VMware Infrastructure 3: Install and Configure Day 3

And at the end of Day 3 on the VMware Infrastructure 3 course...more notes...

Virtual Machines...

• Open Filer is an Open Source Storage Appliance (NAS), including iSCSI support, runs well in a VM, available as a Virtual Appliance.

VMware Converter

• VMware Converter standard is free. Enterprise costs $.
• VMware Converter standard is used one machine at a time. Enterprise can run unattended converting multiple machines.
• VMware Converter standard can be operated in 'Hot' and 'Remote' modes, Enterprise is required for 'Cold' operation (boot from CD).

Virtual Machine Management

• VirtualCenter can now expand volumes, similar to the command-line tool: vmkfstools

Guided Consolidation

• Limited value - potentially only for very small environments
• Only collects 24 hours of data, from 8 perfmon counters
• Confidence Level is really a progress bar with 100% representing 24 hours of data collected. High Confidence does not necessarily mean the data collected is representative of the environment's typical workload.
• VMware capacity planner is a much better tool, collects all statistics for 30 days, and works on both Windows and Linux

Access Control

• VirtualCenter authentication is Windows only (AD or Local Windows Accounts)
• ESX (Service Console) authentication is local Linux user accounts or PAM (e.g. LDAP back to AD)
• VirtualCenter authenticates to an ESX host as 'vpxuser' (with a random password)
• Permissions = User/Group + Role (+ Privileges). Permissions -> applied to -> Inventory Objects
• Web Access 'Generate Remote Console URL' provides access (directly to an ESX host) for users/administrators to manage a single VM.

Resource Management

• CPU or Memory shares are never used unless there is contention for CPU or Memory resources
• Shares are only relative within resource pool siblings - not between resource pools