VMware VDR licensing

Here 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 features of one of my ESXi servers with  ESXi 4.1 update 1, build 348481, standard edition.

VMware Data Recovery

How 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 working pretty stable without any major issue. It's missing some features now like email reporting or GUI FLR restore tool but I think we can expect the future release will include them as the competing backup tools don't miss such basic things.

But what I consider the most important for better adoption of vDR in datacenters is that VMware corrected their licenses recently and vDR is now included in Standard edition as well. This means that vDR is available in all vSphere editions except vSphere Essentials kit.

ESXi log files

What 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 system log bundles for particular host. But this takes some time. 

The last method is I think the fastest one because it will allow you to access log files  directly with your web browser. You can use web interface of the ESXi host,  enter the following URL:

https://ESXi_HOST_ADDR/host

The output should looks like shown at this picture:

You can download ESXi log files  messages, hostd.log and vpxa.log  now.

vMA missing libraries

If 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/perl5/5.8.8/x86_64-linux-thread-multi/DynaLoader.pm line 230.
at /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.8/VMware/VmaTargetLib.pm line 10
Compilation failed in require at /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.8/VMware/VIFPLib.pm line 10.

A reason for such  behaviour is typically caused by some misunderstandings how shell environment in vMA is configured. The most common mistake is testing the affected script with sudo which strips out some environment variables - especially LD_LIBRARY_PATH - due to some security restrictions. Otherwise, the error shouldn't appear because /etc/bashrc exports vmware SDK library path implicitly:

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:/opt/vmware/vma/lib64:/opt/vmware/vma/lib

So in  case of sudo or other unspecified scenarios throwing the presented error try to create a wrapper script which explicitly exports a list of directories where to search for ELF libraries again:

#!/bin/bash

LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/opt/vmware/vma/lib64:/opt/vmware/vma/lib  
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH

/path/to/original-script "$@"

exit $?

Second edition of VMware Site Recovery Manager is out

The 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 multiple sites failures
• expanded support of storage vendors - those who provides storage replication solutions over FC, iSCSI or NFS, 12 generally. Among them belongs DELL, IBM, HP, EMC, LSI and others.

For more information on VMware SRM 4 visit the release notes and product home page.

VMware vSphere hotplug

Hotplug 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 virtual disks to my machines quite often. But when I upgraded 3.5 infrastructure to new vShpere 4.0, I became disappointed because it stopped working.

The reason why is simple. Hotadd feature is available from advanced edition only and I was upgrading to standard edition which doesn't contain license for it. You can check it in my previous post VMware vShpere 4.0 editions . Below is an error message which is complaining about missing license:

I think it wasn't a right decision to shift the feature to the higher editions. I think it would be better to leave things where they were because people are used to using them. And I hope that VMware will push back at least hotadd of virtual disk in some future release of vSphere.

VMware 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 VMware (vSphere 4). XenServer is fully comparable to VMware ESX or ESXi. But what about XenCenter management? It's something more than VMware vSphere client but not so valuable as VMware vCenter Management Server. Citrix XenCenter is not the right choice in case of comparison to vCenter. The right one is Citrix Essentials but this one is not for free already. The main differences between Citrix XenCenter and Essentials are:

• XenCenter is missing alerting capabilities like send me an email when "CPU usage is too high" or when some error condition like "virtual machine power on failure" appears
• XenCenter is missing high availability support
• XenCenter is not able to show you performance data older than one day for physical or virtual servers
  

Now, let's try to propose a simple high availability (HA) solution based on Citrix/VMware products and compare their prices. Let's suppose we have 2 (3) entry level servers where each have 2 CPUs with max 6 cores per CPU (6 CPUs total). The servers are connected to a shared disk storage. The CPU speed or memory capacity is not important now. And we require HA solution to protect our virtual machines from hardware failure. Follows the analysis:

- Citrix Essentials Enterprise (1 license = 1 server):

• XenServer - 2 licenses = 0$ (3 lic = 0$)
• Essentials Enterprise - 2 lic = 5500$ (3 lic = 8250$)
• Essentials Preffered Support (optional) - 1 lic = 1500$
  
• Total cost = 7000$ or 9750$ for 3 servers
  
• Total cost without support = 5500$ or 8250$ for 3 servers

- VMware vSphere 4 Standard Edition (1 lic = 1 CPU):

• vSphere 4 Standard - 4 licenses = 3180$ (6 lic = 4770$)
• vShpere 4 Standard 1y Gold Support - 4 lic = 1092$ (6 lic = 1638$)
• vCenter 4 Foundation - 1 lic = 1495$
• vCenter 4 1y Gold Support - 1 lic = 545$
• Total cost = 6312$ or 8448$ for 3 servers
• Support is mandatory

- VMware vSphere 4 Essentials Plus Bundle (1 lic = 1 CPU)

• Licenses for 3 hosts plus vCenter Server for Essentials plus 1y Gold Support = 3624$
• Total cost = 3624$ for 2 or 3 servers
  

The prices of proposed solutions are quite different. In my opinion, the most valued solution is based on new VMware product line vSphere 4 Essentials.

There are rumors that VMware is the most expensive solution. I don't think so if I check the numbers above. Citrix's solution not covered by support is cheaper then VMware's solution with support but only for 2 servers. If I would like to add third server I would have to pay another license in case of Citrix. In case of VMware, I have still one spare license so I will use it. At first glance, XenServer seems to be free of charge but the price of added value by Citrix Essentials doesn't scale as well as in case of VMware vSphere 4 Standard Edition or vSphere 4 Essentials Plus. And what is your opinion to the topic?

VMware vSphere - OVF support

OVF 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. (draft standard, version 0.9). VMware vSphere 4.0 has full native support of OVF format in version 1.0. Beside, there exists standalone VMware OVF Tool 1.0 which brings OVF support for products like VMware Workstation or VMware Server.

OVF is a packaging format for software appliances. For example, it may contain tested LAMP stack prepared for simple deployment in production. It is a way how to transport virtual machine templates portably. OVF package may contain single or more virtual machines which must be installed (deployed) before they can be run. It is not run-time virtual machine format like VMDK. Further, it provides content verification and integrity checking.

Compared to VMDK format, OVF defines complete virtual machine - virtual hardware configuration including CPU, memory, storage, networking and virtual disks. On the other hand, VMDK is in charge of virtual disks only.

Are there available any OVF packages? Yes, for example there exists OVF of VMware vCenter 2.5 for Linux or vCenter Admin Portal and many others at VMware Virtual Appliance Marketplace.

VMware vSphere - Fault Tolerance

VMware 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 and in case of its failure to restart it.

The next logical step is fault tolerant virtual environment. VMware vSphere 4 can do it . It provides zero downtime and data integrity of virtual machines in case of physical server failure.

When you configure a virtual machine to be fault tolerant a secondary duplicate machine is created on a different host. Then, any operation performed on the primary machine is recorded and replayed on its duplicate. If the primary fails the secondary takes over and continues running without interruption. However, current version is not able to monitor applications running inside virtual machines but it should be available in future.

VMware Fault Tolerance or VMware FT as it is denoted is cool and must have feature but to implement it means to meet these requirements:

1. VM (virtual machine) must be in HA cluster
   
2. esx host ssl certificates checking has to be enabled
   
3. VM has to be stored on shared storage
   
4. VM's virtual disks have to be in thick format, thin is not supported already
   
5. three VMkernel 1G ports are required, one for VMotion and two for FT
   
6. FT doesn't support Virtual SMP, only single processor VMs are supported!
7. physical hosts have to support hardware assisted virtualisation, no problem with recent servers

The most of requirements are common ones but points 4 and 6, for older servers 7 as well, are considerlable limitations. It's not so simple to implement VMware FT but I hope it will get better in next releases.

Finally, vSphere documentation is available at vmware.com.

VMware vSphere 4.0 editions

Yesterday, 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 Essentials Plus
• Enterprise editions - Standard, Advanced, Enteprise and Enterprise Plus

Here is the mentioned table of features:

VMware ESX 4.0 aka vSphere 4.0 platform

The next major release of VMware ESX platform is being prepared. The platform newly called as vSphere 4.0 is going to be based on six stones which provide:

1. vCompute - virtualization layer, hypervisor, live migration
   
2. vStorage - storage management, replication
   
3. vNetwork - network management, distributed switch, Cisco Nexus switch
   
4. Availability - clustering, data protection
   
5. Security - VMsafe APIs, vShield Zones
   
6. Scalability - dynamic resource management, distributed power management
   

Furthermore, the new platform will support virtual machines with 8 virtual CPUs and 256 GB of virtual memory.

The second most important part of virtual environment is centralized management. Today, we know it as VMware VirtualCenter Server. In the future, it should be called vCenter Suite. The good news, it will be available for Linux servers as well so no more Windows licenses are required.