Live port migration

Live port migration means a stand alone dvport can be moved to a dvportgroup and thus acquiring the all the configuration of the dvportgroup and a dvport which is a part of a dvportgroup can be moved out from a dvportgroup, the subsequent config changes to the dvportgroup does not apply to this dvport.

dvPortGroup Settings

General:

• Name
• Description
• Number of ports
• Port Bindings (Static, Dynamic, no binding)

Policies:

• Security: same as Port Group at vSS
• Teaming and Failover as Port Group at vSS
• Traffic Shaping has two ways traffic shaping (Ingress and Egress), while vSS port group only has in-bound traffic shaping
• VLAN Type: VLAN, VLAN Trunking, PVLAN
• Block all port (Yes/No default) from Miscellaneous

Advanced:

• Override port policy above (multipe radio button yes/no), checked by default: Per port level
• Live Port moving (not checked by default): moved while in use
• Configure reset at reconnect (checked by default): back to Port Group settings from per port settings when disconnected from VM
• Define DVPort name format: template for dvPort name

vDS property

From vShpere client:
General:

• name
• Number of uplinks (uplink name editing here)
• Number of ports

Advanced:

• MTU
• CDP
• Administrator contact info (Name and other details text)

Networks in vDS:

• dvSwitch-DVUplinks (Static Port Binding, VLAN Truning 0-4094)
• dvPortGroup

PVLAN is created from Private VLAN tab

• Primary PVLAN: Promiscuous
• Secondary PVLAN: Isolated/Community

Traffic Shapping

Switch level and port group level

By default disabled

• Average bandwidth
• Peak bandwidth
• Bust size

Port Property under vSS

• Network Label
• VLANID optional
• VMotion
• Fault Tolerance logging
• Management Traffic

Port policy consists of:

• Security
• Traffic Shapping
• Failover and load Balancing

vmkfstools

Also included in cCLI with reduced function.

• Create/Extend vmfs file system; upgrade vmfs 2 to vmfs 3
• Create/Extend/Migrate/Clone/Inflate/Rename/Delete Virtual Disk
• Create RDM (Virtual -r /Physical -z)
• Manage SCSI Reservation for LUNs

Supported disk formats:

• zeroedthick(default)
• eagerzeroedthick
• thick
• thin
• rdm
• rdmp
• raw
• 2gbsparese

SSH security

/etc/ssh/sshd_config

• PermitRootLogin yes/no
• Protocol 2
• 3DES cipher
• To disable SFTP, comment out: Subsystem ftp /usr/libexec/openssh/sftp-server

Restart ssh for change: service sshd restart

esxcfg-auth

• change user password aging restriction
• change user password complexity
• authentication from (LDAP, NIS, Kerberos,Actitive Directory authentication)

vCenter Orchestrator

Requirement:

• 4GB ram, 2GB disk, Static IP, 2.0+ GHZ CPU
• Working LDAP
• Web browers IE 7 plus or Firefox 3 +
• DB recommended on separated server

Default plugin:

• Mail Plugin
• SSH plugin
• vCenter 4x plugin
• vCO Library
• WebOperator
• Enumeration
• .Net
• XML
• Database

Skill:

• Configure Orchestrator, database, ldap
• Run a workflow
• Administrator package
• identify actions, tasks, policies

*** feel similar to Microsoft SMS server, and wondering how to test this at DCA exam?

vCenter time out settings

From vSphere client: Administration > vCenter Server Settings > Timeout Settings.


Or you could also increasee the timeout value using the vCenter Server database (http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1002721)

Affinity

VM-VM affinity (VM MSCS cluster)
Host-VM affinity (CPU affinity)
NUMA affinity

Port group security

• Promiscuous Mode (Reject Default)
• MAC Address Change (Accept Default)
• Forged Transmit (Accept Default)

vSphere to modify; or command line: vim-cmd

PowerCLI could also change port group security settings

NUMA controls

NUMA Nodes consist of a set of processors and the memory

NUMA load-balancer in ESX assigns a home node to a VM. For the VM the memory is allocated from the home node. Since the VM rarely migrates away form the home node, the memory access from the VM is mostly local. The all vCPUs of the VM are scheduled within home node too.

Virtual Machine Attributes

.vmx file; vSphere VM settings:

Harware tab:

• Passthrough Device could be added here
• VMCI device is restriced for security by default: VM high speed communication via VMkernel
• Network adapter option for TSO and Jumbo Frame
• hard drive choice between vmdk and RDM

 Options tab:

• General options: name, os, etc
• VMware Tools
• Guest power management: guest OS in standby, and VM's response (standby/suspend)
• Advanced

           General: Settings: Disable Acceleration; Enable logging (checked); debugging and statistics (Normally);Configuration parameters(click to configure)
            CPUID Mask: CPU Identification mask (expose by default), disable certain CPU feature to vMotion
            Boot Options: Power on delay; Force into BIOS setting for next reboot
            ParaVirtualization: VMI (Virtual Machine Interface)Disabled by default; power performance boost on supported OS with impact on vMotion (VMI will retire in 2011)
            Fiber Channel NPIV: Virtual WWN, Physical RDM use case
            CPU/MMU Visualization: Automatic by default
            Swap file location: Default use the cluster or host on which VM resides

Resource tab:

• CPU at Resource pool 
• Memory at Resource pool
• Disk 
• Advanced CPU: NUMA, HyperThreading Sharing (HT) - Any, None, internal. Scheduling Affinity (select physical CPUs)
• Advanced Memory: NUMA, choose memory from node or No affinity

          

Host Attributes

vSphere client -> configuration -> software -> Advanced Settings

NIC Teaming load balancing / failover

Port group level settings:

Load Balancing:

• Route based on the original virtual port ID (default)
• Route based on ip hash
• Route based on source MAC hash
• use explicit failover order

Failover order: the active and standby adapter for this port group in specified order

Network failover Detection:

• Link Status only (default)
• Beacon Probing

Notify Switch (yes Default/No)

Failback (yes Default/No)

IPv6

Enabling IPv6 on host requires a reboot, which could be done from vShpere client configuraton->networking.

Or you could enable the service console and VMkernel separately from command-line:

• esxcfg-vswif -6 true
• esxcfg-vmnic -6 true

Noticed that IPv6 has limitation on:

• iSCSI, experimental
• TSO not supported
• HA and FT not supported

Custom Alarm at vCenter

vSphere client: Inventory->Alarms->Definitions->new Alarms

Alarm Settings:

• General
• Triggers (Trigger type from Drop down, condition,warning, condition length, Alert, condition length)
• Reporting (Range, and Frequency)
• Actions (Action from Drop down, Configuration, once/repeat, green->Yellow, Yellow->Red, Red->Yellow, Yellow->Green)

vCneter server storage filters

vCenter server uses default storage filter, which could be edit from vSphere client interface:

Administration->vCenter Server Setttings->Advanced Settings->config.vpxd.

Raw Device Mapping (RDM)

RDM file acts as a proxy between VM and LUN.

VMFS requires a little more CPU for I/O operation than RDM.

Virtual compatibility mode RDM provides advanced file locking for snapshot and data protection

Physical compatibility mode RDM allow VMkernel to pass SCSI command to the physical device.

Microsoft Exchange cluster on ESX is a use case for RDM physical compatibility mode.