Virtual Machine - Edit Settings (CPU) Part 4(iv)

In my previous post, we have talked about Enable CPU Hot Add.

I am going to skip Reservations, Limit & Shares which will be covered along with calculations in a later post.

In this screenshot as you can see, I have used vSphere Web Client, Right Click on virtual machine & edit settings.

7.CPUID Mask: By default, VM is set to expose the NX/XD flag to guest.

This feature helps prevent execution of certain type of code.
Ex: Here, I have Windows 7 32-bit installed in which I have Enabled/Disabled this feature.

Default, Expose NX/XD flag to guest.

Later on, I Hide the NX/XD flag from guest (64-bit Windows Server 2012) I get this error.

I tried it on Windows7-32 bit, it has a feature DEP (Data Execution Prevention)

Virtual Machine - Edit Settings (CPU) Part 3 (iii)

In my previous post, I have talked about CORE.

Now in this Part 3, We are going to talk about ENABLE CPU Hot Add.

In this screenshot as you can see, I have used vSphere Web Client, Right Click on virtual machine & edit settings.

3.ENABLE CPU Hot Add: This feature lets you add or remove CPU resource to a powered ON virtual machine.
It should be supported by the operating system and should be turned on in advance i.e If VM is running then this option is grayed out. In order to turn it, VM should be in POWERED OFF state.

 

This information is from Windows Server 2012 R2 Standard Edition.

Once CPU Hot Add is enabled: 

This information is from Windows Server 2012 R2 Standard Edition.

Now if you want to decrease the number of CPU, that can only be done if VM is powered OFF.

We are able to edit get this CPU option, I have installed Windows Server 2012 R2 Standard Edition. VMware has published these KB articles related to CPU Hot Add Feature: KB2020993, KB2051989 which relates to this feature for various operating systems.

Virtual Machine - Edit Settings (CPU) Part 1 (ii)

In my previous post, I have talked about CPU.

Now in this Part 2, We are going to talk about CORE.

In this screenshot as you can see, I have used vSphere Web Client, Right Click on virtual machine & edit settings.

CPU Settings:-
2.CORE: Here I have shared an example of single socket , quad core processor.
Initially when VMware released CORES PER SOCKET, it was there to deal with software licensing issue. So as to reduce number of licenses , which were based on SOCKETS.  Further, for performance it is beyond the scope of this blog post which includes: NUMA, vNUMA CPU technologies.

An interesting example is given on this KB:2078069

Virtual Machine - Edit Settings (CPU) Part 1 (i)

In order to learn more, one has to explore more.
In this series of blog post, i"ll be talking about all the options one have for a virtual machine.

This is Part 1 of virtual machines & I"ll be explaining and giving real time examples for all these options which are available for a virtual machine. In the end, we want our virtual machines to be running healthy. Hell Yeah!!

In this screenshot as you can see, I have used vSphere Web Client, Right Click on virtual machine & edit settings.

CPU Settings:-
1.CPU: It depends on your physical processor(Socket & Cores Per Socket) that are present on your server.
As you can see in my case, what my host(ESXi) has, I can that as LCPU to my VM.
If there is no hyperthreading than the total number of LCPU =8 & if it is enabled then the total number of LCPU=16. VCPU(Virtual CPU for VM) is scheduled on LCPU(Logical CPU, part of core).

So, In my case, the maximum number of vCPU that can be assigned to the VM =16.

Amazon AWS & Microsoft Azure Part 1. - Virtual Machines

I was very keen to learn about these two CLOUD giants namely Amazon's AWS & Microsoft's Azure.  So I started to explore about them that how are they similar and different from their offering perspective.

Both of them are Public Cloud offerings as most of the people are aware of it. So let's just start.
Azure has near to 68 offerings that one can choose from their big list whereas AWS has near to 100 offerings. Further, you can check their offerings on other blog posts. Like TOM's IT ProT has a very good comparison of it.

Starting with their Virtual Machine Related Services:-

AWS - EC2 ( Elastic Compute) & Azure Virtual Machines (Compute)

Here you can choose from a wide variety of Virtual machine instances that you can deploy and start using. So will start how to create a VM in EC2 and end with AWS Virtual machine.


Step1. Need to setup an account for AWS & Azure .

AWS has various type of Instances available, in layman's terms size of virtual machines. I"ll be using a Free Tier instance which will be T2.Micro

Similar way how to create a EC2 instance, you can check on  Amazon tutorials as well.

Azure has different size of Virtual Machine available.

Installing PowerShell & PowerCLI in MAC OS

Mac Install 

Install These are the detailed instructions. 

Step 1 - Download PowerShell for MAC and need to check whether it allows you to install if gives you an error related to the unidentified application. To resolve this, click the Apple symbol in the menu bar and open System Preferences > Security & Privacy and then click Open Anyway.
Installed will be there and install.

Step 2 - Make sure you did not miss this step from the PowerShell installation instruction:

brew install openssl brew install curl --with-openssl 

Step 3 - Create the following directory if it does not exists by running the following command: 

mkdir -p ~/.local/share/powershell/Modules 

Step 4 - Extract the PowerCLI modules into the directory you created above by running the following command: 

unzip PowerCLI.ViCore.zip -d ~/.local/share/powershell/Modules 

unzip PowerCLI.Cis.zip -d ~/.local/share/powershell/Modules 

unzip PowerCLI.Vds.zip -d ~/.local/share/powershell/Modules

Renew the IP of VMkernel port if assigned from DHCP.

While working with one of vSAN HomeLab, i have assigned VMkernel port to get IP from DHCP and I should have assigned it on different subnet but did on the same subnet as of vMotion.
So, without removing and re-creating the vmkernel port i have came across this esxcli command:



esxcli network ip interface set -e false -i vmkN ; esxcli network ip interface set -e true -i vmkN

esxcli network ip interface ipv4 get

no element found line 1 column 0 in vSphere Replication

While working with SRM, I came across the problem with vSphere Replication that

no element found line 1 column 0 

in its VAMI console i.e https:\\vSphereReplicationIP:5480.

Its there because one vSphere Replication Appliance can only be registered with one vCenter Server and once it is done , if somehow there is error in the communication between vCenter & vSphere Replication Server you"ll end up getting this error.

How I resolved this.

1. Removed the solution user present in users and group for the designated vSphere Replication Appliance.
Solution User will be like : com.vmware.vr-UUID of vcenter Server.

2. Try and reinstall the certificates of vSphere Replication from VAMI console.

3. Now it should work.

Alarm Override at Virtual Machine Workaround

Just recently in a delivery of vSphere, a participant asked for this question:-

Could we override an alarm created at datacenter object on an individual virtual machine?

Directly it will not allow as you could check in the below given screenshot:

A workaround for this is to create two different folders: FOLDER 1 for which you want to EXCLUDE virtual machines and FOLDER 2 in which you want to include virtual machines.

Instead of creating an alarm at data center Object level. Create an alarm at the folder level.

When you set an alarm on a parent object, such as a vCenter Server, a data center, or a cluster, all applicable child objects inherit the alarm. You can also set an alarm on a folder to propagate the same alarm to all objects contained in that folder. You cannot change or override an alarm that is set on a child object from its parent object. You must change the alarm on the child object itself.

VM from template will have the same SID

I was delivering a training and got a question:- Whether SID will remain same when we deploy a VM from template.

I knew the answer but just wanted to verify it.

YES!!  SID will remain same when we deploy a VM from template without sysprep or running customspec manager.

W7-01 is a windows 7 virtual machine.

W7-02 is deployed from template of W7-01 virtual machine.

Error Installing ESXi on Dell R720

• I was working in a datacenter with an administrator and got this error while trying to upgrade ESXi host.

• Later on did everything and came up with the solution to delete the RAID on which ESXi was installed and re-create the RAID. 
• Even after re-creating the RAID for ESXi installation it did not work.
• Later on, I realized to verify that the RAID that we have created was not initialized.
• Post reinitialization it worked and ESXi was installed.
• Here are some screenshots of RAID initialization:-

RAID Initialization - Dell PERC

What will happen if I upgrade my ESXi to 6.5 and add upgraded ESXi to new vCenter Server?

Virtual SAN 6.5

I will be able to see my existing vSAN Datastore, but I will not be able to use it.

As of now, i have created a cluster for virtual SAN. My hosts are just a part of my US Datacenter.

When i tried cloning my slax virtual mahine to this vSAN datastore, it gives me error

A general system error occurred: PBM error occurred during PreCloneCheckCallback: pbm.fault.PBMFault;

No VASA Provider for schema namespace (VSAN) found.

Virtual Flash Resource in Virtual Machine

VMware has already given some explanation for vFRC:-

1.  VMware vSphere® Flash Read Cache® 1.0
2. Performance of vSphere Flash Read Cache in VMware vSphere 5.5

Here I will show how you can configure:

1. Add a Flash/SSD Resource on your ESXi host which should not be claimed or used for any other purpose.
   
   
   
   
   
2. Once added you have to share this resource with individual virtual machine disk or whichever is I/O intensive.
   
   
   
   
3. The amount of vFRC reservation you want to have along with the desired block size.