Virtualization Megathread V2: VMs inside VMs

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > Virtualization Megathread V2: VMs inside VMs

BelDin: Jan 29, 2001

Mierdaan posted:

Me neither. Someday I'll get to stop being jack of all trades, master of none, right guys?

Good luck with that. VMware is like InfoSec. It's the IT generalist's specialization. It definitely to be jack of all trades, master of many in this area. My experience may be different, but I'm expected to perform minor miracles every day, know more than the admins about their own server functions, and more about networking than anyone else where I work.

# ¿ Mar 7, 2012 16:52

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# ¿ May 1, 2024 06:36

BelDin: Jan 29, 2001

echo465 posted:

Anyone using VMware View?

I'm using View 5.1 with a floating pool of Win7/32 desktops and PCoIP zero clients. Printers are deployed to users with the Windows print management console. The printers show up fine, users can print to them, but if they set their default printer to one of the deployed printers, it resets to the Microsoft XPS printer on their next logon.

How do I get it to keep the network printer as the default printer?

What is the pool behavior for logoff? I bet it is set to refresh....

We had to set ours to never with 4.6 or it would change back settings like printers on refresh. Haven't been able to get a 5.x test up yet.

# ¿ Sep 20, 2012 01:40

BelDin: Jan 29, 2001

I'm sitting in the VMWare ICM class right now and was wondering: What are general thoughts on reliability of vDS? I know with v4, it was a little too new to put in production for my tastes due to the constant tweaking in updates. We're looking at a deployment of View with about 1200 machines and a few (12 to start) blade servers, which makes vDS very attractive from a management standpoint.

# ¿ Oct 15, 2012 15:09

BelDin: Jan 29, 2001

evol262 posted:

I find that nobody really understands Kerberos, and that PTRs are necessary to securely verify the identity of any given client or server in a SSO setting.

You really should have dynamic DNS running, whether through dhcpd+BIND or AD doing the same thing. SSO is the last thing to tack onto a complete network, and it's not anywhere near complete if you don't have DNS and DHCP working hand in hand.

Good lord... the teacher talked about DNS just now, and that VMWare likes having DNS names for some services. I replied "SSO, right?" He said "Yes, you can click on the box on the client."

*sigh* Why do they make people take this class for the certification?

# ¿ Oct 15, 2012 16:15

BelDin: Jan 29, 2001

madmaan posted:

They make more money certifying people this way.

Welp, there goes my real questions like how to size luns and guest OS to avoid problems with disk contention and SCSI reservations in our View environment.

# ¿ Oct 15, 2012 16:58

BelDin: Jan 29, 2001

madmaan posted:

I would ask anyway and forward the answer you got to vmware. Maybe you could get some free stuff out of the deal?

I paid for a community college course I never really attended to get my VCP. At least the professor was cool about it. He quizzed me briefly to satisfy his curiosity and told me that he wouldn't raise a fuss. We did have a long phone call after I passed the test about what I studied and what I thought was important concepts.

I both love and hate the class attendance requirement.

Yeah, I figure I will wait until class is finishing up on Friday to ask questions like that. No sense in chewing up the other student's time. I may share some experiences for now and leave it at that.

# ¿ Oct 15, 2012 17:12

BelDin: Jan 29, 2001

three posted:

The trainers don't need to know everything to be able to teach you what VMware feels is important for that class.

Fair enough... I just figured it was more than a basic certification class. Guess my expectations were too high.

# ¿ Oct 15, 2012 17:14

BelDin: Jan 29, 2001

Rhymenoserous posted:

Pretty much this. If you want to be a "VMware guy" you had better know your storage, and have a decent head for networking as well.

I still think the two careers that you can make still being a generalist is in virtualization and security. You are just specializing in generalism.

# ¿ Oct 15, 2012 19:59

BelDin: Jan 29, 2001

Mierdaan posted:

Are View 5.1 linked clone replica disks really restricted to NFS datastores? We're on Compellent storage here, do we really need to look at a zNAS frontend or something if we want to go that route?

Not that I know of, but there is a VMFS where you can't have more than 8 hosts connected to a non-NFS datastore that is used for your replica image. That limitation is from View Composer, not VSphere itself. Evidently they hard coded it in composer itself.

# ¿ Feb 28, 2013 18:15

BelDin: Jan 29, 2001

three posted:

It was a limitation of vSphere until vSphere 5.1 as well.

View 5.1 now also supports up to 32 hosts with VMFS as it was only put in place due to the vSphere limitation.

The problem is, you still need to run NFS in order to use the 32 hosts. He sounded like he was trying to avoid NFS.

"With View 5.1 and later and vSphere 5.0 and later, an ESXi cluster can contain more than 8 ESXi hosts (up to 32), but you must store the linked-clone replica disks on NFS datastores."

Hopefully they fix Composer to support it in the next dot release. VMWare supposedly hard coded the limit in the product because previous VSphere versions didn't support it.

View 5.1 planning guide

# ¿ Mar 3, 2013 19:47

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# ¿ May 1, 2024 06:36

BelDin: Jan 29, 2001

ragzilla posted:

NLB is supported for availability of the connection servers, not sure how it'd work cross site without shared layer 2. I'd avoid DNS unless you're all floating pools that refresh at logoff.

We have been using an active/passive Zen Load Balancer cluster for a free, easy way to do clustered IPs back to multiple replica connection servers.

# ¿ Apr 20, 2013 23:11

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