumpstart, and that training is without a doubt my catalyst into the rest of the virtual world. Training teaches you how to talk the talk so that other sources of knowledge are useful....

Most of this was taken from this site: http://conshell.net/wiki/index.php/Linux_P2V Up front work Determine exactly what you’re doing, and the resources you’ll need on the VMware side. as root: sfdisk -s /dev/hda: 39070080 total: 39070080 blocks To find the size in GB, divide by 1024 twice. 39070080/1024/1024 = 37.260 GB Partition layout - know exactly the partitions, sizes and FS types. This can be gleaned from the output of `fdisk -l /dev/sda` and the content of /etc/fstab....

We have a problem that a lot of VI administrators (especially us young ones) run into - VM Sprawl. In attempting to reduce the chaos and get a much better understanding of our virtual infrastructure I’ve run into a very helpful cmdlet provided in the VI Toolkit. This tutorial is intended for the complete novice. Step 1: Get your system set up for VI Toolkit. Download PowerShell. Download the VI Toolkit....

It started with Eric Siebert’s open letter to VMware making this suggestion: 6. Relax the VMware Certified Professional (VCP) certification requirements. I shouldn’t have to take a class to become a VCP, if I have the knowledge and experience to pass the VCP exam that should be enough. Many qualified people can’t afford to take a class just so they can take the test. Amen. Then Dave Lawrence, the VMguy responded, making a few points about the certification requirements....

Since I enabled alarms in VirtualCenter on 10/07/2008 we have encountered 14 seperate false alarms regarding host connectivity. Here’s the alarm: Target: hostname.goes.here Old Status: Green New Status: Red Current value: Host connection state - (State = Not responding) Alarm: Host connection state ([Red State Is Equal To notResponding]) Description: Alarm Host connection state on hostname.goes.here changed from Green to Red Here’s what we went through with support. Sending Diagnostics from VC Found out we are running an unsupported HBA (QLA4010’s are not supported in ESX 3....