Screen flicker in VMware Fusion 4.x

Lately I have been having issues with the screen in my VM running under Fusion flickering. This is particularly annoying when working in Visio and trying to draw up a diagram. It is not good for the eyes

The below screenshot shows the issue I have been experiencing:

To stop the flicker enter the VM settings and turn off 3D Acceleration under the Display configuration.  You will need to Power off the VM before you can make this change.  Once the VM is powered on the screen will no longer flicker, therefore saving your eyesight

vCloud DR Solution – Partner opinions

Here is a video with some partners discussing the vCloud DR solution that was released last week.

Partner Exchange 2012 photos

Configuring and using VMware vCloud iPad app

My previous article listed the download link for the VMware vCloud iPad app that was released today.

This article is to demonstrate the screenshots and the basic configuration and use of the app.

• First you install the app from iTunes.  I will not be explaining to anyone on how to do this
• Open the app you are prompted with the initial configuration screen:

• You have to enter your vCloud Org URL (Note: You cannot enter the vCloud Administration URL, it must be https://vcloud.url/cloud/org/orgname)
• Select whether to save the credentials
• Do you want to ignore certificate warnings (Note: If you have self signed certificates you need to select On)
• Select your external applications for RDP, VNC and SSH

Once configured you will be prompted with the login page

• Enter your login credentials for that org

You are then shown the overview screen

• Press on the screen anywhere to remove the overview instructions

You are then shown the vApp list, with a toolbar on the right hand side

• You have four options on the right hand side toolbar
• Add
• Settings
• Tasks
• Logout

• Settings shows you the previous configuration page that we used when first launching the app

• Tasks gives you the options to see Running, Completed and Failed tasks

• Selecting add will take you to the Catalog page

• Trying to deploy some vApps from a catalog does not appear to work, I am prompted with its not supported in vCloud Director 1.0 however my vCloud is running version 1.5 (Note: I have tested this on multiple clouds and I believe the error to be related to version 1.0 of the iPad app, not as would appear the version of vCloud Director)

• You can set different options when deploying the vApp
• Storage used
• Runtime Lease
• Which VDC you would like to deploy it in
• Virtual Machine configuration

The rest of the screenshots below are self explanatory

 

I will be trying to compile a list of the supported 3rd party applications that can be used for RDP, SSH and VNC and will post these separately when I have these

VMware vCloud Client for iPad released

Today the VMware vCloud Client for iPad has been released. To find out further information or to download this iPad from iTunes click here

Listed below is an overview of what the application can do

VMware vCloud Client for iPad | The Cloud at your Fingertips
The VMware vCloud Client for iPad empowers VMware vCloud users to inspect their virtual machines (VMs), provision cloud computer systems (vApps), and perform basic workload operations – all from the convenience of an iPad.

What can I do?
Inspect: View your VMs and vApps, perform basic troubleshooting, and e-mail error logs as needed.
Provision: Easily provision a cloud computer system from your catalog of vApps.
Operate: Power cycle your VMs or possibly extend the lease.

Key Features
Simple Installation from App Store
•Simple install onto your iPad from the Apple app store
•Once installed, use the same vCloud URL and login credentials as used on the Web client

vApp Access and Operations
•Leave notes about the vApp
•Power apps on and off
•Define/reset leases
•Conduct basic networking modifications
•Conduct configuration changes (guest customization)

Directly Provision Apps
•Create vApps from a catalog of templates
•Deploy apps directly from iPad client

Inspect and Troubleshoot
•Monitor tasks that are running or have run recently
•Share failed task descriptions (why tasks have failed) via e-mail

Remote Desktop Access
•Connect to your VM via RDP, SSH, or VNC (Compatible with select third-party clients)

Access Your Public/Hybrid Cloud Environment
•Log into a pubic cloud environment powered by a qualified service provider
•Demonstrate unified log in to VMware-based environment and directly file support tickets from your iPad (Provider-supported feature)

vCloud Disaster Recovery

Its finally out there for the public to consume.  As a lot of people will probably already know, a team of us in VMware have been working on putting together a vCloud infrastructure Disaster Recovery solution.  Duncan Epping and Chris Colotti have wrote a blog article covering the whole aspect of the solution which can be viewed by clicking here

The solution involves using VMware Site Recovery Manager to fail over the vCloud Management Cluster VMs as per the VMware vCloud Architecture Tool kit reference architecture.

The diagram below demonstrates a high level overview of the solution:

In essence, what happens is all the VMs running under the Management Cluster vCenter are all failed over to the secondary site using SRM, then utilising storage replication at the Resource cluster layer, all the vCloud workloads are also protected outside of SRM protection. This solution can be used to not only protect your vCloud Director cells and subsequent workloads, but also the whole vCloud Eco-system components, for example Chargeback and vCenter Orchestrator. See related blog articles: vCloud Ecosystem components explained and vCloud Ecosystem components explained part 2

As detailed above the full solution architecture can be viewed by reading the vCloud blog article.

Running nested ESXi on HP ML115 G5 – EVC Mode Gotcha

So for a couple of days I have been re-building my lab. This has been overdue for a longtime and I finally had some time to get it done.  The main purpose of re-building my lab is to make sure it follows the base reference architecture for vCloud as documented in the VMware vCloud Architecture Toolkit.  Now you may notice the list of kit that I have in my lab below and wonder how I could do this with only two physical hosts.  The simple answer is nested ESXi.

The hardware in my lab consists of

• 1 HP ML115 G5 (AMD Opteron 1354 and 8GB RAM)
• 1 HP Microserver (AMD Athlon II Neo N36L and 8GB RAM)

William Lam has wrote an excellent article on how to run nested ESXi within vSphere 5.0.  This explains how to enable the hidden Guest OS settings.  To read this article click here.

So I began by re-building my physical hosts with ESXi 5.0.  They had previously been running ESXi 4.1 Update 2.

Simon Seagrave wrote a nice article on how to use a HP ML115 G5 and a HP Microserver together in a HA/DRS cluster using EVC Mode.  To read this article click here.

Simon says (:-)) that by configuring EVC Mode for Opteron Generation 1

you can use both the HP ML115 G5 and Microserver together in a HA/DRS Cluster.  This works brilliantly and you can vMotion VMs across the hosts, and DRS does its job perfectly.  This is where the problems started when building nested ESXi.

If you create a new VM by following Williams guide (discussed above) you will have a configuration that looks like this:

Everything looks great.  You power on the VM and start to install VMware vSphere 5.0.  During the installation process however you will be prompted with this warning:

Now I knew that the Secure Virtual Machine Mode was enabled in the bios on the HP ML115 G5, and I also knew that was the only setting that I could configure for this.  So what was the problem?  I was not sure, but as the installer gave me the option to continue I pressed Enter.  Everything went well, the host re-booted and I had now had my first nested ESXi host running.  I built a second nested ESXi and then created a cluster in vCenter and added both the hosts.  By this point I thought that the error was not affecting anything, and as this was a lab I could just forget about it.  However I was wrong!  Once I had my cluster fully configured, I created a test 64 bit RHEL 6 VM, however when powering on this VM I was prompted with a longmode error:

You could still power on the VM, but it would only run in 32bit mode.  Now I knew my friend and ex-colleague Simon Gallagher had 64bit VMs running under nested ESXi on a HP ML115 G5 because of his vTARDIS project.  You can read more about this by clicking here.

We spent quite a bit of time comparing configurations and trying various re-builds, various changes in the .VMX file, nothing would work.  We were even at the point where he was going to export one of his vESXi VMs and send over to me for me to try.

I then remembered about the EVC Mode configuration and how this allows the CPU to change CPUID responses.  Going back to Williams article, he talks a little about CPUIDs and hardware version 4 or 7.  I instantly realised what the problem was.

I disabled EVC Mode on the cluster, and powered on the nested ESXi hosts.  Going back to that cluster I was then able to successfully power on a 64bit VM running under my nested vESXi.

Unfortunately due to turning of EVC Mode DRS no longer works with my two different physical hosts, but thats ok I can manually distribute the load, and even without EVC Mode HA still protects those VMs.

How To: Disable warnings when SSH enabled vSphere ESXi 5.0

I previously wrote an article about how to enable SSH in vSphere 5.0. A few people have asked how to disable the warnings that then appear on the hosts when you have this feature enabled.

The VMware KB article Cluster warning for ESXi Shell and SSH appear on an ESXi 5 host explains how to disable this warning.

The following steps explain how to disable this warning:

1. Select the ESXi host from the Inventory.
2. Select Advanced Settings from the Software menu.
3. Navigate to UserVars > UserVars.SuppressShellWarning.
   
4. Set the value from 0 to 1.
5. Click OK.

HowTo: Enable SSH on vSphere ESXi 5.0

Back in 2010 and I wrote a quick article on How To: Enable Remote Tech Support mode and SSH on ESXi 4.1. A few people have posted comments asking if I could do the same now that vSphere/ESXi 5.0 has been released. The actual steps haven’t really changed, however Remote Tech Support mode is now just simply called SSH.  The steps listed below explain how to enable SSH on an ESXi 5.0 host.

1. Login to vCenter
2. Select your host
3. Click the configuration tab
4. Select Security Profile under Software
5. Click Properties for Services
6. Select SSH and click options
7. Choose the startup policy that you require
8. Click Start
9. Click OK and OK
10. SSH to your host

Once enabled you will notice that the host within vCenter has a warning being shown.  When selecting that host, and looking under the summary, vCenter alerts you to the fact that SSH is enabled.

Enable ESXi Shell vSphere 5.0

Today I was playing around with building some virtual ESXi hosts and could not get one of them onto the network.  I tried everything I could through the console UI, but knew I had to enable the ESXi shell command line to do some further digging.  These are the steps that I carried out to do this:

1. Connect to the ESXi host console
   
2. Hit F2
3. Enter the username and password
   
4. Select Troubleshooting Options
   
5. Select Enable ESXi Shell and hit return
   
6. Press Escape to exit
7. Hold Alt and press F1
8. Login to the ESXi shell
   
9. Once logged in you will see the command line
   

If you are unsure of the commands to use the document Command-Line Management in vSphere 5.0 for Service Console Users is a really good starting point.