tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-81787350760347140062024-03-19T10:36:25.591+01:00dsumsky lines . . .tips and tricks, news, reviews, tutorials about Linux and various Unixes, VMware, virtualization, scripting ...David Sumskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08319307373855262437noreply@blogger.comBlogger123125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8178735076034714006.post-80914881473042267882011-05-24T14:03:00.000+02:002011-05-24T14:03:49.986+02:00VMware VDR licensingHere I wrote about availability of VMware VDR in almost all the editions of vSphere - newly in Standard edition as well. VDR provides agent-less backups of virtual machines and in-line block based destination deduplication.
This license change applies for all installations or upgrades to the latest release 4.1 update 1 of ESXi hypervisor. The screenshot below shows the licensed David Sumskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08319307373855262437noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8178735076034714006.post-21855506399990537112011-05-17T01:22:00.002+02:002011-05-17T08:46:10.385+02:00CentOS 6?I'm a big fan of CentOS project. I use it in production and I recommend it to the others as an enterprise ready Linux distro. I have to admit that I was quite disappointed by the behaviour of project developers who weren't able to tell the community the reasons why the upcoming releases were and are so overdue. I was used to downloading CentOS images one or two months after the David Sumskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08319307373855262437noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8178735076034714006.post-68291623175573212952011-05-15T23:03:00.000+02:002011-05-15T23:03:07.820+02:00VMware Data RecoveryHow do you backup your virtual infrastructure based on VMware platform? Do you still rely on VCB? Even if the VCB is still supported and it is compatible with the latest ESX/ESXi hypervisor at version 4.1u1 it should be discontinued from the next release. So what backup tool to use in the future?
VMware vDR is considered to be its successor and in my opinion, the latest release is David Sumskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08319307373855262437noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8178735076034714006.post-73089464106308916942011-05-10T15:30:00.000+02:002011-05-10T15:30:48.345+02:00DNS reverse mappingRecently, I had to cope with configuring some reverse zones for subnets where the netmask is like 26 or 20 (IPv4). It's quite straightforward to do it with class C networks when it is sufficient to reverse the order of network base of the address, join the result with special domain in-addr.arpa and create a reversed mapped zone file finally. If we had a network 192.168.1.0/24 David Sumskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08319307373855262437noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8178735076034714006.post-87423126903623532642011-05-03T16:20:00.000+02:002011-05-03T16:20:54.269+02:00Quickly - persistent modules loading on RHELThe kernel modules required for booting the system up are part of an initial ramdisk which is automatically loaded into the memory by a boot loader. The ramdisk contains enough modules to mount the root filesystem and to initialize essential devices like keyboard, console or various expansion cards. The boot process then continues with running the init process.
David Sumskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08319307373855262437noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8178735076034714006.post-68962706737977207292011-02-24T14:06:00.000+01:002011-02-24T14:06:45.869+01:00ESXi log filesWhat is the fastest way to retrieve log files from an ESXi host? In my opinion, the best way is to configure remote logging via syslog server but this requires host reboot to apply configuration changes (KB1016621). The alternative method is to forward log files to different datastore. If you don't have prepared syslog server for remote logging you can use vsphere client and generate David Sumskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08319307373855262437noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8178735076034714006.post-49749009387942297802011-02-08T22:11:00.005+01:002011-02-08T22:17:37.061+01:00vMA missing librariesIf you are using vMA (vSphere Management Assistant) for some specific management tasks like UPS monitoring or running a scheduled backup script from cron daemon, you may experience an error similar to this one:Can't load '/usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.8/libvmatargetlib_perl.so'
for module vmatargetlib_perl: libtypes.so: cannot open shared object
file: No such file or directory at
/usr/lib64/David Sumskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08319307373855262437noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8178735076034714006.post-29140470369562152792011-01-21T02:00:00.000+01:002011-01-21T02:00:00.300+01:00VCB basic usage - debuggingDuring the series of articles about VCB usage I supposed that all the presented VCB command examples are running smoothly and without errors. But this is not always true. There can be a lot of reason why it is not working as expected, e.g. wrong permissions assigned to VCB backup user, misconfigured SAN which doesn't allow to access VMFS volumes or unspecified problem with creating David Sumskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08319307373855262437noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8178735076034714006.post-1499887652200148222011-01-18T15:59:00.010+01:002011-01-18T16:57:25.964+01:00YUM download only modeHow many times I was in a situation I needed to update a server with RHEL installed but I wasn't at site and I didn't have a way how to reboot the server after installing a new kernel or glibc package on it reliably? Yes, I have a test environment and I'm testing the updates on it but many installations are too critical to just run yum update -y and then shutdown -r now. On top of that, thereDavid Sumskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08319307373855262437noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8178735076034714006.post-44528649672259656962011-01-18T15:38:00.008+01:002011-01-18T17:02:38.655+01:00Time to continueAfter almost a whole year, I would like to awake my blog from a sleep and begin to publish articles more regularly. During the previous period I was too busy at work and I couldn't afford to take care of it as I would like. On the other hand, I had an opportunity to participate on some interesting projects and I needed to solve many unusual tasks. Everything was written down and now it David Sumskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08319307373855262437noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8178735076034714006.post-45005619834899119102010-08-31T14:12:00.006+02:002010-08-31T14:59:33.552+02:00Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.5 - what's new?It's a few months since RHEL 5.5 was released (march, 2010). Despite this, I would like to point out the major changes and additions compared to the previous release RHEL 5.4. So what's new:Kickstart installation - it is possible to exclude package groups in the same way like single packages.KVM guests and Cluster Suite - management of KVM based virtual guests with Cluster Suite is David Sumskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08319307373855262437noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8178735076034714006.post-55772151065432326252010-07-30T12:27:00.005+02:002010-07-30T12:51:42.533+02:00VMware Workstation 7.1 enhancementsI have decided to update my current VMware workstation 7.0.1 installation I have on my desktop to the latest available release 7.1. Further follows a quick comparison of the most interesting features and enhancements between these two releases:WS7.1 officially support many latest versions of well-known Linux distros like RHEL/Debian/UbuntuWS7.1 supports OVF1.1 via ovftool which is part of the David Sumskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08319307373855262437noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8178735076034714006.post-45563325250840852672010-06-24T16:19:00.006+02:002010-06-24T17:15:04.557+02:00SLES 11 SP1 releasedI have decided to write a brief summary of new features and enhancements which are available with the first service pack of Novell's SLES 11. I need to know the major differences between GA and SP1 release during my every day work and perhaps, it will help you in the same way like me. The original post about SLES11 GA is here. So, what's new?it is based on GNU/Linux kernel 2.6.32it provides web David Sumskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08319307373855262437noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8178735076034714006.post-20352370820753052702009-10-12T01:00:00.001+02:002009-10-12T01:00:00.696+02:00Second edition of VMware Site Recovery Manager is outThe second edition of VMware SRM, officially named as VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manger 4, was released recently. The product is responsible for automated disaster recovery of complex virtual environments. The recent version is fully compatible with VMware vSphere platform and provides these new important features:many-to-one failover - this means that one site is able to recover from multipleDavid Sumskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08319307373855262437noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8178735076034714006.post-26504570955927106772009-09-29T14:58:00.007+02:002011-01-25T09:48:18.809+01:00VMware Server 1.0.x library dependency problemIn the beginning of the year, I wrote this article about some problems between older VMware server 1.0.x and newer Linux distributions. The problem is related to the vmware kernel modules whose source code are not compatible with newer Linux kernels.
I was surprised with one thing. When I upgraded VMware Server from version 1.0.8 to 1.0.9, VMware Server console stopped working. The new version David Sumskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08319307373855262437noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8178735076034714006.post-58975974211650059132009-09-02T14:10:00.011+02:002009-09-02T14:45:22.338+02:00Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4 releasedToday, it was released a next minor version of Red Hat's flagship Linux distribution RHEL 5.4. Here it is a brief summary of new features and updates:KVM hypervisor - Full support of Kernel-based Virtual Machine is included now. XEN support is included as well, but you can't use both XEN and KVM at the same time. Each hypervisor requires different kernel. You need to have 64b machine to run KVM. David Sumskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08319307373855262437noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8178735076034714006.post-19977280696729187042009-08-20T23:00:00.002+02:002009-08-20T23:00:01.392+02:00VMware vSphere hotplugHotplug of virtual hardware is attractive feature of VMware ESX 3.x/4.x. In case of ESX 3.x it is limited to hotadd of virtual disk to a running virtual machine only. With next generation of VMware vSphere hypervisor you are able to hotadd of memory or CPU to a machine if guest operating system supports it.I was surprised during vSphere evaluation how it pretty works. I used to hotadd of virtualDavid Sumskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08319307373855262437noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8178735076034714006.post-18018230128034324922009-08-19T12:22:00.006+02:002009-08-20T08:34:03.847+02:00Linux rc.local scriptSometimes, you need to run some commands during your Linux server startup. And you don't want to waste time with preparing valid init script now. The common task is to load some kernel module or to change speed of network interface and so on.Red Hat distributions provides for this task rc.local script. You can find it in the directory /etc/rc.d. The script is executed after all the other init David Sumskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08319307373855262437noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8178735076034714006.post-68391772754759474992009-06-10T08:47:00.001+02:002009-06-10T09:05:22.843+02:00Solaris 10 updates summaryThe seventh update of Solaris 10 was released on May. It contains support of Intel Nehalem CPU and some ZFS enhancements. I added it to the summary of Solaris updates .Here it is:Solaris 10 1/06 (u1) - GRUB bootloader, iSCSI initiator, fcinfo commandSolaris 10 6/06 (u2) - ZFS filesystemSolaris 10 11/06 (u3) - Solaris Trusted Extensions, LDomsSolaris 10 8/07 (u4) - full TCP/IP stack in zones, David Sumskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08319307373855262437noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8178735076034714006.post-15067723457146775092009-06-09T01:00:00.019+02:002009-06-09T01:00:00.829+02:00VMware or Citrix?Citrix released their virtualization solution named XenServer (from version 5, article XenServer is free) for free but only the time will show if it was a right decision. At first glance, it seems like a marvelous thing but there are some facts which should be investigated first. Together with XenServer, it was released central management solution XenCenter.Let's have a look at their rival David Sumskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08319307373855262437noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8178735076034714006.post-86012400159275377232009-05-28T16:00:00.005+02:002009-05-28T16:00:00.456+02:00VMware vSphere - OVF supportOVF or Open Virtualization Format is an open DMTF standard with intention to package and distribute virtual machines or virtual appliances among various hypervisors independently on hypervisor and CPU architecture.VMware supports OVF format and actively participate on its development . It is supported on ESX 3.5 and VirtualCenter 2.5 but the implementation doesn't support full OVF feature set.David Sumskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08319307373855262437noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8178735076034714006.post-51627279070436129342009-05-21T11:00:00.001+02:002009-05-21T12:18:03.861+02:00VMware vSphere - Fault ToleranceVMware High Availability provides protection against physical servers failures running ESX hypervisors. If one host in HA cluster fails then failed virtual machines are restarted on another alive host from cluster. It ensures the host has enough resources to fulfill requirements of newly booted virtual machines. It is able to monitor virtual machine activity by checking its heartbeat as well andDavid Sumskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08319307373855262437noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8178735076034714006.post-71059060683627011162009-05-19T15:20:00.003+02:002009-05-19T15:30:07.016+02:00RHEL 4.8 releasedYesterday, a next minor version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 was released. The new version 4.8 contains the foloowing updates and enhancements:optimized drivers for RHEL 4 guests running on KVM hypervizorSAMBA update for better interoperability with Windows worldnew kernel tunables for better performanceFor details, there are official release notes published at redhat.com.David Sumskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08319307373855262437noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8178735076034714006.post-49352304176283346622009-04-29T11:03:00.007+02:002009-05-21T10:58:37.177+02:00VMware vSphere 4.0 editionsYesterday, VMware uncovered new pricing and licensing model of vSphere 4.0 platform. In my opinion, VMware is trying to strictly split up the virtualization market into two parts - SMB and enterprise. I have a feeling from the table of features below that there is growing a hole between them. The competitors should catch the chance to fill it up.SMB editions - ESXi Single Server, Essentials and David Sumskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08319307373855262437noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8178735076034714006.post-56562705657771681912009-04-16T18:00:00.001+02:002009-04-16T18:00:00.212+02:00Linux kernel crash dumps with kdumpKdump is official GNU/Linux kernel crash dumping mechanism. It is part of vanilla kernel. Before it, there exists some projects like LKCD for performing such things. But they weren't part of mainline kernel so you needed to patch the kernel or to rely on Linux distribution to include it. In the event of LKCD, it was difficult to configure it, especially which device to use for dumping.The first David Sumskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08319307373855262437noreply@blogger.com1