HowTo: Create sar Graphs With kSar [ Identifying Linux Bottlenecks ]

http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/identifying-linux-bottlenecks-sar-graphs-with-ksar.html

Excelent blog about virtualization, VMware, EMC, ...

http://virtualgeek.typepad.com/

VCP 4 Certification

I have passed VMWARE VCP 4 Exam on 30-Nov-2009.

EMC Celerra - Virtual Appliance

Good for test lab environment ...
http://virtualgeek.typepad.com/virtual_geek/2009/04/new-celerra-vsa.html

Failover with ISC DHCP

http://www.madboa.com/geek/dhcp-failover/

CPU Benchmark

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/

Physical to Virtual Conversion of Linux Servers with VMware Converter BootCD

http://www.petri.co.il/physical-to-virtual-conversion-of-linux-servers-with-vmware-converter-bootcd.htm

IP relé + teploměr

http://www.papouch.com/shop/scripts/_detail.asp?katcislo=0236

Good film about how to install PowerPath/VE

Got an excellent film about how to install PowerPath on ESX or ESXi from friends at EMC and thought it would be good to share…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDC0EQ-jM_I

VMware vSphere Firewall diagram

http://www.vreference.com/2009/09/22/firewall-diagram-updated-to-version-3/

Platespin Recon - cannot get performance counters?

Check permissions on target system:
Regedt32/hklm/currentcontrolset/control/securepipeserver/winreg. -system has full control

Hardware connectors, slots, sockets, ...

http://www.technibble.com/articlecontent/2009/07/computer-hardware-chart1.jpg

VMware Converter - P2V

Your conversion speed will vary depending on options you select during the conversion process.

VMware converter uses two types of “cloning” methods during the P2V process:

File level cloning : Performed when you make the volume smaller then original (slowest conversion speed)

Block level cloning : Performed when you maintain or make drives larger (fastest conversion speed)


If you need to see the conversion rate use the VMware Standalone. It will now report the conversion rate as well as conversion type it is using to get your data into the virtual environment.

On my last project conversion speed varied from 144GB/Hr (or 2.4GB/min block lvl copy) to 36GB/Hr (.6GB/min file lvl copy).

Installing dell openmanage 6.1 on esxi 4.0

This introduction was originally published at http://communities.vmware.com/thread/220783;jsessionid=BDA548B9B81DA124C2F62A75BC7775C6?start=30&tstart=0

...

Here are the exact steps for installing dell openmanage on ESXi 4.0. This is provided in their support site.

1) Download the appropriate RCLI (Remote Command Line Interface) package from http://www.vmware.com/http://www.vmware.com/support/developer/vcli/ depending on whether your system is running on Microsoft Windows or Linux.
2) Copy the Dell OpenManage bundle to a directory on your system.
3) Use the vihostupdate command. If you are using Microsoft Windows, navigate to the folder where you have installed the RCLI utilities to use this command. If you are using Linux, this command is installed when you install the RCLI RPM .
4) Execute the command vihostupdate --server -i -b
5) The command output displays a successful or a failed update.

You must enable CIM OEM providers on the VMware ESXi 4 system after installing the Dell OpenManage bundle to manage a system with Dell OpenManage Server Administrator.

Using vSphere Client to Enable CIM OEM Providers:
To enable CIM OEM providers using VMware vSphere Client, you need to have the vSphere Client tool installed. You can download and install the tool from https:// where is the IP address of the VMware ESXi 4 system.

To enable CIM OEM providers on the VMware ESXi 4 system using vSphere Client:
1) Log on to the VMware ESXi 4 system in which vSphere Client is installed.
2) Click the Configuration tab.
3) Under the Software section on the left side, click Advanced Settings.
4) In the Advanced Settings dialog box, click “UserVars” on the left pane.
5) Change the value of the “CIMOEMProvidersEnabled” field to 1.
6) Click OK.
7) Restart your system for the change to take effect. Use the Summary tab in vSphere Client to restart the system.

BIND 9 Configure Views To Partition External and Internal DNS Information

http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-unix-bind9-named-configure-views/

DELL BladeChassis Cookbook

http://www.delltechcenter.com/page/10G+Blades+Cookbook

vCenter and MSSQL

To prepare a SQL Server database to work with vCenter Server, you generally need to create a SQL Server database user with database operator (DBO) rights. When you do this, make sure that the database user login has the db_owner fixed database role on the vCenter Server database and on the MSDB database. The db_owner role on the MSDB database is required for installation and upgrade only, and you can revoke it after installation.

If you are using SQL 2008, make sure you go to the “CMD” line and change the default ODBC from 32 to 64 Bit

Should read: If you are using Windows 2008 64 bit OS and vCenter with SQL, launch the 32 bit ODBC connector.

Create a 32-Bit DSN on a 64-Bit Operating System
You can install or upgrade to vCenter Server on both 32-bit and 64-bit operating systems.
Even though vCenter Server is supported on 64-bit operating systems, the vCenter Server system must have
a 32-bit DSN. This requirement applies to all supported databases. By default, any DSN created on a 64-bit
system is 64 bit.
Procedure
1 Install the ODBC drivers.
n For Microsoft SQL Server database servers, install the 64-bit database ODBC drivers on your Microsoft
Windows system. When you install the 64-bit drivers, the 32-bit drivers are installed automatically.
n For Oracle database servers, install the 32-bit database ODBC drivers on your Microsoft Windows
system.
NOTE The default install location on 64-bit operating systems is C:\VMware.
2 Run the 32-bit ODBC Administrator application, located at [WindowsDir]\SysWOW64\odbcad32.exe.
3 Use the application to create your DSN.
You now have a DSN that is compatible with vCenter Server. When the vCenter Server installer prompts you
for a DSN, select the 32-bit DSN.

vSphere 4 Default and CTRL-ALT-DEL

If you hit CTRL-ALT-DEL on ESX 4 console, the server will reboot even if there are running VMs and it doesn't matter if the server is not in Maintenance Mode.

To disable this yourself:

1. Edit /etc/inittab. Any text editors will do- I like nano but vi works just as well.
2. Search for "CTRL-ALT-DELETE" or "ctrlaltdel"
3. Comment out the line "ca::ctrlaltdel:/sbin/shutdown -t3 -r now" with a # symbol.

It should look like:

# Trap CTRL-ALT-DELETE

# ca::ctrlaltdel:/sbin/shutdown -t3 -r now

4. Save and exit the file.
5. To make this take effect without a reboot, run the command:

init q

Automating vSphere ESX4 host installations

http://blog.laspina.ca/ubiquitous/tag/esx-4-0

20 Linux System Monitoring Tools Every SysAdmin Should Know

20 Linux System Monitoring Tools Every SysAdmin Should Know

VMware vSwitch and Cisco switch configuration

These are field configurations that have been in-use for years and have their origin from both VMware and Cisco Best Practice documents regarding VMware integration. We use these configurations as reference when working with customer’s network teams in setting up any new Cisco network equipment for VMware.

Standard trunk port Best Practice switchport configuration:

interface GigabitEthernet#/#
description <<** ESX Host #/# **>>
switchport trunk encapsulation dot1q
switchport trunk allowed vlan 1,#,#,#
switchport mode trunk
switchport nonegotiate
spanning-tree portfast trunk
exit

Standard ether-channel Best Practice switchport configuration:

IMPORTANT NOTE: Etherchannel is only applicable if all the interfaces bound to the channel are going to the same physical switch OR that all of the interfaces are going to different physical switches which are stacked together (with an actual stacking cable, not an ISL.) If you are running these interfaces to two separate network switches, you cannot Etherchannel them and they should be configured as above rather than the example below.

interface port-channel #
description <<** ESX EC# **>>
switchport
switchport trunk encapsulation dot1q
switchport trunk allowed vlan 1,#,#,#
switchport mode trunk
interface GigabitEthernet#/#
description <<** EC#/INT# **>>
switchport trunk encapsulation dot1q
switchport trunk allowed vlan 1,#,#,#
switchport mode trunk
channel-group # mode on
interface GigabitEthernet#/#
description <<** EC#/INT# **>>
switchport trunk encapsulation dot1q
switchport trunk allowed vlan 1,#,#,#
switchport mode trunk
channel-group # mode on
exit

NOTE: It is also worth mentioning that it is assumed the member ports (those with channel-group # mode on as above) will inherit their configuration from the channel-group but it is sometimes necessary to replicate that configuration to their individual switchport configurations as above.

Capacity Planning Tools

Platespin Recon
VMware Capacity Planner
CIRBA
LANAMARK

A couple important (ALUA and SRM) notes for VMware and EMC Storage

http://virtualgeek.typepad.com/virtual_geek/2009/09/a-couple-important-alua-and-srm-notes.html

FreeBSD and multiple gateways

Question: How to add multiple gateways to a FreeBSD?
Answer: No you can not do this (at least directly) on FreeBSD. FreeBSD don't support multiple gateways.
Workaround solution: If you have a server with 2 set of IPs and each set have there own gateway.

• First, you must select one of the gateway to be a default gateway.
• Then, You need ipfw (or any FreeBSD firewall solution),
  Check that your kernel support ipfw, if not, recompile your kernel with the following options(IPDIVERT and DUMMYNET is not required, but if you add IPFW/IPFW2 it better to also add these two options)

  #Firewall & NAT & DummyNet 
  options         IPFIREWALL
  options         IPDIVERT
  options         IPFIREWALL_DEFAULT_TO_ACCEPT
  options         IPFIREWALL_VERBOSE
  options         IPFIREWALL_VERBOSE_LIMIT=100
  options         DUMMYNET
  options         IPFW2
  

  add the following rule to your ipfw rules set.

   ipfw add rule_no fwd second_gateyway_ip ip from ip_of_this_gateway to not me
  

  For example, I have 2 ip set (10.0.0.100,10.0.0.101,10.0.0.102 for gateway 10.0.0.254) and (192.168.0.77,192.168.0.78 for gateways 192.168.0.254). I chose 10.0.0.254 as the default gateway. So, my ipfw rules are

   ipfw add 100 fwd 192.168.0.254 ip from 192.168.0.77 to not me
        ipfw add 110 fwd 192.168.0.254 ip from 192.168.0.78 to not me

Source: http://freebie.miraclenet.co.th/server/

Články o administraci CISCO switchů

http://www.samuraj-cz.com/clanky-kategorie/cisco-admin/

Článek o konfiguraci CISCO a ESX teamingu
http://www.samuraj-cz.com/clanek/vmware-esxi-a-nic-teaming-aneb-pripojeni-pres-vice-sitovek/

Configure BIND DNS to Answer Active Directory Queries

How to configure BIND DNS to Answer Active Directory Queries ...
http://www.linuxquestions.org/linux/answers/Networking/Configure_BIND_DNS_to_Answer_Active_Directory_Queries

Quick Setup:
If you have an Address Record (A) that identifies your server name like this:

dc1.example.com. A 111.222.333.444

Then your SRV records for this DC would be as follows

_ldap._tcp.example.com. SRV 0 0 389 dc1.example.com.
_kerberos._tcp.example.com. SRV 0 0 88 dc1.example.com.
_ldap._tcp.dc._msdcs.example.com. SRV 0 0 389 dc1.example.com.
_kerberos._tcp.dc._msdcs.example.com. SRV 0 0 88 dc1.example.com.

HA “Deepdive”

Article at http://www.yellow-bricks.com/vmware-high-availability-deepdiv/ very deeply describe VMware HA functionality.

Article clearly explains:

• Primary and Secondary nodes
• Isolation Response
• Slot sizes/Admission Control
• Advanced settings

Mike Liverick's virtualisation blog

http://www.rtfm-ed.co.uk/

Training videos for vSphere4:
http://www.rtfm-ed.co.uk/?page_id=1442

DELL PowerConnect technical documents

Very good - deep technical documents for DELL PowerConnect switches.

http://www.dell.com/content/topics/global.aspx/solutions/en/pwcnt_papers?c=us&cs=555&l=en&s=biz

Shell Script While Loop Examples

http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/shell-script-while-loop-examples/

Vmware Linux Guest Add a New Hard Disk Without Rebooting Guest

http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/vmware-add-a-new-hard-disk-without-rebooting-guest.html

Infrastructure MS Visio Stnecils

All Infrastructure MS Visio Stencils
http://www.visiocafe.com/

DELL Infrastructure MS Visio Stencils

http://www.visiocafe.com/dell.htm

LiveCD list

http://www.livecdlist.com

Virtualization Performance Benchmark

Virtualization Performance Benchmark VMmark can help for hardware platform comparison.

Public results are available at http://www.vmware.com/products/vmmark/results.html

A “Multivendor Post” to help our mutual iSCSI customers using VMware

Very nice article explaining iSCSI in ESX environment
http://virtualgeek.typepad.com/virtual_geek/2009/01/a-multivendor-post-to-help-our-mutual-iscsi-customers-using-vmware.html

Platespin Recon 3.6 - bugs and issues

Platespin Recon 3.6 have big issues with hardware inventory of some servers. It can hang your server during CPU model checking!!! Platespin released hotfix for that. But that's not all. When you use database PostgreSQL 8.3 which is bundled with Recon it has significant performance issues. I was waiting for some reports several hours!!! I have troubleshooted and realized that there is some problem with SQL communication between Plaspin Recon application server and PostgreSQL. You can find error messages in PostgreSQL log file. It says something about abnormal client termination. If you use MS SQL Server it works like a sharm.

MS Windows Virtual Memory Management on consolidated virtual workloads

When you virtualize lot of MS Window workloads you can observe lot of "Memory Pages/s" from virtual machines to physical disk subsystem (system swaping inactive memory pages to hard drive) . If you haven't enough IO performance in your storage your virtual machines becomes slow. For virtualization is normaly used SAN environment. Don't forget design capacity and performance on your storage for page files. If you want to tune your MS Windows and optimize page file IOs to your storage try disable (if you have enough RAM) or optimize Windows Page File.

Articles about this topic:
http://www.techarp.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=143
http://www.petri.co.il/pagefile_optimization.htm
http://www.instantfundas.com/2008/07/disable-windows-page-file-save-your.html
http://www.windowsdevcenter.com/pub/a/windows/2004/04/27/pagefile.html
http://smallvoid.com/article/windows-page-file.html

20 Linux System Monitoring Tools Every SysAdmin Should Know

http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/top-linux-monitoring-tools.html

Understanding VirtualCenter Performance Statistics

http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-5230

Howto use VMware esxtop

Official documentation http://www.vmware.com/info?id=193

Nice article http://www.hypervizor.com/2009/06/interactive-replay-batch-esxtop-modes/

Killing a frozen VM on a vSphere ESX host

http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/virtualization-pro/killing-a-frozen-vm-on-a-vsphere-esx-host/?track=NL-915&ad=710968HOUSE&asrc=EM_NLN_8048495&uid=5373778

PERL Getopt and GetOptions

When you code unix program first of all you need to get user options. Two Perl modules (Getopt and Getoptions::Long) work to extract program flags and arguments much like Getopt and Getopts do for shell programming. The Perl modules, especially GetOptions::Long, are much more powerful and flexible.

See full article at http://aplawrence.com/Unix/perlgetopts.html

Ultimate Deployment Appliance

Unattended OS installations (Windows, Linux, ESX, Solaris) over the network set-up in minutes! Look at http://www.ultimatedeployment.org/

How to shutdown windows from linux

If you have samba you can use "net rpc SHUTDOWN -C "some comment here" -f -I x.x.x.x -U user_name%password"

Howto install Windows XP on ESX3

http://virtrix.blogspot.com/2007/09/vmware-installing-windows-xp-on-esx.html

How to copy (backup) files from ESX3i?

You can use RCLI and vifs command. More info at
http://www.vm-help.com/esx/esx3i/esx_3i_rcli/vifs.php

Examples:
List files in datastore directory:
vifs --server 192.168.4.4 --username root --password ***** --dir "[Datastore1]/win2k3"

Download file from ESX3i Datastore:
vifs --server 192.168.4.4 --username root --dc ha-datacenter --password ***** --get "[Datastore1] /win2k3/win2k3-flat.vmdk" my-clone.vmdk

Notes:
File write speed around 1MBps only

Using Linux shell scripts to automatically create VMware ESX 3.5 hosts

http://searchvmware.techtarget.com/tip/0,289483,sid179_gci1351853_mem1,00.html?track=NL-915&ad=697266&asrc=EM_NLN_6437813

On demand VNC server with GDM

Each user can login (via ssh) to *nix server and start vncserver. Then he can login to X11 desktop via VNC viewer with defined vnc password. But it's far far away from nice solution. Much better solution is to setup vncserver as xinetd service.

First of all you have to define new service in particular port. Add line bellow into /etc/services

vnc1024         5901/tcp                        # VNC & GDM

now create service description for xinetd. Go to directory /etc/xinetd.d

cd /etc/xinetd.d

and create file vnc1024

service vnc1024
{
     disable = no
     socket_type = stream
     protocol = tcp
     wait = no
     user = nobody
     server = /usr/bin/Xvnc
     server_args = -inetd -query localhost -geometry 1024x800 -depth 16 -once -fp unix/:7100 -securitytypes=none
}

Move to runlevel 3

init 3

Restart xinetd

/etc/init.d/xinetd

Move back to runlevel 5

init 5

And that's it. Now try connect via VNCviewer to port 6901

DR & BC of virtualized datacenters

Virtualization significantly helps to implement Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity scenarios. But some one can think that he can install VMware SRM software and DR&BC solution is ready. It's common mistake. VMware SRM is just arround 5% of DR&BC solution. You have to concider right technology and proper proceses with respect of your particular environment. Right technology means storage replications, network high availabaility across datacenters, automation, etc.

Nice article about VMware implementation conciderations is at http://searchvmware.techtarget.com/tip/0,289483,sid179_gci1347066_mem1,00.html?track=NL-915&ad=689280&asrc=EM_NLN_5870851

Configuration Point-to-Point OpenVPN link

I like OpenVPN because it's simple and it does what you need - VPN.

Let's assume that we have two un*x like servers with OpenVPN software and regular OS user openvpn in group openvpn. One server has IP address 192.168.4.10 and second 192.168.4.100.

In server 192.168.4.10 use following configuration file (openvpn.conf):
remote 192.168.4.100
ifconfig 10.0.0.1 10.0.0.2
dev tun0
port 5001
proto udp
secret /usr/local/etc/openvpn/secret.key
ping 10
comp-lzo
verb 5
mute 10
user openvpn
group openvpn

In server 192.168.4.100 use following configuration file (openvpn.conf):
remote 192.168.4.10
ifconfig 10.0.0.2 10.0.0.1
dev tun0
port 5001
proto udp
secret /usr/local/etc/openvpn/secret.key
ping 10
comp-lzo
verb 5
mute 10
user openvpn
group openvpn

In one of this two servers create secret.key by issuing following command:
openvpn --genkey --secret /usr/local/etc/openvpn/secret.key

Finaly:
Somehow (for example scp) copy secret key to second server into correct location and run openvpn daemons on both servers. On servers new network interface appears (tap) with IP addresses (10.0.0.1 and 10.0.0.2) and you can ping these 10.0.0.1-2 IP addresses over secure VPN link.

Here we go.

Scripting reference manuals

Command line reference for Windows, Bash, Oracle, and SQL Server
http://www.ss64.com/index.html

Creating the 64 KB aligned partition with Diskpart.exe

Once you are at the command prompt, use Diskpart.exe to create an aligned partition. To do so, type in the following:

diskpart
select disk 0
create partition primary align=64

You can now exit diskpart by typing 'exit'.

How to print to a network printer from an MS-DOS-based program in Windows XP

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314499

Newbie SysAdmin Guide to Solaris

http://www.unixville.com/~moazam/stories/2004/05/17/newbieSysadminGuideToSolaris.html

EMC Cellera Simulator

http://virtualgeek.typepad.com/virtual_geek/2008/08/celerra-virtual.html