Punching Clouds

Disclaimer: The views expressed anywhere on this site are strictly mine and not the opinions and views of VMware

I’ve been asked by a few customers about the location of the VMware ESX\ESXi LUN masking feature and how the LUN masking is done at the VMware ESX\ESXi level in version 4.
In VMware ESX 3.0/3.5 the settings for LUN masking were available in the UI via the Advance Software settings under Disk -> Disk.MaskLUNs as shown in screenshot below.

VMware ESX\ESXi 3.x Disk.MaxLUNs Settings

Well, here is the reason why you can’t find the Disk.MaskLUNs in the UI of ESX\ESXi 4. The component is no longer accessible under the ESX\ESXi’s 4 UI. The chance is implemented as a result of the re-architecture of the storage stack. The VMware Pluggable Storage Architecture (PSA)  is completely new. Old code and features were left behind in order to provide better, faster, and more reliable options and features. The Disk.MaskLUNs access via the UI was one of those left behind.

I agree with the point of taking the LUN masking feature out of the UI. Most vSphere administrators shouldn’t be manipulating those settings, unless they also happen to be in charge of the SAN environment, which hopefully means that there is a good amount of experience with storage technologies. The masking of LUN’s is something that should should be handled by the SAN team and executed on the hardware side.  For configurations such as the presentation and removal of LUN’s and Volumes, it’s best to simply contact the SAN team and ask for a certain LUN or certain range of LUN’s not to be presented to the servers. LUN masking is less error-prone at the storage array than at the hosts.

One reason as to why someone would want to configure software LUN masking (ESX\ESXi) is to protect against screw-up’s by SAN administrators. In boot from SAN scenarios this would be beneficial in order to keep the ESX Servers from seeing each others booting LUN and corrupting them.  With that said, as you can’t configure LUN masking from the UI in ESX\ESXi 4, you’ll have to do it from the Service Console, vCLI or vMA appliance. The new procedures on how to achieve LUN masking in ESX\ESXi 4 are listed below.

vCLI LUN Masking Procedure:

You can prevent the ESX/ESXi host from accessing storage devices or LUNs or from using individual paths to a LUN. Use the vSphere CLI commands to mask the paths. When you mask paths, you create claim rules that assign the MASK_PATH plug-in to the specified paths.

Configuration Steps

1- Check what the next available rule ID is. The claim rules that you use to mask paths should have rule IDs in the range of 101 – 200. If this command shows that rule 101 and 102  already exist, you can specify 103 for the rule to add.

esxcli corestorage claimrule list

2- Assign the MASK_PATH plug-in to a path by creating a new claim rule for the plug-in.

esxcli corestorage claimrule add -r <claimrule_ID> -t <type> <required_option> -P <MASK_PATH>

3- Load the MASK_PATH claim rule into your system.

esxcli corestorage claimrule load

4- Verify that the MASK_PATH claim rule was added correctly.

esxcli corestorage claimrule list

5- If a claim rule for the masked path exists, remove the rule.

esxcli corestorage claiming unclaim <type> <required_option>

6- Run the path claiming rules.

esxcli corestorage claimrule run

After you assign the MASK_PATH plug-in to a path, the path state becomes irrelevant and is no longer maintained by the host. As a result, commands that display the masked path’s information might show the path state as dead.

Implementation Example:

This example masks the LUN 20 on targets T1 and T2 accessed through storage adapters vmhba2 and vmhba3.

#esxcli corestorage claimrule list
#esxcli corestorage claimrule add -P MASK_PATH -r 109 -t location -A vmhba2 -C 0 -T 1 -L 20
#esxcli corestorage claimrule add -P MASK_PATH -r 110 -t location -A vmhba3 -C 0 -T 1 -L 20
#esxcli corestorage claimrule add -P MASK_PATH -r 111 -t location -A vmhba2 -C 0 -T 2 -L 20
#esxcli corestorage claimrule add -P MASK_PATH -r 112 -t location -A vmhba3 -C 0 -T 2 -L 20
#esxcli corestorage claimrule load
#esxcli corestorage claimrule list
#esxcli corestorage claiming unclaim -t location -A vmhba2
#esxcli corestorage claiming unclaim -t location -A vmhba3
#esxcli corestorage claimrule run

For more on Storage masking, check out Duncan Epping’s post on Storage Masking best practice at Yellow-Brick.com.

Alright folks, here is another class from VMware Education. vSphere Manage for Performance. The much anticipated, and needed class that will teach attendees how to manage, and monitor performance in the vSphere environments. This class is categorized as an advanced class as there is a certain level of knowledge, and expertise expected  from all attendees. The completion, and or equal knowledge of the topic covered in the courses listed below are require as well as a fair amount of administration experience of ESX/ESXi and vCenter Servers.

• VMware vSphere 4: Install, Configure, Manage
• VMware vSphere: Fast Track
• VMware vSphere 4: What’s New

There will be a great deal of time spend in the Service Console, and Console like utilities in this class, so if you’re command line junky, this is right for you. The targeted audience are system administrators, systems engineers, and consultants that are responsible to monitoring performance of vSphere installations.

Course Objectives

• Explain the performance impact of using different monitor modes
• Use vSphere tools to monitor the performance of ESX/ESXi hosts
• Diagnose performance problems relating to CPU, memory, network,and storage on an ESX/ESXi host
• Discuss how to achieve an optimal virtual machine configuration Discuss guide lines for monitoring application performance

For more information about this class, and schedule go to the VMware Education site.

While working on a multi-site deployment of vCenter Site Recovery Manager 4, I came across an error that seems to be caused by the Storage Replication Adapter (SRA). I encountered this error while installing both the SRA and the vCenter 4 onto a HP that was running Windows Server 2008 32bit operating system.

The issue seems to arise when you launch the installation for this particular vendor’s SRA.  The application starts to install and then halts with an error that reads “The $PRODUCT_NAME$ is not supported on this platform.” as shown in the below screen shot.

SRA Error Message under Windows Server 2008

A note about the environment: The vCenter Server was also installed on that version of the operating system. If you’re operating in an environment that requires the use of the latest versions of Microsoft’s operating systems, such as Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server 2008 R2, and you’re attempting to configure SRM, then this problem will happen.

That message is problematic, since nearly all of the VMware vSphere applications are supported and compatible with the latest version of Windows.  When you get the message, you may be forced to use an older version of Windows Server, which would then require you to rebuild, re-install, and configure the vCenter server onto a new system.

After researching the issue, I came across a useful work around.  Cormac Hogan, one of VMware’s finest, provided this particularly helpful approach:  He instructed me to run the HP LeftHand SRA application in Windows Server 2003 SP1 comparability mode.  After doing so the SRA was installed successful.  To setup the HP LeftHand SRA to run in the Windows Server 2003 SP1 do the following:

• Right click on the application package
• Go to Properties
• Select the comparability tab
• Select the Run this program in comparability mode for, in the comparability mode window
• From the list of modes  choose (Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1)

Windows Server 2003 SP1 Comparability Mode

So, if you ever come across this issue, don’t rush to change or reinstall vCenter and SRM on an older version of Windows.  Instead, just follow the instructions mentioned above. Hopefully these issues will be addressed and resolved by the respective companies in the near future.  Keep me posted if you run into an other issues.

VMware Education keeps pumping out new training for the vSphere platform. A new class which focuses on virtual machine management, and configuration called Skills for Operators will be available to anyone interested. This two day instructor led class is targeted towards systems administrators who’s focus is to deal virtual machines up keep, performance monitoring, and maintenance. The vSphere platform introduces a great deal of new features for virtual machines including new virtual machine hardware type. The new hardware type version 7 provides much greater resource capacities than previous versions. Learning about how to monitor, maintain, and deploy this new types of virtual machines is very beneficial to any virtualized environment.

Course Objectives

• Create, deploy, and manage virtual machines
• Use vCenter Server to monitor virtual machines resource usage
• Use VMware vCenter Update Manager to apply patches to virtual machines
• Use VMware vMotion and Storage vMotion to migrate virtual machines
• Troubleshoot problems with virtual machines configurations

For more information about this class, and schedule go to the VMware Education site.

It’s obvious that VMware is no longer just about virtual machines, they start the new year in the same fashion the finished 2009, by adding more acquisitions to their technology portfolio and continue to position themselves against large infrastructure management companies. Today VMware officially acquired Zimbra from Yahoo. Zimbra, is an open-source, calendaring, and collaboration software. VMware will most likely use Zimbra to strengthen their cloud services and make it available to their vCloud partners.

With the acquisition VMware will be extending their focus into core infrastructure applications and services that IT departments provide to their users – email communications being a one. VMware can now address, in conjunction with our cloud provider partners, solutions that span from the datacenter to the cloud as follows:

• Optimizing infrastructure usage (vSphere, vCenter,vCloud) IAAS
• Desktops (VMware View and VMware Fusion) DAAS
• Development (SpringSource, Lab Manager and Workstation) PAAS
• Core infrastructure and 3rd party applications (Zimbra and VAPP) SAAS

For more detailed information on the Zimbra acquisition and how VMware plans to do with Zimbra go to Steve Herrod’s blog, VMware’s Chief Technical Office. Hey you never know, maybe VMware will now take it to Microsoft and compete with Exchange.