Yesterday I did an upgrade of my vCenter Server Appliance 5.5 U3 to 6.0 U1. This was the first step to update my lab infrastructure to vSphere 6.0. A bit late, but better late than never. The update of the VCSA itself went smooth. No problems with certificates, hosts, VMs or PernixData FVP. But then, I discovered two errors on the old vSphere C# client (I know that I should use the Web Client…)
Today, I was at a customer to prepare a two node vSphere cluster for some MS SQL server tests. Nothing fancy, just two HP ProLiant BL460c Gen9 blades and two virtual volumes from a HP 3PAR. Each blade had two 400 GB SSDs, two 64 GB M.2 SSDs and a 1 GB MicroSD card. Usually, I install ESXi to a SD card. In this case, a MicroSD card. The SSDs were dedicated for PernixData FVP.
Late last year, I applied a third time for the VMware vExpert program. This title is given from VMware to individuals who have significantly contributed to the community and have spread the message of VMware to customers and partners worldwide. This is nothing you get by passing an exam. It’s given to you by VMware in respect of your work. The vExpert title is something which differates you inside the commnity.
A load balancer is an integral component of (nearly) every VMware Horizon View design. Not only to distribute the connections among a number of connection or security servers, but also to provide high availability in case of a connection or security server failure. Without a load balancer, connection attempts will fail, if a connection or security server isn’t available. Craig Kilborn wrote an excellent article about the different possible designs of load balancing.
Logging is essential for troubleshooting. VMware Horizon View allows you to configure a SQL database for event logging, and I really recommend to configure the event logging database (I have seen some deployments without). Beside the event logging database, it’s a great idea to configure a secondary log destination. With a event logging database, and logs sent to a syslog, you have two independent log destinations.
To configure a syslog destination, login to the Horizon View admin portal and go to “View Configuration > Event Configuration”.
Moving VMs from an old cluster with old ESXi hosts to a new cluster with new hosts can be so easy, even if the clusters doesn’t share any storage. A PowerCLI one-liner or the Web Client allow you to migrate VMs between hosts and datastores, while the VMs are running. This enhancement was added with vSphere 5.1. I’m often suprised how many customers doesn’t know this feature, just because they are still using the old vSphere C# client.
On December 8, 2015, VMware released VMware ESXi 5.5 patch ESXi550-201512001 (2135410). This patch is known as U3b and it contains general and security fixes, nothing special. Usually, you would install this update without notice. But this time, you should better take a look into the release notes of ESXi 5.5 U3b, before you install this update. This is taken from the release notes:
Note: In your vSphere environment, you need to update vCenter Server to vCenter Server 5.
Careful preparation is a key element to success. If you restart a storage controller, or even the whole storage, you should be very sure that all ESXi hosts have enough paths to every datstore. Sure, you can use the VMware vSphere C# client or the Web Client to check every host and every datastore. But if you have a large cluster with a dozen datastores and some Raw Device Mappings (RDMs), this can take a looooong time.
Sometimes you need to reset the ILO Administrator password. Sure, you can reboot the server, press F8 and then reset the Administrator password. If you have installed a HP customized ESXi image, then there is a much better way to reset the password: HPONCFG.
Check the /opt/hp/tools directory. You will find a binary called hponcfg.
~ # ls -l /opt/hp/tools/ total 5432 -r-xr-xr-x 1 root root 5129574 Oct 28 2014 conrep -r--r--r-- 1 root root 108802 Oct 28 2014 conrep.
Another inconvenience that I noticed during the update process from VMware Horizon View 6.1.1 to 6.2 was, that the automatic screen resizing stopped working. When I connected to a desktop pool with the VMware Horizon client, I only got the screen resolution of the VM (the resolution that is used when connecting to the VM with the vSphere console)), not 1920x1200 as expected. This issue only occured with PCoIP, not with RDP.
