Contents at a Glance

Introduction ................................................................ 1

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Part I: Deciding on vSphere .......................................... 7

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Chapter 1: Get ting the Most Out of VMware vSphere................................................... 9

Chapter 2: Introducing Vir tualization ........................................................................... 15
Chapter 3: Exploring the Capabilities of VMware vSphere ........................................ 29
Chapter 4: Comparing Vir tual Infrastructure 3.5 with vSphere 4.x ........................... 39

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Part II: Getting Ready for vSphere .............................. 51

Chapter 5: Planning for a vSphere Rollout ................................................................... 53
Chapter 6: Preparing Net work and Storage for vSphere ............................................ 65

Part III: Installing vSphere ......................................... 73

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Chapter 7: Installing VMware ESX 4 for the First Time ............................................... 75

Chapter 8: Building the vCenter Ser ver ........................................................................ 89
Chapter 9: Get ting Star ted with the vSphere Client.................................................. 103

Part IV: Configuring and Connecting vSphere............. 111

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Chapter 10: Configuring a New vCenter Ser ver ......................................................... 113

Chapter 11: Wiring Up vSphere to the Net work, Vir tually ....................................... 129
Chapter 12: Connecting vSphere to Shared Storage ................................................. 149
Chapter 13: Assembling an ESX Cluster ...................................................................... 171

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Part V: Administering and Maintaining vSphere ......... 181

Chapter 14: Creating, Cloning, and Converting VMs ................................................. 183
Chapter 15: Organizing vSphere Resources ............................................................... 205
Chapter 16: Events, Alarms, and Monitoring ............................................................. 219
Chapter 17: A Quick Tour of Your Virtual Infrastructure ......................................... 231
Chapter 18: One of These Hosts Is Not Like the Other Host Profiles ................. 241

Part VI: Tuning and Troubleshooting vSphere ............. 259

Chapter 19: Making VMs Play Fair with Resource Pools .......................................... 261
Chapter 20: Using vSphere Availability Features ...................................................... 271
Chapter 21: Troubleshooting vSphere ........................................................................ 287

Part VII: The Part of Tens ......................................... 301

Chapter 22: Ten Tools to Make vSphere Management Easier.................................. 303
Chapter 23: Ten Places to Improve Your vSphere Know-How ................................. 313
Chapter 24: Ten Pro Tips for a Successful vSphere Deployment ............................ 317

Index ...................................................................... 323

Table of Contents
Introduction ................................................................. 1
About This Book .............................................................................................. 1
How to Use This Book ..................................................................................... 2
What Youre Not to Read ................................................................................ 2
Foolish Assumptions ....................................................................................... 3
How This Book Is Organized .......................................................................... 3
Part I: Deciding on vSphere .................................................................. 3
Part II: Getting Ready for vSphere ....................................................... 3
Part III: Installing vSphere ..................................................................... 3
Part IV: Configuring and Connecting vSphere .................................... 4
Part V: Administering and Maintaining vSphere ................................ 4
Part VI: Tuning and Troubleshooting vSphere .................................. 4
Part VII: The Part of Tens ...................................................................... 4
Icons Used in This Book ................................................................................. 5
Where to Go from Here ................................................................................... 5

Part I: Deciding on vSphere ........................................... 7

Chapter 1: Get ting the Most Out of VMware vSphere . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .9
vSphere and Your Environment .................................................................... 9
Rolling out vSphere ....................................................................................... 10
Mapping out an unfamiliar terrain ..................................................... 10
Youll need one of those ..................................................................... 11
Thinking about Networks and Storage ....................................................... 11
Taking Care of vSphere ................................................................................. 12
The vCenter of Your Universe ..................................................................... 12

Chapter 2: Introducing Vir tualization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .15

Thinking Virtual ............................................................................................. 15
Virtual machines arent so different .................................................. 16
Real virtual hardware .......................................................................... 17
Arriving at Virtualization Again .............................................................. 17
Virtualization is so 1960s .................................................................... 17
Supervisor turns hypervisor .............................................................. 18
Virtualization Simplified ............................................................................... 19
Picturing virtualization ....................................................................... 21
This is your machine ........................................................................... 22
This is your machine on virtualization ............................................. 24

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Ups and Downs of Virtualization ................................................................. 25
Positively virtual .................................................................................. 25
Some side effects of virtualization ..................................................... 27
When Virtual Is Improbable ......................................................................... 28

Chapter 3: Exploring the Capabilities of VMware vSphere . . . . . . . . .29

Exploring the Unique Features of vSphere ................................................. 29
Taking a Peek at Standard vSphere Features ............................................. 30
Memory overcommit ........................................................................... 30
Virtual machine cloning ...................................................................... 31
Thin provisioning................................................................................. 32
High availability ................................................................................... 32
vMotion live migration of VMs ........................................................... 33
Getting a Look at Advanced vSphere Features .......................................... 33
Distributed Resource Scheduler ........................................................ 34
Hot-add of CPU and memory to running virtual machines ............ 34
Delving into vSphere Enterprise Features .................................................. 35
Storage vMotion live migration .......................................................... 35
vSphere fault tolerance ....................................................................... 35
vShield Zones ....................................................................................... 36
vNetwork Distributed Switch ............................................................. 36
Host Profiles ......................................................................................... 37

Chapter 4: Comparing Vir tual Infrastructure 3.5 with vSphere 4.x . . .39
Quickly Comparing VI3 with vSphere 4 ...................................................... 39
Bigger, better virtual machines.......................................................... 40
vCenter Server (formerly VirtualCenter) .......................................... 41
ESX a host of improvements.......................................................... 42
Pushing up the uptime ........................................................................ 42
Finding Out Whats New in vSphere 4 ......................................................... 43
Additions to availability ...................................................................... 43
Net new networking ............................................................................. 44
Storage starters .................................................................................... 45
Security sentiments ............................................................................. 45
Virtual management medley............................................................... 46
Discovering the Differences in vSphere 4.1................................................ 47
vCenter Server...................................................................................... 47
ESX 4.1 ................................................................................................... 48

Part II: Getting Ready for vSphere............................... 51

Chapter 5: Planning for a vSphere Rollout. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .53
Right-Sizing the Environment....................................................................... 53
Enough is not always enough ............................................................. 54
Measure twice, deploy once ............................................................... 55

Table of Contents
Department of redundancy department ........................................... 57
Selling the same disk space twice (or more).................................... 58
Keeping Scalability in Mind .......................................................................... 58
Storage considerations ....................................................................... 58
Adding hosts versus adding clusters ................................................ 59
Comparing vSphere Small Business Editions ............................................ 60
Essentials for Retail ............................................................................. 60
Essentials Plus for Retail ..................................................................... 60
Looking at Mid-Size and Enterprise Business vSphere Versions ............ 61
Standard Edition .................................................................................. 61
Advanced Edition ................................................................................. 62
Enterprise Edition ................................................................................ 63
Enterprise Plus Edition ....................................................................... 63
Exploring Support and Subscription (SnS) Requirements ....................... 64

Chapter 6: Preparing Net work and Storage for vSphere . . . . . . . . . . .65

vSphere, the Network Switch ....................................................................... 65
Understanding virtual and physical network switches .................. 66
Asking for the right connections ....................................................... 67
Teaming Network Interface Cards ............................................................... 68
VLANs and Other Switching Concepts ....................................................... 68
vSphere, the Keeper of Storage ................................................................... 69
Getting the skinny on thin provisioning ........................................... 70
Painting yourself into a corner through overallocation ................. 70
Sharing storage is more than just sharing space............................. 70
Access Control and Datastores ................................................................... 71
Advanced Storage Configurations ............................................................... 71

Part III: Installing vSphere ......................................... 73

Chapter 7: Installing VMware ESX 4 for the First Time . . . . . . . . . . . . .75
Gearing Up for Install .................................................................................... 75
Preparing the install media ................................................................ 75
Confirming the connections ............................................................... 76
IP addresses, routes, and VLANs, oh my! ......................................... 77
Booting Up ESX 4 Installation Media ........................................................... 77
Confirming ESX Installation .......................................................................... 86
Connecting via a Web browser .......................................................... 86
Connecting with vSphere Client......................................................... 87

Chapter 8: Building the vCenter Ser ver . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .89

Placing vCenter Server in a Stable Home ................................................... 89
Going virtual is the new physical....................................................... 90
Right-sizing resources for vCenter .................................................... 90
Going global and Multiple vCenter instances .................................. 92

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Meeting the Prerequisites ............................................................................ 93
Operating system (OS) ........................................................................ 93
Hardware............................................................................................... 94
Microsoft Active Directory ................................................................. 95
Database................................................................................................ 95
Networking............................................................................................ 97
User account permissions .................................................................. 98
Running the vCenter Server Installer .......................................................... 98

Chapter 9: Get ting Star ted with the vSphere Client . . . . . . . . . . . . . .103
Installing the vSphere Client ...................................................................... 103
Reviewing the prerequisites ............................................................. 103
Running the installer ......................................................................... 104
vSphere Clients Less Famous Sister: vSphere Web Access .................. 108
Enabling vSphere Web Access ......................................................... 108
Connecting to vSphere Web Access ................................................ 110

Part IV: Configuring and Connecting vSphere ............. 111

Chapter 10: Conguring a New vCenter Ser ver . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .113
Laying the Foundation ................................................................................ 113
Adding licenses .................................................................................. 114
Creating a new vCenter datacenter ................................................. 117
Adding ESX Hosts ........................................................................................ 118
Adding vSphere licensing ................................................................. 118
Telling vCenter Server about a new ESX host ................................ 122
Setting up time synchronization on ESX hosts .............................. 124

Chapter 11: Wiring Up vSphere to the Net work, Vir tually . . . . . . . . .129
Creating a vSwitch ....................................................................................... 129
Associating physical NICs to the vSwitch....................................... 132
Configuring NIC teaming and failover ............................................. 133
Confirming the connection ............................................................... 136
Creating Port Groups on a vSwitch ........................................................... 136
Associating port groups with VLANs .............................................. 137
Using a port group without VLAN tagging ...................................... 137
Adding a Management Network Port ........................................................ 138
Adding a VMkernel Port.............................................................................. 139
Enabling vMotion ......................................................................................... 140
Adding a vNetwork Distributed Virtual Switch........................................ 141
Attaching hosts to the vDS ............................................................... 142
Configuring VLANs ............................................................................. 145
Configuring Network I/O Control ..................................................... 145
Troubleshooting vSphere Networking ...................................................... 147

Table of Contents
Chapter 12: Connecting vSphere to Shared Storage . . . . . . . . . . . . . .149
Getting Familiar with vSphere Storage ..................................................... 149
VMware Virtual Machine File System .............................................. 150
Network File System .......................................................................... 152
Deciding on Disk .......................................................................................... 152
Sizing Up vSphere Storage Options ........................................................... 153
Configuring Fibre Channel SAN Storage ................................................... 155
Attaching the Logical Unit Numbers to vSphere hosts ................. 155
Setting the path selection policy ..................................................... 156
Optimizing FC SAN performance ..................................................... 159
Avoiding common configuration errors.......................................... 160
Configuring Internet SCSI SAN Storage ..................................................... 160
Comparing hardware versus software iSCSI initiators ................. 161
Enabling the iSCSI initiator on a vSphere host............................... 161
Configuring Dynamic Discovery of an iSCSI server ....................... 162
Avoiding common configuration errors.......................................... 164
Preparing LUN-Based SAN Storage for First Use ..................................... 164
Creating a new VMFS volume ........................................................... 164
Enabling Storage Input/Output Control .......................................... 167
Configuring Network-Attached Storage .................................................... 168
Mounting NFS exports in vSphere ................................................... 169
Avoiding common configuration errors.......................................... 170

Chapter 13: Assembling an ESX Cluster. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .171

Keeping Consistent Configurations ........................................................... 171
Network naming ................................................................................. 172
Same datastore, same name ............................................................. 172
Same access, different hosts ............................................................ 173
Inviting ESX Hosts to the Cluster Club...................................................... 173
Creating a cluster ............................................................................... 174
Adding an ESX host to a cluster ....................................................... 176
Sharing the Load with Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) ............. 177
Keeping VMs separated .................................................................... 177
ESX hosts and VMs, hand-in-hand ................................................... 178
Enabling DRS on a cluster ................................................................. 178

Part V: Administering and Maintaining vSphere ......... 181

Chapter 14: Creating, Cloning, and Converting VMs . . . . . . . . . . . . . .183
The Makings of a Virtual Machine ............................................................. 183
Configuration ...................................................................................... 183
Virtual disks ........................................................................................ 184
Virtual hardware ................................................................................ 185

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Filling Up the Virtual Container ................................................................. 188
Building a VM from scratch .............................................................. 188
Whats a worker without VMware Tools? ....................................... 191
A Computer in a File .................................................................................... 194
Importing an existing virtual machine disk .................................... 194
Thinning out an existing virtual disk ............................................... 195
Bring in the Clones ...................................................................................... 195
Making a clone of a VM ..................................................................... 195
Deploying from a template ............................................................... 198
Automatically Customizing Clones ........................................................... 199
Cloning with customization .............................................................. 199
Customization specifications ........................................................... 201
Things That Dont Clone Very Well ........................................................... 203
Applications with identities.............................................................. 203
Licensing tied to hardware ............................................................... 203

Chapter 15: Organizing vSphere Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .205

The Client Perspective: Four Views, One vSphere .................................. 205
Focusing on the vSphere hosts: The Hosts and Clusters view .... 206
Virtual machines on the brain: the VMs and Templates view ..... 207
Thinking capacity a storage perspective:
The Datastores view ...................................................................... 208
Networking, and whatever it connects: Networking view ............ 209
Using Logic to Place a New Virtual Machine ............................................ 210
Considering storage growth ............................................................. 210
Creating a common sense folder structure .................................... 211
Assigning ownership through Custom Attributes ......................... 212
Giving permissions to the new owner ............................................. 214
All Together Now: vSphere vApps ............................................................ 215
Defining a vApp in vSphere vCenter ................................................ 216
Bringing order to virtual machines ................................................. 217

Chapter 16: Events, Alarms, and Monitoring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .219

Using Events to Track Activity................................................................... 219
Spotting the events that matter ....................................................... 220
Finding an event related to a failure ................................................ 220
Setting Up Alarms in vSphere .................................................................... 221
Exploring the default alarms ............................................................ 222
Calming vSphere alarm paranoia ..................................................... 224
Tweaking alarms to understand normal ...................................... 225
Putting Alarms to Work .............................................................................. 226
Setting up notifications ..................................................................... 226
Sending alerts over e-mail................................................................. 227
Connecting vSphere to other monitoring systems ........................ 229
Going overboard with alerting ......................................................... 230

Table of Contents
Chapter 17: A Quick Tour of Your Virtual Infrastructure . . . . . . . . . . .231
Diving into Datastores ................................................................................ 231
Peering into Permissions ............................................................................ 232
Perusing the Environment with Maps....................................................... 234
Checking the Stats with Performance ....................................................... 235
Writing a vCenter To-Do List with Scheduled Tasks............................... 237

Chapter 18: One of These Hosts Is Not Like

the Other Host Proles. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .241
Preparing the Perfect Host ......................................................................... 241
Network considerations .................................................................... 242
Datastores all around ........................................................................ 243
Connect me with Active Directory .................................................. 243
Do you know the time? ...................................................................... 244
Capturing a Host Configuration ................................................................. 244
Attaching a Host Profile .............................................................................. 246
Applying a Host Profile ............................................................................... 247
Changing the Admin Password .................................................................. 251
Keeping the Host Profile Up to Date ......................................................... 255

Part VI: Tuning and Troubleshooting vSphere .............. 259

Chapter 19: Making VMs Play Fair with Resource Pools . . . . . . . . . .261
Creating a Resource Pool ........................................................................... 261
Putting Resources in Perspective.............................................................. 262
Setting Limits and Reservations for Clusters, Hosts,
and Virtual Machines............................................................................... 264
Do you have a reservation? .............................................................. 265
Enforcing hard limits ......................................................................... 266
Giving preference to certain VMs .................................................... 266
Delegating Resources to Other VMs ......................................................... 267
Allocating resources to a group ....................................................... 267
Favoring critical machines ............................................................... 268
Combining Resource Pools ........................................................................ 268
The nesting instinct: Dividing resources with nests ..................... 269
Importing VMs with their own resource settings .......................... 270
Merging resource pools when adding a host to a cluster ............ 270

Chapter 20: Using vSphere Availability Features. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .271

Deciding How Much Downtime Is Too Much ........................................... 271
Defining zero downtime .................................................................... 272
Clustering at the OS level.................................................................. 272
Comparing high availability and fault tolerance............................ 273

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Using VMware High Availability ................................................................ 274
Prerequisites for VMware High Availability ................................... 275
Bringing order to your VMs .............................................................. 275
Providing Your VMs High Availability ...................................................... 276
Responding to failure ........................................................................ 276
Enabling High Availability on a cluster ........................................... 277
Exploring VMware Fault Tolerance Beyond HA.................................. 278
Prerequisites for VMware Fault Tolerance ..................................... 279
Calculating the cost of VMware Fault Tolerance ........................... 280
Enabling VMware Fault Tolerance ................................................... 280
Protecting multi-VM applications .................................................... 282
Making the Rules (and Breaking Them) ................................................... 283
Managing acceptable failure settings .............................................. 283
Configuring behaviors for critical situations ................................. 284
Saving space for visitors during maintenance ............................... 285

Chapter 21: Troubleshooting vSphere . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .287

Conducting General Troubleshooting ...................................................... 287
ESXi: Easier or harder to troubleshoot? ......................................... 288
Super-secret Tech Support Mode .................................................... 288
PSOD .................................................................................................... 289
Taking Advantage of Log Files ................................................................... 290
Troubleshooting a SAN ............................................................................... 292
Refresh and rescan ............................................................................ 292
SCSI locks ............................................................................................ 292
Solving High Availability Errors ................................................................. 293
Reconfigure for VMware HA over and over .................................... 293
Admittance errors.............................................................................. 293
My whole blade chassis failed, and HA did nothing! ..................... 294
Isolation island ................................................................................... 294
Troubleshooting Oversubscribed Hosts .................................................. 295
Disabling unneeded devices ............................................................. 295
Install/update VMware Tools ........................................................... 295
Tools updated on every reboot ....................................................... 295
Dont overuse reservations .............................................................. 296
CPU ready and why it matters ......................................................... 296
Handling vCenter Troubles ........................................................................ 297
Cannot convert template to a VM .................................................... 297
Guest customization errors .............................................................. 297
vCenter Server stopped and wont start ......................................... 298
Dealing with VM Crashes ............................................................................ 298
Low VMFS space ................................................................................ 299
Missing or ghost hardware ............................................................... 299
Incorrect HAL in Windows ................................................................ 299
Handling Networking Issues ....................................................................... 300

Table of Contents

Part VII: The Part of Tens.......................................... 301

Chapter 22: Ten Tools to Make vSphere Management Easier. . . . . .303
VMware PowerCLI ....................................................................................... 303
VMware Project Onyx ................................................................................. 304
DynamicOps Cloud Automation Center ................................................... 305
vSphere Mini Monitor ................................................................................. 306
Veeam FastSCP............................................................................................. 306
Ultimate Deployment Appliance (UDA) .................................................... 308
Virtual Guest Console ................................................................................. 309
xtravirt vSphere Client RDP Plug-In .......................................................... 310
Openfiler ....................................................................................................... 311
Stratusphere UX........................................................................................... 311

Chapter 23: Ten Places to Improve Your vSphere Know-How. . . . . .313

DABCC.com .................................................................................................. 313
Mike Lavericks RTFM Education .............................................................. 314
NTPRO.NL ..................................................................................................... 314
Petri IT Knowledgebase .............................................................................. 314
virtualization.info ........................................................................................ 314
VMware Knowledgebase............................................................................. 315
VMware Communities ................................................................................. 315
vSphere Land ............................................................................................... 315
xtravirt .......................................................................................................... 315
Yellow Bricks................................................................................................ 316

Chapter 24: Ten Pro Tips for a Successful vSphere Deployment . . .317
Plan to Make the Most of vSphere Memory Optimization ..................... 317
Monitor Utilization on Datastores with Thin-Provisioned VMs ............ 318
VM Snapshots Are Quiet Space Consumers............................................. 318
Clean Templates Make for Happy VMs ..................................................... 318
Automate the Startup/Shutdown of VMs.................................................. 319
Not Everyone Needs vCenter Access ........................................................ 319
vSphere Clusters of a Feather .................................................................... 320
Dont Get vMotion Sickness ....................................................................... 320
Working through Hostname Resolution ................................................... 321
Putting VM Tools Everywhere .............................................................. 321

Index ....................................................................... 323

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