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Thursday, August 1, 2013

Controlling Upgrade Chaos of VMware Environment

Lot of times depending on the VMware components you are using its always better to check which component to upgrade 1st whenever there is a newer version available.

Now this is a big question for any Organization as its affects the whole chain of Maintenance, downtime, change management requirements etc. etc.

If the downtime is involved in cost and other losses then such upgrade process must be thought out carefully before proceeding further.

Depending on the products in use sometimes people have the ability/luxury of having a standby/Dev/Test/Lab environment where they can do such upgrade first and verify if its affecting anything in such environment and if everything successfully upgraded then you can roll out the same steps in your Production environment.

Now look at the following Table which will clear up most of your doubts

Now as you can see the VCD (vCloud Director) is the 1st one in the process of upgrade. As the upgrade starts with the lowest number First you go with the same recommendation for all the products and related upgrade path (whether you run only few, all or some of them) and you should not be having any issues.

I would also suggest to search http://kb.vmware.com/ and the Release Notes for each products involved, for any known issues/gotchas during the upgrade so that you can take care of them before you proceed with the Upgrade.

Now here if you are using Cisco Nexus 1000v then you need to make sure before you upgrade your ESXi/vCenter Server, please make sure that the VSM/VEM version are supported/Compatible otherwise after upgrading your vCenter server you may end up in a dead water with NO connectivity on the VMs/ESXi if hosts if everything is managed through Nexus 1000v. With your existing version of VSM you can check up the Cisco's website for the Compatibility of ESXi/VC.

As Nexus 1000v is a Cisco product the above Matrix is not reflecting the same but it will be definitely grab a spot after vCenter/ESXi host upgrade paths.

There is a published KB 2037630 available too for more information which you can refer if you are running SRM/VR and VDP solution in your environment and which will guide you on the steps of overall upgrade.

And suppose you are running vCenter Server Appliance then the above KB will not help but instead refer the KB 2031331.

Enjoy upgrading VMware Environment !!

Share and care !

Cheers.

Saturday, June 29, 2013

VMware Network Ports Diagrams (vSphere, vCloud, vCenter, SRM, VR, VCD, Update Manager)

For long time there are various Diagrams when it comes to configuring Firewall and make the changes on the Network to provide access to certain person to certain product.

There is lot of work done to make a singular Diagram available now.

A KB is also published http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2054806 which has a link to the PDF file.

But here is the Pictorial view of the Ports which includes the products such as vSphere, vCenter Server (w Linked Mode), VMware Update Manager, vCO, vCloud Director, ESXi, vSphere Client etc.

The port information are integrated on the diagram using information from various KB articles mentioned below.

1012382, 2031843, 2039095.

@simonlong_ has recently blogged about VMware Horizon View 5.2 Diagrams for Internal and External facing Designs.

Internal Facing

External Facing

While we are at the Firwall Diagrams you can refer the SRM diagrams blogged by Grant Orchard (@grantorchard and also refer the KB article 1009562 for details tables.

vSphere Replication

Site Recovery Manager

SRM and VR

SRM and VR

@Hany_Michael has contributed towards developing the diagram which is documented under KB 1030954. He also blogged about various other diagrams on his blog here.

vCloud Director Diagram

Hope you enjoy using all the Diagrams and configure your environment accordingly to make them secure and also go with your requirements.

These are also helpful in studying for VCP or VCAP exams as well.

Care and share please !

Cheers !!

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Passed VCP-Cloud - Links and Resources

I attempted the BETA Exam and missed it by few. Saw all the Tweets when the BETA results was announced as people were passing. I had nothing but to take that as an opportunity to prepare again and Never give up.

For last week or so I have been studying the vCloud, vShield, vCloud Connector and Chargeback.

Today I went to one of the centers to give the VCP-IaaS Exam and after finishing the survey my heart beats are started to becoming little faster. With all the study resources I have gone through which were immensely helped me to understand the concepts of vClound and other components tied up with it.

Chargeback is definitely a BEAST which will play a crucial role in organizations when it comes to cost and resource allocation. So much new to learn about it and I can see the future of Chargeback is very bright along with the vCloud implementations where the strength of the same can be utilized in both Public and Private Clouds. Now a days everything e.g. Storage, Networking becoming cheaper in the cost per GB per / MB. But still to see if your underlying hardware resources are fully optimized or not and giving you the best ROI with reasonable CAPEX/OPEX involved, it will be a priority subject for any organization which are in the business of using IT infrastructure.

I would probably posts about Chargeback in near future as it keeps attracting me by its features and offerings.

Finishing the 85 questions I got only 90 minutes but was able to finish it within lot of time to review the questions. As I pressed End Exam and I could not see the "Congratulations" word right away but saw your score which was "426", which means I passed. :-). I was excited while attempting the questions so not even bothered to review all the questions but just went back reviews 4-5 flagged about which I was double minded. Now the journey is just started in the vCloud track as VCP-Cloud is the first stepping stone while going for VCAP-CID (BEAT recently finished) and VCAP-CIA (not released yet).

Now lets discuss the resources I have used to prepare for this exam.

1) First of all the official documentation are the highest priority who ever is preparing for the examination. Majority of them are listed here by @davidmdavis.

2) I went through all the videos posted on mylearn.vmware.com for vCloud Training which I blogged about earlier.

3) vCloud Deploy and Manage Course - offered by VMware Education.

4) VMware vCloud Director Fundamentals - offered by VMware Education.

5) Before going for the exam David Davis also helped me in last few days to review the recently launched training from TrainSignal "VMware vCloud Director Organizations" by @jakerobinson which I highly recommend to anyone who wants learn about vCloud Director and preparing for this certification. Its kind of paced training so the basic requirements includes the knowledge of related components to understand the subject better. there is vCloud Director Essentials Training is also available which will give you the knowledge about vCloud Director setup and other features offered by the same.

6) I'm previous post I have listed some links where similar resources are blogged about community members. but recently I referred the blog from Larus Hjartarson (@lhjartarson). He blogged about VCP-IaaS study notes.

7) VCAT 2.0/ 3.0 documents

8) Home LAB :-)

Cheers and Good Luck to all.

Sunday, November 18, 2012

VCP-IaaS Objective 3.2 Configure and Generate vCenter Chargeback Reports

In preparation for the VCP-IaaS Exam majority of the blueprint items are covered by @lhjartarson on his blog, but few objectives are probably in progress or never finished so to help the readers and the VMware community I am putting down here "Objective 3.32 Configure and Generate vCenter Chargeback Reports" from the blueprint of VCPVCD510 Exam Blueprint Version 1.2 (Updated 26 July 2011).

Objective 3.2 – Configure and Generate vCenter Chargeback Reports

Knowledge

Identify vCenter Chargeback report types
Identify components of the reporting dashboard
Given a reporting requirement, determine what report type should be run
Schedule reports
Manage archived reports
Generate custom reports

There are four types of reports one can generate in Chargeback Manager

vCenter Chargeback Manager enables you to generate following reports for a chargeback hierarchy and for entities in the hierarchy.

1 Cost Reports - A cost report provides the cost and utilization information for each computing resource for the hierarchy or entity on which the report is generated based on the cost configured in the hierarchy and the cost model selected during report generation.

2 Usage Reports - A usage report is similar to a cost report except that it provides only the computing resource utilization data. This report type is useful when you only want to analyze the resource utilization for various entities in a hierarchy.

3 Cost Comparison Reports - A cost comparison report enables you to compare the costs for each resource and entity based on two different cost models.

4 Showback Reports - A showback report lets you analyse how the costs are distributed among the entities based on a specified distribution policy. This report type is useful when you know the total cost and want to analyze how this cost is distributed among the entities by selecting different distribution policies.

Report Dashboard

vCenter Chargeback Manager provides a report dashboard that displays various graphs providing information about the resource cost and usage for a selected hierarchy or entity for the last 30 days excluding the current date.

The report dashboard displays three charts, Cost per Resource, Cost per child Entity, and Cost per Day, for

the selected hierarchy or entity. The dashboard also provides an option to view the following Top N reports:

1 Top N most expensive VMs

2 Top N least expensive VMs

3 Top N CPU consuming VMs

4 Top N Memory consuming VMs

Here, N can take the values 10, 20, and 50.

For a hierarchy that includes a vCenter Server that is integrated with VMware vCenter Operations, the Dashboard provides the following details:

The Cost per Resource bar chart in the Cost projection tab shows cost for each resource, which is color coded, for the past 30 days and projected data for next three months in sets of 30 days each.
The Cost per Day graph in the Cost projection tab charts the variance in the total cost for the entity for the past 30 days and projected data for next three months.
The Cost Optimization tab lists the following optimization opportunities: Oversized Virtual Machines, Undersized Virtual Machines, Idle Virtual Machines, and Powered Off Virtual Machines.
For each optimization opportunity, the corresponding virtual machines along with the configured and recommended resource-cost details are listed.

NOTE

The graphs and optimization reports are generated only if the vCenter Server user, which was used for adding the vCenter Server to vCenter Chargeback Manager, has either the Global.vCenter Operations User privilege or the Global.vCenter Operations Admin privilege assigned on the root folder.
Cost projection reports are enabled only with pure usage-based cost model, else graphs based on only past 30 days data are displayed. If the hierarchy is less than 30 days old and is not back-dated, then the graph based on the available data is displayed.

Scheduling reports

When creating a report, you can choose to schedule the report generation from the Create Report screen. You can schedule cost reports, cost comparison reports, and usage reports. Showback reports cannot be scheduled. Other than the create privilege for report and schedule resource types, you must have read privilege on the hierarchy, chargeback hierarchical entities, and cost models to perform this task

On the Schedule page and set the scheduling parameters.

Option Description

Report Creation Time When the report has to be generated.

Recurrence Pattern How often the report has to be generated.

Range of Recurrence Till when the report has to be generated periodically.

Managing Archived Reports

The Archived Reports page of the Reports tab displays a table listing all the reports archived in the application.

This includes manually generated and saved reports as well as reports generated by report schedules.

All the reports generated by a single schedule have the same name but different Created on and Billing

Period values.

The reports are listed in the ascending order of their creation time. You can view an archived report by clicking it.

1 Export Archived Report - After a report is generated and archived, it can be exported to the required format at any time.

2 Email Archived Report - After a report is generated and archived, you can send it through email to one or more recipients.

3 Delete Archived Report - You can clear the archive by deleting unwanted reports.

4 Advanced Search for Archived Reports - You can search for specific archived reports by using the advanced search feature of vCenter Chargeback Manager.

Sunday, July 8, 2012

All Free Courses offered by VMware Education !!

Now a days lot of companies have their various certifications in the market to compete others in the same area and VMware also has few new certifications released recently which includes VCAP5-DCD, VCP5-DT etc. for the Datacenter and Desktop streams.

Few others are in BETA stages such as VCAP5-DCA and VCP-IaaS right now and will become publicly available in future. The BETA Period is over by now for both exams so whomsoever willing to appear have to wait till it generally available.

The following list includes almost all the courses offered Free of Cost (self-paced) by VMware and the areas starts from vSphere Fundamentals, View, vShiled, vCenter Operations Manager, vCenter Chargeback, Site Recovery Manager, Virtualizing Tier 1 Databases such as SQL and Oracle and not limited to that but also included courses for the TC Server, GemFire, Groovy Grails, SpringSource, Hyperic (Companies acquired by VMware) etc. etc.

I have tried finding all the Free courses offered by VMware Education and if you find any course for which there is a cost involved then pleaes leave the feedback so that I can update the list accordingly.

These courses are very good for the person who never knew what vMware vSphere is or what ESX/ESXi server is. These courses are covering the starter level areas covering desktop products such as Workstation, Fusion, Lab manager, vSphere upto all at the advanced level areas such as vShiled, Tier 1 Database virtualization, View Design, Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery etc. etc.

These courses are worth if one is preparing for any entry level certification like VCP to an advanced certification such as VCAP-DCD or VCAP-DCA for various tracks such as vSphere, View or IaaS (new upcoming first vCloud Certification).

vSphere 5.x and 4.1, SRM, DR/BC,Chargeback, Capacity IQ, AppSpeed,

• VMware vSphere What's New in 5.1

http://mylearn.vmware.com/mgrReg/courses.cfm?ui=www_edu&a=det&id_course=149391

vCloud, vShield, vCenter Chargeback, Configuration Manager

Learn about the basics of OSGi and how it provides a modular, dynamic environment for your applications
Learn how Spring Dynamic Modules allows to you to apply the familiar Spring programming model to your OSGi-based applications
Learn how the SpringSource dm Server enables you to build Enterprise Java applications that can benefit from OSGi’s features on the server-side
Learn about OSGi and Spring-DM best practices
Learn about options and best practices for applying modularization to your own applications

Metaprogramming With Groovy

http://www.springsource.com/training/free-online-video-metaprogramming-groovy
Key learning points:

Metaprogramming Techniques With Groovy
Metaprogramming Hooks
ExpandoMetaClass
Intercept, Cache and Invoke

Core Spring

http://www.springsource.com/training/class?classID=136220
Course Objectives covers

Use the Spring Framework to develop Java applications
Use dependency injection to set up and configure applications
Test Spring-based applications
Set up Spring configuration using XML, annotations, and Java configuration
Use Hibernate and JDBC with Spring to access relational databases
Use Spring support for transactions
Use aspect-oriented programming (AOP) to add behavior to objects
Develop a basic Web application with Spring MVC
Use Spring Security to secure Web applications
Use Spring with RMI, HttpInvoker, and JMS for remote communication
Add management with the JMX API

Enterprise Integration with Spring Training

http://www.springsource.com/training/class?classID=136215

You will learn:

How to design and implement asynchronous, event-driven, message-oriented systems with Spring JMS
How to use Spring Integration to implement Hohpe and Woolf's Enterprise Integration Patterns
How to cut through hype and understand 'buzzword' topics including SOA, ESB, and REST from first principles
How to design for concurrency using the latest from Spring and java.util.concurrent
How to optimize performance across integration boundaries

Rich Web Applications with Spring Training

http://www.springsource.com/training/class?classID=136217
You will learn:

Learn to create professional Ajax user interfaces with Spring JavaScript
Learn to design and implement stateful application transactions with Spring Web Flow 2
Learn to secure web applications effectively with Spring Security 2
Learn to get the most out of Ajax toolkits such as the Dojo Toolkit in your application
Learn to integrate JSF into your application with Spring Faces

I hope you will find these courses useful for your own study purpose and also to educate a person who is new to VMware virtualization. If you see any other courses which is not in the list above then please notify me or leave a feedback on the post and I will update the post.

For all the certification requirements and other necessary courses required for the ceritfications do visit the certification site http://mylearn.vmware.com/portals/certification/ and the training site http://mylearn.vmware.com/mgrreg/index.cfm?ui=www_edu&redirect=off.

Good luck and enjoy the ride of VMware Virtualization !!

Monday, June 11, 2012

VCDX Path - for both vSphere versions

Hi,

I was thinking to do this while back but could not get time to do it but today I just put some raw information in a form of Flow chart for both VCDX versions based on vSphere 4 and vSphere 5

This will help people determining and planning for their defenses at either SF or Barcelona.

Please watch this space with updates shortly.

Thanks for your time.

virtualpatel.blogspot.com