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madsushi posted:Don't quiesce the data. You're just going to have awful performance during the VMware snapshot creation/deletion and it doesn't buy you anything at all. We snapshot and replicate our NFS volumes 6 times per day, plus one additional that quiesces the VMDKs. It keeps my (paper) RPO low while giving me the warm and fuzzy feeling of a real backup once per day. We can afford the IO hit while 99% of the company is sleeping.
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Dec 6, 2012 05:10
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Misogynist posted:You've clearly never worked with either Oracle or XFS.
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Dec 6, 2012 07:27
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Misogynist posted:You've clearly never worked with either Oracle or XFS. If your Oracle DBs are located on your VMware NFS LUNs, then you have been doing something very wrong. All of your databases should be stored on separate iSCSI/FC LUNs mapped directly to the VMs. The data on the NFS volume should only be OS drives or non-DB application data. XFS, I have not worked with. If you're relying on VMware HA for your high availability, then you're already relying on non-quiesced disks being available and working properly. Which, if designed properly, they always will.
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Dec 6, 2012 08:20
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So if I'm storing my Postgres databases on iSCSI-backed vmdk's, I'm doing it wrong?
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Dec 6, 2012 08:39
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/\ You don't have to, but it is best practice for performance.Moey posted:Have you though about segregating that traffic with VLANs? We did consider this, but everyone (myself included) feel that it's more secure to have a separate physical switch. Even though a lot of the security risks like VLAN hopping aren't a big problem when everything is properly configured, it just seems better to use another physical switch. We have a free switch after doing some consolidating. So we don't even need to buy one for it. Maybe that's just old school thinking though. Corvettefisher posted:How* are you currently utilizing for your NICs? What is the avg. nic count per host? The only hosts we'll put on the DMZ are in a 3 host cluster. Two of the hosts have 12 NICs (2x quadport PCI, and 4 onboard). Then the one I have a problem with only has 10 (2x quadport PCI, and 2 onboard). Currently we are using 10 NICs. 4x to iSCSI switches (SAN), 4x to the LAN, and 2x to a switch dedicated to vMotion (management network). So the two hosts with 12 NICs I can just toss two connections for a redundant connection to a DMZ no problem, but the 3rd host with only 10 NICs is a problem. VLAN would certainly be easier, but I was wondering if there was something else I could do while still keeping a DMZ and the redundant connections. As it stands I guess I'll drop a connection to the management network and a connection to the LAN.
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Dec 6, 2012 08:57
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itskage posted:/\ You don't have to, but it is best practice for performance. Got any numbers? Right now I kinda like the fact that it's easy to grow the vmdk to add add storage space instead of screwing around with the LeftHand. in fact, our LeftHand is only used for vmware storage
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Dec 6, 2012 09:28
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Misogynist posted:You've clearly never worked with either Oracle or XFS. Ha, yeah. We have a couple Oracle middleware servers that like to die for absolutely no goddamn reason but I'll make the DBA clean that up.
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Dec 6, 2012 15:09
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luminalflux posted:Got any numbers? Right now I kinda like the fact that it's easy to grow the vmdk to add add storage space instead of screwing around with the LeftHand. in fact, our LeftHand is only used for vmware storage VMDK encapsulation doesn't really pose a lot of overhead. In my case, the Oracle db's are pretty small and low load so I'm okay with throwing in that layer of abstraction but that's going to depend heavily on the particulars of your situations.
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Dec 6, 2012 15:12
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My databases aren't big either - if anything I'd probably consolidate a bunch of databases into one VM or a physical machine if VMware overhead was the problem
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Dec 6, 2012 15:34
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For me, it's not a performance issue, it's the ability of my backup software (usually NetApp's SnapManager for SQL/Oracle/Exchange) to back up those NetApp volumes independently, so that it can quiesce the data.
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Dec 6, 2012 17:26
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Any concerns SvMotioning my vCenter db?
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Dec 6, 2012 19:33
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Moey posted:Any concerns SvMotioning my vCenter db? No. I just installed an evaluation of vCenter Operations Manager. Holy hell is this product sweet, if a bit confusing. I really like how I can quickly see where various issues are.
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Dec 6, 2012 19:35
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Thats what I assumed, just wanted to double check. Thanks.
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Dec 6, 2012 19:37
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Are there any particular gotchas with using VMware Converter on a Windows 2000 host these days?
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Dec 7, 2012 05:38
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Misogynist posted:Are there any particular gotchas with using VMware Converter on a Windows 2000 host these days?
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Dec 7, 2012 06:03
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adorai posted:pretty much whether the random number generator is rolling in your favor. I like this. we took over a company running win 2000 and the converter was so hit and miss it's amazing. I found clearing up old orphaned device drivers in device manager helped a lot, god i hope to have to never use converter on win2000 again
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Dec 7, 2012 07:38
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Didn't they drop support for Win2000 P2V so you have to do it with an old version of converter?
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Dec 7, 2012 16:46
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I had my Fusion VM's configured the way I wanted, and for no reason now *all* my virtual adapters are hosed up.
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Dec 7, 2012 16:49
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BangersInMyKnickers posted:Didn't they drop support for Win2000 P2V so you have to do it with an old version of converter? yep
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Dec 7, 2012 17:34
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I always look at P2V as a last resort, I would rather the box rebuilt and services migrated than carry over something that may have existing problems into a virtual infrastructure.
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Dec 7, 2012 17:35
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Corvettefisher posted:I always look at P2V as a last resort, I would rather the box rebuilt and services migrated than carry over something that may have existing problems into a virtual infrastructure.
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Dec 7, 2012 18:30
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Hahaha I was waiting for that.
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Dec 7, 2012 18:42
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I wasn't explicitly directing it at you I am more than certain you are doing it for all the right reasons, just mentioning it since we are on the topic of P2V.
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Dec 7, 2012 18:57
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Misogynist posted:Yes, we are literally running Windows 2000 servers in production in the year 2012 because migrating them is a very simple proposition I had to actually do some VM inception to get the last 2000 box virtualized since we had already upgraded to ESXi 5.0. -Make ESXi 4.0 guest inside of a VM on an ESXi 5.0 host -Mount my NFS datastore to the ESXi 4.0 guest -Attach the old version of VMware converter to the 4.0 guest -P2V using the old converter/ESXi 4.0 -Attach the VM to the ESXi 5.0 host
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Dec 7, 2012 19:03
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Goon Matchmaker posted:I just installed an evaluation of vCenter Operations Manager. Holy hell is this product sweet, if a bit confusing. I really like how I can quickly see where various issues are.
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Dec 7, 2012 19:25
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Has anyone played with vCenter 5.1 yet? We've been fighting with the new vsphere SSO garbage that they decided to shoehorn in to "simplify" things, and yet we can't get it to play nice with the way our windows domains and multitude of trusts are configured. At this point I'm planning to wait for the first update before I consider upgrading our prod instances to it, but I was curious if anyone else had any similar difficulties.
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Dec 7, 2012 20:11
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Cidrick posted:Has anyone played with vCenter 5.1 yet? We've been fighting with the new vsphere SSO garbage that they decided to shoehorn in to "simplify" things, and yet we can't get it to play nice with the way our windows domains and multitude of trusts are configured. At this point I'm planning to wait for the first update before I consider upgrading our prod instances to it, but I was curious if anyone else had any similar difficulties. SSO 5.1 install is buggy and annoying as hell, there is no nice way to put it.
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Dec 7, 2012 20:19
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I'm thinking about moving to the vCenter Server Appliance as part of my 5.1 upgrade. We're not a big shop and I'd rather free up a Windows license for something else. I have another spot to host Update Manager so that's not really an issue. Am I crazy for considering this?
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Dec 7, 2012 20:37
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Number19 posted:I'm thinking about moving to the vCenter Server Appliance as part of my 5.1 upgrade. We're not a big shop and I'd rather free up a Windows license for something else. I have another spot to host Update Manager so that's not really an issue. No, the Virtual Appliance 5.1 is pretty decent, minus the VUM, heartbeat, and IPv6. But it is pretty good if you aren't doing anything huge or special. The real deciding factor comes from, how large is your environment Hosts/VM's? What licensing are you using? Are any storage plugins compatible with VCSA? Are you using View?
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Dec 7, 2012 20:50
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Corvettefisher posted:No, the Virtual Appliance 5.1 is pretty decent, minus the VUM, heartbeat, and IPv6. But it is pretty good if you aren't doing anything huge or special. We have a very small environment. I use an HP storage plugin which is already hosted where I'd host VUM. There's no View. It sounds like it might be worth trying out. I'd love to make the setup here simpler if I can.
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Dec 7, 2012 21:10
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Cidrick posted:Has anyone played with vCenter 5.1 yet? We've been fighting with the new vsphere SSO garbage that they decided to shoehorn in to "simplify" things, and yet we can't get it to play nice with the way our windows domains and multitude of trusts are configured. At this point I'm planning to wait for the first update before I consider upgrading our prod instances to it, but I was curious if anyone else had any similar difficulties. vCenter 5.1 is a fly-covered shitheap that absolutely should not have been released, and I am ready to drink myself into a stupor after rolling it out over the past week and I wish I could take it all back, however I haven't had too many problems with SSO interacting with AD. It does seem to be random whether an individual account can log into vCenter, but I only had a problem with one service account so I used a different one.
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Dec 7, 2012 21:26
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^ Yeah it was pretty rushed to get out before Hyper-V which sucks. Can't say I have really had problems with it though.Number19 posted:We have a very small environment. I use an HP storage plugin which is already hosted where I'd host VUM. There's no View. It sounds like it might be worth trying out. I'd love to make the setup here simpler if I can. I'd say set it up in a lab see if you like it. It is a pretty simple setup, and deploy.
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Dec 7, 2012 21:38
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I've got an oddball question regarding vmware - I'm playing with it on a test box that's an AMD instead of my normal intel, and it's not enabling hardware-virtualization for some reason. model name : AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 5000+ flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 ht syscall nx mmxext fxsr_opt rdtscp lm 3dnowext 3dnow rep_good nopl extd_apicid pni cx16 lahf_lm cmp_legacy svm extapic cr8_legacy 3dnowprefetch lbrv I thought that svm was the gen-1 AMD hardware acceleration, but vmware insists my only option is binary translation. It's not a huge deal, as my i5 workstation runs HVT no problem, but I do want to know what the minimum AMD cpu is for vmware HVT - Xen will run on that processor just fine.
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Dec 7, 2012 21:56
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Erwin posted:vCenter 5.1 is a fly-covered shitheap that absolutely should not have been released, and I am ready to drink myself into a stupor after rolling it out over the past week and I wish I could take it all back, however I haven't had too many problems with SSO interacting with AD. It does seem to be random whether an individual account can log into vCenter, but I only had a problem with one service account so I used a different one. One of the other guys on my team was the one banging his head against it so I only have second-hand knowledge, but because of the way our AD trusts are set up with the Mothership (we're a separate business unit) we control our own domain and create our own domain local security groups that contain imported users from another domain. Apparently this makes SSO cranky - or at least, we haven't been able to figure out The Right Way to do things. Obviously we did not have this problem with vCenter 5.0 or prior. It's sort of amusing since we're running into this exact same scenario doing a POC for RHEV for a smaller VM farm. Edit: s/heads/head/. Pretty sure the guy only has one of them unless he's really good at hiding it. Cidrick fucked around with this message at 22:09 on Dec 7, 2012 |
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Dec 7, 2012 21:58
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Harik posted:I've got an oddball question regarding vmware - I'm playing with it on a test box that's an AMD instead of my normal intel, and it's not enabling hardware-virtualization for some reason. IS AMD-V, Virtualization enabled in the bios? What stepping is the CPU? Here is something that might help you https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/1933 You might want to update that CPU for VM work, but you probably already know that.
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Dec 7, 2012 22:09
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Kachunkachunk posted:Pretty solid product. You'll want to give it some time to collect data about the environment. A few weeks is a start, but I think I heard three months is the ideal starting point before acting on recommendations [that involve money]. We have the evaluation stood up in our dev environment. It's been running for 4 days now and has already identified some issues we weren't aware of. I'm not taking every recommendation its making and acting on it, but it's still proving to be very useful.
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Dec 7, 2012 22:29
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Well so far just setting up the vCenter Server Appliance has been a total poo poo show. From it not wanting to join AD to SSO failing right out of the box it's been a gong show. I'm not sure how much more time I'm going to dedicate to this.
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Dec 7, 2012 22:53
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We're a small shop but we noticed vcenter taking up a hell of a lot more ram then normal after our 5.1 upgrade. We ended up lowering the java memory requirements which has helped. As for the SSO thing, I haven't really done much with it other than remembering installing it to be a pain in the rear end.
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Dec 8, 2012 00:10
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Well I got the VCSA up and running now. My last issue was getting an SSL certificate from our internal CA installed but VMware support helped with that. It's...not awful? The Web Client still needs some serious work but I can see where they're going with this and I think I'll stick with it.
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Dec 8, 2012 04:23
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Anyone else going to VMware Partner Exchange in Feb?
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Dec 8, 2012 04:43
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