Book Image

VMware vSphere 5.1 Cookbook

By : Abhilash G B
Book Image

VMware vSphere 5.1 Cookbook

By: Abhilash G B

Overview of this book

Amidst all the recent competition from Citrix and Microsoft, VMware's vSphere product line is still the most feature rich and futuristic product in the virtualization industry. Knowing how to install and configure vSphere components is important to give yourself a head start towards virtualization using VMware. If you want to quickly grasp the installation and configuration procedures, especially by using the new vSphere 5.1 web client, this book is for you.VMware vSphere 5.1 Cookbook will take you through all the steps required to accomplish a task with minimal reading required. Most of the tasks are accompanied with relevant screenshots with an intention to provide a visual guidance as well.The book has many useful recipes that will help you progress through the installation of VMware ESXi 5.1 and vCenter Server 5.1. You will learn to use Auto Deploy and Image Profiles to deploy stateless/stateful ESXi servers, configure failover protection for virtual machines using vSphere HA, configure automated load balancing using vSphere DRS and DPM. Finally, the book guides you through upgrading or patching ESXi servers using VMware Update Manager and also deploying and configuring vSphere Management Assistant (VMA) to be able to run scripts to manage the ESXi servers.

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VMware vSphere 5.1 Cookbook
Abhilash G B
Jul, 2013 | 466 pages
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Table of Contents (20 chapters)
VMware vSphere 5.1 Cookbook
VMware vSphere 5.1 Cookbook
Credits
Credits
About the Author
About the Author
About the Reviewers
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Preface
Free Chapter
1
Upgrading to vSphere 5.1
Upgrading to vSphere 5.1
Introduction
Carrying out pre-upgrade checks before performing a vCenter upgrade
Performing an in-place upgrade of vCenter Server
Creating a table space for SSO on a SQL instance
Creating DB users for the SSO database
Upgrading a 32-bit vCenter Server to vCenter 5.1
Upgrading to ESXi 5.1
Installing vSphere Web Client
Upgrading VMware Tools
Upgrading the virtual machine hardware
2
Performing a Fresh Installation of vSphere 5.1
Performing a Fresh Installation of vSphere 5.1
Introduction
Installing vCenter 5.1
Deploying a VMware vCenter Server Appliance (vCSA)
Preparing vCenter Server Appliance for first use
Installing the vCenter Server Appliance update
Upgrading a vCenter Server Appliance
Installing ESXi 5.1
Performing a scripted install of the ESXi server
3
vSphere Auto Deploy
vSphere Auto Deploy
Introduction
Installing the Auto Deploy server
Configuring a TFTP server with Auto Deploy files
Configuring the DHCP server for PXE boot
Testing the PXE boot configuration
Preparing VMware PowerCLI for first use
Downloading an ESXi Offline Bundle
Adding the Offline Bundle to the Auto Deploy server
Choosing an ESXi Image to deploy
Creating a Host Profile
Creating a deploy rule
Activating a deploy rule
Testing Auto Deploy
Enabling Stateless Caching
Performing an Auto Deploy stateful install
4
ESXi Image Builder
ESXi Image Builder
Introduction
Creating an Image Profile by cloning an existing one
Removing an Image Profile
Adding a VIB (software package) to an Image Profile
Exporting an Image Profile as an ISO or Offline Bundle
Creating an Image Profile from scratch
Applying an Image Profile to the host
5
Creating and Managing VMFS Datastores
Creating and Managing VMFS Datastores
Introduction
Viewing the LUNs presented to an ESXi host
Viewing the datastores seen by the ESXi host
Viewing the multipathing information of a LUN
Creating a VMFS datastore
Expanding/growing a VMFS datastore
Extending a VMFS datastore
Unmounting a VMFS datastore
Mounting a VMFS datastore
Deleting a VMFS datastore
Upgrading VMFS-3 to VMFS-5
Mounting VMFS on a snapshot LUN
Resignaturing VMFS on a snapshot LUN
Masking paths to a LUN
Unmasking paths to a LUN
Creating a datastore cluster
Enabling Storage DRS
6
Managing iSCSI and NFS Storage
Managing iSCSI and NFS Storage
Introduction
Adding the software iSCSI adapter
Creating a new VMkernel interface for iSCSI or NFS
Preparing the vSphere network for iSCSI multipathing
Binding VMkernel interfaces to the software iSCSI adapter
Adding an iSCSI target server to the software iSCSI adapter
Creating an NFS datastore
7
Profile-driven Storage and Storage I/O Control
Profile-driven Storage and Storage I/O Control
Introduction
Adding a storage provider
Creating user-defined storage capabilities
Mapping user-defined storage capabilities to datastores
Creating a VM storage profile and enabling it
Assigning storage profiles to virtual machine disks and checking compliance
Enabling Storage I/O Control (SIOC)
Modifying disk shares on a VM
8
Configuring the vSphere Network
Configuring the vSphere Network
Introduction
Creating a vSphere Standard Switch
Deleting a vSphere Standard Switch
Creating a VMkernel interface on a vSphere Standard Switch
Deleting a port group
Adding an uplink to a vSphere Standard Switch
Creating a vSphere Distributed Switch
Creating a distributed port group
Adding hosts to a vSphere Distributed Switch
Mapping a physical adapter (vmnic) to a dvUplink
Migrating virtual machine network from vSphere Standard Switch to vSphere Distributed Switch
Migrating management and VMkernel interfaces between vSphere Standard and Distributed Switches
Creating a VMkernel interface on a vSphere Distributed Switch
Exporting the vSphere Distributed Switch configuration
Restoring the vSphere Distributed Switch configuration
Importing a vSphere Distributed Switch into the datacenter from a backup
Enabling port mirroring on a DSwitch
Enabling NetFlow on a DSwitch
Configuring private VLANs (PVLANs) on a DSwitch
9
Creating and Managing Virtual Machines
Creating and Managing Virtual Machines
Introduction
Creating a virtual machine
Creating a new hard disk for a virtual machine
Adding an existing hard disk to a virtual machine
Attaching RDM to a virtual machine
Mapping a virtual machine's vNIC to a different port group
Adding a new virtual network adapter to a virtual machine
Creating a virtual machine snapshot
Deleting a virtual machine snapshot
Reverting to a current virtual machine snapshot
Going to a virtual machine snapshot
Consolidating snapshots
Exporting a virtual machine
10
Configuring vSphere HA
Configuring vSphere HA
Introduction
Enabling vSphere HA on a cluster
Setting host isolation response for an HA cluster
Setting VM restart priority for an HA cluster
Configuring VM monitoring
Configuring datastore heartbeating
Disabling host monitoring
Configuring vSphere HA admission control
Configuring a VM to override host monitoring and VM monitoring settings
11
Configuring vSphere DRS, DPM, and VMware EVC
Configuring vSphere DRS, DPM, and VMware EVC
Introduction
Enabling vSphere DRS on a cluster
Choosing a DRS automation level
Overriding the cluster automation level for a VM
Setting a migration threshold
Creating host and VM DRS groups
Creating virtual machines to host affinity rules
Creating "Inter-VM" affinity/anti-affinity rules
Configuring vSphere Distributed Power Management (DPM)
Enabling power management on a per-host level
Configuring VMware EVC (Enhanced vMotion Compatibility)
12
Upgrading and Patching using vSphere Update Manager
Upgrading and Patching using vSphere Update Manager
Introduction
Preparing a database for vSphere Update Manager
Installing vSphere Update Manager
Installing the vSphere Update Manager plugin
Adding a download source
Creating a baseline
Importing ESXi Images
Creating a host baseline group
Creating a VM and VA baseline group
Remediating a host or a cluster
Remediating a VM or a VA
Staging patches
Installing the Update Manager Download Service (UMDS)
Configuring UMDS and downloading data
Creating a shared repository
Using a shared repository
13
Using vSphere Management Assistant (vMA 5.1)
Using vSphere Management Assistant (vMA 5.1)
Introduction
Deploying the vMA appliance
Preparing vMA for first use
Configuring vMA to join an existing domain
Adding vCenter to vMA with AD authentication
Adding vCenter to vMA with fastpass (fpauth) authentication
Adding an ESXi host to vMA
Reconfiguring an added target server
Running CLI command on target servers
Index
Index

Consolidating snapshots

Snapshot consolidation is a process of merging the content of all the snapshots to the base disk. We have seen snapshot consolidations fail for various reasons. For instance, a backup appliance which hot-adds the VMDK to its proxy server to back up its content, should ideally remove the hot-added VMDK and issue a delete operation on the snapshot it created. If for some reason, it fails to remove the hot-added VMDK, then all subsequent snapshot delete operations that it issues will also fail. This is because the file is in use. If this goes undetected, then you will be left with a lot of snapshot delta files, eventually using up a lot/all of the free space on the datastore. Things get worse, when the snapshot manager does not show all the left over snapshots, leaving the user/administrator with no GUI control over the situation.

Fortunately, starting with vSphere 5, you have a GUI option to consolidate the left-over snapshot files. In this recipe we will learn how to...

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