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We've only got 3 hosts and about 80 VMs, so not that complicated either.
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Jan 10, 2014 20:18
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Hmm. So I love the idea of the web-based vclient, but in practise I kind of feel like it's a little clunky. I can't put my finger on why or exactly what I dislike about it, but I find myself firing up vsphere client .exe on my desktop more often than not since I don't really use any new functionality in my environments.
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Jan 10, 2014 20:41
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The web client in 5.1 is slightly slower with everything. Anything you click on there's a distinct wait time of anywhere from a half second up to two or three seconds. It's just enough friction to really slow you down and make it feel off. I wish VMware would make a new vSphere client from the View client, with all the console stuff PCOIP based.
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Jan 10, 2014 21:06
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I recently did a fresh reinstall of VCenter 5.5 with the web client server due to some SSO bugs in the upgrade from 5.1. Imagine that. But one thing I noticed is that the web client became much, much faster on the same hardware than it was before the reinstall. The old server had been upgraded from 4.1 --> 5 --> 5.1 --> 5.5. Java heap settings? Something else? Not sure.
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Jan 10, 2014 21:18
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El_Matarife posted:I wish VMware would make a new vSphere client from the View client, with all the console stuff PCOIP based. No, no, and gently caress no. Let me explain the View client. It is a GUI built around something called the remoteMKS. PCoIP gives frames to the remoteMKS. The remoteMKS deals with all the mouse and frame stuff, that the GUI is build around. It is the console where you see the desktop. The frame data for the PCoIP steam comes from a driver in the guest. It talks to the guest svga driver, which is developed by VMware. The PCoIP portion is developed my Teradici, another company. View pays them for the license. If you don't have the svga driver(tools) installed, you don't get frame data. The ability for the PCoIP driver to get frame data has to be maintained for every guest driver. If you don't want tools, or for some other reason the svga driver is not there(a crash) you lose your console. For ESX/WS the frame data comes the host. That means you can see your desktop without drivers installed, or before you VM is booted into the guest and gets the driver loaded. If your VM dies for some reason, you can still see the desktop! That frame data is sent though a VNC connection. We have recently worked to make huge improvements to the frame rate as well. You don't want a guest based remoting solution on ESX. When you use the web client, you install the remoteMKS plugin. The is the same remoteMKS you are seeing over on View. The difference is a web based GUI around it instead of a native client. What you are wanting is native client all around, not just for the remoteMKS. Oh, and there is the webMKS. It is a web based version of the remoteMKS. That means no installation of the plugin, but there are other limitations. Both are needed for different reasons.
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Jan 10, 2014 22:08
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The point is that the web interface is poo poo and the View interface is less awful I guess. I also find myself using the thick client a lot, because the web interface is so unresponsive. Want to power on a VM and watch it boot up to see some message given during boot up? In the Windows client, you find the VM in the list, right-click it and open the console, then hit the power on button so that you see the whole boot sequence from the very beginning. In the web interface, you look at the list, realize the VM in question is collapsed in a group like (54) virtual machines so you click that, wait several seconds for that to expand, find the VM in question, right-click to open console BUT WAIT, you have to start the machine first because some loving rear end in a top hat made that a requirement now. So you power it on but then the list on the left resets and now your VM is stuck in a group again, or maybe it's there but god loving forbid it's selected still. Select it, right-click -> console but by now it's booted up and you missed the message. I'm pretty sure what he meant was "I wish VMware would make a working web client."
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Jan 10, 2014 22:28
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I understand. I said that the issue was the web stuff. He suggested using PCoIP, which would give you no benefit. It actually wouldn't work with most VMs. There are really two issue here. The first is bad design with the web interface. That is up to the guys implementing the web UI. The second is a desire for a faster native client. Sadly, the powers that be have decided that a web based client is better. The only people that are interested in driving ESX from a native client are the Workstation/Fusion guys. You can do really basic stuff from Workstation, but adding more functionality would take time. Sadly, they don't have much staff to work on that.
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Jan 10, 2014 22:55
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DevNull posted:I understand. I said that the issue was the web stuff. He suggested using PCoIP, which would give you no benefit. It actually wouldn't work with most VMs. Here's the disconnect I find with that. VMware, as a company, would presumably want people to use and adopt VMware. If fact, they removed the restrictions from the free version to encourage that use. So, how is someone who's set on trying out the free version of VMware really going to get a sense of how it will be used in a larger environment if there are no management tools for it? The thick client works, for now, but you can't configure all the 5.5 features with it. There's no "single host" version of the web client. So, it's either command line or the non-updated thick client. The question is, at what point will the thick client stop working altogether on a newer version of VMware? There's one thing you can't really do from command line, console access.
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Jan 11, 2014 00:10
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bull3964 posted:Here's the disconnect I find with that. Honestly, I have no idea. Engineers here have found the same disconnect. Many of us in the actual virtualization side of things avoid the web client completely. We use the old native client or workstation. We even had some engineers hack together a web client that runs directly on your ESX box. It only give your the ability to power on/off a VM and access the VMs desktop. You might be able to add VM to the inventory as well. The powers that be decided the big installations with vCenter needed a client before they figured out how to get a client connected to a single ESX machine. No, that does not make sense to me.
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Jan 11, 2014 00:51
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I have been debating the same thing at work since we use a lot of ESXi free without vCenter. I thought about the whole running a webserver within ESXi but figured you guys wouldn't want to do that. Why not just have a basic web VM that gets installed by default and acts like a free version of vCenter for the purposes of managing through the Web interface? I'd have to imagine the vCenter appliance would provide a decent head start on the programming.
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Jan 11, 2014 02:23
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El_Matarife posted:The web client in 5.1 is slightly slower with everything. Anything you click on there's a distinct wait time of anywhere from a half second up to two or three seconds. It's just enough friction to really slow you down and make it feel off. 5.5 improved a bunch(HTML5 COMING SOOON***), but PCOIP for the console is a good idea but would be terrible in exicution and reception by the community. I'm still interested on 6.0 they best make a "free vcenter" or make essentials free. Internet Explorer posted:I have been debating the same thing at work since we use a lot of ESXi free without vCenter. I thought about the whole running a webserver within ESXi but figured you guys wouldn't want to do that. Why not just have a basic web VM that gets installed by default and acts like a free version of vCenter for the purposes of managing through the Web interface? I'd have to imagine the vCenter appliance would provide a decent head start on the programming. Going back to an embedded webserver on the install of ESXi basically negates some of the reason VMware was abandoned ESX. Honestly they need to make some basic integration with vmware player/workstation like they have done with workstation. Something that would be a serious threat to hyper-v and Xenserver would be making Essentials kit free. I'm honestly concerned where vmware goes with 6.0 since it seems the company is divided itself on where to move next with connecting the users to the operations of vmware(even though I actually have come to like the webclient). Side note: My coteacher just got accepted to his VCDX defense! 
Dilbert As FUCK fucked around with this message at 03:23 on Jan 11, 2014 |
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Jan 11, 2014 02:33
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Internet Explorer posted:I have been debating the same thing at work since we use a lot of ESXi free without vCenter. I thought about the whole running a webserver within ESXi but figured you guys wouldn't want to do that. Why not just have a basic web VM that gets installed by default and acts like a free version of vCenter for the purposes of managing through the Web interface? I'd have to imagine the vCenter appliance would provide a decent head start on the programming. I am not sure which route they are going to take, and I couldn't say even if I did sadly. There are a ton of engineers with your same problem though. Dilbert As gently caress posted:5.5 improved a bunch(HTML5 COMING SOOON***), but PCOIP for the console is a good idea but would be terrible in exicution and reception by the community. The webMKS (your console into the VM) is already HTML5, so at least part of it is done. What benefit would using PCoIP give?
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Jan 11, 2014 03:33
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DevNull posted:I am not sure which route they are going to take, and I couldn't say even if I did sadly. There are a ton of engineers with your same problem though. I don't support moving to PCoIP, but maybe if they did some of the view features that BLAST provides it would be cool but still. Yeah but you have to force it for a non flash machine don't you?
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Jan 11, 2014 04:21
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Dilbert As gently caress posted:I don't support moving to PCoIP, but maybe if they did some of the view features that BLAST provides it would be cool but still. I am not sure the current state of how things are for getting the HTML5 console working with the web client. I think going forward, they plan on making the HTML5 webMKS pop up by default. There will be an optional install for the full remoteMKS plugin. They actually wanted to drip the remoteMKS plugin completely, but we convinced them that it would be a very bad thing to not have it as an option. Mostly because of the keyboard. Which Blast features are you talking about? That info I might be able to pass along to some people.
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Jan 11, 2014 04:39
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DevNull posted:I am not sure the current state of how things are for getting the HTML5 console working with the web client. I think going forward, they plan on making the HTML5 webMKS pop up by default. There will be an optional install for the full remoteMKS plugin. They actually wanted to drip the remoteMKS plugin completely, but we convinced them that it would be a very bad thing to not have it as an option. Mostly because of the keyboard. it seems to follow a digest of the client to what it can present to the end user http://www.virtuallyghetto.com/2013/09/how-to-generate-pre-authenticated-html5.html quote:Which Blast features are you talking about? That info I might be able to pass along to some people. I'll message you Dilbert As FUCK fucked around with this message at 05:02 on Jan 11, 2014 |
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Jan 11, 2014 05:00
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Dilbert As gently caress posted:it seems to follow a digest of the client to what it can present to the end user http://www.virtuallyghetto.com/2013/09/how-to-generate-pre-authenticated-html5.html That is interesting. As I said, they were wanting to drop the plugin all together. They probably just didn't have time to fully test the HTML5 console. Performance won't be a huge issue with the HTML5 console. It will mostly be keyboard support. We will always want the plugin around for better support. I might talk to William though. I don't know why I haven't though of feeding him good stuff before, since his blog is so popular.
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Jan 11, 2014 05:12
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DevNull, since you are active tonight I have a question for you. What impact does EMC have on your day to day? I'm been nothing but frustrated when supporting EMC products, but VMware seems fairly "workable" in comparison. Just curious as to what you guys run into. EMC seems like the definition of bureaucracy.
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Jan 11, 2014 05:14
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Internet Explorer posted:DevNull, since you are active tonight I have a question for you. What impact does EMC have on your day to day? I'm been nothing but frustrated when supporting EMC products, but VMware seems fairly "workable" in comparison. Just curious as to what you guys run into. EMC seems like the definition of bureaucracy. IIRC EMC owns something like 52% of the company assets so the bureaucracy, while to the highest bidder, does have a bit of resistance.
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Jan 11, 2014 05:20
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Internet Explorer posted:DevNull, since you are active tonight I have a question for you. What impact does EMC have on your day to day? I'm been nothing but frustrated when supporting EMC products, but VMware seems fairly "workable" in comparison. Just curious as to what you guys run into. EMC seems like the definition of bureaucracy. I have heard that about EMC. EMC has no impact on us really. I have seen a few EMC badges around the office, but it is rare and they have always been engineers. The leadership of both companies have tried really hard to keep VMware as it's own identity. Our cultures are very different from what I can tell. The two companies work mostly at a strategy level. I'm sure the storage guys work closely with EMC, but I think work closely with other storage companies as well. VMware has become a bit more bureaucratic over the years, but I think that has mostly been due to the wild growth. When I started 6.5 years ago, there were around 3,000 employees. Now I think there are 16,000 or 17,000. There are a lot of people that have stuck around though, both engineers and managers. I think that has helped a lot. Many of the employees were around when the company was smaller and less corporate, so they work to keep it that way. A lot of the engineers use the products as well, so we want to make them less frustrating. At least that is how things are in the core engineering team.
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Jan 11, 2014 05:32
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Dilbert As gently caress posted:IIRC EMC owns something like 52% of the company assets so the bureaucracy, while to the highest bidder, does have a bit of resistance. I think the number is closer to 70%. That is the number I heard around the IPO, but that has been a few years.
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Jan 11, 2014 05:33
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This is probably a long-shot but is there an easy and reliable way to upgrade the NIC's on a large number of VMs (300+) from E1000 to vmxnet3? The environment we've inherited has E1000 vmNICs across the board and they are massive bottlenecks. Edit: proably should have included this info: 95% of the VMs are running Windows Server 2008 R2, the hosts are running ESXi 5.1u1 and we are using Distributed vSwitches.
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Jan 13, 2014 09:32
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cheese-cube posted:This is probably a long-shot but is there an easy and reliable way to upgrade the NIC's on a large number of VMs (300+) from E1000 to vmxnet3? The environment we've inherited has E1000 vmNICs across the board and they are massive bottlenecks. The bigger question is are the servers set to share IP's between all attached nic's and are the tools ready? Replacing the NIC's I believe so I'd need to research it a bit and modify some scripts but I think there is. the problem would be ensuring the OS and the application has network availability during the swap out, which honestly I am not sure about.
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Jan 13, 2014 09:36
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Dilbert As gently caress posted:The bigger question is are the servers set to share IP's between all attached nic's and are the tools ready? Yeah I knew that a VMware Tools upgrade would be step 1, most of the VMs are woefully out-of-date (Along with the rest of the infrastructure  ). Most of the servers have just a single NIC with one static IP address. Honestly I'd have to run an audit as I'm certain there are several with non-standard configurations (I know that we do have several WSFC cluster nodes which will obviously have to be done manually).My focus on migrating them to vmxnet3 is mainly due to vMotion operating in a really unpredictable fashion. For instance, last night DRS vMotioned a development SAP BW server and when it registered on the new host CPU wait sky-rocketed basically rendering the guest OS unresponsive for ~5 minutes.
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Jan 13, 2014 09:45
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cheese-cube posted:My focus on migrating them to vmxnet3 is mainly due to vMotion operating in a really unpredictable fashion. For instance, last night DRS vMotioned a development SAP BW server and when it registered on the new host CPU wait sky-rocketed basically rendering the guest OS unresponsive for ~5 minutes. I think you may want to look at the latency and constancy of your vmotion network I'd look into some vmkernel pings on the vmotion network or make sure that NIOC is enabled if aggrigating all your nics to vDS. I'd be wanting to look more into how your physical network is setup between hosts, EVC levels+physical hardware, and Power management settings. also when you say your servers have a single nic is that physical or virtual? Dilbert As FUCK fucked around with this message at 09:55 on Jan 13, 2014 |
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Jan 13, 2014 09:51
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Dilbert As gently caress posted:Even with DRS and automated vmotion the E1000 never loses more than a packet or two on/off a vds... Yeah I do have some concerns on the ESXi side of things. The EVC mode is currently set to Merom despite all the hosts supporting Nehalem, something which I am looking to fix. Also does the MTU setting on individual vmkernel ports override the MTU setting on the vDS itself? The documentation on VMware's website was a bit vague about this. Regarding the server NICs: I was referring to the VMs themselves. The ESXi hosts are HP blades and have 8 physical NICs each which are split between the four vDSs (Two uplinks per vDS).
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Jan 13, 2014 10:10
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All else being equal, if you do want to just get the VM to boot with a VMXNET3 adapter instead of the E1000 (without changing the MAC etc) you can simply force the change using powershell and reboot. Get-NetworkAdapter -vm VMName | Set-NetworkAdapter Vmxnet3 We had a shitload of linux Dev VMs auto-deploy with E1000 instead of VMXNET3 on the vSphere4 environment because someone cocked up the blueprint, a quick script using the above redid all 300ish of them without any (reported) issues.
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Jan 13, 2014 14:23
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DevNull posted:I think the number is closer to 70%. That is the number I heard around the IPO, but that has been a few years. Luckily, as a publicly traded company, this info is in VMware's 10-Qs. VMW 10-Q filed 2013-11-07 posted:As of September 30, 2013 , EMC Corporation (“EMC”) holds approximately 79.7% of VMware’s outstanding common stock and 97.2% of the combined voting power of VMware’s outstanding common stock, including 43 million shares of VMware’s Class A common stock and all of VMware’s Class B common stock. VMware is a majority-owned and controlled subsidiary of EMC, and its results of operations and financial position are consolidated with EMC’s financial statements. VMware and EMC engage in intercompany transactions, including agreements regarding the use of EMC’s and VMware’s intellectual property and real estate, agreements regarding the sale of goods and services to one another, and an agreement for EMC to resell VMware’s products and services to third party customers. In geographic areas where VMware has not established its own subsidiaries, VMware contracts with EMC subsidiaries for support services and for personnel who are managed by VMware. See Note K and N to the consolidated financial statements for further information. So, even if for now EMC is taking a hands-off approach, there is nothing keeping them from loving things up at the drop of some director's whim.
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Jan 13, 2014 15:58
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Erwin posted:Luckily, as a publicly traded company, this info is in VMware's 10-Qs. If by director whim you mean Joe Tucci. Why would he want to change things? VMware is making EMC piles and piles of money. Our CEO, Pat Gelsinger, was at a few years at EMC before he came here. He spent 30 years at Intel before that though, so we probably get more of their culture from him if anything. He is awesome by the way, and still fully fluent in x86 from what I have heard.
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Jan 13, 2014 16:40
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Sure, or any of the other 4 of 9 people on the board of directors that are also on EMC's board of directors. Sometimes not changing because VMware is making EMC a boatload of money can also be the problem. There's been plenty of discussion in this thread about how VMware should change to fit the changing virtualization market. Will it? Maybe not due to the added resistance of an old guard megacompany sitting on top of it and the rest of its tech hoard. The point was that VMware is basically a private company disguised as a publicly traded company, and the controlling entity is EMC of all people. I'm not a business analyst so I really have no idea what the implications are here, I was just pointing out that the actual controlling percentage owned by EMC is publicly available, and it's large. And EMC sucks.
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Jan 13, 2014 18:53
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I don't see it as a problem. I don't think any analysts do either. VMware has been owned my EMC for 10 years and it has not been a problem. If there is any resistance to change, it is more likely to come from the disorganization that come with the rapid growth of the company. Over the past 6 years the population has exploded.
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Jan 13, 2014 19:12
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I'm about to take the dive into vCenter 5.5. The last time I did an installation was on 5.1 when I was running only two vSphere hosts. Our current infrastructure looks like this (the 1 vCenter server is running on the Essentials Kit license): 6 vSphere hosts (3 running 5.1, 3 running 5.5 (not joined to vCenter atm)) 1 vCenter server running 5.1 I've just purchased another Essentials Kit license for 5.5 for now. I think we have some plans to upgrade our Essentials license to a Std license sometime this year, but until then I need to make plans to make sure that if we do that, I can easily transition to a single vCenter server install. Is it possible (and if so, how hard is it) to have a single Inventory collector for multiple vCenter installation?
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Jan 13, 2014 20:54
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quote:I've just purchased another Essentials Kit license for 5.5 for now. I think we have some plans to upgrade our Essentials license to a Std license sometime this year, but until then I need to make plans to make sure that if we do that, I can easily transition to a single vCenter server install. quote:Is it possible (and if so, how hard is it) to have a single Inventory collector for multiple vCenter installation? I assume you could link the SSO as "multi-sites", but I don't think linked mode or sharing the inventory is possible on Essentials. I think you need a vCenter standard license for that. What in term you would end up with is Essentials cluster A and Essentials cluster B talking up to a vCenter Standard server and you connect to the standard and manage downward.
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Jan 13, 2014 21:01
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Dilbert As gently caress posted:You can't upgrade essentials at this point and time. just FYI IIRC you could upgrade Essentials with the vCenter Standard Acceleration Kit once in your business, or am I mistaken?
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Jan 13, 2014 21:17
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Wicaeed posted:IIRC you could upgrade Essentials with the vCenter Standard Acceleration Kit once in your business, or am I mistaken? Oh wow I feel dumb look at that http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/vsphere/VMware-vSphere-Essentials-Editions-Datasheet.pdf "As small businesses grow and their needs increase, they can easily upgrade to vSphere with Operations Management Acceleration Kits for more-advanced capabilities." Ahh okay it looks like they don't give you as much of reduced pricing during upgrading your licenses when coming from a kit. Dilbert As FUCK fucked around with this message at 21:26 on Jan 13, 2014 |
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Jan 13, 2014 21:22
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Actually IIRC the price difference was quite big. We actually were looking at it about three months ago (upgrading our vCenter server + licensing for 6 hosts) and the total cost was around 25k WITH support, which I think is quite cheaper than just straight up purchasing licensing+support. edit: I just wish there was a licensing option that let us join more than 3 servers to a vCenter server, but didn't include VMotion It's not really something we need that badly in our test environments, even though we run like 200+ vms and 6 hosts.
Wicaeed fucked around with this message at 21:40 on Jan 13, 2014 |
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Jan 13, 2014 21:34
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What do you want vCenter for if not vMotion? Just central management and stats? Host updates without vMotion is no way to live.
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Jan 13, 2014 21:41
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Well it's not really a requirement in our case, although it would be nice to have. It's really a case of management not seeing the advantage in ponying up $20k+ for a feature that isn't a requirement for our environment. Since these are all these servers we can just spin them down/up whenever we want, however my difficulty comes from having to manage two separate vCenter instances, thereby doubling the amount of work I have to do in order to get performance info, check permissions, and do any other vCenter oriented work.
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Jan 13, 2014 22:57
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DevNull posted:The webMKS (your console into the VM) is already HTML5, so at least part of it is done. What benefit would using PCoIP give? VMware console is terribly slow and generally awful on low bandwidth connections. It's got quite the delay on 6 Mbps DSL and some cellular hotspot or public / hotel WiFi use is unbearable. I understand not everyone has or can install VMware Tools at all times, but for VMs that have it (which should be nearly 100% of your environment or you're doin' it wrong), PCOIP would be a nice option. Anyway, apparently VCDX-001 & 002 are barnstorming around the country giving free VCAP-DCA, DCD and VCDX bootcamps. I found out about it through my local VMUG, but maybe you can get a heads up from your training or sales reps. El_Matarife fucked around with this message at 23:17 on Jan 13, 2014 |
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Jan 13, 2014 23:15
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El_Matarife posted:VMware console is terribly slow and generally awful on low bandwidth connections. It's got quite the delay on 6 Mbps DSL and some cellular hotspot or public / hotel WiFi use is unbearable. Are you using the latest server and client? There were a ton of improvements in the last release. It should be comparable to PCoIP.
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Jan 13, 2014 23:19
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5.1 vCenter build 1123961 with ESXi build 1157734, and it's a little better than 5 GA and 4.1 were but still seems pokey. I've never sat down to measure the traffic, admittedly.
El_Matarife fucked around with this message at 23:31 on Jan 13, 2014 |
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Jan 13, 2014 23:26
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