VMware Consultancy
Virtualization
Abstraction of computer resources
VMware – vscsiStats
Jun 17th
vscsiStats can be used to perform storage performance analyses. vscsiStats collects and reports counters on storage activity. Its data is collected at the virtual SCSI device level in the kernel. This means that results are reported per VMDK (or RDM) irrespective of the underlying storage protocol.
How to start it up
Open a putty session to your ESX server
Get help on vscsiStats: /usr/lib/vmware/bin/vscsiStats -h
Start collecting statistics (collection stops after 30 minutes): /usr/lib/vmware/bin/vscsiStats -s -w <worldgroupID>
To find the worldgroupID of the Virtual Machine you want to monitor: /usr/lib/vmware/bin/vscsiStats -l
Display counters: /usr/lib/vmware/bin/vscsiStats -p <histotype> -c
histotypes can be one of the following: all, ioLength, seekDistance, outstandingIOs, latency, interarrival
the option -c will use a comma as delimiter
VMware – esxtop
Apr 12th
A very good article about ESXTOP can be found at http://www.yellow-bricks.com/esxtop/
Reference card: http://www.vreference.com/public/vReference-esxtop1.2.pdf
Read also the VMware article http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-9279
VKernel: Product Offering
Mar 23rd
VKernel’s award winning Capacity Management products help system administrators reduce the costs of virtualization and ensure application performance. VKernel's suite of Capacity Optimization products reduce the cost of virtualization by optimizing server and storage resource utilization. The Performance Optimization products ensure application performance by identifying and resolving capacity bottlenecks. The Cost Visibility products provide application and business level visibility to determine infrastructure usage and allocate costs.
Support Validation Wizard
Mar 11th
To know if a Microsoft Product is supported on VMware (or another hypervisor), Microsoft has an easy to use support validation wizard
VKernel: SnapshotMyVM
Feb 18th
VKernel’s free SnapshotMyVM is a quick–to–install and easy–to–use standalone documentation tool for VMware ESX environments. Within minutes, SnapshotMyVM completely automates the time–consuming process of documenting all virtual machines (VMs).
You can download it from VKernels website or here
VMware Capacity Planner Assessment Service
Feb 16th
Virtualisation is a compelling solution for organisations to increase productivity, reduce complexity and improve the predictability of their IT infrastructure. Typically, the first step towards Virtualisation is a project that will identify an optimal IT infrastructure, consolidation opportunities and cost savings.
For an overview of capacity planner please read this article.
VMware Capacity Planner Assessment Service (CE)
For companies planning on implementing server consolidation and virtualization, our VMware Capacity Planner Assessment Service (CE) provides a comprehensive inventory of current capacities and capabilities, a detailed deployment strategy and optionally a financial analysis required to help you create a solid business case to proceed with confidence.
VMware vCenter Orchestrator
Jan 26th
VMware vCenter Orchestrator is a powerful workflow solution designed to automate tasks for VMware vSphere and allows orchestration between multiple solutions. Through an easy drag-and-drop interface, administrators can automate tasks through pre-designed or customized workflows. Orchestrator can also be used as a workflow development platform for creating advanced workflow or “powered” applications that require utilize an underlying workflow engine.
Benefits
- Eliminate manual or repetitive tasks using automation and orchestration.
- Reduce operational costs by simplifying administration and virtual machine management.
- Accelerate actions like snapshots, deployments,changes and updates to virtual machines and associated resources.
- Translate best practices into automated workflows.
VMware Capacity Planner Overview
Jan 14th
VMware Capacity Planner is a business and IT capacity planning tool for the datacenter and desktop that provides an integrated set of analysis, planning and decision support functions to enable faster, measurable and more accurate infrastructure assessment services.
VMware P2V Converter Best Practices
Jan 8th
The best approach to converting a Windows operating system from a physical machine to a virtual machine is to perform a hot migration with VMware Converter installed locally on the source (physical machine) operating system. Below an overview of the different steps involved in a P2V (Physical to Virtual) conversion. Note that these steps only apply to Windows operating systems.