Vmware VM Memory Reservation

But when will a VM hit its full reservation exactly? Popular belief is that the VM will hit full reservation when a VM is pushing workloads, but that is not entirely true. It also depends on the Guest OS being used by the VM. Linux plays rather well with others, when Linux boots it only addresses the memory pages it needs. This gives ESX the ability to reallocate memory to other machines. After its application or OS generates load, the Linux VM can hit its full reservation. Windows on the other hand zeroes all of its memory during boot, which results in hitting the full reservation during boot time.

Here are the Lines about the Reservation From "Resource Management Guide"

VMware vSphere Data Protection Advanced

Choosing Your vSphere Data Protection 5 Edition

VMware vSphere Data Protection is available in two editions to help you protect your virtual machines depending on the size of your vSphere environment and with the level of granularity that your applications require.

VMware vSphere Data Protection 5 Advanced

vSphere Data Protection Advanced is a backup and recovery solution powered by EMC Avamar designed for midsize vSphere environments. It extends the capabilities of vSphere Data Protection – available with all vSphere editions – with greater scalability and integration with business-critical applications. vSphere Data Protection Advanced provides fast agent-less image-level backups, as well as guest-level application-consistent protection of Microsoft® SQL Server™ and Microsoft® Exchange Server™.

VMware vSphere Data Protection 5

vSphere Data Protection, a feature available with all vSphere editions, is ideally suited to protect small vSphere environments. Based on EMC Avamar technology, vSphere Data Protection provides the most efficient agent-less image-level backup and recovery for virtual machines.

	VDP	VDP Advanced
Licensing and Pricing
Per CPU (license only)	Included with vSphere ESS+ and above	$1095
Max protected VMs per CPU	Unlimited	Unlimited
Scalability
Max deduplicated storage per appliance	2TB	8TB
Max supported VMs per appliance	100	400
Max appliances per vCenter instance	10	10
Features
Agent-less backup
Variable-length deduplication
CBT for backup and restore
vSphere Web Client management
Self-service backup and recovery
Full VM and file-level recovery
Integrity check and rollback mechanism
Dynamic provisioning 2TB->8TB
MSFT Exchange Server agents
MSFT SQL Server agents
Migration from VDP

 

Note: List Pricing is for reference purposes only and is subject to change without notice. Pricing reflected in this document is suggested retail price in USD, for sales in the US. Regional prices may vary.

 

Licensing

Midsize companies constrained in time and resources can’t afford to deal with complicated and expensive licensing models. However, these organizations should not have to settle for less capable solutions simply because they can’t invest on enterprise-level products. With enterprise-class deduplication and streamlined backup and recovery management, vSphere Data Protection Advanced is the most cost-effective backup solution.

Licensing unit – vSphere Data Protection Advanced is licensed per CPU.

What this means to customers

• Protect as many VMs as needed on properly licensed vSphere hosts.*
• Deploy virtual appliances as needed at no additional charge (up to 10 per vCenter Server instance).
• No charge for the agents deployed throughout the environment – they are included with the solution.
• No need to perform complicated calculations to forecast backup storage capacity as in “per TB” licensing models.

Licensing vSphere Data Protection Advanced is as simple as matching the number of vSphere licenses in the environment.

*Actual limit in the number of VMs that can be protected is dictated by the technical scalability limitations of the solution.

Packaging

vSphere Data Protection Advanced can also be purchased as part of the Enterprise and Enterprise Plus editions of the vSphere with Operations Management Accelerations Kits. Learn more about Acceleration Kits.

Requirements

VMware vSphere Data Protection Advanced requires an adequate number of vSphere licenses (version 4.1 or higher and Essentials Plus or higher edition) and one instance of vCenter Server 5.1 or higher.

Learn more about VMware vCenter Server Standard licensing and VMware vSphere licensing.

For More Info:-

https://www.vmware.com/products/datacenter-virtualization/vsphere-data-protection-advanced/buy.html

SiteSurvey is no longer supported as of vSphere 5.1.

VMware SiteSurvey 2.5.3 is actually a plugin for the vSphere Client which analyzes ESX/ESXi host/s managed by vCenter Server and reports on whether the configuration of both software and hardware is suitable for use with the VMware Fault Tolerance (FT) feature.

You will notice the following message on the Main Site Survey Page.

How to Use

Run the SiteSurvey install utility

• If running, close vSphere Client
• Double click the install utility and follow the instructions

Using SiteSurvey

• After installation, restart vSphere Client and connect to a vCenter Server
• In vSphere Client, click on a cluster or host view. A SiteSurvey tab will now be present.
• Open the SiteSurvey tab and click the "Run SiteSurvey" link
• A popup window will allow you to generate a report for the current view only, or for all views. Running all views can take several minutes, depending on how large your configuration is.
• SiteSurvey will generate the report

Here is the sample of the report generated by the SiteSurvey

VMware Fault Tolerance FAQ

Purpose

This article provides information for users of VMware Fault Tolerance (FT). The article contains Frequently Asked Questions that can help to resolve Fault Tolerance related issues.

Resolution

What is VMware Fault Tolerance?

VMware Fault Tolerance is a feature that allows a new level of guest redundancy. Information regarding this feature can be found in the vSphere Availability Guide  for your version of ESX.

 

How do I turn it on?

The feature is enabled on a per virtual machine basis. Instructions for enabling Fault Tolerance can be found in the Turning on Fault Tolerance for Virtual Machines section of the vSphere Availability Guide for your version of ESX.

 

What happens when I turn on Fault Tolerance?

In very general terms, a second virtual machine is created to work in tandem with the virtual machine you have enabled Fault Tolerance on. This virtual machine resides on a different host in the cluster, and runs in virtual lockstep with the primary virtual machine. When a failure is detected, the second virtual machine takes the place of the first one with the least possible interruption of service. More specific information about how this is achieved can be found in the Protecting Mission-Critical Workloads with VMware Fault Tolerance whitepaper.

 

Why can't I turn Fault Tolerance on?

VMware Fault Tolerance can be enabled on any virtual machine that resides in a cluster that meets the necessary requirements. If you have difficulty enabling Fault Tolerance for a specific virtual machine, see The Turn on Fault Tolerance option is disabled (1010631).

 

How do I turn Fault Tolerance off?

Instructions for disabling Fault Tolerance can be found in the article in Disabling or Turning Off VMware FT (1008026).

 

How do I tell if my environment is ready for Fault Tolerance?

The VMware SiteSurvey Tool is used to check your environment for compliance with VMware Fault Tolerance. It can be downloaded at http://www.vmware.com/download/shared_utilities.html.

 

Where do I find the product's website?

VMware has a website for the Fault Tolerance product available online here at http://www.vmware.com/products/fault-tolerance/.

 

What happens during a failure?

When a host running the primary virtual machine fails, a transparent failover occurs to the corresponding secondary virtual machine. During this failover, there is no data loss or noticeable service interruption. In addition, VMware HA automatically restores redundancy by restarting a new secondary virtual machine on another host. Similarly, if the host running the secondary virtual machine fails, VMware HA starts a new secondary virtual machine on a different host. In either case there is no noticeable outage by an end user.

 

What is the logging time delay between the Primary and Secondary Fault Tolerance virtual machines?

The actual delay is based on the network latency between the Primary and Secondary. vLockstep executes the same instructions on the Primary and Secondary, but because this happens on different hosts, there could be a small latency, but no loss of state. This is typically less than 1 ms. Fault Tolerance includes synchronization to ensure that the Primary and Secondary are synchronized.

 

In a cluster with more than 3 hosts, can you tell Fault Tolerance where to put the Fault Tolerance virtual machine or does it chose on its own?

You can place the original (or Primary virtual machine). You have full control with DRS or VMotion to assign to it to any node. The placement of the Secondary, when created, is automatic based on the available hosts. But when the secondary is created and placed, you can VMotion it to the preferred host.

 

What happens if the host containing the primary virtual machine comes back online (after a node failure)?

This node is put back in the pool of available hosts. There is no attempt to start or migrate the primary to that host.

 

Is the failover from the primary virtual machine to the secondary virtual machine dynamic or does Fault Tolerance restart a virtual machine?

The failover from primary to secondary virtual machine is dynamic, with the secondary continuing execution from the exact point where the primary left off. It happens automatically with no data loss, no downtime, and little delay. Clients see no interruption. After the dynamic failover to the secondary virtual machine, it becomes the new primary virtual machine. A new secondary virtual machine is spawned automatically

 

Where are Fault Tolerance failover events logged?

All failover events are logged by vCenter.

 

I encountered an error message that I can't find in the knowledge base.  Where else should I check?

The vSphere Availability Guide contains a list of known errors in the Fault Tolerance Error Messages section.

 

Does Fault Tolerance support Intel Hyper-Threading Technology?Yes, Fault Tolerance does support Intel Hyper-Threading Technology on systems that have it enabled. Enabling or disabling Hyper-Threading has no impact on Fault Tolerance.

 

What happens if vCenter Server is offline when a failover event occurs?

Once Fault Tolerance is configured for a virtual machine, vCenter Server need not be online for FT to work. Even if vCenter Server is offline, failover will still occur from the primary to the secondary virtual machine. Additionally, the spawning of a new secondary virtual machine will also occur without vCenter Server.

Source:-

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1013428

Using Storage vMotion to migrate a virtual machine with many disks timeout

Default Value is 100 Seconds

Symptoms

You may experience these symptoms:

• Storage vMotion fails.
• The Storage vMotion operation fails with a timeout between 5-10% or 90-95% complete.
• On ESX 4.1 you may see the errors:
  
  In hostd.log
  
  v ix: [7196 foundryVM.c:10177]: Error VIX_E_INVALID_ARG in VixVM_CancelOps(): One of the parameters was invalid 'vm:/vmfs/volumes/4e417019-4a3c4130-ed96-a4badb51cd0a/Mail02/Mail02.vmx' opID=9BED9F06-000002BE-9d] Failed to unset VM medatadata: FileIO error: Could not find file : /vmfs/volumes/4e417019-4a3c4130-ed96-a4badb51cd0a/Mail02/Mail02-aux.xml.tmp.
   In vmware.log
  
  vmkernel: 114:03:25:51.489 cpu0:4100)WARNING: FSR: 690: 1313159068180024 S: Maximum switchover time (100 seconds) reached. Failing migration; VM should resume on source.
  vmkernel: 114:03:25:51.489 cpu2:10561)WARNING: FSR: 3281: 1313159068180024 D: The migration exceeded the maximum switchover time of 100 second(s). ESX has preemptively failed the migration to allow the VM to continue running on the source host.
  vmkernel: 114:03:25:51.489 cpu2:10561)WARNING: Migrate: 296: 1313159068180024 D: Failed: Maximum switchover time for migration exceeded(0xbad0109) @0x41800f61cee2

• vCenter Server logs contain entries similar to:
  
  [yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm:ss.nnn tttt error 'App'] [MIGRATE] (migrateidentifier) vMotion failed: vmodl.fault.SystemError
  [yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm:ss.nnn tttt verbose 'App'] [VpxVmomi] Throw vmodl.fault.SystemError with:
  (vmodl.fault.SystemError) {
  dynamicType = <unset>,
  reason = "Source detected that destination failed to resume.",
  msg = "A general system error occurred: Source detected that destination failed to resume.

Resolution

Note: A virtual machine with many virtual disks might be unable to complete a migration with Storage vMotion. The Storage vMotion process requires time to open, close, and process disks during the final copy phase. Storage vMotion migration of virtual machines with many disks might timeout because of this per-disk overhead.

This timeout occurs when the maximum amount of time for switchover to the destination is exceeded. This may occur if there are a large number of provisioning, migration, or power operations occurring on the same datastore as the Storage vMotion. The virtual machine's disk files are reopened during this time, so disk performance issues or large numbers of disks may lead to timeouts.

The default timeout is 100 seconds, and can be modified by changing the fsr.maxSwitchoverSeconds option in the virtual machine configuration to a larger value.

Note: Ensure this change is performed when the virtual machine is powered down.

To modify the fsr.maxSwitchoverSeconds option using the vSphere Client:

1. Open vSphere Client and connect to the ESX/ESXi host or to vCenter Server.
2. Locate the virtual machine in the inventory.
3. Power off the virtual machine.
4. Right-click the virtual machine and click Edit Settings.
5. Click the Options tab.
6. Select the Advanced: General section.
7. Click the Configuration Parameters button.
   
   Note: The Configuration Parameters button is disabled when the virtual machine is powered on.
8. From the Configuration Parameters window, click Add Row.
9. In the Name field, enter the parameter name:
   
   fsr.maxSwitchoverSeconds
10. In the Value field, enter the new timeout value in seconds (for example: 150).
11. Click the OK buttons twice to save the configuration change.
12. Power on the virtual machine.

To modify the fsr.maxSwitchoverSeconds option by editing the .vmx file manually:

The virtual machine's .vmx configuration file can be manually edited to add or modify the option. Add the optionfsr.maxSwitchoverSeconds = " <new value>" on its own line.

For more information, see Tips for editing a .vmx file (1714).

Note: To edit a virtual machines configuration file, you need to power off the virtual machine, remove it from Inventory, make the changes to the vmx file, add the virtual machine back to inventory, and then power on the virtual machine again.

Source:-

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1010045

Guest operating systems that are supported for vShield Endpoint Thin Agent

vShield Endpoint is part of the VMware vShield suite of security services. This security solution provides introspection-based anti-malware services to vSphere virtual machines (VMs). While vShield Endpoint’s introspection-based approach performs the scanning at the hypervisor layer, an agent is necessary inside the VM to support remediation activities when malicious content is found. In vShield Endpoint, that agent is called the Thin Agent.

Purpose

This articles provides the list of supported operating systems for vShield Endpoint Thin Agent.

Resolution

To use vShield Endpoint Thin Agent, you must ensure that the guest virtual machine is installed with a supported version of Windows. The versions of the Windows operating systems that are supported for vShield Endpoint 1.0 are:

• Windows Vista (32 bit)
• Windows 7 (32 bit)
• Windows 7 (64 bit)
• Windows XP (32 bit)
• Windows 2003 (32/64 bit)
• Windows 2003 R2 (32/64 bit)
• Windows 2008 (32/64 bit)
• Windows 2008 R2 (32/64 bit)

Note: Ensure that the Thin Agent and the virtual machine are both either 32 or 64 bit versions. You cannot mix the two versions.  Also, ensure that the guest virtual machine has a SCSI controller installed.

Note:Windows 2012 and Windows 8 are currently not supported Guest Operating Systems for vShield Endpoint 5.1

Additional Information

The vShield Endpoint Thin Agent must be installed on each guest virtual machine to be protected. Virtual machines installed with the Thin Agent are automatically protected whenever they are started on an ESX/ESXi host installed with the security solution. That is, protected virtual machines retain the security protection through shut downs and restarts, and even after a vMotion move to another ESX/ESXi host that has the security solution installed.  

Source:-

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1036847

Adding Active Directory Authentication in SSO 5.1

- When no AD authentication is added in SSO then there is no option of selecting the Domain to assign the permission to AD Users.

- To Add AD Identity Source in SSO. Connect with the vSphere Web client Server via this URL :-
https://<vSphere Web Client Server Name>:9443/vsphere-client ---> Enter the Username and Password and Then Follow these steps:-

- Once Done then check whether you have the option to now select the Domain Name in vCenter Server.

Note:- There is no need to add the vCenter Server in Domain to Assign the Permissions to AD users on the vCenter Server.

Yippee!!!! Now we have this Option to Select the Domain to assign the Permission to AD User