VMwArune

My VCP-510 exam experience ;)

2011-12-19T12:45:00.000+05:30

I took the VCP-510 exam today and I am glad I cleared it. The difficulty level is high when you compare it with the VCP-410 exam. My suggestion is to make sure that you revise all the documentation once and make sure that all aspects with respect to other VMware products is covered as well.
Another aspect is to consider the total exam duration and make sure that you don't sit on a single question for more than a minute. I finished the exam with 15 minutes to spare. Make sure to flag the questions on which you would like to review your answers and move on to the next question.

All the very best to all VMware Pros who are taking up the VCP-510 exam.

Documents that could help in VCP-510 Exam preparation

2011-12-19T02:40:00.001+05:30

The following docs would be helpful in preparing for the VCP-510 exam.

ESXi andvCenter Server Product Documentation

VMwarevSphere Basics Guide

vSphereInstallation and Setup Guide

vSphereUpgrade Guide

vCenterServer and Host Management Guide

vSphereVirtual Machine Administration Guide

vSphere HostProfiles Guide

vSphereNetworking Guide

vSphereStorage Guide

vSphereSecurity Guide

vSphereResource Management Guide

vSphereAvailability Guide

vSphereMonitoring and Performance Guide

vSphereTroubleshooting

VMwarevSphere Examples and Scenarios Guide

CommandLineProduct Documentation

GettingStarted with vSphere CommandLine Interfaces Guide

vSphereCommandLine Interface Concepts and Examples

vSpherePowerCLIUser's Guide

VMwarevSphere Update Manager PowerCLI Installation and Administration Guide

vSphereManagement Assistant Guide

SupplementaryDocumentation

CommandLineManagement in vSphere 5.0 for Service Console Users

Installingand Configuring VMware Tools Guide

Legacy HostLicensing with vCenter Server 5.0

CommandLineInstallation and Upgrade of VMware vCenter Server 5.0

Configuringand Troubleshooting NPort ID Virtualization

AdditionalDocumentation

Installingand Administering VMware vSphere Update Manager vSphere Update Manager 5.0

http://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-50/topic/com.vmware.ICbase/PDF/vsphere-update-manager-50-install-administration-guide.pdf

Reconfiguring VMware vSphereUpdate Manager
http://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-50/topic/com.vmware.ICbase/PDF/vsphere-update-manager-50-reconfig-guide.pdf

VMwarevCloud : Requirements for a cloud

www.vmware.com/files/pdf/cloud/VMware-vCloud-Requirement-11Q1-White-Paper.pdf

VMware vCloud:Service Definition for a Public Cloud
www.vmware.com/files/pdf/cloud/VMware-ServiceDef-Public-Cloud-11Q1-White-Paper.pdf

VMware vCloud:Service Definition for a Private Cloud
www.vmware.com/files/pdf/cloud/VMware-ServiceDef-Private-Cloud-11Q1-White-Paper.pdf

vSphere 5.0Licensing, Pricing and Packaging Whitepaper

http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/vsphere_pricing.pdf

VMware vSphereStorage Appliance Installation and Configuration guide
http://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-50/topic/com.vmware.ICbase/PDF/vsphere-storage-appliance-10-install-config.pdf

VMware vSphereStorage Appliance Administration guide

http://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-50/topic/com.vmware.ICbase/PDF/vsphere-storage-appliance-10-admin.pdf

OVF Tool User Guide

https://www.vmware.com/support/developer/ovf/ovf20/ovftool_201_userguide.pdf

VMware Data RecoveryAdministration guide

http://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-50/topic/com.vmware.ICbase/PDF/vmware-data-recovery-administrators-guide-20.pdf

The VMware Documentation Downloader from xtravirt.com can be used to download all documents in PDF format from the VMware website except for the ones mentioned under the "Additional Documentation" section
VMware Documentation Downloader

Documents can be directly downloaded using the URL mentioned below
http://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-50/index.jsp

I thank the VCP-510 exam blueprint which aided me in compiling this list

vSphere HA and FT Error Messages

2011-09-12T02:27:00.001+05:30

I came across this interesting KB article on VMware's website when I was troubleshooting VMware Fault Tolerance in my environment. It's worth bookmarking.
http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1033634

ESXi whitebox - the way I assembled it & got it working ;) - Part 1

2011-03-20T21:02:00.130+05:30

I started my preparation for taking up the VCAP-DCA and VCAP-DCD certification exam when the thought of setting up my own home lab for preparation struck my mind.

vMotion, HA, DRS and Fault Tolerance dictated that I needed atleast 2 identical systems.

Now came the big task of decision making.The first week went off trying to determine which CPU & motherboard combo could support all the features listed above. It all first started with AMD Phenom II X6 and 890FX chipset, but I wasn't certain that it can support VMware FT as I was not able to gather documentation from anywhere on the web which could support this claim.

An article on Tom's Hardware confirms that AMD 890FX Chipset in-turn supports IOMMU, although I did not want to take a chance since I wanted a CPU & motherboard combo that can support both FT and VMDirectPath.

Next was AMD Opteron's turn where the motherboard & CPU combo would cost a fortune if I had opted for it.

Finally Intel had given me some hope with their 34XX series CPUs which was listed on the VMware Compatibility Guide for VMware FT supported CPUs.

I bought the hardware components listed below and assembled them.

Intel® Xeon® Processor X3450 (8M Cache, 2.66 GHz)
CPU Specs

Intel Server Board S3420GPV
Board Specs

Corsair DDR3-1333 MHz Non-ECC Unbuffered DIMM 16 GB (4 GB x 4 sticks)

Cooler Master Elite 360 Chassis
Chassis Specs
Note: The chassis has a 120mm fan already built-in as part of the bundle.

Cooler Master eXtreme Power Plus 350W PSU
PSU Specs

For additional cooling I bought a 120mm Cooler Master chassis fan and attached it to each of my chassis, so in total each of the chassis has
2 x 120mm fans for cooling.
120mm Chassis Fan Spec

Finally after assembling the whitebox, it was time to boot and modify the BIOS settings before trying to install VMware ESXi v4.1.0 Build 260247.

I checked the hardware clock and synced it as per the actual time.

I enabled Intel VT since ESXi now requires a 64-bit CPU as well this option to be enabled for hardware assisted virtualization.

I did not enable Intel VT-d, which is used for VMDirectPath for the time being.

I used a Kingston 8GB USB drive to install ESXi and am still scratching my head for a filer that can support both NFS and iSCSI.

I was able to install ESXi successfully.

Video - Using shared folders between host and virtual machines in VMware Workstation

2011-02-01T02:15:00.000+05:30

This video is about the Shared Folders functionality available in VMware Workstation to share files between the host and virtual machines.

Technical Paper - VMware High Availability (HA): Deployment Best Practices

2010-12-28T19:00:00.001+05:30

This paper describes best practices and guidance for properly deploying VMware HA in VMware vSphere 4.1. These include discussions on proper network and storage design, and recommendations on settings for host isolation response and admission control.

VMware High Availability (HA): Deployment Best Practices

YouTube - Cisco Nexus 1000V and vSphere

2010-12-24T04:48:00.011+05:30

Cloning a Windows 7 x64 VM using VMware Workstation v7.0.1

2010-11-01T22:22:00.006+05:30

By default, VMware Workstation v7.0.1 comes bundled with vCenter Converter Standalone.

In this blog post, I will explain how to install a Windows 7 x64 VM and then use the built-in clone option to clone a new Windows 7 Virtual Machine.

Let me start with the process of creating a new VM with the following virtual hardware config,

1 vCPU
1 GB RAM
No vNIC
80 GB VMDK (I used "Thin Provisioning")

I am not going to brief on installing Windows 7 within the VM since I am sure this is similar to the installation on a physical box.

Once the OS has been installed and you have logged in, please make sure to install VMware Tools within the virtual machine.

Upon completion of the VMware tools installation, the virtual machine requires a reboot. The presence of the VMware tools icon on the system tray confirms the successful installation of VMware tools.

Once this has been confirmed, please shutdown the virtual machine.

The option to clone existing virtual machines can be found under the VM drop-down list.

In this case, I am trying to clone a newly built Windows 7 x64 Virtual Machine.

Make sure that the Windows 7 x64 VM which was newly built is highlighted when you click on VM -> Clone.

Clicking on clone would open the pop-up window shown below

Click "Next" and the following window would be shown

In this case, I have not created any snapshots for the virtual machine, hence I am selecting the first option, "The current state in the virtual machine"

Following the selection, the following window would pop-up where I selected, "Create a full clone"

The difference between a linked clone and a full clone is a linked clone cannot operate without the original VM since it shares the VMDK with the original virtual machine and appends changes to a delta file.

After selecting Full clone, the path for storing the new cloned virtual machine would be asked for. Key in the details as per your configuration.

In my case, I have stored the VMs in a different hard drive (H:\) other than my system drive.

Once this has been selected, click Finish.

The following window would pop-up indicating that the cloning of the virtual machine is in progress.

Upon successful completion, the a window would be displayed confirming that the cloning process was successful.

We have to SysPrep the new full clone VM before we can start using it.

Before running SysPrep, we can see that the full clone VM retains the host name of the VM from which it was cloned.

In this case, the cloned VM was cloned from a VM called W7x64TMPLT.

If the cloned VM is powered on and connected to network, this may cause a SID conflict since the SID on the cloned VM would be similar to the template.

SysPrep solves this problem.

SysPrep is built into Windows 7. It can be started by executing the command, "SysPrep" from Start -> Run.

The following window would open up

Double-clicking on the sysprep application would open the pop-up which is shown below

Make sure that the "Enter System Out-of-Box Experience (OOBE) is selected and also the "Generalize" checkbox is checked.

Leave the "Shutdown options" to default so that the Virtual Machine would get restarted once SysPrep has completed its tasks.

The following pop-up confirms the status of SysPrep

Upon reboot, the following window would be displayed.

After customizing the options, click Next.

The next set of windows should be customized when we setup a new Windows 7 physical or virtual machine.

Once every setting has been customized, the following window would be displayed.

Upon completion, the fully cloned & customized virtual machine would login to the desktop with the credentials you set during the customization screen.

Thus we have completed the successful clone of a newly installed Windows 7 64-Bit virtual machine using VMware Workstation v7.0.1 with the built-in Converter.