The Technology Chronicle

The blog explains the process of creating a basic Windows stack in Openstack using Heat Orchestration Template. The hypervisor being used is VMware ESXi5.5. Image preparation to upload in glance Lets start with creating a Windows 2012 R2 VM in ESXi. In this server, download and install the cloudbase-init package for windows .The beta version is available at this link: https://www.cloudbase.it/downloads/CloudbaseInitSetup_Beta.msi Follow the steps in this link for installation : http://www.cloudbase.it/cloud-init-for-windows-instances/ Once installation is completed, edit the 'setup.exe" registry key at HKLocal machine/SYSTEM/SETUP/STATUS/ChildCompletion and change the value from 1 to 3. This is to avoid a system restart exception when the image boots up for the first time in openstack If you want to do any custom configurations in the windows machine, like open a specific firewall port, enable ping ,rdp etc..you can do it at this point  Run Syprep and shu...

In this blog, I will explain the steps required to run a nested KVM hypervisor on  Vmware ESXi. The installation of KVM is done on Ubuntu 13.10(64 bit). Note: It is assumed that you have already installed your Ubuntu 13.10 VM in ESXi, and hence we will not look into the Ubuntu installation part. 1) Upgrade VM Hardware version to 9. In my ESXi server, the default VM hardware version was 8. So I had to shutdown my VM and upgrade the Hardware version to 9 to get the KVM hypervisor working. You can right click the VM and select the Upgrade hardware option to do this. 2)In the ESXi host In /etc/vmware edit the 'config' file and add the following setting vhv.enable = "TRUE" 3)Edit the VM settings and go to VM settings > Options  > CPU/MMU Virtualization . Select the Intel EPT option 4) Go to Options->CPUID mask> Advanced-> Level 1, add the following CPU mask level ECX  ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- --H- ---- 5) Open the vmx...

If the VDP backup fails , the following troubleshooting steps can be used SSH to the the VDP appliance and browse to the /usr/local/avamarclient Search for logs related to the VM :   grep -r -a "VM_NAME" ./* If you suspect it is snapshot related issue : grep -r -a " VM_name" ./* | grep "FATAL" To be more specific and to check messages for a certain date, try searching using the date : grep -r -a " VM_name" ./* | grep "2013-08-02" Sometimes we could get very useful information from the "info" messages as well. Inorder to narrow down to the same, you can use the command: grep -r -a "VM_name" ./var-* | grep "2013-07-03" The baove command will search only through the 'var-proxy' directories. It will display the entire log file. You can less it to view details for a specific date eg:  less ./var-proxy-5/VMGROUP1-1378306800496-35fj52c29f48eeejef090b27edaeba3d868719e8-4016-vmimagew.log /2013...

The hot-add and hot-plug of resources are very useful feature in vSphere where you can pile in more compute resources on the fly without a downtime for machines.Few points about this feature "Hot-add" refers to adding more memory to a VM whereas "Hot-plug" refers to adding a virtual CPU to a VM Inorder to change the hot-add/hot-plug status of a VM , the machine should be powered off i e if the feature is disabled, you should first shutdown the machine before you can enable it. This is enabled from VM settings-> options-> advanced->memory/cpu hotplug The feature is not enabled by default Minimum VM hardware version of 7 is required for hot-add/hot-plug to work. If you are using a lower version of virtual hardware, first you need to upgrade it Even if it hot add/plug enabled, for the hot add/plug to be effective, it should be supported by the VM guest operating system for the resources to be available to the VM Hot add/plug feature is not compatibl...

When we add a new disk in  a VM hosted in Vmware ESXi, we can choose whether the disk should be Independent or not. If we choose the disk to be independent, it is not included in snapshots. If you browse the datastore after taking a snapshot of the machine, you will not see any delta disks related to the independent disks. There are two types of independent disks: Persistant: The data written to the disk is retained after we powercycle the machine. It is like any normal disk that we add to a machine, only difference is that we cannot return to a point in time for data in that disk Non-persistant: Data is deleted when we powercycle the VM. I have tried it on a Windows VM and the disk is listed as unallocated space each time I powercycle the VM, thereby deleting all data saved in it. I had to initialize the disk from the disk management console and format it  as a drive before using it again. Interestingly, if we restart the windows OS the disk and the data that it contai...

VMware snapshot includes the following: Virtual machine snapshot database file - vmsd:  This is the snapshot database file, which is used by the snapshot manager to display the snapshot details, relations between the various parent/child snapshots etc. There will be one vmsd file created per virtual machine when a snapshot is taken Virtual machine memory state - vmsn:  This file is created when you select the option to snapshot virtual machine memory as well . One benefit of taking snapshot of memory is that it will let you revert to a snapshot with virtual machine in switched on state. If snapshot of memory is not taken, when you revert a snapshot the VM will go back to switched off state Delta disks - delta.vmdk: These are delta disks created when we take a snapshot. The point of time at which the snapshot is taken, the current disk is turned to read-only, and a delta disk is created for subsequent writes. A delta disk, like other vmdk files consist of two fi...

vSphere 5 components and features; Vmware ESXi : Well, this is the physical part of vSphere. The virtualization OS installed in  in physical servers and bastracts the physical resources of the server and distributes them across VMs. VMware vCenter : It is the vsphere centralised management software. It is essential for configuring and managing the full potential of vSphere say HA, DRS etc vSphere client: A client software that lets users connect remotely to Vmware ESXi and vCenter vSphere web client: A web interface that allows users to connect remotely to vCenter client or ESXi vSphere SDKs: Provides standard interfaces for VMware and third party solution to access VMware vSphere VMFS : A high performance cluster file systems for ESXi virtual machnes vSphere virtual SMP: Enables single virtual machine to use multiple physical processors simultaneously vMotion: Enables migration of virtual machines from one datastore to another without service interruption* vSphere HA: If the ...