This week i'm taking a Global Knowledge course called Implementing Cisco Switched Networks to prepare for the CCNP SWITCH exam. The class has been pretty good after day 1 with a lot of refreshers talking about vlans, private vlans, trunks, and etherchannel/lacp.

In a vSphere environment, setting up network trunks is very important. It's what allows multiple VLANs to traverse the same wire and it's fairly easy to setup. In most of my configurations I never worry about setting up the native vlan because 99% of the time it works without setting it. That's where I found out I've been making a big mistake all along.

When you setup a trunk link and do not add the native vlan command to the configuration, a native vlan is actually done for you behind the scenes using vlan 1. This is a concern for many reasons because many other protocols traverse the network on vlan 1 such as Virtual Trunking Protocol (VTP). Also, a best practice is to change VTP to Transparent during initial configuration because by default, switches come in Server mode. VTP can ruin your day if you're not paying attention.

Back in May I posted an article about VMTurbo releasing a new free virtual appliance called Performance and Efficiency Reporter. Yesterday, I took the 10 minutes to actually get this puppy up and running and I'm actually very pleased to see the results.

At first, I thought to myself, how good is this actually going to be? After just 1 night of letting the appliance do its job and collect statistics, I'm very happy with the turnout. And come to find out, it works with Free ESXi as well! This is a great tool to have some reports emailed either to yourself or your managers every morning so you can see what yesterday's virtual environment looked like. The Host/VM Resource Utilization Heatmap is the best report out of all of them because it's a summary of what is out there. If you have a large environment, I would think this report could get a bit bulky.

Here are all the reports you have access to once it runs after 1 night...

You may have remembered me talking about Xangati at VMworld 2010 and on my blog before because it's one of the top 10 free tools. Xangati strikes again because they are now releasing an update to their free tool that packs a HUGE punch.

I wrote an article a few months ago called Next Generation Management - The Battle Begins about how 3rd party management products are getting smarter in the way they monitor your vSphere environment. No longer are alerts happening because thresholds are being reached, but smart algorithms are running that know what your environment usually looks like, and it will warn you when things are abnormal. Xangati has done just that and released their Performance Health Engine inside of their free Xangati for ESX product. This is huge step in the development of free tools. The new tool now comes with 3 different pre-populated logins: admin, viadmin, and vdiadmin which all give the UI a different look and feel. Xangati still boasts alot of it's old awesome features such as DVR-like capabilities and reporting. Remember the 10 rule still applies to the free product. You can only examine the top 10 things in every category, but wouldn't that be the norm anyway?

In addition, setup time has been reduced and works like a charm. Please watch the Xangati for ESX install video to get the easy step-by-step. There are going to be 3 different screens you can use to log in. Below is a screenshot of my home lab environment. Note that the "magic number" isn't showing because I haven't let enough historical data gather yet.

Over the past couple months I've had my vSphere Home Lab environment up and running and it's been pretty flawless. I've been relatively happy with my Synology DS411+ after I sorted out the IET and LIO iSCSI driver issues. This past week gave my Synology DS411+ a negative tick on the scale.

I've been testing vSphere.next (so atleast you know this SAN/NAS works with it) and I've also been testing vCloud Director.next. I wanted to make my environment as clean as possible by presenting my vCD instance with a different iSCSI target and set of LUNs from my regular vSphere environment. It should be pretty simple. Go to Storage Manager, create a new iSCSI target, create a new set of LUNs, and map those LUNs to the iSCSI target. Next, go to the Masking tab and.... wait! Why is it grayed out?

The release of vSphere 4.0 introduced something really revolutionary to the virtual world, VMsafe. The article published here dates all the way back to 2008. In addition, VMwold 2010 did some name changing and introduced vShield Edge. We're mid-way through 2011, so it's taken a bit over 3 years for a vendor to actually bring a completely baked product to market.

VMsafe isn't an actual product within vSphere itself but is a set of APIs that allows a 3rd party security vendor to do anti-virus scanning without the need to use agents on the VMs. This is HUGE! Have you ever stepped back to wonder how many CPU (and human) cycles are wasted on anti-virus scanning, deployment, and updates? Every server gets the updates, every server has to do scheduled scans, and there is an administrator out there that has to manage all of that.  This is the one piece of software that needs to be re-engineered for a virtualized environment. This key piece of security software has been done the same way for physical environments, and everyone knows that virtualization changed everything.

If you are unaware, David Davis from TrainSignal has released the latest VMware vSphere Performance Monitoring DVD that has a TON of great material. I just received my own copy and will be reviewing it very soon. In addition, I'm very fortunate that TrainSignal is one of my great blog sponsors and allows me to give back to my readers. That being said....

I'm having a grand vNerd Memorial Day Weekend Giveaway! Up for grabs is a vNerd T-Shirt from American Apparel (Size L), VMware vSphere Pro Series Vol. 2 DVD set, and the brand new VMware vSphere Performance Monitoring DVD set. Retail value over $600!!

How to Enter?:

Simple. Leave a comment on this article. It can be anything such as "TrainSignal Rocks", "Hey Kenny", or "+1". Make sure that when you leave a comment you use your correct email address so I can get in contact with you. If Disqus gives you any problems, simply send an email to kendrickcoleman [@] gmail d0t com and I'll add your entry. Only one entry per person please.

How is the winner chosen?:

The contest runs from 5/27/2011 - until midnight 6/3/2011 EST. Once all the submissions are received, I will follow Jason Boche's method, print and cut out each person's name and have my wife draw a name out of a bowl.

Rules?:

Open to anyone in the world. You read that right, I'll ship this stuff to Mumbai. Don't hesitate, just enter! Again, only one entry per person