I was in the process of upgrading some of the VMware Tools on some guests since we have migrated our infrastructure to vSphere 4.1. I was able to install VMware Tools two times before I started getting a very non-descriptive error: "Error upgrading VMware Tools" and the only related event was "Task: Initiated VMware Tools install or upgrade"

In my last post, The Migration From ESX to ESXi is Happening. Moving Configurations, I talked about the need to move from ESX to ESXi and some of the options that came along with it. Here we are, almost a month later, and I have started to take my production environment from ESX to ESXi. Here's what I've learned in the process.

Forget keeping your current ESX profile. It doesn't matter if you have Host Profiles, or if you had an old kickstart script. Toss them out the window. Host Profiles based on ESX are going to take into account security profiles which are no longer necessary, and with 4.1 adding new features, they won't be a part of the new host. I've built a sample ESXi 4.1 kickstart script and found out first hand alot of things that were possible with ESX aren't there with ESXi.

As of vSphere 4.1, ESXi now has the ability to perform a kickstart installation, whereby you create a script to configure your ESXi host during the install. Using a kickstart script, you can get an ESXi host up and functional within a matter of a few minutes. The fact that it's functional, doesn't mean it's fully configured. Kickstart scripts are still very limited and can't completely configure your ESXi host with all that vSphere 4.1 offers. Some features that can't be scripted (atleast in my own testing) are Local Active Directory integration, prompting a user for input to create a dynamic script, simply adding a host to vCenter, configuring a Distributed Virtual Switch (dVS) because it's not a part of vCenter, and more. This might be only temporary because Justin Guidroz has created a script to add your ESXi Host to vCenter Using MOB as part of a kickstart.

For the past two weeks I've been trying to get an ESXi 4.1 Kickstart script created. It's currently a work in progress (WIP), but I'm letting it rest for a little while. I've been testing this script out on an ESXi 4.1 VM w/ 10 NICs to try and simulate my current environment. My current environment resembles my vSphere Host NIC Design - 10 NICs post.

The bulk of the script is working. There are a few parts where it's not working and you are more than welcome to try it out. I started this project so I could atleast get myself familiar with kickstarting an installation and diving a bit deeper into the ESXi commands. I tried a bunch of different options out there from ESX 4.0 kick-scripts and alot of stuff has changed in the syntax. Keep that in mind if you are developing your own script.

Last night I recieved an email from an IT professional, looking for some career advice when it comes to learning about virtualization and how to get started. I won't post the original email, but I am posting my response.

Hey *****,

First off, thanks for reading! It's always cool to see there is someone out there finding useful information. Thanks for the compliments, but I will preface that I'm in my "late" twenties, hah. I still have a long way to go when it comes in terms of my career. I won't lie and tell you that I know everything, heck, I still need career advice. :) But I'll try to give you some insights into where I see the industry trending.

Looking at your background, I think you would be a great candidate to start learning about virtualization. I started my career off in 2006 when I graduated college, working at a marketing firm and doing basic help desk stuff. I did that for a while and found out that helping end-users isn't the most fun in the world. I buckled down, got my CCNA, and wanted to get into networking. I was at my first company for 2 years, then I left to take a network engineer position at my last company. I was in charge of the whole network (5 cities, 250 users, 80 servers) and they threw me into virtualization. I'm so glad they did. They sent me to the fast track course for ESX 3.5 and I went and took the VCP3. While I was there, I focused on infrastructure and moving forward. I optimized the network, cleaned up the virtual environment, and had the place sitting pretty for a while.

Last week NetApp released version 2.0 of it's Virtual Storage Console plug-in for vCenter. You can download VSC 2.0 from now.netapp.com. To install VSC 2.0, you have to uninstall version 1.0. What I don't like about this method is that vCenter can't find the plug-in named Virtual Storage Console from version 1.0 and you end up with this nasty red ! telling you there is an error. Can we clean-up the old one first? During the install of VSC 2.0 make sure you click on the "Provisioning and Cloning" check box to install the provisioning tools. If you have the license for "Backup and Recovery" you can install those components as well to do VM level Backups. No longer are you subject to taking snapshots of a full LUN or datastore, this allows you to do it on a VM-by-VM basis, but you have to purchase the license. I just like how it is all nicely integrated with vCenter now. After installing VSC 2.0, you have to register the plug-in and enable the plug-in in your vSphere client. Now that the install is finished, it's time to look at the gravy.

NetApp did a much better job grabbing stats to display within vCenter. You can click on any datastore to see how much storage has been used, your de-duplication ratio and more. With a click of a button you can deploy all the recommended HBA, MPIO, and NFS Advanced Settings to optimize your storage environment.

I was asked by a fellow twitter user to give my thoughts on best practices for virtual machine (VM) backups. I didn't know anything about this persons company or product, so these are just reflections of my own opinion.

I would expect my ideal backup solution to take a snapshot using the vSphere API to protect the VM disk files (vmdk, vmx, etc) and create a process from that snapshot inherit to vSphere. Why?

1. Agents are dead to me. When I deploy a new server, I don't want to worry about having to install another piece of software.
2. Agent updates with every new version. When there is an update to the backup software, there is usually an update to the agent on every server. I don't care if it's all centrally managed, it's a task that I don't enjoy, especially when a reboot is needed.
3. Agents have issues with locked files. Traditionally, an agent within a system won't be able to backup any files that are locked and the file is skipped during the backup process.
4. Agents spike CPU usage. Agents within a VM have to crawl the machine and touch every single file. Whether it's to back up a file, check an md5sum hash to see if a file has changed, etc. vSphere snapshots takes a lot of the grunt work out and saves your host CPU power.
5. Full VM Recovery. Using the vSphere API, taking a snapshot and copying that place in time to a different storage location allows me to completely restore a whole virtual machine or even its configuration files if necessary. This allows you to do file level recovery and dig into the VMDK offline as well.
   

THIS PAGE HAS BEEN DEPRECIATED. PLEASE VISIT THE MAIN PAGE VM Advanced ISO. Free Tools For Advanced Tasks

I have a small update to VM Advanced ISO. Free Tools For Advanced Tasks.

Copy/Pasta from original post: FREE TOOLS for virtual machines within your VMware environment. All of the tools in this package were pooled together for performing advanced tasks to optimize performance, reclaim lost space, and clean up your virtual machine. The goal of this project was to mount the ISO to your VM and run the scripts or tools that are packaged. Of course not all of these tools will run from a VM, but most can. I do not want to take any credit for any of the programs or scripts packaged. I simply took the time to place all of them in one spot. Take a moment to thank the creators of scripts and programs that I have linked within every ReadMe in every folder.

DISCLAIMER: I do not take any responsibility for your actions. If the tools are not used properly according to the ReadMe and How-To’s provided, you run the risk of destroying data. Before running any of these tools, please have backups of your VMs.

Time to take a break from today's vSphere 4.1 release and highlight another release for everyone wanting to take another step for higher education. Over the past 2 months, I was able to preview TrainSignal's new VMware vSphere Pro Series Training Vol. 2 DVD

The release includes these topics:

• VMware Advanced Features Up Close by Eric Seibert
• VMware Site Recovery Manager 4 by Sean Clark
• Intro to Third-Party Virtualization Tools by David Davis
• Veeam Monitor by David Davis
• Veeam Reporter 4.0 by David Davis
• Veeam Backup and Replication by David Davis
• VMware Data Recovery (VDR) by David Davis
• PowerCLI by Hal Rottenberg