What I’m Looking Forward To In VMware vSphere ESXi 5
VMware recently released their newest version of their Hypervisor, this time in ESXi format only. If you have not already, check out the release notes. There are a lot of cool new features that were added but below are a few that I am looking forward to or thing are a nice item.
Storage
The removal of the 2TB datastore limit is a welcome change so that the number can be reduced to make management easier and grow virtual disks easier in my opinion.
VMFS5. VMFS5 is a new version of vSphere Virtual Machine File System that offers improved scalability and performance, and provides internationalization support. With VMFS5, you can create a 64TB datastore on a single extent. RDMs in physical compatibility mode with the size larger than 2TB can now be presented to a virtual machine. In addition, on SAN storage hardware that supports vStorage APIs - Array Integration (also known as VAAI), ESXi 5.0 uses the atomic test and set (ATS) locking mechanism for VMFS5 datastores. Using this mechanism can improve performance, although the degree of improvement depends on the underlying storage hardware.
VMware vCenter Server
The vCenter server appliance is also nice, it will save money on the cost of a Windows license (unless you have datacenter edition) and the cost of an antivirus license and any other annually licensed Windows based software.
vCenter Server Appliance. A vCenter Server implementation running on a pre-configured virtual appliance. This appliance significantly reduces the time required to deploy vCenter Server and associated services and provides a low-cost alternative to the traditional Windows-based vCenter Server.
Availability
Email alerting was possible in 1.2 only with the use of scripting which isn't the way to go. It will also be nice to have the ability to schedule, pause, and cancel integrity checks. I was hoping they would increase the CIFS size limitations above 500GB but have not seen any mention of that so I assume they have not.
vSphere Data Recovery 2.0. VMware increases the speed and reliability of backups expands with the release of Data Recovery 2.0. This release improves integration with vCenter and provides new manageability features including:
- Automated generation and emailing of backup job reports.
- Improved backup, integrity check, and reclaim operation performance.
- Increased resiliency against transient network failures provides improved CIFS support.
- Increased flexibility to schedule, pause, and cancel integrity check operations.
Multi-NIC vMotion Support
Previously even when two NICs were assigned to a VMkernel for vMotion it would only use one. Frank Denneman describes this functionality in more detail on his blog.
“Number Is Invalid” When Resetting Password In Plesk 8
Today I received the error message "Number is invalid" when attempting to reset a user's password in Plesk 8. This was because of using Firefox 5.0, when I tried with Internet Explorer 9 I was able to change the password.
Moving IIS Logs Older Than X Days
We currently have a legacy web server and we use Awstats to parse the logs and provide stats to our customers. We keep all the IIS logs in the event that the Awstats information is lost or corrupted. The problem is that the drive is constantly running out of space and eats up about 1GB per day.
I have a another drive attached to this server that has a NTFS compressed folder with backup logs. In order to automate the movement of logs from the live location to the archive location a scheduled task can be created using the following command.
robocopy E:\folder1 F:\folder2 *.log /s /move /sec /minage:6
This will move all .log files from E:\folder1 to F:\folder2. It will move sub-directories (not empty ones, for that use /e). Security permissions will be maintained and it will move files older than 7 days. My goal was to leave 7 days worth of logs in the live location but when using /minage:7 eight files would remain so I changed it to 6.
The other option would be to simply compress E:\folder1 which we might end up doing but I wanted to provide this in the event that someone needed something like this.
So Lightword 2.0.0.6 Doesn’t Work With IE9
I normally use Firefox for most of my internet adventures however on occasion I am known to use some Internet Explorer. I use Lightword as my theme and I was just reviewing my site and noticed that in IE9 did not display the post titles (sorry if you missed them). At any rate I have resolved the problem, this was done by removing the following code from the functions.php file.
$cufon_header_script = "\n<script src=\"".get_template_directory_uri()."/js/cufon-yui.js\" type=\"text/javascript\"></script>\n<script src=\"".get_template_directory_uri()."/js#/vera.font.js\" type=\"text/javascript\"></script>\n<script type=\"text/javascript\">/*<![CDATA[*/Cufon.replace(['h1','h2','h3#reply-title'], { fontFamily: 'Vera' });/*]]>*/</script>";
The solution for this problem was found on the WordPress forums.
Monitoring VMware With Icinga Or Nagios
op5 has created a plugin to monitor VMware hosts which is quite useful. To be honest I'm sure you can set this up better than I have but I got it working so I'm happy with it as it is. By better I mean you could probably use a Windows user (with vCenter) and I know you can monitor from the datacenter level (easier) rather than per host (harder). At any rate I am happy with the results and wanted to share.
Before you can monitor a VMware host you will first need to install the vSphere SDK for Perl on your monitoring server.
After that is done, log directly into the host, not vCenter and create a local user on the called "icinga" from the Local Users & Groups tab. Go to the permissions tab and add the icinga user and give it read-only permissions.
Install Dependencies
sudo apt-get install git-core libnagios-plugin-perl
Download the plugin
cd /usr/src
sudo git clone git://git.op5.org/nagios/op5plugins.git
Copy the check_esx3.pl file to the Icinga plugin directory
sudo cp /usr/src/op5plugins/check_esx3.pl /usr/local/icinga/libexec
Test the plugin
sudo /usr/local/icinga/libexec/check_esx3.pl -H 10.0.1.11 -u icinga -p Testing123 -l cpu
The output should look something like this
CHECK_ESX3.PL OK - cpu usage=4880.44 MHz (26.98%) | cpu_usagemhz=4880.44Mhz;; cpu_usage=26.98%;;
To many files in /var/spool/asterisk/monitor/ Not all files processed
The following error may occur when a user logs in and goes into the call monitor menu.
To many files in /var/spool/asterisk/monitor/filename.gsm Not all files processed
This occurs because by default the maximum number of files allowed is 3,000 which is defined in /var/www/html/recordings/includes/bootstrap.php.
The number of files allowed is defined in the following section. You can increase 3000 to something higher, however as I read it may cause performance issues with the system.
function getFiles($path,$filter,$recursive_max,$recursive_count) {
global $SETTINGS_MAX_FILES;
$SETTINGS_MAX_FILES = isset($SETTINGS_MAX_FILES) ? $SETTINGS_MAX_FILES : 3000;
There is also a typo that can be corrected in the following section. "To many files in" should be "Too many files in".
$fileCount++;
if ($fileCount>$SETTINGS_MAX_FILES) {
$_SESSION['ari_error']
.= _("To many files in $msg_path Not all files processed") . "
";
return;
}
Rather than increasing the number of files allowed, I would suggest creating a cronjob to cleanup the directory. If you edit /etc/crontab you could add the following line which would delete all the files on a weekly basis. You can change the frequency that this occurs with a pre-defined definition or using a custom schedule of your own. For more information check out the Wikipedia article on cron.
@weekly root rm -f /var/spool/asterisk/monitor/*
404 When Listening To A CDR Report Recording In trixbox
When trying to listen to a recording from the CDR Report section of the PBX menu you might get a 404 saying it can't find /maint/cache/monitor/filename.wav
To resolve this create a symbolic link to the correct directory where the files reside.
ln -s /var/spool/asterisk/monitor /var/www/html/maint/cache/monitor
Enable Video Hardware Acceleration For VMware Tools Without Rebooting
After installing VMware Tools it is always a good idea to enable hardware acceleration on the video card so that your console interaction will be smoother. VMware KB1011702 describes how to enable hardware acceleration in Windows Serevr 2003. The procedure is similar for all other versions and needs to be done from the console, not a RDP session. Like many Microsoft things it informs you after making the change that a reboot is required. Click restart later.
Click OK until you get back to the display settings and change the resolution to anything else and click apply and confirm that you want to keep the changes. Doing this will enable hardware acceleration without a reboot and your mouse movements will be much smoother now. At this point you are done, you can either keep the new resolution or change it back to what you had before.
Unable To Log Into VMware ESXi with Windows Credentials
I configured an ESXi so that I could log into it with my Active Directory credentials. However, after setting it up per the following blog post I was not able to log in and got the following error message: "Windows session credentials cannot be used to log into this server. Enter a user name and password."
After going through the blog post again I verified that it was correct, that the ESX Admins group was created, and that the host was in Active Directory. I then found a post on VMware's forum and KB1029531 on VMware's site which said I needed a PTR record for the host. After creating the PTR record (and the A record for name resolution) I was able to log in successfully with my Active Directory credentials.
Clarifying Windows 7 Volume Licensing Rights
Volume licensing is what I generally order for servers, Office, Windows Server, Exchange, etc. However in the past I have always ordered Dell desktops and laptops with an OEM license of Windows. Management recently asked me to get a volume license for a laptop and so the research journey began.
Below is what I found out during the process:
- There is no full version of Windows 7 available through the volume license program.
- Windows 7 volume license (upgrade) is tied to the hardware in the same way an OEM license is.
- You can't flot a volume license of Windows 7 (upgrade).
- The only way to "float" a Windows 7 license is to buy a retail box copy.
- If you want to image your desktops or laptops with a single license key you need to buy a license of software assurance for an OEM or retail license. When you buy software assurance you get the volume media and product key but use the OEM or retail license.
More detailed information can be found in the following Microsoft documents: Microsoft Operating System License Requirements Brief and Reimaging Licensed Microsoft Software by Using Volume Licensing Media Brief