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VMware and HP have both released advisories which say you shouldn’t use HP Virtual Connect in tunnel mode if you are using vCloud Director Network Isolation (vCDNI) which is MAC-in-MAC encapsulation.

There are two network modes available with Virtual Connect, Tunnel Mode and Mapped Mode.

When using Tunnel Mode, Virtual Connect passes all tagged and untagged packets through the Virtual Connect switch down to select blades where the VLANs are split into port groups. The uplinks are therefore considered dedicated uplinks as control over which VLANs are trunked is done at the upstream switch and so you can’t have a different set of VLANs going to Blade 1 and Blade 2 while still utilising the same uplinks. You could obviously have separate sets of uplinks for Blade 1 and Blade 2 to achieve this. The advantage of tunneling mode is only having to specify your VLANs once at the upstream switch and being able to pass all VLANs down the same trunk to multiple blades and only having to manage VLANs at the upstream switch and port groups on the ESXi host or within the vSphere Distributed Switch.

In Mapped Mode  mode, the Virtual Connect switch examines all the VLANs and by defining Ethernet Networks for each VLAN on the Virtual Connect switch you can selectively pass down all or some of the VLANs down to the blades. The uplinks are considered shared as you can trunk all VLANs you will need for any blade and for example have some VLANs going to Blade 1 and other VLANs going to Blade 2 but sharing the same uplinks. In order to do this you  have to create separate Ethernet Networks for every VLAN (possibly two for redundancy) and manage VLANs at both the upstream and Virtual Connect switches as well as port groups on the ESXi host or within the vSphere Distributed Switch.

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I had always thought you couldn’t update Windows Server editions from one to another without a reinstall as allegedly the base software wasn’t the same even though we all knew it was really just a file or two or registry key or two that needed to be changed.

This in fact wasn’t possible until Windows Server 2008 / Windows Vista SP1 which introduced Windows Edition-Servicing Command-Line Options using a built-in utility called the Deployment Image Servicing and Management (DISM) tool which doesn’t require any media to upgrade the edition and just needs a reboot.

I’ve recently had to do this with Windows 2008 R2.

You can’t use this on DCs, can only do upgrades, not downgrades and the supported Windows 2008 R2 upgrade paths are:

• Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard -> Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise -> Windows Server 2008 R2 Datacenter
• Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard Server Core -> Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise Server Core -> Windows Server 2008 R2 Datacenter Server Core
• Windows Server 2008 R2 Foundation -> Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard

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HP has updated its ESXi 5.x customised images as part of its Service Pack for Proliant (SPP) Feb 2013 update.

HP’s customised images are fully integrated sets of specific drivers and software that are tested to work together. You can see the list of Driver Versions in HP supplied VMware ESX/ESXi images.

I have done an extensive update of my HP Virtual Connect Flex-10 & VMware ESX(i) pre-requisites post which includes these new customised images.

HP Custom Image for VMware ESXi 5.1 February 2013: VMware-ESXi-5.1.0-799733-HP-5.34.23.iso

The new and updated features for the HP vSphere 5.1 Customized Image for February 2013 include:

• Provider Features:
  • Report installed licenses for HP Dynamic Smart Array Controller.
  • Report New memory properties.
  • Support for IP Address encoding in SNMP traps.
  • Support SMX MemoryModuleOnBoard association.
  • HP Dynamic Smart Array Controller split cache support.
  • Report New RAID levels for storage volume fault tolerance.
  • HP Smart Cache support.
  • Update reporting of Smart Array Cache Status to align with firmware and iLO.
• AMS features:
  • Report running SW processes to HP Insight Remote Support.
  • Report vSphere 5.1 SNMP agent management IP and enable VMware vSphere 5.1 SNMP agent to report iLO4 management IP.
  • IML logging for NIC, and SAS traps.
  • Limit AMS log file size and support log redirection as defined by the ESXi host parameter: ScratchConfig.ConfiguredScratchLocation
• SR-IOV Support:
  • Updated Intel 10Gb network driver to enable SR-IOV for the HP 560FLB, 560M, 560SFP+, and 560FLR-SFP+.

HP Custom Image for VMware ESXi 5.0.0 Update 2 February 2013: VMware-ESXi-5.0.0-Update2-914586-HP-5.27.20.iso

The new and updated features for the HP vSphere 5.0 U2 Customized Image for February 2013 include:

• Provider Features:
  • Report installed licenses for HP Dynamic Smart Array Controller.
  • Report New memory properties.
  • Support for IP Address encoding in SNMP traps.
  • Support SMX MemoryModuleOnBoard association.
  • HP Dynamic Smart Array Controller split cache support.
  • Report New RAID levels for storage volume fault tolerance.
  • HP Smart Cache support.
  • Update reporting of Smart Array Cache Status to align with firmware and iLO.
• AMS features:
  • Report running SW processes to HP Insight Remote Support.
  • IML logging for NIC, and SAS traps.
  • Limit AMS log file size and support log redirection as defined by the ESXi host parameter: ScratchConfig.ConfiguredScratchLocation

Emulex has released a new set of drivers and firmware for use on Gen8 and G7 HP Servers including blades with both VMware ESXi 5.0 and 5.1.

Driver:
Emulex be2net nic driver version 4.2.327.0 which is included in the HP Custom Image for VMware ESXi 5.1 February 2013: VMware-ESXi-5.1.0-799733-HP-5.34.23.iso and HP Custom Image for VMware ESXi 5.0.0 Update 2 February 2013: VMware-ESXi-5.0.0-Update2-914586-HP-5.27.20.iso or can be downloaded separately from VMware.

Emulex has also released a newer driver version 4.4.231.0 which is available from VMware but this isn’t supported as yet by HP.

Firmware:
Emulex firmware version 4.2.401.605 which can be updated using the Emulex OneConnect-Flash .ISO.

There was a 4.2.401.6 released but this has been superseded by 4.2.401.605 which fixes a number of issues.

I have done an extensive update of my HP Virtual Connect Flex-10 & VMware ESX(i) pre-requisites post which includes these new Emulex drivers and firmware.

VMware has today released the VMware Horizon Suite which they are calling “The platform for workforce mobility.”

The Horizon Suite was initially announced at VMworld 2012 in San Francisco and is VMware’s integrated product suite for End User Computing which comprises three main components:

• VMware Horizon Workspace
• VMware Horizon View
• VMware Horizon Mirage

This is a big step for VMware by providing a far more integrated End User Computing suite for customers rather than perpetuating the old tiring battle of VDI brokers between VMware View and Citrix XenDesktop. VDI is important but only a part of the overall “delivering applications to users” so VMware is providing  a lot more in this suite by bringing together traditional VDI with applications and data. This is the initial release with some things that don’t integrate yet or as well as they should so hopefully the Suite will become more tightly knit down the road. It will be interesting to see how customers respond.

VMware Horizon Workspace
VMware envisions VMware Horizon Workspace as a “Multi-device workspace for IT services” and sees three trends that are changing IT. New device platforms with less reliance on Windows, new apps with more SaaS and mobile apps and new user expectations including better collaboration and productivity.

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VMware has released PowerCLI 5.1 Release 2 which is  the latest update to its PowerShell interface which includes support for Virtual Distributed Switches, vCloud Director 5.1 and PowerShell 3.

Virtual Distributed Switches

This new release now includes 14 new cmdlets to manage VMware Virtual Distributed Switches, something people have been waiting eagerly for:

• Get-VDSwitch
• New-VDSwitch
• Remove-VDSwitch
• Set-VDSwitch
• Export-VDSwitch
• Get-VDPortGroup
• New-VDPortGroup
• Remove-VDPortGroup
• Set-VDPortGroup
• Export-VDPortGroup
• Add-VDSwitchPhysicalNetworkAdapter
• Remove-VDSwitchPhysicalNetworkAdapter
• Add-VDSwitchVMHost
• Remove-VDSwitchVMHost

There are also enhancements to existing cmdlets such as Set-VMHostNetworkAdapter and Set-NetworkAdapter to support distributed port groups.

vCloud Director 5.1

vCloud Director 5.1 support has also been added with a new snap-in which include cmdlets to:

• Connect to a vCloud Director Server
• Create, Manage, Modify and Retrieve Organizations
• Create, Manage, Modify and Retrieve Organization Virtual Datacenters
• Create, Manage, Modify and Retrieve Organization Networks
• Importing vApps & Creating vApp Templates
• Create, Manage, Modify and Retrieve a vApp
• Create, Manage, Modify and Retrieve vApp Networks
• Create and Manage Access Control Rules

PowerShell 3

PowerCLI 5.1 Release 2 also now includes support for PowerShell 3 which is Microsoft’s latest update to its phenomenal scripting environment. Version 3 enhancement include Workflows & Scheduled Jobs, simpler where-object formatting, a new web-based console, persistent sessions, enhanced IDE,  Module Auto-Loading and plenty of new and enhanced cmdlets.

Missing

Something I have spotted that is still missing is support for the new vSphere Web Client tags which would be useful.

Documentation

It’s worth look at the release notes for some of the Known Issues and also understanding which PowerCLI cmdlets only work with the 32-bit version.

Also of use is the User Guide .PDF which has some example scripts.

Great update, VMware, keep ‘em coming!

The London VMware User Group (VMUG) gathers again following the great success of the UK National VMUG last November. The meeting is on the 24th January 2013 at:

London Chamber of Commerce and Industry
33 Queen Street
London,
EC4R 1AP

It’s a free to attend full day event packed with interesting useful content with even lunch included and certainly worth a day out of the office. You can register at http://www.vmug.com/e/in/eid=695.

Brian Gammage who is VMware’s chief market technologist will be speaking about VMware’s vision for End User Computing (EUC) in Journey to the Post-PC Era and will also be chairing what promises to be a very interesting panel discussion EUC Panel with VDI Gurus which I’ve been asked to participate in.

From VMware, we have Spencer Pitts doing a What’s Here and What’s Coming Soon all about VMware’s EUC products and Kim Raynard will be talking about ex-Dynamic Ops, now vCloud Automation Center (vCAC).

Dan Senior who is Colt’s lead architect for their vCloud platform will be speaking about Deploying vCloud Director 5.1 and VXLAN.

VMUG regular presenter Stu Radnidge will be talking about Big Data for the Uninitiated.

Gregg Robertson will be letting you know about VMware Certification Updates.

Eric Sloof will also be jetting over from the Netherlands to give us an HA deep dive.

There are also sponsor presentations from Nutanix, Zerto and 10Zig.

You can see the full agenda here.

After filling your head with superb technical content, it’s time to fill your tummy with a tasty beverage so we’ll all be heading on to the pub to catch up and solve the worlds EUC and cloud  issues!

See you there.

Anyone who manages firmware on HP rack and blade servers knows it can be a fairly cumbersome process. You can either update firmware by booting from the Service Pack for Proliant (SPP) DVD which is an offline process. Windows and Linux servers have had the option to perform firmware updates online by running an application from with the OS.

Sadly this has not been possible with ESX or ESXi which meant you always had to arrange downtime (ok, not that hard with vMotion) but then boot into the SPP DVD and apply firmware to each and every server individually which in a large virtualisation environment can take quite a while.

Happily HP has seen the frustration and now released what is calls VMware Smart Components as part of the HP vibsdepot . These are executables that can run within the ESXi shell or can be installed using HP Insight Control for vCenter. They are not to be rolled out with HP Smart Update Manager.

You will need at least ESXi 5.0 and be either running the HP ESXi 5.0 custom image (5.25 or later) or have HP Insight WBEM Providers (1.3.5 or later) and HP Agentless Management (9.2.5 or later) installed on the ESXi host. You can read more in the Release Notes.

A great enhancement by HP. Now all we would like is the functionality extended to HP SUM and even better be able to push out the firmware updates with vSphere Update Manager!

NetApp has extended its PowerShell management to its virtual center plug-in, the Virtual Storage Console. The toolkit can be downladed from here.

NetApp currently has a PowerShell toolkit called DataONTAP for managing its controllers but this new toolkit has been developed to manage the VSC directly.

As this is a 1.0 release not all VSC functionality is available. Currently it can do the Provisioning & Cloning operations of VSC such as creating and deleting datastores and starting a rapid VSC clone and redeploy. Also included is the new ability in VSC 4.1 to do a vCloud Director vApp clone.

Going forward NetApp are working on exposing more of the VSC functionality through an API which will be available to the toolkit so expect plenty more to come.

This is a great addition from NetApp as it allows you to include the cleverness of the VSC along with your PowerCLI automation in the same scripts.

Here is a list of the available Cmdlets

• Connect-vsc: Connect to the web service hosting the VSC Provisioning and Cloning APIs.
• Get-vscManagedObjectRef: Get the managed object reference (aka MORef) string for a vCenter object.
• Get-vscVirtualMachine: Get vmSpec objects for all virtual machines that were created based on the virtual machine specified.
• Get-vscVmFileSpec: Get vmFileSpec objects that define a virtual machine clone source.
• Get-VCloudCredentialStatus: Verifies vCloud Director connection status.
• Get-VCloudVCenterCredentialsStatus: Verifies vCenter(s) connection status information.
• New-vscControllerSpec: Convenience cmdlet to create a controllerSpec object with the ability to prompt for credentials.
• New-vscDatastore: Create a new VMware datastore.
• New-VAppClone: Perform vApp cloning or provisioning operation.
• Remove-vscDatastore: Delete a VMware datastore.
• Remove-VCloudCredentials: Remove vCloud Director credentials.
• Remove-VCloudVCenterCredentials: Remove vCenter credentials.
• Set-vscDatastoreSize: Resize a VMware datastore.
• Set-VCloudCredentials: Set vCloud Director credentials.
• Set-VCloudVCenterCredentials: Set vCenter credentials.
• Start-vscClone: Start a vsc rapid cloning operation.
• Start-vscRedeploy: Start a vsc virtual machine redeploy operation.

VMware has released its latest update to vCenter Operations Manager Suite with some notable changes.

First of all there is now a vCenter Operations Manager Foundation edition which is included with every vSphere edition from Standard free of charge.

The Foundation edition includes basic vSphere Performance and Health monitoring just as Proactive Smart Alerts, Intelligent Operations Groups (New), vSphere Health Monitoring and Self-learning Performance Analytics. It’s a start to at least get you monitoring your environment but for any of the clever analysis and recommendations or capacity management you will need to look at a more feature rich edition or get it included as part of the VMware vCloud Suite.

There are 4 editions and they have had a feature list move around, the above mentioned Foundation (vSphere Performance and Health), Standard (vSphere Monitoring, Performance and Capacity Optimization), Advanced, (Virtual and Physical Infrastructure Operations including Monitoring, Performance, Capacity and Configuration Management) & Enterprise (Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure Operations including OS- and Application-level Monitoring, Performance, Capacity and Configuration Management)

The features of the old Advanced edition have now been incorporated into the Standard edition, the old Enterprise edition is now called Advanced and the old Enterprise Plus is now called Enterprise.

vCOPS 5.6 includes plenty of new integration including being part of the new Web Client which is a great (inevitable obviously) change.

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