Virtualization Team

VM instance model in VMware vCenter ChargeBack up to version 2.0.1 still has no prorating on charges. For those of you who is not sure what I am describing by VM Instance below how its described in the “VMware-Technote-Using-vCenter-Chargeback-vCloud-Director” document as well a screenshot of where you configure VM instance in vCenter ChargeBack:

“VM Instance enables the creation of a matrix of fixed costs that apply to hard a hard bundle of vCPU (count) and memory (MB). VM Instance matrices are linked with a cost model and consist of the hierarchy selection criteria, a fixed-cost table and a default fixed cost. Selection criteria can be based on name-pattern matching or custom- attribute matching. VM Instance uses a stepping function, where the virtual machine charge steps up to the next instance size. Costs are applied only for the duration when a virtual machine is powered on and is not prorated.”

Since the introduction of vCenter ChargeBack integration with VMware vCloud Director & I hear repeatedly questions about how its Cost Models charge in a VMware vCD environment. To be honest, the question usually come in the form that vCenter ChargeBack is not calculating the cost as I expected & something wrong with it. Most of the time it turn out nothing but a misunderstanding of vCenter ChargeBack Cost Models in a vCloud Director environment.  As vCenter ChargeBack Cost Models highly integrate with VMware vCloud Director allocation models, its very important to have a solid understanding of VMware vCD Allocation Models. As Duncan Epping & Chris Colotti both has explained vCloud Director Allocation Models extensively in two great blogs posts, I am going to only reference these and not cover it in this post & rather focus on the vCenter ChargeBack part of the story. Below are the two posts for VMware vCD Allocation Models:

It seems the problem of vCenter ChargeBack report not displaying certain info is becoming a popular question lately. Actually this was pointed out to me earlier today by a colleague who was reviewing my vCD design. The most common info not displayed in a vCenter ChargeBack Report are below:

• vCenter ChargeBack Report Does Not Display the Network Transmitted and Network Received Information

• vCenter ChargeBack Report Does Not Display the Disk Read and Disk Write Information

• vCenter ChargeBack Report Does Not Display the Memory Usage Value and the Corresponding Cost

It seems many admins are getting to the point where one of the above list is not being displayed in the vCenter ChargeBack Reports although they select them while generating the report.

At first I wanted to congrats every one who was elected as vExperts for 2012. Second I wanted to celebrate being on the list while being a VMware employee. As many of you know, that earlier years VMware employees could not be chosen as vExperts nonetheless of how much effort they spent in enlightening Virtualization & Cloud Computing. I am glad VMware has changed that and started giving some recognition to employees who take the extra effort to spread the words on blogs, VMware forums, Community, seminars, VMUGs & so on. Further, the election seems to be done separately for employees and non employees to ensure fairness. If you are not sure if you were elected as a vExpert for 2012 then you can have a look at the VMware vExpert 2012 list published at:

While setting up VMware vCloud Director  1.5 using MS SQL Server, you will need to enter the SQL Server & database information during the configuration phase of the setup. Although during the configuration wizard you are asked which port SQL Use and the answer to that is given to be “default” which you will assume it will revert to the correct MS SQL Server port 1433, it does not to work out that way in vCloud Director 1.5.1 for some reason. To avoid having a problem with the setup, I would recommend you do the following when answering the database info in the vCloud Director wizard.

I have been lately seeing the question of how to add a Second vCloud Director Cell to an existing single Cell VMware vCloud Director Setup to build a multi-cell vCloud Director raising often. Actually the question seems to get to phrased differently by different people. The most heard question, is how to increase the availability of my vCloud Director server or how to cluster my VMware vCloud Director server. Well, vCloud Director it self does not really support or use clustering for high availability. On the other hand, you can create a multi-cell vCloud Director setup and load balance between your vCloud Director Cells which will help you achieve both a higher availability  & better scalability of your vCloud Director environment. In this article I will cover in step by step how to add a second vCloud Director Cell to your vCloud Director environment, though I will not cover up configuring the load balancer part as that can be widely different for each load balancer vendor.

Time will come when you need a quick inventory of the VMs in your vCenter with their IPs, Computer name, power on status & all these simple things. You might just need that sheet b/c you need to keep an inventory of what you have or just the for the simple cause that the management had asked you for such one. In both cases you need to figure out the quickest and easiest way to do it. Yeah this can be achieved using power shell script or any other scripting language that vSphere support, but let’s keep that to when we require a more extensive inventory that is can not be generated using the GUI of vCenter. One question I repeatedly hear “why is the Export list in vCenter file menu is shadowed and can not be chosen?” Here I will show you the steps to get a simple inventory of your VMs using VMware vCenter GUI & following it will show you how to get the Export list in vCenter file menu in business.

Playing with my vCloud Director lab lately, I have end up with a trouble adding one of my ESXi 5 hosts to my vCloud Director 1.5 due to an error installing the vCloud Director agent. I knew I have used the same host with beta install of vCloud Director before, & that could be the reason why the agent is missing up. Of course, I could have re-installed the ESXi host in 15 minutes and be back on track, but I decided to burn sometime trying to figure out how to fix it without re-installing it. I was able to achieve that by uninstalling the earlier installed vCloud Agent then Install the new vCloud Agent. Doing it in vSphere 4 & vSphere 4.1 was well document in KB2003486, but not how to manually install and uninstall the vCloud agent on vSphere 5. After digging it for a bit, below is how I have done it in case you need it.

Today while doing a manual DR failback test at one of the customers sites where they use Virtual Distributed Switches, I have noticed when removing/adding a Virtual Machine to inventory it lose the configuration for its network interface of which port group its connected to and the like. As the customer was running vSphere 4.1u1, I went ahead and tested the same in my lab running vSphere 5.0  which end up  having the exact same behavior. Its important to note that this behavior only affect Virtual Machines that is connected to a Distributed Switch port group, & it does not affect port group configuration for Standard Switches. This behavior although look odd seems to be nothing but as intended by engineering as it makes the assumption that you are restoring the VM to a different Infrastructure where these Distributed Switches might not exist.

While playing with VMware vCenter Server Appliance in my home lab, I have been surprised with the following error:

Error: VPXD must be stopped to perform this operation.

This error has came up while trying to change authentication to active directory authentication and kinda seen the same error when trying to change the database to an external database. For some reason the Server service stop button is shadowed as well which mean I could not stop it by the GUI interface. Although my lab setup is not ideal and it might just due to the way I set it up, though I will still document how I resolved this where the same mechanism can be used to stop and restart any other service used by the vCenter Server Appliance. Below are the steps I have followed:

Updating VMware ThinApp packages is much easier and scale with ease when compared to updating traditional software packages. In fact VMware ThinApp offer multiple ways to update ThinApp Software packages that every environment can find a mechanism that suit their needs. In this post, I will discuss the major VMware ThinApp update mechanisms and the scenario each update mechanism suit best. I have noticed many posts/articles around the web talk about how to use a certain VMware ThinApp update mechanism, but not many that explain when to use that mechanism. In this post, I will work on trying to cover both area how to use a specific VMware ThinApp update mechanism and when to use it.

VMware ThinApp can be deployed using two main methods streaming or locally deployed. The main difference between the two methods is where the ThinApp Package will be executed from. In the streaming case the ThinApp package will reside on a shared folder, where users access it remotely. In the other hand when locally deploying ThinApp packages the ThinApp package is copied to each of the end point devices and executed locally. Each method can be deployed in few different ways, & has its pros & cons. Some companies rather streaming, some rather locally installed, where others mix and match between the two. Below is a closer look on each of the two main VMware ThinApp Deployment Scenarios.

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In a previous post( The Magic of Application Virtualization with VMware ThinApp), I have shown how to create a virtualized Mozilla FireFox using VMware ThinApp and how easy the process is. If you still not sure what ThinApp is or you just want a quick idea about how it works, then please make sure you read my previous post first( The Magic of Application Virtualization with VMware ThinApp). Though if you want to get a more optimized package then there is more guide lines to follow. In this post, I will document what you need to do to create a good machine to capture & build the ThinApp packages on. Following this article will help you build better ThinApp packages faster and give you a bit more repeatable results.

I was about to head to bed till I saw this really funny VMware video on my facebook. I thought it was too funny to pass by it and not share it with my readers. Check out how the Cavemen want efficiency too! Move beyond traditional IT management solutions with VMware. Don’t miss this video and watch it and have a great laugh.

For those of you who already know ThinApp, this article might not be of a great interest though keep checking back as I am planning to write few more advance ThinApp articles in the upcoming days. If you have not heard of ThinApp or just heard a small whisper here and there about it or about Application Virtualization then keep reading. For some time I have thought everyone has heard of ThinApp, but after visiting few customers around as well talking to my friends at different large vendors I have discovered that ThinApp & Application Virtualization are still a hidden treasure.