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stubblyhead posted:Has anyone gotten USB passthrough to work in VirtualBox? I've been struggling with it all weekend and just can't get it to connect, and it sounds like it's a pretty common problem. Can VMware Player do this with less hassle? It works quite well for me, Windows 7 hosts to Windows 7 or Ubuntu guest. I was able to dd a usb hard drive I plugged in to make a backup image, and that was flawless. So overall no complaints here.
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Mar 26, 2012 01:24
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feld posted:What is the host OS that VirtualBox runs on? Windows 7 Professional. I've already downloaded vmware player though, so I'll give that a shot. I should be able to convert my vms, right? It won't be a huge loss if I have to start over since they're basically bare installs, but it would be helpful.
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Mar 26, 2012 03:13
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three posted:There is no such thing as ESX 5.0. This is true. I don't think I'll ever manage to remember their naming schemes.
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Mar 26, 2012 05:03
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stubblyhead posted:Has anyone gotten USB passthrough to work in VirtualBox? I've been struggling with it all weekend and just can't get it to connect, and it sounds like it's a pretty common problem. Can VMware Player do this with less hassle? You installed the VBox extensions right? USB passthrough works flawlessly for me on OSX Lion. You have to plug in what you want to pass through and define it on the USB Ports config page for the VM. After that, when you boot the machine, it will disappear from your host OS and appear in your guest.
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Mar 26, 2012 14:57
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How much are the disks used on an ESXi host if all my datastore is over iSCSI? Should I be overly concerned with disk performance?
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Mar 27, 2012 12:29
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luminalflux posted:How much are the disks used on an ESXi host if all my datastore is over iSCSI? Should I be overly concerned with disk performance?
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Mar 27, 2012 12:33
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Really? It doesn't swap to local disk at all?
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Mar 27, 2012 12:49
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It pretty much has no need to swap anything in the hypervisor. Everything is about the VMs, which would swap to their configured .vswp locations.
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Mar 27, 2012 13:28
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luminalflux posted:Really? It doesn't swap to local disk at all?
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Mar 27, 2012 13:32
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luminalflux posted:Really? It doesn't swap to local disk at all? I may be wrong but I believe you can choose where the swapping happens
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Mar 27, 2012 13:36
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Slight corrections, I had to go read up on it since it's fuzzy. ESXi host swapping happens on the configured scratch partition, if needed. I think it should pick one by default now, but you can configure it. This is also the only way you will have some persistent logging past reboots. It'll be to a datastore, basically. VMs swap to .vswp files (default is their configuration file location, but you can pick an SSD or specific datastores). Finally, the Guest swaps to its own contained swap file/partition within one or more of its given virtual disks. The .vswp files are used pretty much last. I don't believe that host-side scratch swap is used at all for VMs, aside *maybe* from VM overhead (due to vCPUs, 32 vs 64-bit, etc) and stuff, but even then, probably not. I'm thinking it's just for heap/worlds/processes.
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Mar 27, 2012 13:40
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Kachunkachunk posted:Slight corrections, I had to go read up on it since it's fuzzy. ESXi host swapping happens on the configured scratch partition, if needed. I think it should pick one by default now, but you can configure it. This is also the only way you will have some persistent logging past reboots. It'll be to a datastore, basically. That way when you start replicating, you can specify a non-stupid schedule for the swap data instead of keeping it near-synchro like the data you actually give a poo poo aobut.
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Mar 27, 2012 14:53
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I like having an SSD in the ESX host. Allowing ESX to use the SSD for swap is a nice safety net in the case of accidental or temporary intentional memory overcommit. See http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/mem_mgmt_perf_vsphere5.pdf on page 26 for a nice graph showing that 60GB of VMs can run in 30GB of real RAM with less than a 20% impact compared to normalized throughput.
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Mar 27, 2012 15:46
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In the future it will all be some sort of hybrid RAM/SSD hardware running a hypervisor OS. And it will own.
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Mar 27, 2012 17:29
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evil_bunnY posted:It's pretty good practice to install an extra vHDD per VM on a different datastore for guest OS swap files/partitions. Good point for SAN replication. Veeam can skip swap files when replicating. 
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Mar 27, 2012 18:26
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SRQ posted:In the future it will all be some sort of hybrid RAM/SSD hardware running a hypervisor OS. And it will own. We're almost there. http://pivot3.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Pivot3-vSTAC-VDI-Product-Spec-Sheet-2-9-12.pdf
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Mar 27, 2012 20:41
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VM laugh of the day (We use hyper-v on ~10 physical hosts with no shared storage, but with a working setup of SCVMM with templates, library, etc)! A Coworker decides he needs to bring up another instance of our most common VM, a windows 2003 application server running a lovely old non-scaling legacy app. Instead of using the template for said vm and just doing the usual right click->new vm using this template->boot up and name new VM, he signs on to one of the other VMs, fires up the physical to VHD capture tool, and makes a new vhd from the already running VM. He then moves the captured VHD image to the host machine over the network (Hosts are using two teams of nics, one for the host connection, one for the virtual network the VMs use) which takes many many hours since our network is poo poo and even the servers are still all running on 100 megabit Ethernet. Finally he creates a new VM with the vhd, renames it, and joins to the domain and such. So much  there.
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Mar 27, 2012 21:01
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This is a dumb question but I don't think the VMware Update Manager documentation explains how to upgrade the VM hardware from 7 to 8 on your Update Manager VM. I feel like if I try to remediate it, it'll just explode halfway through  Also, what about the vCenter VM? I feel like vCenter has to be running for Update Manager to do its thing.
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Mar 27, 2012 21:26
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Erwin posted:This is a dumb question but I don't think the VMware Update Manager documentation explains how to upgrade the VM hardware from 7 to 8 on your Update Manager VM. I feel like if I try to remediate it, it'll just explode halfway through power down the VM=>rightclick=>upgrade virtual hardware, I believe the binarys for the virtual hardware are kept on the ESXi host not vCenter or VUM. Not sure the way via VUM Orchastrator might do it but I am not sure http://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-50/index.jsp?topic=/com.vmware.vsphere.upgrade.doc_50/GUID-A45CBEE5-C4D2-484E-A699-A5A577244DE0.html Dilbert As FUCK fucked around with this message at 21:34 on Mar 27, 2012 |
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Mar 27, 2012 21:32
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Corvettefisher posted:power down the VM=>rightclick=>upgrade virtual hardware, I believe the binarys for the virtual hardware are kept on the ESXi host not vCenter or VUM. Yeah IIRC that's how I upgraded my vCenter VM. You connect directly to the ESXi host where vCenter lives.
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Mar 27, 2012 21:47
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Ugh, of course. Like I said, dumb question 
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Mar 27, 2012 22:04
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If your VMs start swapping at the hypervisor level, you have much bigger fish to fry.
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Mar 27, 2012 22:35
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only partially related to virtualization, but can anyone recommend an FM1 motherboard that supports IOMMU? I want to build a new combo VMware / NAS box, passing my disk controller into the NAS VM via IOMMU.
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Mar 28, 2012 00:58
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IOMMU always seems hard to track down. From some searching, it looks like AMD's 900-series chipsets has it, but you may want to stick with the 970X and 990X variants out there. It could also still depend on whether or not the feature was left enabled on the reference board between different brands. Someone that knows and uses AMD should hopefully know.
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Mar 28, 2012 13:16
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adorai posted:only partially related to virtualization, but can anyone recommend an FM1 motherboard that supports IOMMU? I want to build a new combo VMware / NAS box, passing my disk controller into the NAS VM via IOMMU. Don't know of any F1's but this AM3 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131767 supports IOMMU. It's the board I use, it also supports 32GB ram which is an awesome +
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Mar 28, 2012 14:00
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Job related question. I've worked with Hyper-V for a while now. Nothing fancy, but some single and multi host implementations, as well as setting up a cluster once. I've only worked in MS shops. I am interested in expanding my knowledge about VMs. Am I wasting my time if I continue working with Hyper V, or should I just try to learn VM ware? I did get a Hyper-V implementation book the other day, but a $35 investment hardly locks me into a certain path. I just want to end up with a useful skill set in the end.
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Mar 28, 2012 16:04
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SpaceRangerJoe posted:Job related question. I've worked with Hyper-V for a while now. Nothing fancy, but some single and multi host implementations, as well as setting up a cluster once. I've only worked in MS shops. I am interested in expanding my knowledge about VMs. Am I wasting my time if I continue working with Hyper V, or should I just try to learn VM ware? I did get a Hyper-V implementation book the other day, but a $35 investment hardly locks me into a certain path. I just want to end up with a useful skill set in the end. Generally VMWare is a generation or two ahead of Hyper-V. I like hyper-v for labs, I like VMWare for production.
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Mar 28, 2012 16:12
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The only downside to learning the VMWare side of things is that it'll make Hyper-V intolerable.
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Mar 28, 2012 16:12
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evil_bunnY posted:The only downside to learning the VMWare side of things is that it'll make Hyper-V intolerable. This x100 this I started out doing VMware, now my shop runs hyper-v, I hate hyper-v so much it is so much lackluster than ESXi, but head and shoulders over citrix(atleast for what I do) in terms of stability/performance
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Mar 28, 2012 16:18
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I'm wondering about you're CPU core to RAM ratios. I've been reading through VMware vSphere Design and it said 4GB per core is a good rule of thumb. We'll be running purely infrastructure stuff on our cluster: Windows, Solaris, and probably a little Linux. Stuff like AD, SCCM, file serving on the Windows side, DHCP, DNS, NFS, Apache, Mysql on the Unix side. We'll most likely be getting Enterprise licenses, and unless Dell comes out with a reall convincing single socket E5 server, be using dual processors. That puts each server at 128 GB of RAM, which is enough for 32 cores. Even doubling to 8 GM per core, that's 16 cores, which requires the dual octo core processors, which is a lot of money. I'd prefer to scale out rather than up, so I'm wondering if maybe I shouldn't be filling the servers with RAM? On the other hand its so cheap, does it really matter? E: I'm aware the book is for vSphere 4, but I figure the same concepts apply, and after this I'm reading Scott Lowe's vSphere 5 book.
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Mar 28, 2012 16:54
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I have no opinion other than that we're at 8GB/core and not worrying about ballooning or other memory management at all is nice. Our current hosts can go up to 16GB/core, but I, too, would rather scale out (and plan to add hosts soon).
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Mar 28, 2012 17:00
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My templates are Core/Ram 1:2 per windows instance 1:1 per linux instance but usually it turns into custom ratios depending on what the VM is doing
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Mar 28, 2012 17:10
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I would say one BIG advantage of Hyper-V is licensing. You buy two datacenter licences on a dual socket machine and you have unlimited virtualization rights on all microsoft server OS versions. It has saved us thousands in licensing costs being primarily a microsoft shop. I'm really excited for windows server 8 hyper-v as it seems like they are continuing to play catch up nicely. I'm particularly looking forward to live fail-over without shared storage and online snapshot merging.
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Mar 28, 2012 18:01
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bull3964 posted:I would say one BIG advantage of Hyper-V is licensing. You buy two datacenter licences on a dual socket machine and you have unlimited virtualization rights on all microsoft server OS versions. It has saved us thousands in licensing costs being primarily a microsoft shop. This applies to vSphere and XenServer as well. Datacenter licenses are licensed to the socket, you can run whatever hypervisor you want on top.
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Mar 28, 2012 18:23
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Pantology posted:This applies to vSphere and XenServer as well. Datacenter licenses are licensed to the socket, you can run whatever hypervisor you want on top. Except that you're buying a VMWare license -and- a Windows Datacenter license at that point.
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Mar 28, 2012 18:33
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madsushi posted:Except that you're buying a VMWare license -and- a Windows Datacenter license at that point. Yeah, that's what I meant, I just worded it a bit weird. The additional cost of VMWare on top of the datacenter license effectively doubles the cost of licensing the host. Over two virtual hosts, the savings is enough to pay for the hardware of the 3rd. I have a much easier time getting a 3 server solution approved and purchased over the a 2 server solution for almost the same price even if it does mean easier management. 
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Mar 28, 2012 18:46
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What kind of performance increase in processing power should I expect from hyperthreading? This is for a home whitebox lab setup. All my google searches hint at around a 20% performance increase. additional info: I have the option of getting a chip real cheap, but options are limited (i5-2500 or i7-2700k). I really think i would rather lose the 20% in cpu performance and gain VT-D so I can properly pass through disks and such to VMs. edit: new chips i5-2500 $100 i7-2700k $180 edit 2: Looks like if I spend a little more I can have my cake and eat it too. The e3-1230 supports VT-D and HT. edit 3: Cheaping out with the i5-2500, using the savings for a nice SSD to run VMs from. Moey fucked around with this message at 22:00 on Mar 28, 2012 |
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Mar 28, 2012 19:25
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bull3964 posted:Yeah, that's what I meant, I just worded it a bit weird. The additional cost of VMWare on top of the datacenter license effectively doubles the cost of licensing the host. Hyper-V is getting there faster than I expected, though.
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Mar 28, 2012 22:15
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Misogynist posted:Until you take into account how much better VMware is at overcommit and resource management and what that buys you in terms of how many hosts you actually need to pay for. Some of VMware's licensing packages make the cost more palatable for small to medium sized businesses, but the cost of licensing does nullify a lot of the benefits in certain situations.
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Mar 28, 2012 22:34
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I've said this before, but the first time your virtual environment saves your bacon/allows you to fix/upgrade hardware during business hours instead of when you could be boozing you'll stop thinking about the license costs.
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Mar 28, 2012 22:48
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