16Mar 2019 by Ceyhun Kirmizitas No Comments

Windows Server 2008 R2 Best Practices in VMware vSphere 4.X

VMware, Windows Server
Be sure the virtual machine has at least 2GB of RAM. Hard drive for the virtual machine must be 20GB or larger. Single VCPU works better for Windows 2008, Because Windows 2008 uses high bit rate address space for context switching when compared with Windows 2003, which creates multiple cycles of high bit range contexts and these are better addressed by Single VCPU. (this again vary if it is a DB server). VCPU will get hit, when VMware have wide variety of hardware components attached to VM (Majorly Serial and Parallel COM ports, USB controllers, Sound Cards etc), if any of these components are not required, remove them and disable them from VM BIOS. Zeroed Thick: Space required for the virtual disk is allocated at creation time, hoVMwarever the data…
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15Mar 2019 by Ceyhun Kirmizitas No Comments

How to Install IBM x3850 X5 Intel 82576 and 82580 Gigabit Ethernet Controller on VMware ESXi 4x and ESX 4x

vSphere
The IBM x3850 X5 server is a nice machine. This particular IBM x3850 X5 came with IBM I340-T4 Network Adapters, however they weren't being detected by VMware ESXi 4x. The NICs are supported by vmware but drivers aren't included by default on the ESXi media. You need to manually download the driver packages from VMWare, and inject the driver into ESXi/ESX in order to utilize the NICs. These NICs can be ordered with any IBM System x Server, so you can run into this issue on anything from an IBM x3250 through to an IBM x3950. Driver Install Process: 1- Download the ESX/ESXi 4.x Driver CD for Intel 82576 and 82580 Gigabit Ethernet Controller. Then, mount the ISO, extract the driver bundle from the " offline-bundle " folder. 2- Upload " INT-intel-lad-ddk-igb-2.1.10.2-offline_bundle-268793.zip…
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14Mar 2019 by Ceyhun Kirmizitas No Comments

multiextent loaded successfully – Long Time to Boot ESX/ESXi 4.x hosts with passive MSCS nodes with RDM

VMware
You might experience significant delays while booting your ESX/ESXi 4.x hosts that have passive MSCS nodes with RDM LUNs on a SAN. This could be because conflicts between the LUN SCSI reservations. For ESX and ESXi 4.1 hosts To resolve this issue in ESX/ESXi 4.1 hosts, you must modify the Scsi.CRTimeoutDuringBoot parameter from the GUI. To modify the Scsi.CRTimeoutDuringBoot parameter: Go to Host > Configuration > Advanced Settings. Select SCSI. Change the Scsi.CRTimeoutDuringBoot value to 1. For ESX and ESXi 4.0 hosts The Scsi.UWConflictRetries parameter for ESX/ESXi 4 Update 1 hosts have a default value of 1000. This increases the time spent enumerating LUN and VMFS volumes. To resolve this issue and to speed up the boot process, modify this value to 80. To modify the Scsi.UWConflictRetries parameter from the…
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11Mar 2019 by Ceyhun Kirmizitas No Comments

VMware vSphere 5 features a new ESXi firewall

VMware
VMware vSphere 5 features a new ESXi firewall that you can configure though the vSphere Client or command line. The addition brings a feature to ESXi 5 that was previously found only in the recently discontinued ESX hypervisor. VMware argued that ESXi didn't require a firewall, because the lightweight hypervisor had hardly any services or ports open, leaving it with almost nothing to attack. I believe VMware added a firewall to ESXi 5 for few reasons. With a firewall, ESXi 5 isn't missing a notable feature found in the old ESX Server. Also, a firewall signals to customers and partners that VMware is committed to security. And finally, vSphere 5 is just as secure as before, if not more so. Five things to know about the ESXi 5 firewall It?s…
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10Mar 2019 by Ceyhun Kirmizitas No Comments
Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Best Practices in VMware vSphere 4.x

Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Best Practices in VMware vSphere 4.x

VMware
Best practices for SQL Server 2008 in VMware Set a fixed amount of memory that the SQL Server process will use. For example, set the max server memory and min server memory equal and large enough to satisfy the workload (2500 MB is a good starting value). Configure SQL Server to Use Soft-NUMA - To avoid any performance latency resulting from remote memory accesses, you should size a SQL Server virtual machine?s memory so it is less than the amount available per NUMA node. For more information about NUMA, you can visit http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms345357.aspx Note: This should be applied only if it is applicable to your environment. If you set the SQL Server lock pages in memory parameter, make sure to set the virtual machine?s reservations to match the amount of…
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08Mar 2019 by Ceyhun Kirmizitas No Comments

How to Install VMware vCenter Server 5.1 U1 with Microsoft SQL Server 2012 on Windows Server 2012

Video Tutorials, vSphere
it’s possible to install vCenter Server on Windows Server 2012. Also a Microsoft SQL 2012 is supported as an external database. Since the vSphere 5.1, the architecture of vCenter has changed and another database is present – SSO (single sign on database). So there are three databases for vCenter: VMware vSphere 5.1 Single Sign-On VMware vSphere vCenter server VMware Update Manager All those database can be installed on a separate Microsoft SQL Server 2012 (this post) or on the same VM as vCenter server. SQL 2008R2 Express is still the database which is bundled with the VMware vSphere. VMware vCenter Server VM requirements: 64-bit system DSN to connect to its database I recommend getting the latest patches from Microsoft before going further.
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08Mar 2019 by Ceyhun Kirmizitas No Comments
Implementing iSCSI Cluster Using Starwind iSCSI Target and WMware Workstation

Implementing iSCSI Cluster Using Starwind iSCSI Target and WMware Workstation

VMware
In this article, I will show you how to implement iSCSI cluster on vmware workstation. In an iSCSI network, there are three components: Target, Initiator and Network. I will use Starwind as an iSCSI target and Microsoft iSCSI Software Initiator as an iSCSI Initiator. You can download free trial version of Starwind at http://www.rocketdivision.com/ and Microsoft iSCSI Software Initiator at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/ Basic Steps 1. Install Starwind and make disks available that can be used for the Quorum and Data in MSCS on the host pc 2. Install Microsoft iSCSI Initiator in the guest operating system. 3. Configure MS iSCSI Software Initiator to use the disks made available by Starwind in the guest OS 4. Now you can see extra SCSII disks in Windows 2003 that you can format and assign a…
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