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    VMware vCenter Cookbook
    VMware vCenter Cookbook
    VMware vCenter Cookbook
    Ebook597 pages2 hours

    VMware vCenter Cookbook

    By Konstantin Kuminsky

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    About this ebook

    About This Book
    • Learn how to increase availability and scalability of your virtual environment
    • Improve efficiency and optimize resource usage in your virtual infrastructure
    • Explore new vCenter features and discover best ways to implement them using proactive examples
    Who This Book Is For

    If you are a system administrator who has some experience with virtualization and already uses VMware vCenter, but wishes to learn more, then this is the book for you. If you are looking for tips or shortcuts for common administration tasks as well as workarounds for pain points in vSphere administration, you'll find this guide useful.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPackt Publishing
    Release dateMay 30, 2015
    ISBN9781783552276
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      Book preview

      VMware vCenter Cookbook - Konstantin Kuminsky

      Table of Contents

      VMware vCenter Cookbook

      Credits

      Foreword

      Overview and informational elements

      The content

      Chapter 1 – vCenter basis tasks and features

      Chapter 2 – Increasing environment availability

      Chapter 3 – Increasing environment scalability

      Chapter 4 – Improving environment efficiency

      Chapter 5 – Optimizing resource usage

      Chapter 6 – Basic administrative tasks

      Chapter 7 – Improving environment manageability

      Wrapping up

      About the Author

      About the Reviewers

      www.PacktPub.com

      Support files, eBooks, discount offers, and more

      Why subscribe?

      Free access for Packt account holders

      Instant updates on new Packt books

      Preface

      What this book covers

      What you need for this book

      Who this book is for

      Sections

      Getting ready

      How to do it…

      How it works…

      There's more…

      See also

      Conventions

      Reader feedback

      Customer support

      Downloading the color images of this book

      Errata

      Piracy

      Questions

      1. vCenter Basic Tasks and Features

      Introduction

      Choosing the right vSphere and vCenter editions

      How to do it...

      vSphere editions

      vCenter editions

      There's more…

      Booting a VM from a virtual CD-ROM

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      Using hosts with different CPUs in one cluster

      Getting ready

      How to do it...

      There's more…

      Fixing VMware tools to autostart after Linux updates

      How to do it...

      There's more…

      Running vCenter on a VM

      How to do it...

      There's more…

      vCenter Server on a VM

      Managing several vCenter Servers from one client

      Getting ready

      How to do it...

      Joining vCenter to a group

      Removing vCenter from a group

      Accessing new vCenter features

      How to do it...

      There's more…

      Accessing hosts via SSH

      How to do it...

      Opening the SSH port on the firewall

      Starting an SSH service

      There's more…

      Securing host management access

      How to do it...

      Enable Lockdown mode from the ESXi console

      Storing host logs on a shared datastore

      How to do it...

      There's more…

      Configuring remote logging

      How to do it...

      2. Increasing Environment Availability

      Introduction

      Configuring the HA feature

      How to do it...

      Enabling host protection

      Enabling VM monitoring

      Prioritizing VMs for recovery

      How to do it...

      Tuning up vSphere HA

      How to do it...

      Ensuring 100 percent uptime for critical VMs

      Getting ready

      How to do it...

      Verifying VM FT status

      Disabling FT

      There's more…

      Protecting host redundancy for equally sized hosts

      How to do it...

      Protecting host redundancy for significantly different hosts

      How to do it...

      Protecting host redundancy with failover hosts

      How to do it...

      Backing up/restoring .vmdk files

      Getting ready

      How to do it...

      VM backup

      VM restore

      There's more…

      Restoring VM backup without vCenter

      Getting ready

      How to do it...

      Configuring the backup retention policy

      How to do it...

      Protecting the vCenter VM

      How to do it...

      Virtualizing vCenter

      Clustering the database

      Third-party solutions

      3. Increasing Environment Scalability

      Introduction

      Delivering new VMs faster with templates

      How to do it...

      There's more…

      Delivering new VMs faster with customizations

      How to do it...

      Using customization

      Troubleshooting customizations

      How to do it...

      There's more…

      Keeping templates up to date

      How to do it...

      Utilizing host local storage

      Getting ready

      How to do it...

      Create VMkernel NIC for vSAN

      Enable vSAN on cluster level

      Create vSAN disk groups

      Creating a storage policy

      How it works...

      Automating VM deployments

      Getting ready

      How to do it...

      Creating a deployment script

      Running a deployment script

      Deploying new hosts faster with scripted installation

      How to do it...

      Creating an installation script

      Use the installation script to configure ESXi

      Deploying new hosts faster with auto deploy

      Getting ready

      How to do it...

      Configuring the TFTP server

      Creating an image profile

      Assigning an image profile to hosts

      Assigning a host profile to hosts

      Assigning a host to a folder or cluster in vCenter

      How it works...

      Keeping host configuration consistent

      Getting ready

      How to do it...

      Creating a profile using a reference host

      Add a host to a profile

      Check a host's compliance

      Applying a profile to a host

      Increasing a VM's RAM and CPU online

      Getting ready

      How to do it...

      There's more…

      4. Improving Environment Efficiency

      Introduction

      Meeting higher I/O needs with the VMware Paravirtual controller

      How to do it...

      PVSCSI for a new VM

      PVSCSI for new virtual drives

      PVSCSI for existing OS virtual drives

      Improving network performance with the VMXNET 3 network adapter

      How to do it...

      Using new virtual hardware

      How to do it...

      Choosing a virtual hardware version

      Upgrading the virtual hardware

      Controlling storage space used by virtual disks

      How to do it...

      Choosing disk provisioning for new VMs

      Converting disk formats

      Managing the space used by snapshots

      How to do it...

      Improving host productivity with Flash Read Cache

      Getting ready

      How to do it...

      Speeding up VMs with Flash Read Cache

      Getting ready

      How to do it...

      Optimizing host power consumption

      Getting ready

      How to do it...

      Configuring DPM

      Configuring HPM

      How it works...

      There's more…

      Considering NUMA when configuring RAM

      How to do it...

      vCPU versus pCPU and time slots

      How to do it...

      5. Optimizing Resource Usage

      Introduction

      Prioritizing VMs with shares

      How to do it...

      Ensuring VMs have enough resources to run

      How to do it...

      Limiting resources used by VMs

      How to do it...

      Grouping VMs by resource usage

      How to do it...

      There's more…

      Balancing loads between hosts

      Getting ready

      How to do it...

      Creating a DRS cluster

      Configuring VM options

      Disabling DRS

      Balancing loads between datastores

      How to do it...

      Creating a datastore cluster

      Taking advantage of initial placement

      Adding existing VMs to a datastore cluster

      Reviewing and applying recommendations

      Configuring storage load balancing thresholds

      How to do it...

      Changing the threshold for new clusters

      Changing the threshold for existing clusters

      How it works...

      Limiting VM storage I/O consumption

      How to do it...

      Enabling SIOC on a datastore

      Limiting I/Os per VM

      Limiting VM network I/O consumption

      How to do it...

      Enabling NIOC

      Creating network resource pool

      Assigning port groups to network resource pools

      Editing the network resource pool

      Deleting a network resource pool

      6. Basic Administrative Tasks

      Introduction

      Improving visibility with email alerts

      How to do it...

      Testing email alerts

      Configuring email alerts for important events

      There's more…

      Controlling the space used by snapshots

      How to do it...

      Changing the VM snapshot file location

      Controlling datastore space utilization

      How to do it...

      Disabling default alarm

      Creating folders for datastores

      Creating alarm definitions for each folder

      Automating VM placement with storage profiles

      Getting ready

      How to do it...

      Enable storage profiles and tag datastores

      Creating storage policy

      Assigning storage policy to a VM

      Automating VM placement with VM affinity

      How to do it...

      Creating VM-to-Host rules

      Creating VM-to-VM rules

      Automating VM placement with storage affinity

      Getting ready

      How to do it...

      Creating the Intra-VM rule

      Creating a VM-to-VM rule

      Changing default affinity rule

      There's more…

      Automating tasks with a scheduler

      Getting ready

      How to do it...

      There's more…

      Keeping hosts up to date

      Getting ready

      How to do it...

      Installing the Update Manager server

      Installing the Update Manager plugin

      Creating baselines and groups

      Attaching baselines or groups to hosts

      Scanning and remediating objects

      7. Improving Environment Manageability

      Introduction

      Categorizing objects in the environment

      How to do it...

      Scheduling the VM clone

      Getting ready

      How to do it...

      Creating the script

      Creating a scheduled task

      Redirecting VMkernel dumps to another server

      Getting ready

      How to do it...

      Configuring the Netdump collector service

      Configuring the ESXi host for Netdump

      Gathering network traffic

      How to do it...

      There's more…

      VDS configuration backup and restore

      How to do it...

      Management network configuration recovery

      How to do it...

      Choosing a MAC address prefix

      How to do it...

      Getting familiar with new CLI

      How to do it...

      Formatter options

      Management operations

      Power operations

      Networking operations

      Configuring the firewall from CLI

      How to do it...

      Working with rules

      Bypassing hostd when it's unresponsive with CLI

      How to do it...

      Index

      VMware vCenter Cookbook

      VMware vCenter Cookbook

      Copyright © 2015 Packt Publishing

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.

      Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.

      Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.

      First published: May 2015

      Production reference: 1270515

      Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.

      Livery Place

      35 Livery Street

      Birmingham B3 2PB, UK.

      ISBN 978-1-78355-397-6

      www.packtpub.com

      Credits

      Author

      Konstantin Kuminsky

      Reviewers

      Ravi Kishore Angajala

      Sébastien Brochet

      Greg Mefford

      Ranjit Singh RJ ThakurRatan

      Commissioning Editor

      Kunal Parikh

      Acquisition Editor

      Usha Iyer

      Content Development Editor

      Samantha Gonsalves

      Technical Editor

      Madhunikita Sunil Chindarkar

      Copy Editor

      Adithi Shetty

      Project Coordinator

      Sanchita Mandal

      Proofreaders

      Stephen Copestake

      Safis Editing

      Indexers

      Hemangini Bari

      Priya Sane

      Graphics

      Sheetal Aute

      Production Coordinator

      Komal Ramchandani

      Cover Work

      Komal Ramchandani

      Foreword

      Virtualization is becoming a central component of data center strategies and as a result, it is an increasingly important aspect of the information technology strategy of many organizations. Organizations across many different sectors and of varying sizes are working to deploy more sophisticated computing infrastructures that use virtualization in order to maximize resource utilization. Virtualization provides organizations with a number of advantages, including better efficiency, better resource utilization, an improved ability to scale solutions and services while often achieving cost savings, and significant return on investment.

      However, supporting a highly virtualized computing infrastructure can be challenging for many organizations. Managing and deploying many virtual machines can be a challenge, and managing the many different configurations can be overwhelming, especially for heterogeneous computing environments comprised of different kinds of servers with different processors, cores, memory, and so on. For enterprises making use of virtualized environments to serve core enterprise applications and house critical data, ensuring availability and reliability in a virtualized environment can be daunting.

      As the leading virtualization company, VMware too has recognized the challenges in managing complex, enterprise datacenters and computing environments. To address these challenges and associated complexities, it introduced vCenter and vSphere to help administrators manage complex virtualized environments. Like many commercial software products, vCenter and vSphere are really a suite of software components that come in a number of different versions. While they make life easier for the administrator, they too are complex software products.

      As in many situations, learning to use a complex software suite often requires assistance and sometimes, it is best done through examples. This book plays an important role in helping to fill an administrator's understanding and use of vCenter and vSphere. This book assumes that the reader/user will have access to vCenter that is deployed and has hosts and datastores. This book notes that this could be a trial license, which should be sufficient to allow the reader to explore vCenter and vSphere. For those in the process of acquiring vCenter, this is a useful suggestion as it will help determine versions of vSphere that may be needed.

      Overview and informational elements

      The key focus is on vCenter and vSphere and the key functions and capabilities of the suite of software. This book covers a number of different requirements of virtualized environments—not all environments will have all the requirements. Thus, the text can be used by administrators across a range of environments; readers can pick-and-choose the chapters that are most relevant to their needs.

      The core focus of the text covers the means of dealing with key enterprise needs: Availability, Scalability, Efficiency, and Optimization (chapters 2 to 5). The other chapters are useful as well. Chapter 1, covers basic vCenter tasks and examines different vSphere editions (I found this chapter particularly useful). Chapters 6 and 7 cover basic administrative tasks and ways to improve the manageability of the virtual environment.

      This book is very well written and there is consistent organization throughout the chapters. There are numerous step-by-step instructions on how to do certain tasks and many of these are accompanied by screenshots. This gives the book a cookbook flavor as there are many recipes (in fact, the text refers to many of the steps as recipes) for tasks, and coupling this with the actual use of the software provides an excellent learning model.

      The content

      This book falls into three logical sections: Chapter 1, basics of vCenter and vSphere; chapters 2-5, central enterprise tasks; Chapters 6 and 7, basic tasks and manageability.

      Chapter 1 – vCenter basis tasks and features

      This chapter provides a discussion and comparison of various vSphere editions, what software components and kits are included under the different licenses, what each license covers (for example, CPUs), and so on. There is a very nice walk-through of the different editions, licenses, and options, and it can be very helpful in making a choice that is most appropriate for your organization. This chapter covers a number of basic vCenter tasks, such as booting a VM from a virtual CD, using hosts with different CPUs in one cluster, running vCenter on a VM, accessing hosts via SSH, and so on. There are, of course, screenshots to help the reader. I found this chapter to be particularly useful, since it clearly explained the different vSphere editions.

      Chapter 2 – Increasing environment availability

      This chapter covers vCenter's approach in dealing with availability. It covers how to configure and tune the High Availability (HA) and Fault Tolerance (FT) options. Different scenarios are reviewed, including prioritizing VMs for recovery, admission control, backup, and replication. There are useful discussions on resource consumption for HA and FT, particularly on network traffic, memory, and disk. There are also some useful tips or best practices since HA and FT can impact available resources. Another useful element of this chapter is that it explains some of the messages that the administrator may get while configuring HA and FT, and it explains why these messages are being generated.

      Chapter 3 – Increasing environment scalability

      For many organizations, one main advantage of virtualized data centers is the ability to scale. This chapter covers some of the options and features available in vCenter to improve the administrator's efficiency. This includes templates, customizations, host profiles, and other solutions designed to automate and simplify VM, host deployment, and configuration. Templates enable

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