We’ve been talking about snapshots this week, and as part of
the discussions we thought about the question:
How do we list VMs with VMware Tools installed?
My answer, use PowerCLI.
However, some great suggestions came back.
Use life cycle manger. We select the Cluster > Updates
> VMware Tools
The Tools Status column then shows as
Upgrade Available
Guest Managed
Not Installed
Unknown
Up to Date
The other suggestion, enable the column in the VMware
vSphere Client.
By default, we don’t see the column for VMware Tools
Select one of the columns and then select the down arrow,
and select View/Hide Columns and then select the VMtools Options, and
now you have the view showing VMtools on the VMs
Snapshots have their uses; we can use them to repeatably
return back to a virtual machines previous state.
When we take a snapshot we capture the virtual machines hard
disk, hardware and optionally the memory state.
Within VMware, we create three state files
·Disk files-Delta.VMDK VMFS5 less than 2TB
virtual disk
·Hardware state.vmsn
·Memory State.vmem
These snapshots then allow us to revert back to a previous
state if something goes wrong, for example a software update fails
However, VMware has some best practices for using Snapshots.
Do not use snapshots as backups
Do not use a single snapshot for more than 72 hours
When using a third-party backup software, ensure that snapshots are deleted after a successful backup.
Maximum of 32 snapshots are supported in a chain. However, for a better performance use only 2 to 3 snapshots.
The last point is quite interesting, the more snapshots we
take, the slower, potentially the VM will run, but most importantly, the VM
will take up a lot of additional disk space, as the snapshot disk file
increases in size.
VMware however, have a setting we can add to the VMs .vmx
file, we set the maximum number of snapshots for a virtual machine by editing
the snapshot.maxSnapshots = n variable of the configuration file.
Once we are in the vSphere
Client, right click and edit your VM settings, select VM options
and then select Advanced, then locate Configuaration Parameters, and
select EDIT CONFIGURATION
Then select ADD CONFIGURATION PARAMS
Then type for max of 2 snapshots, and click OK
Snapshot.maxSnapshots2
Now we can only take a maximum of 2 snapshots against this
machine.
One of the recommendations for managing vSphere is to add
your ESXi hosts to Active Directory and authentication to the client by using an
AD account.
VMware give us some best practices for managing user
accounts
On an ESXi host, the root user account is the most powerful
user account on the system. The user root can access all files and all
commands. Securing this account is the most important step that you can take to
secure an ESXi host.
Whenever possible, use the vSphere Client to log in to the
vCenter Server system and manage your ESXi hosts. In some unusual
circumstances, for example, when the vCenter Server system is down, you use
VMware Host Client to connect directly to the ESXi host.
Although you can log in to your ESXi host through the vSphere CLI or through
vSphere ESXi Shell, these access methods should be reserved for troubleshooting
or configuration that cannot be accomplished by using VMware Host Client.
If a host must be managed directly, avoid creating local users on the host. If
possible, join the host to a Windows domain and log in with domain credentials
instead.
To add an ESXi host to Active Directory, authenticate to your
ESXi host via the host client and highlight Manage, select the Security&
Users tab, then select Authentication, and then select Join Domain
and fill in relevant information for your domain.
When we add the ESXi hosts to Active Directory, by default
anyone who is a member of the AD group ESX Admins automatically have root
privileges on ESXi hosts.
If we split AD and VMware into different IT departments,
this could mean that our AD administrators could also manage our ESXi hosts by
creating a group called ESX Admins and adding themselves to that group.
However, we can modify this functionality. We achieve this
through the advanced configuration on an ESXi host
Login to the vSphere Host Client, once authenticated go to
your ESXi host and highlight Manage, select Advanced settings and
then search for admins
You’ll be presented with three options and they are:
Config.HostAgent.plugins.hostsvc.esxAdminsGroup This option specifies the Active
Directory group name that is automatically granted Administrator privileges on
the ESXi host.
Config.HostAgent.plugins.hostsvc.esxAdminsGroupAutoAdd This option controls whether the group
specified by “esxAdminsGroup” is automatically granted administrator permission,
values are True or False
Config.HostAgent.plugins.hostsvc.esxAdminsGroupUpdateIntervalThis option specifies the interval
between checks for whether the group specified by “esxAdminsGroup’ has appeared
in Active Directory, value is in minutes.
As a VMware Certified Instructor I have been using VMware vSphere 7 for a while now. I also teach the VMware vSphere 7 courses.
VMware have now released the VMware vSphere 7 exam which leads to the VMware Certified Professional - Data Centre Virtualisation certification (VCP-DCV 2020)
The Professional VMware vSphere 7.x Exam (2V0-21.20), which leads to the VMware Certified Professional – Data Center Virtualization 2020
certification, is a 70-item exam with a passing score of 300 using a scaled method. Candidates are given an exam time of 130 minutes, which
includes adequate time to complete the exam for non-native English speakers.
The exam is delivered through Pearson VUE and can be done online (proctored).
As we saw in a previous post, installing your first
VMware vSphere ESXi 7.0 host is not a complicated task.
Once it’s installed, you will have to perform some basic
tasks, and these are generally based around networking.
Your ESXi hosts management network that you connect to,
will have been assigned a DHCP IP address, and the chances are, you’ll want to
configure a static IP address information, you’ll also want to add it to a
valid DNS zone, and also give the host a name that conforms to your naming
convention for servers.
To configure these initial settings, we can use the
Direct Console User Interface or DCUI. This involves logging in directly to the
ESXi Host. Once at the main screen press F2 and enter root username and password.
This will then
lead to the main screen.
The options are as follows:
·Configure Password – This allows the changing of
the root password, and this requires a complex password, uppercase, lowercase,
numeric, and special characters
·Configure Lockdown Mode – This is only available
for vCenter controlled ESXi hosts and restricts root access.
·Configure Management Network – Allows setting
static or DHCP IP address for the management network, as well as DNS
information, hostname, and domain.
·Restart Management network – Restarts network,
after making changes, or for troubleshooting purposes.
·Test Management network – Sends Pings against
DNS servers, default gateway, and resolves hostname against DNS server.
·Network Restore Options – Allows restoring both
standard, and distributed switches, as well as restoring networking to default
settings.
·Configure Keyboard – Allows configuring language
settings for keyboard.
·Troubleshooting options – Allows enabling local
shell, which can then be accessed by pressing Alt-F1, and exiting by Alt-F”,
and also enabling SSH, for accessing ESXi host from a remote device. Also
allows for setting of Shell, SSH, and DCUI timeouts.
·View System Logs – Allows viewing of system logs
from DCUI
·View Support Information – Gives details of
product, used by VMware GSS
·Reset System Configuration – Resets ESXi Host
back to factory defaults.
The majority of configuration of an ESXi host is done via
the vSphere host Client, or a vCenter server.
Installing VMware vSphere 7.0 is a fairly straight forward
task, in simplistic terms, it involves grabbing hold of the ISO, whether that
be from VMware or from the hardware vendor of your servers.
Once the ISO is obtained, mount it, boot your ESXi host
hardware and follow the instructions that get presented on the screen.
The installation is really broken down into 4 steps.
Installing ESXi does have some requirements and the
Hardware requirements are as follows. Make sure that you have the supported platform
and for more information, visit the VMware compatibility
guide
vSphere ESXi requires
·At least two CPU cores
·The NX/XD bit to be enabled for the CPU in BIOS
·Requires a minimum of 4 GB of physical RAM,
however provide at least 8 GB of RAM to run virtual machines.
·To support 64-bit VMs enable hardware
virtualisation on the host.
·One of more Gigabit or faster NICs
·A boot disk of 8 GB for USB or SD devices, if
using HDD, SSD, or NVMe, then at least 32 GB of disk space. Also provide space
for VMs if storing locally.
Once the ESXi host is installed, the host’s basic
configuration will need to be configured, and this will be covered in a later
blog.
I’ve been a keen user of the VMware vSphere and previous
versions of their bare metal hypervisor for a number of years now.
When I first get hold of the product, I usually build a test
lab, purely so that I can install and play with the product in an environment
that I’m not going to break, and if I do, it’s not a business critical system that
will bring the company crashing down.
With VMware vSphere 7.0, VMware have allowed the product to
be installed and used in full Enterprise Plus mode for 60 days.
As the evaluation is a full edition of Enterprise Plus, you
can use all of the features that makes the product the market leading
virtualisation platform, these features include vSphere vMotion, vSphere HA,
vSphere DRS, etc.
The 60 evaluation starts when you first turn on the ESXi host.
At any time during the evaluation period, you can convert the product to a licensed
mode from evaluation mode, but the evaluation mode has only decreased by the
time it was in evaluation mode.
For example, I install ESXi on 1st April 2020 and
convert to Standard license on 7th April 2020, that means I have
only used 7 days of my Enterprise Pus evaluation.
Now let’s say that I really need to test vSphere Distributed
switches, unfortunately these are not available with Standard edition.
In this little series of blogs we're going to introduce the new courses coming to enable people to learn and get to grips with the New version of vSphere that was announced March 2020
During this 3-day course, you focus on deploying and managing VMware vSphere with Kubernetes.
You learn about how vSphere with Kubernetes can be used to orchestrate the delivery of Kubernetes clusters and containerised applications in a VMware vSphere environment.
The course covers the following objectives
Describe vSphere with Kubernetes and use cases in on-premises environments
Deploy vSphere with Kubernetes
Describe the VMware NSX networking requirements for vSphere with Kubernetes.
Create and manage vSphere with Kubernetes namespaces
Deploy and run container applications on vSphere with Kubernetes
Deploy and configure VMware Harbor
Describe the VMware Tanzu Kubernetes Grid service
Deploy a Tanzu Kubernetes Grid cluster
Deploy and run container applications on a Tanzu Kubernetes Grid cluster
Describe the vSphere with Kubernetes lifecycle
Use logs and CLI commands to monitor and troubleshoot vSphere with Kubernetes
For more information about the course, please watch Feidhlim O'Leary overview video.
In this little series of blogs we're going to introduce the new courses coming to enable people to learn and get to grips with the New version of vSphere that was announced March 2020
This three-day training course equips you with the knowledge, skills, and abilities to design a VMware vSphere 7 virtual infrastructure.
You follow a proven approach to design a virtualisation solution that ensures availability, manageability, performance, recoverability, and security, and that uses VMware best practices.
This course discusses the benefits and risks of available design alternatives and provides information to support making sound design decisions.
Given a case study, you practice your design skills by working with peers on a design project.
The course covers the following objectives
Identify the business objectives for the vSphere environment
Identify business requirements, constraints, assumptions, and risks for all layers in the vSphere environment
Apply a framework to a design
Analyse design choices and best-practice recommendations
Create a design that ensures availability, manageability, performance, recoverability, and security
Design the core management infrastructure for an enterprise
Design the virtual data center for an enterprise
Design the compute infrastructure for an enterprise
Design the storage and networking infrastructures for an enterprise
Design virtual machines to run applications in a vSphere infrastructure
Design security, manageability, and recoverability features for an enterprise
For more information about the course, please watch Alistair Sutherland overview video.
In this little series of blogs we're going to introduce the new courses coming to enable people to learn and get to grips with the New version of vSphere that was announced March 2020
This five-day, intensive course takes you from introductory to advanced VMware vSphere 7 management skills. Building on the installation and configuration content from our best-selling course, you will also develop advanced skills needed to manage and maintain a highly available and scalable virtual infrastructure.
Through a mix of lecture and hands-on labs, you will install, configure and manage vSphere 7. You will explore the features that build a foundation for a truly scalable infrastructure and discuss when and where these features have the greatest effect.
This course prepares you to administer a vSphere infrastructure for an organisation of any size using vSphere 7, which includes VMware ESXi 7 and VMware vCenter Server 7.
The course covers the following objectives
Describe the software-defined data center (SDDC)
Explain the vSphere components and their function in the infrastructure
Install and configure VMware ESXi hosts
Deploy and configure VMware vCenter Server Appliance
Use VMware vSphere Client to manage the vCenter Server inventory and the vCenter Server configuration
Manage, monitor, back up, and protect vCenter Server Appliance
Create virtual networks with vSphere standard switches
Describe the storage technologies supported by vSphere
Configure virtual storage using iSCSI and NFS storage
Create and manage VMware vSphere VMFS datastores
Use the vSphere Client to create virtual machines, templates, clones, and snapshots
Create a content library and deploy virtual machines from templates in the library
Manage virtual machine resource use and manage resource pools
Migrate virtual machines with VMware vSphere vMotion and VMware vSphere Storage vMotion
Create and manage a vSphere cluster that is enabled with VMware vSphere High Availability and VMware vSphere Distributed Resource Scheduler
Create virtual networks with VMware vSphere Distributed Switch and enable distributed switch features
Discuss solutions for managing the vSphere life cycle
Use VMware vSphere Lifecycle Manager to apply patches and perform upgrades to ESXi hosts and virtual machines
Use host profiles to manage ESXi configuration compliance
Describe how vSphere storage APIs help storage systems integrate with vSphere
Configure and use virtual machine storage policies
Discuss the purpose and capabilities of VMware vSphere with Kubernetes and how it fits into the VMware Tanzu portfolio
In this little series of blogs we're going to introduce the new courses coming to enable people to learn and get to grips with the New version of vSphere that was announced March 2020
This five-day, hands-on training course provides you with the advanced knowledge, skills, and abilities to achieve competence in troubleshooting the VMware vSphere 7.x environment. This workshop increases your skill and competence in using the command-line interface, VMware vSphere Client, log files, and other tools to analyse and solve problems.
The course covers the following objectives
Introduce troubleshooting principles and procedures
Practice Linux commands that aid in the troubleshooting process
Use command-line interfaces, log files, and the vSphere Client to diagnose and resolve problems in the vSphere environment
Explain the purpose of key vSphere log files
Identify networking problems based on reported symptoms, validate and troubleshoot the reported problem, identify the root cause and implement the appropriate resolution
Analyse storage failure scenarios using a logical troubleshooting methodology, identify the root cause, and apply the appropriate resolution to resolve the problem
Troubleshoot vSphere cluster failure scenarios and analyse possible causes
Diagnose common VMware vSphere High Availability problems and provide solutions
Identify and validate VMware ESXi host and VMware vCenter Server problems, analyse failure scenarios, and select the correct resolution
Troubleshoot virtual machine problems, including migration problems, snapshot problems, and connection problems
Troubleshoot performance problems with vSphere components
For more information about the course, please watch Chinmay Inamdar overview video.
In this little series of blogs we're going to introduce the new courses coming to enable people to learn and get to grips with the New version of vSphere that was announced March 2020
This five-day course teaches you advanced skills for configuring and maintaining a highly available and scalable virtual infrastructure. Through a mix of lecture and hands-on labs, you configure and optimize the VMware vSphere® 7 features that build a foundation for a truly scalable infrastructure, and you discuss when and where these features have the greatest effect.
Attend this course to deepen your understanding of vSphere and learn how its advanced features and controls can benefit your organization.
The course covers the following objectives.
Configure and manage vSphere networking and storage for a large and sophisticated enterprise
Use VMware vSphere Client to manage certificates
Use Identity Federation to configure VMware vCenter Server® to use Microsoft ADFS
Use VMware vSphere Trust Authority to secure the infrastructure for encrypted VMs
Use host profiles to manage VMware ESXi host compliance
Create and manage a content library for deploying virtual machines
Manage VM resource usage with resource pools
Monitor and analyze key performance indicators for compute, storage, and networking resources for ESXi hosts
Optimize the performance of ESXi and VMware vCenter Server
Discuss the purpose and capabilities of VMware vSphere® with Kubernetes and how it fits into the VMware Tanzu portfolio
For more information about the course, please watch Joathan Loux overview video.
In this little series of blogs we're going to introduce the new courses coming to enable people to learn and get to grips with the New version of vSphere that was announced March 2020
This five-day course features intensive hands-on training that focuses on installing, configuring, and managing VMware vSphere 7.
This includes VMware ESXi 7 and VMware vCenter Server 7.
This course prepares you to administer a vSphere infrastructure for an organisation of any size. This course is the foundation for most of the other VMware technologies in the software-defined data center.
The course covers the following objectives
• Describe the software-defined data center (SDDC)
• Explain the vSphere components and their function in the infrastructure
• Install and configure VMware ESXi hosts
• Deploy and configure VMware vCenter Server Appliance
• Use VMware vSphere Client to manage the vCenter Server inventory and the vCenter Server
configuration
• Manage, monitor, back up, and protect vCenter Server Appliance
• Create virtual networks with vSphere standard switches
• Describe the storage technologies supported by vSphere
• Configure virtual storage using iSCSI and NFS storage
• Create and manage VMware vSphere VMFS datastores
• Use the vSphere Client to create virtual machines, templates, clones, and snapshots
• Create a content library and deploy virtual machines from templates in the library
• Manage virtual machine resource use
• Migrate virtual machines with VMware vSphere vMotion and VMware vSphere Storage vMotion
• Create and manage a vSphere cluster that is enabled with VMware vSphere High Availability and
VMware vSphere Distributed Resource Scheduler
• Discuss solutions for managing the vSphere life cycle
• Use VMware vSphere Update Manager to apply patches and perform upgrades to ESXi hosts and
virtual machines
For more information about the course, please watch Joe Cooper overview video.
In this little series of blogs we're going to introduce the new courses coming to enable people to learn and get to grips with the New version of vSphere that was announced March 2020
In this three-day, hands-on training course, you will learn the new features and enhancements in VMware vCenter Server 7 and VMware ESXi 7.
Real-world use-case deployment scenarios, hands-on lab exercises, and lectures teach you the skills that you need to effectively implement and configure VMware vSphere 7.
This course is recommended for delegates who want to deploy vSphere 7 in their existing vSphere environment.
Is is expected that you will either have attended previous version training on VMware vSphere, or you will have the necessary experience of install, designing, and maintaining the previous versions of VMware vSphere
On this course you will cover
List and describe the importance of key features and enhancements in vSphere 6.7 update releases and vSphere 7
Determine the proper upgrade path for a vCenter Server instance and upgrade VMware vCenter Server Appliance to version 7
Migrate a Windows vCenter Server system to vCenter Server Appliance 7
Manage and update VM templates located in content libraries
Use Identity Federation to configure vCenter Server to use Microsoft ADFS
Use the VMware vSphere Client to manage certificates
Describe vCenter Server, VMware ESXi, storage, network, virtual machine, and security enhancements in vSphere 7
Use VMware vSphere Trust Authority to secure the infrastructure for encrypted VMs
Demonstrate the Quickstart feature of the ESXi cluster
Recognize improvements to VMware vSphere Distributed Resource Scheduler
Use vSphere Lifecycle Manager to manage vSphere deployments, updates, and configurations
Discuss the purpose and capabilities of VMware vSphere® with Kubernetes and how it fits into the VMware Tanzu portfolio
For an overview of what's covered on the course, watch Joe Coopers video.
As a VMware Certified Instructor (VCI), I am please to announce that VMware are releasing dates and information about their vSphere 7 course offerings.
Join them on April 7 for a sneak-peek into the NEW VMware vSphere 7 training.
Chat with the experts behind this (and other vSphere 7 courses) and learn more about how they will help you grow your skills and enable you to take advantage of all the new key capabilities of vSphere 7.
Learn more and register for a time that’s convenient for you:
For all live events visit the VMware Learning Zone for more information and to register for the events.
As a VMware Instructor and also VMware support professional I talk to a lot of people who are or will be moving towards Modern Applications, and also multi-cloud.
For a lot of these companies, they wish to retain and also develop their existing talent, their also want to build on the investment they have with their existing IT services, but also need to become more competitive in their IT models.
I am a sysops type of IT professional, I work with developers and we want different things, I want an efficient, easy to manage platform, my developer colleagues want a system that is highly flexible and also want the ability to create and deploy applications within their agile methodology.
With Kubernetes, we have the ability to quickly create and deploy these modern run anywhere apps that will give us that competitive advantage that will drive our companies towards a long and successful future.
As always VMware have given us the resources to learn about not only how these services work, but also why these services may work to our advantage.
Thanks to VMware for producing this 10 page white paper, just click on the link to learn more
