Monthly Archives: October 2013

Veeam & Server 2012 De-Dupe

A handy tip to remember when working with Veeam and Windows Server 2012 De-Dupe.

To restore files from deduplicated volumes, the Veeam backup server must be installed on Windows Server 2012 with Data Deduplication feature enabled in the OS settings.

RDMs and Veeam Backup & Replication

For most requirements, if you need to use an RDM;  then you should think about using virtual compatibility mode. This will give you the capability to snapshot the volume thus enabling Veeam to backup it up. Only if you need access to physical characteristics of the underlying LUN and storage system would a physical RDM make the most sense.

 

vSphere ESXi 5.5 unsupported hardware

Turns out a lot of systems have been dropped from the latest version of vSphere 5.5

Hopefully, this list will shrink as I am sure the recently released  x222 node from the IBM PureFlex Systems will raise some eyebrows.

http://www.virten.net/2013/09/vsphere-esxi-5-5-unsupported-hardware/

Double check your vendors support when updating ESXi hosts from VMware vSphere 5.x to 5.5. There are a lot of systems that are no longer supported. The following servers were supported in 5.x but are no longer supported in 5.5:

 

  • HP ProLiant BL280c G6 – No vSphere ESXi 5.5 Support
  • HP ProLiant BL2x220c G6 – No vSphere ESXi 5.5 Support
  • HP ProLiant BL465c G6 – No vSphere ESXi 5.5 Support
  • HP ProLiant BL490c G6 – No vSphere ESXi 5.5 Support
  • HP ProLiant BL490c G7 – No vSphere ESXi 5.5 Support
  • HP ProLiant BL495c G6 – No vSphere ESXi 5.5 Support
  • HP ProLiant BL680c G5 – No vSphere ESXi 5.5 Support
  • HP ProLiant BL685c G5 – No vSphere ESXi 5.5 Support
  • HP ProLiant BL685C G6 – No vSphere ESXi 5.5 Support
  • HP ProLiant DL160 G6 – No vSphere ESXi 5.5 Support
  • HP ProLiant DL160se G6 – No vSphere ESXi 5.5 Support
  • HP ProLiant DL170h G6 – No vSphere ESXi 5.5 Support
  • HP ProLiant DL180 G6 – No vSphere ESXi 5.5 Support
  • HP ProLiant DL288 G6 – No vSphere ESXi 5.5 Support
  • HP ProLiant DL320 G6 – No vSphere ESXi 5.5 Support
  • HP ProLiant DL360p Gen8 SE – No vSphere ESXi 5.5 Support
  • HP ProLiant DL370 G6 – No vSphere ESXi 5.5 Support
  • HP ProLiant DL385 G6 – No vSphere ESXi 5.5 Support
  • HP ProLiant DL580 G5 – No vSphere ESXi 5.5 Support
  • HP ProLiant DL585 G5 – No vSphere ESXi 5.5 Support
  • HP ProLiant DL585 G6 – No vSphere ESXi 5.5 Support
  • HP ProLiant DL785 G6 – No vSphere ESXi 5.5 Support
  • HP ProLiant ML150 G6 – No vSphere ESXi 5.5 Support
  • HP ProLiant ML330 G6 – No vSphere ESXi 5.5 Support
  • HP ProLiant ML370 G6 – No vSphere ESXi 5.5 Support
  • HP ProLiant SL160s G6 – No vSphere ESXi 5.5 Support
  • HP ProLiant SL160z G6 – No vSphere ESXi 5.5 Support
  • HP ProLiant SL165s G7 – No vSphere ESXi 5.5 Support
  • HP ProLiant SL165z G7 – No vSphere ESXi 5.5 Support
  • HP ProLiant SL170s G6 – No vSphere ESXi 5.5 Support
  • HP ProLiant SL170z G6 – No vSphere ESXi 5.5 Support
  • HP ProLiant SL2x170z G6 – No vSphere ESXi 5.5 Support
  • HP ProLiant SL390s G7 – No vSphere ESXi 5.5 Support
  • IBM BladeCenter HS12 – No vSphere ESXi 5.5 Support
  • IBM Flex System x222 Compute Node – No vSphere ESXi 5.5 Support
  • IBM System x iDataPlex dx360 M2 – No vSphere ESXi 5.5 Support
  • IBM System x iDataPlex dx360 M3 – No vSphere ESXi 5.5 Support
  • IBM System x3100 M4 – No vSphere ESXi 5.5 Support
  • IBM System x3200 M3 – No vSphere ESXi 5.5 Support
  • IBM System x3250 M3 – No vSphere ESXi 5.5 Support
  • IBM System x3250 M4 – No vSphere ESXi 5.5 Support
  • IBM System x3300 M4 – No vSphere ESXi 5.5 Support
  • IBM System x3400 M2 – No vSphere ESXi 5.5 Support
  • IBM System x3400 M3 – No vSphere ESXi 5.5 Support
  • IBM System x3500 M2 – No vSphere ESXi 5.5 Support
  • IBM System x3500 M3 – No vSphere ESXi 5.5 Support
  • IBM System x3620 M3 – No vSphere ESXi 5.5 Support
  • IBM System x3630 M3 – No vSphere ESXi 5.5 Support
  • IBM System x3755 M3 – No vSphere ESXi 5.5 Support
  • IBM System x3850 M2 – No vSphere ESXi 5.5 Support
  • IBM System x3950 M2 1 Node – No vSphere ESXi 5.5 Support
  • DELL PowerEdge C6145 – No vSphere ESXi 5.5 Support
  • DELL PowerEdge C6220 – No vSphere ESXi 5.5 Support
  • DELL PowerEdge T605 – No vSphere ESXi 5.5 Support
  • DELL PowerEdge 1950 – No vSphere ESXi 5.5 Support
  • DELL PowerEdge 1955 – No vSphere ESXi 5.5 Support
  • DELL PowerEdge 2900 – No vSphere ESXi 5.5 Support
  • DELL PowerEdge 2950 – No vSphere ESXi 5.5 Support
  • DELL PowerEdge 6950 – No vSphere ESXi 5.5 Support
  • DELL PowerEdge C1100 – No vSphere ESXi 5.5 Support
  • DELL PowerEdge C2100 – No vSphere ESXi 5.5 Support
  • DELL PowerEdge C6100 – No vSphere ESXi 5.5 Support
  • DELL PowerEdge M600 – No vSphere ESXi 5.5 Support
  • DELL PowerEdge M605 – No vSphere ESXi 5.5 Support
  • DELL PowerEdge R200 – No vSphere ESXi 5.5 Support
  • DELL PowerEdge R300 – No vSphere ESXi 5.5 Support
  • DELL PowerEdge T100 – No vSphere ESXi 5.5 Support
  • DELL PowerEdge T300 – No vSphere ESXi 5.5 Support
  • Cisco CAM 35/45 – No vSphere ESXi 5.5 Support
  • Cisco UCS – B200 M2 Blade Server – No vSphere ESXi 5.5 Support
  • Cisco UCS – B200 M3 Blade Server – No vSphere ESXi 5.5 Support
  • Cisco UCS – B22 M3 Blade Server – No vSphere ESXi 5.5 Support
  • Cisco UCS – B230 M2 Blade Server – No vSphere ESXi 5.5 Support
  • Cisco UCS – B250 M2 Blade Server – No vSphere ESXi 5.5 Support
  • Cisco UCS – B420 M3 – No vSphere ESXi 5.5 Support
  • Cisco UCS – B440 M2 Blade Server – No vSphere ESXi 5.5 Support

Performance of vSphere Flash Read Cache in VMware vSphere 5.5

http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/vsphere/VMware-vSphere-Platform-Whats-New.pdf

 

VMware vSphere® 5.5 introduces new functionality to leverage flash storage devices on a VMware ESXi™ host. The vSphere Flash Infrastructure layer is part of the ESXi storage stack for managing flash storage devices that are locally connected to the server. These devices can be of multiple types (primarily PCIe flash cards and SAS/SATA SSD drives) and the vSphere Flash Infrastructure layer is used to aggregate these flash devices into a unified flash resource. You can choose whether or not to add a flash device to this unified resource, so that if some devices need to be made available to the virtual machine directly, this can be done. The flash resource created by the vSphere Flash Infrastructure layer can be used for two purposes: (1) read caching of virtual machine I/O requests (vSphere Flash Read Cache) and (2) storing the host swap file.

Suppress Configuration Issues and Warnings Alerts after enabling vSphere HA in a VMware vSphere Cluster

You may have noticed that after Turning On vSphere HA in Cluster settings from the  Sphere Client that a Configuration Issues warning yellow box may appear on the Summary page of ALL host ESXi servers in the vSphere Cluster.

VMware vSphere HA will still function correctly, the configuration issue, is warning that there is only one physical network interface connected to the virtual vswitch which has the service console (ESX) or management network interface (ESXi) connected.

These configuration issues and warnings alert triangles can be suppressed as follows

Using the VMware vSphere Client, login and connect to the VMware vSphere vCenter server. Use the IP address or hostname of the VMware vSphere vCenter server, and use the vCenter Server Administrator username and password credentials.
  • Using the VMware vSphere Client, Login and Connect to the VMware vSphere vCenter Server
 Select the Cluster in Inventory > Hosts and Clusters, Right Click the Cluster in the right-hand panel, and select Edit Settings
  • Right Click the Cluster in the right-hand panel, and select Edit Settings

The vSphere Cluster settings dialogue box will be opened.

  • vSphere Cluster Settings
 Select vSphere HA and click Advanced Options, bottom right
  • vSphere HA Advanced Options

The Advanced Options (vSphere HA) dialogue box will open.

 To suppress the configuration issues box and warning triangles, the das.ignoreRedundantNetWarning needs to be added with a value of TRUE.

Click the left-hand column under Option, and enter das.ignoreRedundantNetWarning

  • enter das.ignoreRedundantNetWarning

Click the right-hand column under Value, and enter TRUE.

  • enter TRUE

Click OK to return to Cluster Settings.

Click Cluster Features and remove the Tick from Turn On vSphere HA.

This action will disable HA on ALL ESX/ESXi hosts in the cluster. Please note I would recommend any changes to a production environment be carried out and schedule out of core SLA hours.

  • Turn OFF HA

Click OK. The HA cluster will be reconfigured, this will take a few seconds.

Select the Cluster in Inventory > Hosts and Clusters, Right Click the Cluster in the right-hand panel, and select Edit Settings
  • Right Click the Cluster in the right-hand panel, and select Edit Settings

The vSphere Cluster settings dialogue box will be opened.

Select Turn ON vSphere HA (by clicking and ensuring a Tick appears in the box)

Click OK.

The HA cluster will be reconfigured, this will take a few seconds (test with five hosts took 40 seconds).

  • HA Configuration Issues Suppressed