vSAN Policies with PowerCLI(Striping=3)

New-SpbmStoragePolicy -Name Stripe=3 -RuleSet(New-SpbmRuleSet -Name "striping=3" -AllOfRules @((NewSpbmRule -Capability VSAN.stripewidth 3)))

Output:-

vSAN Policies with PowerCLI (No redundancy i.e FTT=0)

New-SpbmStoragePolicy -Name FTT=0 -RuleSet(New-SpbmRuleSet -Name "NoRedundancy" -AllOfRules @((New-SpbmRule -Capability VSAN.hostFailuresToTolerate 0)))

Output:-

Check IP for Management VMkernel

esxcli network ip interface ipv4 get

Output:-

Network Port Binding for software iscsi

esxcli iscsi networkportal add -A vmhba33 -n vmk2

Output:-

Add software iscsi target using esxcli

esxcli iscsi software set -e true

Output:-

Add Target for software iscsi using esxcli

esxcli iscsi adapter discovery sendtarget add -a iscsi.vclass.local:3260 -A vmhba33

Output:-

Enable software iscsi on esxi02

Get-VMHostStorage -VMHost esxi02.vclass.local | Set-VMHostStorage –SoftwareIscsiEnabled $True

Output:-

Create a Port Group for vMotion(TCP/IP Stack enabled for vMotion)

New-VMHostNetworkAdapter -VMHost esxi02.vclass.local -PortGroup vMotion -VirtualSwitch vSwitch2 -IP 172.20.12.52 -SubnetMask 255.255.255.0 -VMotionEnabled $true

Output:-

GUID in Windows

powershell -Command "[guid]::NewGuid().ToString()"

Output:-

Join a host to active directory domain

Get-VMHostAuthentication -VMHost esxi01.vclass.local | Set-VMHostAuthentication -JoinDomain vclass.local -Username administrator -Password VMware1!

Output:-

Virtual Machine - CPU (Reservations, Shares & Limits) Part 1(viii)

As I said, we"ll be covering the CPU - Reservation, Shares & Limits.

The SI Unit for CPU is hertz(Hz), frequency or clock cycles per second that were somewhat limited to the first generation CPUs. Now in the 21st Century, CPU's have larger processing capability with more clock cycles per second thereby measured in MHz(MegaHertz) i.e one million cycles per second & GHz(GigaHertz) i.e one billion cycles per second.

RESERVATION: Guaranteed minimum allocation of Resources.

LIMIT: Upper bound of given resource or the maximum amount of resource CONSUMER is entitled from physical(ESXi). 

SHARES: Priority of a VM's access to a given resource.


In Case of CPU, Share values can be defined as Low, Normal, High & Custom.

In the 2 VMs named, CPU1(Girish01-2), CPU2(Girish01-3). I am running a script to increase the CPU activity.
In other 3 VMs named VM01(Low), VM02(Normal) & VM03(High) running normally with different share values.

                           

People are use to ask is there a performance impact on the VMs!! Nah!. There will be NO IMPACT till the time every one is not hungry for resource as soon as every one is hungry for the resource, there you go!!

As given in the screenshot with the help of CPU shares, the VM01 with high is getting more priority and henceforth.

Reference:Click here.

Installing PowerCLI Version 10

Check the version of PowerShell in windows System,
In order to install powercli 6.5.2 ,  the version of PowerShell should be 5 or above.
To install PowerShell 5 for windows server 2012, click here.
Download it,  install and update the windows server.
Once done run this command to check the PowerShell version

• $psversiontable
  
  
  
  

Once PowerShell version is updated, run these commands

• Find-module -Name VMware.PowerCLI
• Install-Module -Name VMware.PowerCLI -Scope CurrentUser

Once finished, you will be able to run powercli commands from the same window.

Virtual Machine - Edit Settings (Memory) Part 2 (i)

In my previous Series of posts, we have explored options available under CPU(Part1 to Part7).
In this series, we are going to talk about Memory options as below:-

As said for CPU & Memory Reservations, Shares & Limits,  I"ll be running a separate post after completing all the options related to virtual machine edit settings.

Here, In this post, the option to explore is Memory Hot Plug.

It can not be enabled when the machine is in running state and as told in case of CPU Hot Add posts earlier, it has to be supported by the operating system as in these given KB2020993 & KB2051989 articles.

Using this option, Memory Hot Plug: Memory can only be increased, it can not be decreased.
Given below is the screenshot of Windows Server 2012, Standard Edition that supports increasing the memory on the fly.


Before:                                 After:

     

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

In my previous post, I have talked about scheduling affinity.
In this post Part 7, I am going to talk about CPU/MMU Virtualization.

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

11. CPU/MMU Virtualization:- By default, it is automatic. Here, we get three options in this drop-down i.e

i) Software CPU & MMU

ii) Hardware CPU, Software MMU

iii) Hardware CPU & MMU

Software CPU - Software Based CPU Virtualization

Hardware CPU - Hardware assisted CPU Virtualization

Hardware MMU(Memory Management Unit) & Software MMU (Memory Management Unit)

For better understanding refer to this article.

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

In my previous post, we have talked about Performance Counter.
In this post CPU Part 6, We are going to talk about Scheduling Affinity

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

10. Scheduling Affinity:-  By default, a virtual CPU is scheduled to run on a logical CPU. Using this feature one can restrict a VM to a dedicated LCPU. 

EX:- Lets say we have ESXi with 8LCPU numbered from 0 to 7.

If we are using Scheduling affinity then it can be specified as 1,2,3,4-6 either way means you can specify dedicated LCPU number or the range of LCPU that can be used.

USE CASE:- For CPU Intensive VM performance testing purpose to check whethere scheduling it to dedicated LCPU enhances its performance or to check VMs throughput and response time when pinning it down to LCPU.

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

In my previous post, we have talked about CPUID Mask.
In this post of CPU Part 5, We are going to talk about Performance Counter

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

9. Enable Virtualized CPU performance counters: It is mainly used by developers for debugging software(software profilers) which is going to run in a VM such as vTune, OProfile, CodeAnalyst.

This feature is going to make some additional CPU related performance counters (MSRs-Model Specific Registers) available to the guest OS.

There is a KB2030221, which is related to what CPU Performance counters are exposed to guest OS.

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.