P2V a Domain Controller

This morning I read 2 post about the virtualization of an existing Domain Controller.

The post are these:
- Virtualizing a domain controller, how hard can it be from Gabes Blog
- P2V a domain Controller, why would you from vNinja blog.

My opinion and my experience says that is more simple and secure deploy a new vm and that promote it to a DC, attend the replication process, move the FSMO roles and after all demote the old DC.

aLex

Session at VmWorld

The vmworld at San Francisco is started on monday.

There are some session for new vCloud Director, but one interested is this for the change from ESX to ESXi or Hypervisor Server.

aLex

VmWare Converter Standalone 4.3

Here the release notes of the new vmware Converter Stanalone. Thee news are the support for vSphere 4.1 and win 2008 R2 for guest, but the bad news is the installation on linux as server is disappered!

Bad!

Ok I use it only one time but I think the installation on linux permits of lot of people to create a converter cd for free!

Bye

aLex

Strange vmdk disk error

Hi all,
yesterday I had a strange vmdk/LUN failure over an ESX 4 U1.
The vm is a file server with 2 hard disk: 1 for the OS of 10GB and 1 for the data of 300GB. The disk was in thock mode and the vm was the only stored on a LUN of 350GB! You say " OK The LUN has much space for that VM!".

I say: NO! the Lun fills up all the space and the vm goes down! When I received the alarm on the LUN there was only 2Mb of free space!!
The problem was on the second hard disk. It was divided on more subdisk like a snapshot, but there was no snapshot. The other mistake was the provisioned space: the disk was thick so the space provisioned was the same, but see the image below



I search over the kb in vmware and I find 2 article for the solution.
The first is abount the snapshot and the second is about the child disk.

The second article help me to the solution. I cloned the hdu with vmkfstools -i on another LUN and than I change the configuration of the vm adding the new disk instead of the old big hdu!
It was a long time waititng answer! to clone the hdu it takes about 5 hours over a SAN!

bye

aLex

Strange network issue on FCoE environment

Hi all,
on this month I and my collegues migrate all the virtual infrastructure from EMC CX Clariion SAN to EMC Symmetrix VMAX SAN. On the ESX there was 2 CNA adapter:
- QLogic 8042
- Emulex LP21002
All the 2 interface for the network emulates an 82598EB 10Gigabit AF Dual port. The CNA are connected to Cisco Nexus 5020 switch. For the migration we create a new vSwitch whit all the portgroup and the emulex network for the physical adapter. The issue is the vm not connected to the network after a vmotion. With VMware and many stress test we found that the vm after a vmotion did't make an arp request for register the MAC to the new esx host, so the vm is connected to the virtual switch and another vm on the same esx and portgroup can ping it, but all the physical world can't ping it.

After many task we make a dirty solution: remove the QLOGIC CNA and make all the connection with the EMULEX card. This is the solution for our case! take attention for your environment! make many test and speack with vmware and log, log, log!

bye

aLex

ESX 4 Update 2

Hi all,

jost a little remind: VmWare released an upgrade of the vSphere infrastructure. Here the Release Notes.

aLex

End of VMware Server on 2011

Yes! I read this news on Alessandro Perilli's blog. If you have a VMware Server you need to migrate to ESXi or the player!

aLEx