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All this virtualization stuff is crazy complex. I've looked over the OP but it's hard to find answers amongst all that stuff. Is there anything for free I can download that will let me: 1) create a file that will act as a large hard drive for a virtual machine 2) load up Windows Server 2008 or 2012 on the virtual machine and run that OS inside my current copy of Windows 7 Pro x64
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Jan 22, 2014 23:02
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Dilbert As gently caress posted:IS ESXi set to reserve anything obscene? There are some 100GB Reservations on a couple of VM's if that is what you mean.
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Jan 22, 2014 23:06
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GreatGreen posted:All this virtualization stuff is crazy complex. I've looked over the OP but it's hard to find answers amongst all that stuff. Is there anything for free I can download that will let me: Most of the guys here are doing Enterprise. Start small and go with Virtualbox.
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Jan 22, 2014 23:07
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CtrlMagicDel posted:There are some 100GB Reservations on a couple of VM's if that is what you mean. Oh you already accounted for system overhead of ESXi. Silly questions but if it is a 2 node cluster and you are taking one offline, is admission control enabled? Admission control when enabled will reserve some of the host resources either by percentage or slot size. GreatGreen posted:All this virtualization stuff is crazy complex. I've looked over the OP but it's hard to find answers amongst all that stuff. Is there anything for free I can download that will let me: Roll with VMware player or Virtual box, I'm doing a gug on this in 3.5 hours by the way. Check the stickies
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Jan 22, 2014 23:51
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Dilbert As gently caress posted:Oh you already accounted for system overhead of ESXi. Good though, but admission control is off on this cluster. Most of the VM's on this cluster are either non-production or load balanced at least so it's not the end of the world if one or two doesn't start right away in a host failure scenario, but mostly trying to figure it out from an understanding perspective.
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Jan 23, 2014 00:08
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Is it possible, using a single install of the vSphere web client and SSO client, to manage two separately licensed vCenter server installations? edit:  IT TOTALLY IS
Wicaeed fucked around with this message at 04:38 on Jan 23, 2014 |
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Jan 23, 2014 04:01
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I was directed here from the parts picking megathread. Is the 4820k worth it over a 4770k given the price is nearly the same for the CPU+ mobo combo for visualization ? It's for a personal computer but gaming would be minimal at best, virtual machines priority. http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3525843&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=432#post424767225
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Jan 23, 2014 17:16
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Ignoarints posted:I was directed here from the parts picking megathread. This is more the enterprise virtualization thread, but unless he is running a LOT of VM's, then a standard Haswell/Ivy proc should be fine. If he is serious about a ton of VMs, then he may look at building out a host for a home lab separate from his desktop, like many of us here have.
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Jan 23, 2014 17:41
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mayodreams posted:This is more the enterprise virtualization thread, but unless he is running a LOT of VM's, then a standard Haswell/Ivy proc should be fine. If he is serious about a ton of VMs, then he may look at building out a host for a home lab separate from his desktop, like many of us here have. Hmm I see. I know he has VM dedicated machines, but this would be just for his personal computer. He does want to be able to get the best VM performance out of that too within this price range, but you said Haswell/Ivy do you mean it doesn't really matter? Would the memory bandwidth difference really any sort of discernible difference?
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Jan 23, 2014 17:52
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For a home VM box I would say Disk is most important, followed by Disk Disk and more Disk, followed by RAM and RAM and then worry about the processor.
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Jan 23, 2014 17:54
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skipdogg posted:For a home VM box I would say Disk is most important, followed by Disk Disk and more Disk, followed by RAM and RAM and then worry about the processor. Would the RAM capabilities between the 4820k and 4770k matter then (quad channel vs dual channel). There is no shortage of disk and RAM.
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Jan 23, 2014 18:03
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Ignoarints posted:Would the RAM capabilities between the 4820k and 4770k matter then (quad channel vs dual channel). There is no shortage of disk and RAM. Dual and quad channel memory configs give negligible performance gains, but are generally not worth the price premium to the consumer/prosumer. And by disk, skipdogg means a lot of physical disks in some kind of RAID to boost performance. This is the part that gets expensive, but it makes a dramatic impact to performance verses a single off the shelf "green" drive. Don't do that. My home lab runs off a single 1TB 7200RPM drive for VM storage, on a quad Sandy Bridge Xeon processor with 32gb of ram. Even running vCenter and 6 other VM's, I am still only using about 24GB of RAM, and 8GB is that my FreeNAS VM. My CPU is essentially idle all the time, and it is only an E3-1230 at 3.2GHz. I'd love to upgrade to a 3 disk RAID5 for my VM's, but I do not have any IO heavy VM's, so I'll I just roll with my current setup.
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Jan 23, 2014 18:14
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mayodreams posted:Dual and quad channel memory configs give negligible performance gains, but are generally not worth the price premium to the consumer/prosumer. And by disk, skipdogg means a lot of physical disks in some kind of RAID to boost performance. This is the part that gets expensive, but it makes a dramatic impact to performance verses a single off the shelf "green" drive. Don't do that. It's already got some massive raid (for a desktop) and three SSD's (dont know if those are in raid too) and ram is just ram from what I understand, as long as there are 4 identical sticks it should work in the quad channel mobo. But from what I gathered the memory bandwidth is almost double over an identical dual channel setup. I'm just not sure how much that matters, are you saying that bandwidth is basically wasted? (for VM purposes) Edit: If it seems like I'm pushing to buy the 4820k over the Haswell, I'm really trying to find good reason not to buy it honestly. I feel uncomfortable recommending purchasing of an older architecture and socket even if it is the newest of the old. And I understand the benefits of Haswell here ("5-10%" performance increase in most categories for example, power isnt an deciding factor though). But after seeing the that 2011 offers almost double the memory bandwidth, over double pcie lanes, larger cpu cache all for a $15 difference for the mobo+cpu in either choice I'm having a hard time recommending the Haswell too. My problem is I don't know really how much all that matters and then if its worth going with the older stuff because of it. And I'm not trying to pretend to be an expert to this guy, I'm giving you guys all the credit lol. Ignoarints fucked around with this message at 18:43 on Jan 23, 2014 |
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Jan 23, 2014 18:30
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Ignoarints posted:It's already got some massive raid (for a desktop) and three SSD's (dont know if those are in raid too) and ram is just ram from what I understand, as long as there are 4 identical sticks it should work in the quad channel mobo. But from what I gathered the memory bandwidth is almost double over an identical dual channel setup. I'm just not sure how much that matters, are you saying that bandwidth is basically wasted? (for VM purposes) Again, none of this poo poo matters. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter for his wintendo_cum_virtualbox machine. You don't need to worry about PCIe lanes, or memory bandwidth, or larger CPU caches making a difference for whatever tiny virtualization workload he has. If that poo poo matters to him for another reason, great. But this isn't the parts picking megathread, and he's not even going to come remotely close to stressing memory bandwidth, IO bandwidth, or CPU unless he's actually running a Hadoop cluster in those VMs. Pick whatever you want.
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Jan 23, 2014 18:49
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Dilbert As gently caress posted:VMware player Isn't player only for "premade" VMs?
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Jan 23, 2014 18:57
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evol262 posted:Again, none of this poo poo matters. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter for his wintendo_cum_virtualbox machine. You don't need to worry about PCIe lanes, or memory bandwidth, or larger CPU caches making a difference for whatever tiny virtualization workload he has. If that poo poo matters to him for another reason, great. But this isn't the parts picking megathread, and he's not even going to come remotely close to stressing memory bandwidth, IO bandwidth, or CPU unless he's actually running a Hadoop cluster in those VMs. Pick whatever you want. Thanks, you'd be surprised how hard that direct info is to come by. It's always well, if, maybe, then one or the other. I wasn't going to post here but was recommended to in the parts thread. So all of that is firmly "doesnt matter"
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Jan 23, 2014 19:10
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evol262 posted:Again, none of this poo poo matters. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter for his wintendo_cum_virtualbox machine. You don't need to worry about PCIe lanes, or memory bandwidth, or larger CPU caches making a difference for whatever tiny virtualization workload he has. If that poo poo matters to him for another reason, great. But this isn't the parts picking megathread, and he's not even going to come remotely close to stressing memory bandwidth, IO bandwidth, or CPU unless he's actually running a Hadoop cluster in those VMs. Pick whatever you want. Yeah, people underestimate the power of a Mac Mini with Fusion installed. I run 3 VMs on mine just fine. My co-worker runs 5 VMs from a NAS. It is honestly the cheapest and easiest way to do it. When the VMs aren't doing much, the Mini uses nearly no power. It is a great setup, and ESX would be overkill. The only reason to run it on ESX would be to learn how to manage ESX.
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Jan 23, 2014 19:18
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Moey posted:Isn't player only for "premade" VMs? I think there was(is?) a version that just "plays" premade VM's, but I was able to download a free version of VMWare from their site that allows me to both build and play standalone virtual machines, so there's that.
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Jan 23, 2014 19:19
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GreatGreen posted:I think there was(is?) a version that just "plays" premade VM's, but I was able to download a free version of VMWare from their site that allows me to both build and play standalone virtual machines, so there's that. Interesting to know. I thought that functionality was only in Workstation. I have not touched Player in the past 4 years or so though.
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Jan 23, 2014 19:22
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GreatGreen posted:I think there was(is?) a version that just "plays" premade VM's, but I was able to download a free version of VMWare from their site that allows me to both build and play standalone virtual machines, so there's that. I think that was Lab manager, player can make, play, delete vm's like workstation can. DevNull posted:Yeah, people underestimate the power of a Mac Mini with Fusion installed. I run 3 VMs on mine just fine. My co-worker runs 5 VMs from a NAS. It is honestly the cheapest and easiest way to do it. When the VMs aren't doing much, the Mini uses nearly no power. It is a great setup, and ESX would be overkill. The only reason to run it on ESX would be to learn how to manage ESX. I pefer shuttle pc's over mac mini's, little more flexible. Dilbert As FUCK fucked around with this message at 19:34 on Jan 23, 2014 |
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Jan 23, 2014 19:30
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evol262 posted:Again, none of this poo poo matters. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter for his wintendo_cum_virtualbox machine. You don't need to worry about PCIe lanes, or memory bandwidth, or larger CPU caches making a difference for whatever tiny virtualization workload he has. If that poo poo matters to him for another reason, great. But this isn't the parts picking megathread, and he's not even going to come remotely close to stressing memory bandwidth, IO bandwidth, or CPU unless he's actually running a Hadoop cluster in those VMs. Pick whatever you want. Well I just found out he runs 16 right now, and it's all for database stuff (he is a dba) not sure if this changes anything. But anyways, wrong thread so, thanks
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Jan 23, 2014 20:14
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Ignoarints posted:Well I just found out he runs 12 right now, and it's all for database stuff (he is a dba) not sure if this changes anything. But anyways, wrong thread so, thanks No you asked a perfectly fine question related to virtualization, I don't know why anyone would think this thread isn't about anything else.
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Jan 23, 2014 20:16
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Ignoarints posted:Well I just found out he runs 16 right now, and it's all for database stuff (he is a dba) not sure if this changes anything. But anyways, wrong thread so, thanks This may make memory pressure more of a problem, but probably not memory bandwidth. If anything, it makes disk much, much more important, but it's hard to imagine 16 busy database VMs on any kind of consumer setup. Do you have any more details on what they actually do?
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Jan 23, 2014 20:25
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evol262 posted:This may make memory pressure more of a problem, but probably not memory bandwidth. If anything, it makes disk much, much more important, but it's hard to imagine 16 busy database VMs on any kind of consumer setup. Do you have any more details on what they actually do? He could put his Pagefile on SSD, make it very large and set the option to allow workstation to allow most of the VM memory to swap. It doesn't fix the 16GB ram but it may make it more usable.
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Jan 23, 2014 20:34
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evol262 posted:This may make memory pressure more of a problem, but probably not memory bandwidth. If anything, it makes disk much, much more important, but it's hard to imagine 16 busy database VMs on any kind of consumer setup. Do you have any more details on what they actually do? No unfortunately, I know he works with very large databases at work and he has his own separate dedicated VM computers at home as well. I imagine on his personal computer it's just for testing new database methods. I was just giving VM's focus vs other things (very light gaming, movies, whatever) since it was the only hardware intense thing he does on it. To fit within the budget it came down to these two processors and motherboards, and then I fell into an internet can of worms. I don't want to drag this on with you guys though, I believe I can just give him enough info to make the decision. At least I doubt it can go wrong either way. I just wish it were more clear cut Dilbert As gently caress posted:He could put his Pagefile on SSD, make it very large and set the option to allow workstation to allow most of the VM memory to swap. It doesn't fix the 16GB ram but it may make it more usable. He has 32 GB at the moment which I don't think will change given 16gb stick costs but I wasn't sure if that additional bandwidth would make any difference (before hitting some other bottleneck) but it's looking like no, probably no difference.
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Jan 23, 2014 20:47
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Ignoarints posted:No unfortunately, I know he works with very large databases at work and he has his own separate dedicated VM computers at home as well. I imagine on his personal computer it's just for testing new database methods. I was just giving VM's focus vs other things (very light gaming, movies, whatever) since it was the only hardware intense thing he does on it. To fit within the budget it came down to these two processors and motherboards, and then I fell into an internet can of worms. Sorry I was sort of dismissive earlier for not wanting to get into "does a 5-10% difference in absolute CPU performance, dual v. quad chanel memory, and double PCIe lanes matter" conversation (because those things broadly don't matter for this subject), but "how do I run 16 busy database VMs on consumer hardware" is absolutely on topic and not at all an internet can of worms. Realistically, he probably wants as much memory as he can get (at the expense of CPU performance and anythign else, though this is also a fair general recommendation for virtualization), but disks are the thing. Does he have a SAN? What kind of RAID setup if not? The storage setup is going to matter a lot, and it may be worth downgrading other components to get more performance.
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Jan 23, 2014 20:55
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Stupid question time.  Configuration Issues posted:This host currently has no management network redundancy What am I missing? I would think that having two nic's on the management network gives me... management network redundancy. I have tried changing one to standby and one to active but it doesn't work. KennyG fucked around with this message at 21:23 on Jan 23, 2014 |
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Jan 23, 2014 21:18
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KennyG posted:What am I missing? Right click on the host and reconfigure for HA -- it will probably clear it.
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Jan 23, 2014 21:59
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So here's a philosophical question, on whether to visualize or not. I'm setting up some NoMachine products on Linux, which is essentially VDI. The nodes are licensed per core, be they virtual or physical cores. I'm thinking about some of the traditional reasons to virtualize, and they don't really apply here. I don't need to worry about under utilizing a piece of hardware, because it will have host exactly as many desktops as it can handle, be it virtually or physically. Redundancy doesn't matter, because there will be multiple hosts, if a piece of hardware dies the worst that happens is someone's session dies (which, if it was hosted on a VM on that host would also happen). Cost of VMware licensing could be a concern, but in this case because it's for educational use there's no additional cost. Any thoughts on which way I should go with this?
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Jan 23, 2014 22:03
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KS posted:Right click on the host and reconfigure for HA -- it will probably clear it. YAY! Thank you kind sir.
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Jan 23, 2014 22:12
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Is there any way to check which vCenter servers are registered an Inventory server? Not finding anything in the VMware docs that would tell me this.
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Jan 24, 2014 00:55
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Wicaeed posted:Is there any way to check which vCenter servers are registered an Inventory server? [2008]ProgramData\VMware\Infrastructure\Inventory Service\Logs\ [2003]C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\VMware\Infrastructure\Inventory Service\Logs\ I can't see anything in the documentation that would allow you to query which vCenters are registered with an inventory service.
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Jan 24, 2014 13:48
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I have a 3-node cluster running 3.5 or 4.0 or something and it needs to be upgraded to 5.5 - Is there some kind of guide as to how about going through with this? Our consultant wants 25 hours of time to do it, and I've only upgraded single hosts and never a whole cluster.
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Jan 25, 2014 18:22
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Here's the guide. It is really, really easy if you can get the right tools in place. This is an actual cluster with shared storage and vmotion? That means no downtime. You need to figure out what version you're on and if there's a supported upgrade path. Just look in the VSphere client for the version and whether it's ESXi or ESX. Docs like this document the supported upgrade paths. You need to follow the steps in order. You upgrade VCenter and other supporting apps first before upgrading hosts. Before each time your hosts jump a major version , you will need to redo your license keys. If there's an upgrade path, install Update Manager, upload the ESXi images into the patch store, attach the upgrade baseline to the host, scan for updates, put in maintenance mode, remediate. Repeat 3x. You can actually do the whole cluster in one operation and it will automatically shuffle VMs around, but crawl before you walk. If there's no upgrade path, it's likely because you're moving from ESX to ESXi. Figure out where you want to install ESXi (SD card or hard drive), document your current settings, do a clean install, and redo your settings. Should be an hour per host. If you're running name brand hardware, for both methods, use the customized ISOs for that vendor's hardware. I'm probably forgetting a few steps, depending on what version you're coming from. 25 hours seems excessive no matter what the case though. I'd do it for less 
KS fucked around with this message at 19:54 on Jan 25, 2014 |
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Jan 25, 2014 19:46
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If it is really 3.5 and there is no local VM storage I'd deploy a new vcenter appliance and rebuild all the hosts from scratch (good opportunity for firmware updates too). It'd take a lazy saturday or 4-8 hours, I bet Dilbert could do it in 2. sanchez fucked around with this message at 21:11 on Jan 25, 2014 |
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Jan 25, 2014 21:05
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Just adding in; There is a lot to consider when upgrading, firstly have you checked the HCL http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/search.php to ensure you have supported HW? If not Vmware support could be iffy. First you should upgrade vCenter, or just go to the appliance because it will save you headache in the future if you grow at all. It doesn't support a SQL DB but has enough room to satisfy a 300 host, 30,000 vm environment or something ridiculous. Make sure any backup programs are working with it correctly 5.5 is better than 5.1 but still has some qwarks. If you have the resources I'd put one host in maintenance mode, power it down, update firmware on the host, network, storage, bios, kitchen sink. Verify 3.5 boots back up properly, shut it back down, MIGRATE to 5.0 or 5.5. I'd recommend using the HP Esxi image, it does have some additional/advanced drivers in it. Migrate a test VM or something to verify all is working and stable, you can let it burn in overnight if you want, then play leap frog doing the same thing to the remaining hosts. VUM may be a bit more work than needed as you are coming off 3.5 to 5.5 and it's probably easier to just stand infront of the server and manually upgrade. I've seen vum throw a hissy fit with ESX -> Esxi, could be just me though. Key notes: Don't upgrade VMFS3 to 5 until you have all hosts using those datastores one 5.x Ensure HCL compatibility before jumping to 5.5 Ensure Backup software does not need updating to work with 5.5 Ensure Firmware's are up to date on hardware TPS works differently in 5.x than 3.x so keep in mind if you are low on ram overhead(I can show you how to fix it) If you want I can tack on upgrading from ESX 3.5 to 5.5 vCenter and ESXi to the GUG I am doing Wednesday, it will be on the end but I don't mind doing it. Might need to see about hunting down a 3.5 vCenter ISO and ESX iso though. E: and yeah 25hours is a bit over, I'd say 12 if I were doing it from an MSP to client solely because depending how close you are with them they may need 1-2 hours for discovery(HCL/firmware/HW health check), 8 hours for vCenter + hosts + Datastores (and any optimizations), and 2 for documentation. sanchez posted:If it is really 3.5 and there is no local VM storage I'd deploy a new vcenter appliance and rebuild all the hosts from scratch (good opportunity for firmware updates too). It'd take a lazy saturday or 4-8 hours, I bet Dilbert could do it in 2. If it were my environment, yes. But MSP's/VAR's usually over account hours for engineers than under account but 25 hours for a 3 host cluster is high; even if the tech was traveling. Dilbert As FUCK fucked around with this message at 02:00 on Jan 26, 2014 |
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Jan 26, 2014 01:53
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Finally! For gently caress's sake I finally managed to figure out how to get the drat vCenter Server Appliance working on my home environment. I was starting to get extremely frustrated by my lack of ability until I just slapped next on everything and waited to see it all fall apart. Which it didn't, which pissed me off even more. I wanted to get vCenter running on my home ESXi server in order to take advantage of the vCenter and vSphere enterprise licenses I got from Stanly, but not one of the guides I found online was very helpful. I think I really do need to make a write-up of my experience and post it somewhere, but for today at least I'm going to bask in my success.
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Jan 26, 2014 17:39
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There are about 20 VM's total. There's a 4th machine for the cluster but it's powered off - instead of spreading the load across 4 nodes my boss thinks it's a better idea to leave the 4th one off until one of the other three fails. There's not quite enough capacity to run the whole environment on just two nodes (40GB each?) so I don't know what his thinking is. Maybe I can use the powered-off host to start the migration with? Pretty sure they are all DL360 G5's with Xeon E5240's. Old stuff. All the VM's are on one of two NetApps (equally as old). We use Retrospect for backups, not anything that's actually backing up the VM's. The NetApps are SnapMirrored with a third NetApp that's offsite. All the hosts are Windows except maybe 2 which are appliances that run Linux, one from a wireless vendor and I forgot what the other is for.
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Jan 26, 2014 18:45
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Make sure you manage your shared storage microcode as you upgrade your hosts, nobody wants old NetApp code running against their 5.x clusters.
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Jan 27, 2014 00:14
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I've been searching all day but have yet to find an answer to my question about my RAID controller. I bought an LSI 9212-4i card to manage my two 320GB WD Blue spindle drives in RAID-1 in my ESXi box, but when I look under Hardware Status there is nothing for the drive status. I can see under Configuration/Storage/Devices that I have an LSI Serial Attached SCSI Disk, but there is no indication of the condition of the drives. I know that vCenter monitors RAIDs and alerts when they enter a degraded state, but for the life of me I have been unable to find anything online to indicate what I need to download from LSI in terms of drivers or accessories or how to go about enabling this feature.
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Jan 27, 2014 00:53
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