Comments for blog.scottlowe.org

Comment on I’m a Bad Student by Liam Ashworth

Liam Ashworth — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 12:13:40 +0000

I see what you mean… I am the kind of person who just WON’T do a college assignment during the Holidays/half term breaks, or weekends, or evenings , and i like to wind down on friday after noons.

I wouldn’t say it makes me a bad student though, I’d say it makes me an individual , I believe if i am actually doing at least SOME of it in college then i don’t feel I deserve to take it our of college ( not because i don’t enjoy them, but because i enjoy OTHER THINGS TOO! ) where i’ll do WHAT I WANT!

Comment on Disabling AD Replication by MikeF

MikeF — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 23:37:32 +0000

Is there a way to disable replication for a site for 2-3 weeks? I built a domain controller and site up for a new location and the server is being shipped there now, but all my other DC’s are crying every few minutes to a couple of hours, depending on the events, about not being able to reach it.

I set the replication timer on the site link to 1440 minutes, and the “KCC site generator renewal interval (minutes)” value to 180 minutes, but is there a way to stop replication attempts altogether for a couple of weeks and then turn it back on right before the DC is powered up in the new location?

Comment on How To Create a MetaLUN by Casper42

Casper42 — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 19:11:05 +0000

Is it possible to grow a normal LUN as opposed to a MetaLUN?

We’re using DMX4-4500 Symmetrix here and my SAN guy is telling me we cannot grow a volume. I have a LUN attached to a SQL Server and we need an extra 50% on there. He presented me a new drive with that 50% which I could use, but its far easier if the space shows up on the existing Volume as I can go in with DiskPart on the command line and expand that volume.

Comment on VMware vSphere vDS, VMkernel Ports, and Jumbo Frames by Karl

Karl — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 16:20:04 +0000

Great Blog!

Has anyone been through this exercise using ESXi? I am trying to drop the VMKernel port and can’t quite get the syntax right. My distributed vSwitch is named dvSwitch02-iSCSI and the VMKernel port is name vmk1 with a dvport ID of 102. here is the command that I tried (with variations on the theme):

C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\VMware vSphere CLI\bin>vicfg-vswitch.pl –server –userna
me –password -d dvSwitch02-iSCSI -v 102

Any help would be great!

Comment on VMware ESX, EMC CLARiiON Arrays, and Multiple Protocols by Vinod Pant

Vinod Pant — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 11:51:45 +0000

I am trying to create multipathing between Clariion CX3-10 and ESX4, but have not got the success so far. It detects the path 5 which is correct but shows only one path under “managed path”. What I did so far is, create multiple vmkernel port groups, assigned each port group a dedicated NIC and then bind these vmk port groups on the console.
I am using software iSCSI intiator at ESX4 and iSCSI connection from CX3-10.

Is there any doc available in the internet that could explained the process? I have not found any.
Thanks,
V

Comment on VMware ESX, EMC CLARiiON Arrays, and Multiple Protocols by Evaldas

Evaldas — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 16:20:08 +0000

Scott, we actually use the same LUN via multiprotocol-multipath to ESX from OpenSolaris COMSTAR targets, FC and iSCSI (1G/10G), basically for failover, I think you could call EMC’s host registration as “views” in COMSTAR, there you can take initiator identifiers wwn.., iqn.. and put them in a group and then create a view for that group on a particual LUN (Mike LaSpina has a described it in very nice details here: http://blog.laspina.ca/ubiquitous/multi_protocol_storage_provisioning_with ). Here is “Manage paths” screenshot for one of our LUNs - http://zaibasweb.nerim.net/esx-multiprotocol-multipath.png. The only annoyance with this setup is that VC “Storage Views” tab is not working. Do you have an idea if VMware has any plans on supporting multiproto for same LUN, working in that direction ?

Comment on Understanding NIC Utilization in VMware ESX by slowe

slowe — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 14:32:41 +0000

Michael,

I know this sounds self-serving, but the best approach for you would be to pick up the book “Mastering VMware vSphere 4″ (which I authored)—it will give you all the information you need to configure and support vSphere. Given that you are, admittedly, new to vSphere, I think that this would be a very valuable resource for you.

Good luck!

Comment on Understanding NIC Utilization in VMware ESX by Michael

Michael — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 14:28:06 +0000

Thanks for the info.

I am completely new to VMWare and I have a few questions. Here is my setup:

I have one server with 4 network adapters running ESXi 4.0.

There is one NAS device with a single network port being used for VM backups.

I connect to the ESXi server using the vSphere client and do not have a vSphere server.

NIC1 is connected to the internal network and is assigned to a virtual switch. This is the management interface and I’m running 4 VM’s that all use the assigned virtual switch.

NIC2 is connected to my hardware firewall and is assigned to another virtual switch that is used by only one of my VM’s which is my proxy server.

NIC’s 3 and 4 are not connected.

I would like to know whether it would be possible to use NIC 3 or 4 together with NIC1 for load balancing and better network performance for my VM’s? If possible, how?

Can I connect the last NIC to the firewall, configure a new VMkernel vSwitch and assign a public IP address to the interface so that I can manage the ESX server over the Internet when I can’t be at the office or can only one IP be used for management? (I still want to be able to manage the server in the local LAN using the existing private IP)

Thanks!

Comment on Today’s Vendor Meetings by adrien

adrien — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 11:12:47 +0000

Thank you so much for this post !

This is exactly what I was looking for.

I am really concerned about how secure is a virtual environment from internal and external threats. At the moment I am balancing between Tripwire and VMinformer.

I read your opinion for Tripwire - do you have any thoughts regarding VMinformer?

Comment on PXE Booting VMware ESX 4.0 by Niels

Niels — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 22:31:09 +0000

It is possible to use vlan’s during a PXE deployment. Add vlanid=### to the APPEND line, and of you go.

Mrepo (http://dag.wieers.com/home-made/mrepo/) can be handy to create a installation repository (for ESX or other RPM based Linux distro’s), it also copies the relevant PXE files and puts them on the right tftp spot.

Best regards,
Niels