DiskMount GUI – Mount VMDK files. <span class="big">Please enable Javascript, because you won't see all of the content. </span> Update July 13, 2012: You can download the VMware Workstation 5.5 Disk Mount Utility here. Earlier, I blogged about attaching VHD images and WIM files, so it is only fair that I introduce a tool that allows you to mount VMDK (Virtual Machine Disk Format) images. VMware’s format is certainly one of the most commonly used imaging formats these days. The VMware DiskMount GUI is not, despite its name, a VMware tool. It is a DEVFRAM product, and simply consists of a graphical user interface for the command line tool VMware DiskMount (vmware-mount.exe), which is a part of the free VMware Virtual Disk Development Kit. As such, you have to first download and install this toolkit before you can use the VMware DiskMount GUI. When you first launch the VMware DiskMount GUI, you have to tell the tool where to find vmware-mount.exe.
VMware announced VMware Horizon DaaS as a service. Perf-vsphere-memory_management.pdf (application/pdf Object) Performance Troubleshooting VMware vSphere – Memory | virtual in. Introduction As memory prices continue to drop and the x64 bit architecture is embraced and adopted more in the industry, we continue to see a rise in memory demands. Only a few years ago, 1-2 GB virtual machines were the norm, 95% of these being 32 bit operating systems. From my personal experience I have seen this trend change to 2-4 GB as a norm, with the more high performing virtual machines consuming anywhere from 4-16 GB of memory. VMware has answered this demand with vSphere now delivering up to 1TB of addressable memory per physical host, and up to 255GB per virtual machine. With processors now more powerful than ever, the general shift of virtual machine limitations is changing from compute to memory.
Memory Technologies in VMware vSphere There are some major benefits of virtualization when it comes to memory. Transparent Page Sharing – The VMkernel will compare physical memory pages to find duplicates, then free up this redundant space and replaces it with a pointer. Conclusion. ESX Memory Management – Part 1 | Arnim van Lieshout. Apr 27th, 2009 I receive a lot of questions lately about ESX memory management. Things that are very obvious to me seem to be not so obvious at all for some other people. So I’ll try to explain these things from my point of view. First let’s have a look at the virtual machine settings available to us. On the vm setting page we have several options we can configure for memory assignment. Allocated memory: This is the amount of memory we assign to the vm and is also the amount of memory the guest OS will see as its physical memory. Instead of configuring these settings on a vm basis, it is also possible to configure these settings on a resource pool.
This concludes the memory settings we can configure on a vm. Continue reading Part2 (Visited 11,982 times, 5 visits today) Related posts: VMware Storage Sudoku Tweet Last Friday I was brainstorming with Gabrie van Zanten about the optimal placement of the VMDKs across our LUNs. Why vEcoShell or PowerGUI makes sense - Virtu-Al.Net. A little while back I started a PowerPack which could be used in either PowerGUI or vEcoShell – the application formerly known as “The Virtualisation EcoShell or VESI, my PowerPack was a collection of the most used scripts from my site all laid out in a nice GUI format. Now why would you put a GUI back on top of the scripting, lets think about this… At the moment when you are using the vSphere client to update your virtual infrastructure it is as slow as the human that is driving it, if you want to create 10 virtual machines you will need to click over 50 times (roughly 5 times per VM) and also type the names in etc etc.
If we were to use PowerCLI to do this then we could do it in one-line: The difference here is not what it is doing as it is still creating 10 VMs, still connecting to the same vCenter and still using the same API’s as the client its just an automated way of making the call, a programmatic way of sending many calls down the same line to the vCenter. -Alan Like this: Community. Main Page - PowerGUI Wiki. Clone a virtual machine in ESXi using command line | OPTION Knowledge Base. 1. SSH to the ESXi 2. Follow the steps below to clone the machine: ~ # cd /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/ /vmfs/volumes/4c602e63-ca53af40-0be9-1cc1de0f5c19 # ls -l drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1260 Mar 2 02:12 W2K8ENT_64_1 drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2940 Mar 1 09:43 W2K8_1_64b drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2800 Feb 22 08:18 W2K8_2_64b /vmfs/volumes/4c602e63-ca53af40-0be9-1cc1de0f5c19 # mkdir W2K8ENT_Test1 /vmfs/volumes/4c602e63-ca53af40-0be9-1cc1de0f5c19 # cd W2K8ENT_64_1/ /vmfs/volumes/4c602e63-ca53af40-0be9-1cc1de0f5c19/W2K8ENT_64_1 # ls -l *.vmdk -rw——- 1 root root 53687091200 Mar 2 02:11 W2K8ENT_64_1-flat.vmdk -rw——- 1 root root 474 Mar 1 15:32 W2K8ENT_64_1.vmdk /vmfs/volumes/4c602e63-ca53af40-0be9-1cc1de0f5c19/W2K8ENT_64_1 # vmkfstools -i /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/W2K8ENT_64_1/W2K8ENT_64_1.vmdk /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/W2K8ENT_Test1/W2K8ENT_Test1.vmdk Destination disk format: VMFS zeroedthick Cloning disk ‘/vmfs/volumes/datastore1/W2K8ENT_64_1/W2K8ENT_64_1.vmdk’… Clone: 5% done. 3.
VMware: VMware ESXi Chronicles: What's in a VIB? Introduction With the release of vShere 5.0 and the introduction of the new ESXi Image Builder CLI there’s naturally been a good deal of interest in how to create and maintain custom ESXi images. Although I’ve always understood a “VIB” to be the basic building block of an ESXi image, I’ve never really understood what exactly a VIB is. However, the more I work with vSphere 5.0 the more I have come realize that to be successful I need more than a cursory knowledge of VIBs.
It’s important to understand the make up of a VIB, how VIBs are created, and how VIBs are packaged and distributed. About VIBs VIB stands for vSphere Installation Bundle. A file archiveAn XML descriptor fileA signature file The file archive, also referred to as the VIB payload, contains the files that make up the VIB. The XML descriptor file describes the contents of the VIB. The signature file is an electronic signature used to verify the level of trust associated with the VIB. How are VIBs created and distributed? VMware I/O queues, micro-bursting, and multipathing. Ok – like many Virtual Geek posts – this starts with fundamentals, and will go deep. I know this makes these long, hard slogs, but it’s how I learn… (feedback/critiques welcome!).
Also, it’s really important to know – we’re talking about stuff that will NOT affect most customers. As a general principle, I’m a big believer of “start simple, keep it as simple as you can, but understand enough that you know what you need when it gets complicated”. This is just stuff good to know so that you can diagnose issues, and determine truth from reality in the era of info overload from a bazillion sources based on your own understanding. Let’s follow an block I/O from a VM through to the back-end disk in the shared storage array.
The vSCSI queues are the SCSI queues internal to the guest OS. Next – you hit the LUN queues (a critical element for reasons which become clear later). This is why I say that queues exist everywhere. Ok – why is this important? Q: So what was happening? A: No. 1. 2. 3. 4. Troubleshooting Storage Performance in vSphere – Storage Queues. Storage Queues what are they and do I need to change them? We have all had to wait in a line or two in our life, whether it is the dreaded TSA checkpoint line at the airport or the equally dreaded DMV registration line, waiting in line is just a fact of life. This is true in the storage world too; storage I/O’s have plenty of lines that they have to wait in. In this article, we examine the various queues in the virtualized storage stack and discuss the when, how, and why of modifying them. Queues are necessary for several reasons but primary they are used to allow for sharing of a resource and to allow for concurrency.
In a virtualized environment there are several queues. When investigating storage performance problems and bottlenecks you should investigate the queuing at all levels of the storage stack from the application and guest OS to the storage array. Why are the virtual machine queues and the LUN queues set to just 32? Why increase the device queue?