While there are many new changes in VMWare ESXi 5.0, like Image Builder, Auto Deploy/Central Management, Firewall Changes, USB 3 Support and hardware upgrades, Today I’m going to highlight Cluster HA.
In vCenter 5.0 VMware Cluster HA functionality has been fully revamped. The clunky Automated Availability Manager (AAM) used in 4.X and below is now replaced by Fault Domain Manager (FDM). AAM had many quirks and limitations some of them being that it only used the management interface as the heartbeat communication for nodes in the cluster. Troubleshooting it when it broke was a headache because it wrote too many log files all over the place. AAM could also only have 5 cluster masters which were elected when the first 5 ESXi hosts joined the cluster, this could not be exceeded and if the hosts needed to change it had to be done manually via configuration files. This caveat would need to be taken into consideration in your infrastructure design so that all of the masters didn’t reside in the same enclosure, DC, running of the same power, etc…
FDM is far more resilient to host failures and isolations. It has a new cluster master election process which assigns a single node as the cluster master; if that node dies any node inside cluster can rerun the election process and assign a new master inside the cluster. If host isolation occurs the isolated hosts can function on their own and elect a new master. Once the hosts can communicate with one another and there are multiple masters present in the cluster the election process will begin and a single master will be elected once again. FDM now uses the management interfaces as a heartbeat but also the storage network (datastore) for heart beat communication. If you bring down your management switches for your ESXi servers for maintenance/failure the cluster can still communicate on the storage network not causing any re-election inside the cluster or any sort of freak out. FDM also has a single log file (/var/log/fdm.log) for troubleshooting and supports syslog for centralized log gathering and possible monitoring functionality. FDM is exciting news for VMware admins and end users alike!
I hope that you find the write ups on cluster HA and vCenter Storage helpful. If you’d like more information on any new vCenter features please comment below.
While there are many new changes in VMWare ESXi 5.0, like Image Builder, Auto Deploy/Central Management, Firewall Changes, USB 3 Support and hardware upgrades, Today I’m going to highlight Storage DRS and Profile Driven Storage.
With vCenter 5.0 comes the introduction of Storage Distributed Resource Scheduler (SDRS) and Profile Driven Storage. It is common practice to implement standard VMware DRS inside your VMware cluster one would load balance your VMs (virtual machines) based upon CPU and Memory usage. The new feature within vCenter 5.0, SDRS, uses the same ideology but at the vSphere storage level.
SDRS monitors datastore capacity and disk latency metrics and will Storage vMotion VMs to a better suited storage (datastore’s). This reduces administrative overhead for the VMware admin. It will help mitigate situations where VMs run out of space and get paused or are running poorly due to insanely high disk latency on the disk subsystem.
Profile Driven Storage is another slick new feature that allows you to specify Storage SLAs on a VM level to ensure that performance is never impacted. vSphere APIs for Array Awareness (VASA) integrates with the underlying disk array and allows vCenter to understand the type of disk groups and disk tiers that are available to the host. vCenter will work with the array on moving the VM to the appropriate physical spindles or SSDs using SvMotion after it has been configured in the Storage Profile. If VASA is not available for your array you can manually configure your tiered storage by using different datastores for different tiers (e.g. EMC01-SSDs-DG#12).
SDRS and Profile Driven Storage combined with VASA will help in ensuring constant storage performance for mission critical VMs. Stayed tuned to www.blog.inetu.net for the next highlighted feature of vCenter/ESXi 5.0.
In yesterday’s blog post I showed you how to configure a backup, today I’ll show you how to restore the Windows Server backup. In this example I am using the Windows Recovery Environment from Windows Server 2008 deployed through WDS. You can also boot to this from the installation disk or create your own media such as WinRE on a CD-ROM or USB flash drive.
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n Windows Server 2008, Microsoft has decided to scrap the treasured NTBackup and replace it with Windows Server Backup (WSB). Windows Server Backup is its own beast, boasting Image based backups rather than file level backups. The term image backup is used loosely in WSB; it is not a clone of the disk but rather a selective backup of the necessary components to perform a restore for the OS to a functional state. Things such as the page file and blank space, for example, are not backed up.
WSB utilizes VSS to accomplish the backups and stores the backup files in VHD format. In addition, you can also configure incremental backups with WSB, this will maximize disk usage and avoid data duplication as compared to nightly full backups. Recovery of the server is simplified as well, as you do not need to follow the traditional incremental restore process. Instead, you simply chose the restore point you want to revert back to and WSB handles the restore as if it were a full restore.
Although WSB has its shortcomings, it is ideal for single server backup and recovery. For all you do-it-yourself types, I’m going to show you the process of performing a backup of a Server 2008 box and restoring to that backup using Windows Recovery Environment. Note that Windows Server 2008 requires a physically attached disk for backups. This disk will be locked down by WSB and cannot be used for any additional purposes.
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Should you Use a Private Cloud? Many companies, small or large, can take advantage of a private cloud environment. You could choose to combine your already existing infrastructure with a hosted private cloud solution to minimize the cost of expansion and/or hosting of a publicly accessible service or application.
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