Its been a while since I posted anything, and thats just mainly down to how busy Ive been

since the turn of the new year!!

https://theithollow.com/2013/03/26/are-you-thin-or-thick-where-at/

http://rickardnobel.se/eager-thick-vs-lazy-thick-disk-performance/

I guess its good to be busy as it occupies the mind! =)

Although really busy, the MTI TAMs still managed to fly over to Cork to visit EMCs factory..
it was my first time there and I must say I was very impressed. we got to see all the
processes behind testing and building the EMC storage arrays (VMAX, VNX) and also how
rigorous the testing process was!! Amazed at how much investment EMC have put into their
testing equipment (temperature, vibration, etc). Supposedly if its tested to bits, there is less
chance of an DoA (Dead on Arrival) when shipped and also stops people ringing support to
complain about their array not functioning! =)

Anyways, the reason for this post is I had to explain briefly the difference between Eager
Zeroed and Lazy Zeroed for Thick Provisioning within VMware.

I believe the default format for Thick Provisioned virtual disks is Lazy Zero.

Thick Provision Lazy Zeroed

When selected this basically means that the space required for the virtual disk is allocated
when the virtual disk is created but the blocks on the physical drives are not erased (zeroed)
during creation, but will be zeroed out on demand at a later time on first write from the virtual
machine hence the Lazy terminology.
So as you can imagine theres a slight overhead when writing to a block for the first time
(subsequent writes to the same block does not require it to be zeroed).

Thick Provision Eager Zeroed

When selected this basically means that the space required for the virtual disk is allocated
when the virtual disk is created. However, the data remaining on the physical device is zeroed
out when the virtual disk is created.
Because it has to zero out the whole space allocated to the virtual disk at creation, this means
it might take longer to create the disk over say Lazy or Thin.

The difference in performance between the two is minimal (Read is obviously not affected).
However, just bear in mind that if theyre using MSCS or VMware FT you will need to use
Eager Zeroed Thick.

UIM 2.0 serves as a single point of management for full provisioning automation
across network, compute and storage environments.

Explain what is hypervisor?

Hypervisor is a program that enables multiple operating systems to share a single

hardware host. Each operating system has the hosts processor, memory and
other resources all to itself. Hypervisor controls the resources and host
processor, allocating what is required for each operating system in turn and make
sure that the guest operating system cannot disrupt each other.
Explain what is VMware DRS?

VMware DRS stands for Distributed Resource Scheduler; it dynamically balances

resources across various host under cluster or resource pool. It enables users to
determine the rules and policies which decide how virtual machines deploy
resources, and these resources should be prioritized to multiple virtual machines.

Explain VMware Fault Tolerance?

VMware fault tolerance is an important component of VMware vSphere, and it

offers continuous accessibility to applications by preventing data loss and down
time of virtual machines in the event of ESX server failure.

Clone
Clone is a copy of the virtual machine
You cannot convert back the cloned Virtual Machine
A clone of a virtual machine can be made when the virtual machine is
powered on
A full clone is independent from parent virtual machines and does not
share anything with virtual machines.

Template

A template is a master copy of a virtual machine; it can be used to make

many clones
Template can be converted back to the virtual machine to update the base
template
Template cannot be edited or powered on, and are more difficult to
change than ordinary virtual machine
When you clone a virtual machine from the template, the resulting cloned
virtual machine is free of the original virtual machine

What is a .vmdk file?

This isn't the file containing the raw data. Instead it is the disk descriptor
file which describes the size and geometry of the virtual disk file. This file is in
text format and contains the name of the flat.vmdk file for which it is
associated with and also the hard drive adapter type, drive sectors, heads and
cylinders, etc. One of these files will exist for each virtual hard drive that is
assigned to your virtual machine. You can tell which flat.vmdk file it is
associated with by opening the file and looking at the Extent Description field.

13. Youre creating a list of ports you need the network admin to open on
the firewall. What is port 902 used for on vCenter?
Answer: Port 902 is the default port vCenter uses to send data to hosts
managed by vCenter.

Java Database Connectivity (JDBC)

17. VMware vSphere give you options. What are the 4 typical ways
storage can be added to a vSphere?
Answer: Storage can be added via iSCSI, FC, NFS and local disk
(including DAS).

21. This is a tough VMware interview question created just for you. Name
4 things that happen on the VMkernel networking layer?
Answer: vMotion, IP storage (iSCSI/NFS), Fault Tolerance and Virtual
SAN.

22. You have a VCP so this should be an easy interview question. What
are 2 ways a vSphere admin can separate traffic from distinct
environments (ex. Production and test) on the same hosts.
Answer: Either by creating separate vSwitches using dedicated NICs or
if NICs are not available by creating separate port groups using
different VLAN IDs on the same vSwitch.
23. True or false. A Distributed Virtual Switch is very much like a
physical switch that detects which VMs are logically connects to each
port and uses that information to forward network traffic. Hint: It is not
used for monitoring and administration across a datacenter.
Answer: False. A Distributed Virtual Switch acts as a single switch
across all hosts in a datacenter to provide centralized provisioning,
administration, and monitoring of virtual networks.

24. Another True or false. NIC teams are normally put in active/active
mode to allow fail-over in the event of a hardware failure.
Answer: False again. NIC teams are normally put in active/standby
mode to allow fail-over in the event of a hardware failure. You can use
active/active but this would not be standard and would require port
channeling at the physical switch
 25. This is a trick question so think about it! How many physical NICs are
needed in an ESXi hosts for hosting 25 virtual servers on iSCSI
storage split between 2 diverse environments (web/app).
Answer: The answer is purely subjective. It depends on how much
separation is needed for performance and the level of redundancy built
into the design for hardware failure. At minimum, maybe 2 (1 for data
and 1 for VMkernel) but more should be used.

26. What is the use of vmware tools?

VMware Tools is a suite of utilities that enhances the performance of the virtual machine's
guest operating system and improves management of the virtual machine. Without VMware
Tools installed in your guest operating system, guest performance lacks important
functionality. Installing VMware Tools eliminates or improves these issues:

Low video resolution

Inadequate color depth

Incorrect display of network speed
Restricted movement of the mouse
Inability to copy and paste and drag-and-drop files
Missing sound
Provides the ability to take quiesced snapshots of the guest OS
Synchronizes the time in the guest operating system with the time on the host
Provides support for guest-bound calls created with the VMware VIX API

What is the difference between clone and template in VMware?

Clone

A clone is a copy of virtual machine.

You cannot convert back the cloned Virtual Machine.
A Clone of a Virtual Machine can be created when the Virtual Machine is powered on
Cloning can be done in two ways namely Full Clone and Linked Clone.
A full clone is an independent copy of a virtual machine that shares nothing with the
parent virtual machine after the cloning operation. Ongoing operation of a full clone is
entirely separate from the parent virtual machine.
A linked clone is a copy of a virtual machine that shares virtual disks with the parent
virtual machine in an ongoing manner. This conserves disk space, and allows multiple
virtual machines to use the same software installation.

Template

A template is a master copy or a baseline image of a virtual machine that can be used to
create many clones.
Templates cannot be powered on or edited, and are more difficult to alter than ordinary
virtual machine.
You can convert the template back to Virtual Machine to update the base template with
the latest released patches and updates and to install or upgrade any software and again
convert back to template to be used for future deployment of Virtual Machines with the
latest patches.
Convert virtual Machine to template cannot be performed, when Virtual machine is
powered on. Only Clone to Template can be performed when the Virtual Machine is
powered on.
 A template offers a more secure way of preserving a virtual machine configuration that
you want to deploy many times.

What is a snapshot?

A snapshot is a point in time image of a virtual guest operating system (VM). That
snapshot contains an image of the VMs disk, RAM, and devices at the time the snapshot was
taken. With the snapshot, you can return the VM to that point in time, whenever you
choose.

13. What is the difference between VMware HA and vMotion?

VMware HA is used in the event when any of the hosts inside a cluster fails then all the virtual
machines running under it are restarted on different host in the same cluster.
Now HA is dependent on vMotion to perform live migration of the vms to different host so
vMotion is just used for the migration purpose between multiple hosts which is also used by
other functionality like DRS.

What is storage vMotion?

Storage vMotion is similar to vMotion in the sense that "something" related to the VM is
moved and there is no downtime to the VM guest and end users. However, with SVMotion
the VM Guest stays on the server that it resides on but the virtual disk for that VM is what
moves.
With Storage vMotion, you can migrate a virtual machine and its disk files from one
datastore to another while the virtual machine is running.
You can choose to place the virtual machine and all its disks in a single location, or select
separate locations for the virtual machine configuration file and each virtual disk.
During a migration with Storage vMotion, you can transform virtual disks from Thick-
Provisioned Lazy Zeroed or Thick-Provisioned Eager Zeroed to Thin-Provisioned or the
reverse.
Perform live migration of virtual machine disk files across any Fibre Channel, iSCSI, FCoE
and NFS storage.

What are the security options available for ESX vswitch?

Promiscuous Mode Reject
MAC Address changes Accept
Forged Transmits Accept

What is Promiscuous Mode ?

If the promiscuous mode set to Accept, all the communication is visible to
all the virtual machines, in other words all the packets are sent to all the
ports on vSwitch. It can be useful when you are running virtual machines
with network sniffers to capture packet in that network.

What is MAC Address changes?
All the virtual machines nics are provide with the MAC address at the time
of creation and it is stored in .VMX file. If the packet doesnt match with
the MAC address as same as in the .VMX file , it does not allow incoming
traffic to the VM by setting this option as reject.
If it is set as Accept,ESX accepts requests to change the effective MAC
address to other than the MAC address save din the .VMX file.
 What is Forged Transmits ?
Which is same as the Mac Address changes setting but it worked for the
outgoing traffic but the MAC address changes setting is for incoming
traffic.

What is a VLAN ?
A VLAN is the Virtual LAN which is used to broke down the Broadcast
traffic into many logical groups. Basically, one physical switch comprise of
one broadcast domain. VLAN used to separate the one broadcast domain
into many small pieces to separate the networks within the broadcast
domain.

What are the types of VLAN tagging in Vsphere?

There are 3 types of VLAN tagging available in Vsphere.
1.Virtual Switch Tagging (VST)
2.External Switch Tagging (EST)
3.Virtual Guest Tagging (VGT)

What is VST , EST & VGT?

Please refer my blog post on VLAN tagging

What are the Traffic Shaping policies available in the vSwitch?

Understanding the usecases of Traffic shaping policies are very important
part of VMware interview questions. Traffic shaping policies are disabled
by default. There are 3 different traffic shaping policy setting
Average Bandwidth
Peak Bandwidth
Burst Size

Average Bandwidth is defined in KBPS

Peak bandwidth is defined in KBPS
Burst Size is defined in Kilobytes

What are the Load balancing policies available in vswitch?

Route based on the originating virtual switch port ID

Route based on source MAC hash
Route based on IP hash

Average Bandwidth is defined in KBPS

Peak bandwidth is defined in KBPS
Burst Size is defined in Kilobytes

What are the Load balancing policies available in vswitch?

Route based on the originating virtual switch port ID

Route based on source MAC hash
Route based on IP hash
 What is VMware DRS and how does it works?

Here DRS stands for Distributed Resource Scheduler which dynamically balances
resource across various host under Cluster or resource pool.
VMware DRS allows users to define the rules and policies that decide how virtual machines
share resources and how these resources are prioritized among multiple virtual machines.
Resources are allocated to the virtual machine by either migrating it to another server
with more available resources or by making more space for it on the same server by
migrating other virtual machines to different servers.
The live migration of virtual machines to different physical servers is executed completely
transparent to end-users through VMware VMotion
VMware DRS can be configured to operate in either automatic or manual mode. In
automatic mode, VMware DRS determines the best possible distribution of virtual
machines among different physical servers and automatically migrates virtual machines
to the most appropriate physical servers. In manual mode, VMware DRS provides a
recommendation for optimal placement of virtual machines, and leaves it to the system
administrator to decide whether to make the change.

What is VMware Fault Tolerance?

VMware Fault Tolerance provides continuous availability to applications running in a

virtual machine, preventing downtime and data loss in the event of server failures.
VMware Fault Tolerance, when enabled for a virtual machine, creates a live shadow
instance of the primary, running on another physical server.
The two instances are kept in virtual lockstep with each other using VMware vLockstep
technology
The two virtual machines play the exact same set of events, because they get the exact
same set of inputs at any given time.
The two virtual machines constantly heartbeat against each other and if either virtual
machine instance loses the heartbeat, the other takes over immediately. The heartbeats
are very frequent, with millisecond intervals, making the failover instantaneous with no
loss of data or state

In a cluster with more than 3 hosts, can you tell Fault Tolerance where to put
the Fault Tolerance virtual machine or does it chose on its own?
You can place the original (or Primary virtual machine). You have full control with
DRS or vMotion to assign it to any node. The placement of the Secondary, when
created, is automatic based on the available hosts. But when the Secondary is
created and placed, you can vMotion it to the preferred host.

How does vSphere HA works?

When we configure multiple hosts for HA cluster, a single host is automatically elected as
the master host. The master host communicates with vCenter Server and monitors the state
of all protected virtual machines and of the slave hosts. When you add a host to a vSphere
HA cluster, an agent is uploaded to the host and configured to communicate with other
agents in the cluster.

What are the roles of master host in vSphere HA

Monitoring the state of slave hosts. If a slave host fails or becomes unreachable, the master
host identifies which virtual machines need to be restarted.
 Monitoring the power state of all protected virtual machines. If one virtual machine fails,
the master host ensures that it is restarted. Using a local placement engine, the master
host also determines where the restart should be done.
Managing the lists of cluster hosts and protected virtual machines.
Acting as vCenter Server management interface to the cluster and reporting the cluster
health state.

How is a Master host elected in vSphere HA environment?

When vSphere HA is enabled for a cluster, all active hosts (those not in standby or
maintenance mode, or not disconnected) participate in an election to choose the cluster's
master host. The host that mounts the greatest number of datastores has an advantage in
the election. Only one master host typically exists per cluster and all other hosts are s lave
hosts.

If the master host fails, is shut down or put in standby mode, or is removed from the cluster
a new election is held.

What is the use of vmware tools?

VMware Tools is a suite of utilities that enhances the performance of the virtual machine's
guest operating system and improves management of the virtual machine. Without VMware
Tools installed in your guest operating system, guest performance lacks important
functionality. Installing VMware Tools eliminates or improves these issues:

Low video resolution

Inadequate color depth
Incorrect display of network speed
Restricted movement of the mouse
Inability to copy and paste and drag-and-drop files
Missing sound
Provides the ability to take quiesced snapshots of the guest OS
Synchronizes the time in the guest operating system with the time on the host
Provides support for guest-bound calls created with the VMware VIX API

Short for System Center Configuration Manager, SCCM is a software

management suite provided by Microsoft that allows users to manage a
large number of Windows based computers. SCCM features remote
control, patch management, operating system deployment, network
protection and other various services.
For their workstations, administrators can:
Provide the initial installation of an operating system and/or software
on a new machine
Push software, patches, configurations, and updates to individual
machines or groups of machines
Rebuild a system that has been compromised
Run reports
o Hardware and software inventories
o Computer details
 o Network information
o Compliance
o Software deployment status
o Virus/Malware infections and status
o Disk space

Boundary groups are collections of boundaries. By using boundary

groups, clients on the intranet can find an assigned site and locate
content when they have to install software, such as applications,
software updates, and operating system images.
When clients are on the Internet, or they are configured as Internet-
only clients, they do not use boundary information. These clients
cannot use automatic site assignment and always download content
from any distribution point in their assigned site when the distribution
point is configured to allow client connections from the Internet.

Boundaries can be an IP subnet, Active Directory site name, IPv6

Prefix, or an IP address range, and the hierarchy can include any
combination of these boundary types. To use a boundary, you must add
the boundary to one or more boundary groups. Boundary groups are
collections of boundaries. By using boundary groups, clients on the
intranet can find an assigned site and locate content when they have to
install software, such as applications, software updates, and operating
system images.

SCOM
SCOM is a near real-time server and data-center monitoring tool
from Microsoft targeted at monitoring servers and enterprise
infrastructure, services, and applications like Exchange and SQL.
Not to be confused with SCCM (Systems Center Configuration
Manager), which is a management tool meant for use with
Windows-only client nodes. SCCM works by deploying agents to
perform remote management tasks such as automated software
installation and updates of Windows components, as well as other
non-Windows services and apps. Like SCOM, SCCM also utilizes
agents and can technically be used for some rudimentary
monitoring; though this isnt really its intended use.

What is Cloud Computing?

Cloud computing is the use of computing resources (hardware and software) that are
delivered as a service over a network (typically the Internet).
What are the Service Model in Cloud Computing?
?What are the Service Model in Cloud Computing
Cloud computing providers offer their services according to three
fundamental models: Infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a
service (PaaS), and software as a service (SaaS) where IaaS is the
most basic and each higher model abstracts from the details of the
.lower models
Examples of IaaS include: Amazon CloudFormation (and underlying
services such as Amazon EC2), Rackspace Cloud, Terremark,
.Windows Azure Virtual Machines, Google Compute Engine. and Joyent
Examples of PaaS include: Amazon Elastic Beanstalk, Cloud Foundry,
Heroku, Force.com, EngineYard, Mendix, Google App Engine, Windows
.Azure Compute and OrangeScape
Examples of SaaS include: Google Apps, Microsoft Office 365, and
Onlive. Source from : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_computing

?How many types of deployment models are used in cloud

:There are 4 types of deployment models used in cloud
Public cloud
Private cloud
Community cloud
Hybrid cloud
DCDIAG stands for domain controller diagnostics is a free tool from Microsoft to test the overall
health of an active directory network.
Analyzes the state of domain controllers in a forest or enterprise and reports any problems to help
in troubleshooting.
DCDiag is a command line utility that performs a full check of the DC.
These tests include forest DNS tests, to check that the DNS is okay at the forest level, domain
DNS tests, to do the same on a domain level, configuration test, schema test, and the FSMO test
to check that all FSMO servers are available.

SYSVOL FRS to DFSR migration

Most of you probably already updated Active Directory infrastructure from Windows 2003 to
Windows 2008 R2. What I see most is that administrators do not upgrade DFS replication
subsystem for SYSVOL shares. Before Windows Server 2008 (also R2) was released FRS (File
Replication System) is used. In Windows 2008 R2 there is new version released and its called
DFSR (Distributed File System Replication).

FSR
FSR uses NTFS volumes USN journal to determine when a change has occured to a file and
triggers replication. When FSR detects file close it gathers information about file and its attributes.
It also checks files MD5 hash. If MD5 hash changes it will trigger replication. If file has changed
whole file is send to FSR replication partners.

DFSR

First benefit of DFSR is that it doesnt replicate whole file, but just a changed data in the file. To be
able to check only changes in files it uses RDC (Remote Differential Compression) compression
algorithm.
Netstat
Displays active TCP connections, ports on which the computer is listening, Ethernet statistics, the
IP routing table, IPv4 statistics (for the IP, ICMP, TCP, and UDP protocols), and IPv6 statistics (for
the IPv6, ICMPv6, TCP over IPv6, and UDP over IPv6 protocols). Used without parameters,
netstat displays active TCP connections. For examples of how this command can be used,
Examples

To display both the Ethernet statistics and the statistics for all protocols, type:
netstat -e -s
To display the statistics for only the TCP and UDP protocols, type:
netstat -s -p tcpudp
To display active TCP connections and the process IDs every 5 seconds, type:
netstat -o 5
To display active TCP connections and the process IDs using numerical form, type:
netstat -n -o

Time Synchronization in Active Directory:

1- C:\Users\administrator.UOH>net stop w32time

LDIFDE (Lightweight Data Interchange Format Directory Exchange)

LDIFDE (Lightweight Data Interchange Format Directory Exchange) is an executable that can
import data (create objects, modify existing ones, etc) into Active Directory. It can be used as well
to extract data but there are other tools better suited for this (like CSVDE).

Authoritative restore will update existing DCs with the restored data.
Non-authoritative restore will replicate the existing data from another DC.

An authoritative restore, on the other hand, allows you to selectively increment the version
numbers of attributes to make them authoritative in the directory. That is, during the replication
following the restoration, when the version numbers of objects are compared, the objects and
attributes on the restored DC that were restored authoritatively will have higher version numbers
than those on the other DCs, and will replicate out to the other DCs instead of themselves being
overwritten as out-of-date.

The Microsoft Office 365 suite is a hosted, online version of the

traditional installed version of Microsoft Office software. This online
service is subscription-based and includes Office, Exchange Online,
SharePoint Online, Lync Online and Microsoft Office Web Apps.
The advantage of the Microsoft Office 365 suite is that the cloud
service is provided by Microsoft and, thus, eliminates a company's IT
maintenance tasks, such as patching, and infrastructure support
costs. For end users, the advantage is the ability to access Office
365 offerings using any device anywhere with an internet connection.