Yesterday the VMware community noticed that the direct ESX download links were removed from vSphere download page. When I checked the download page, the ESX link is not with the bundles but at the end of the page in its own section.
To my own curiosity, I wonder what the adoption ratio of these two hypervisors is today. As an engineer, I don’t have sales data in front of me. Even I have, I am sure if I can share it here.
Instead, I tried Read more... (234 words, 1 image, estimated 56 secs reading time)
VMware ESX and ESXi (a.k.a. vSphere Hypervisor) support the most guest operating systems among all the hypervisors. From the vSphere API, you can determine what operating system is installed on a virtual machine.
The related managed object is the VirtualMachine and there are multiple ways to Read more... (841 words, estimated 3:22 mins reading time)
With a vSphere Client, you can easily check the memory information of a host, either ESX or ESXi. To get that, you click on a host from the inventory tree, and then configuration tab. From the left side Hardware section of the configuration page, you click Memory and see a pane displaying the memory info as follows:
Note that if you have chosen a ESXi host, you won’t see the Service Console part because there is no console OS any more in ESXi. BTW, VMware wants you to migrate from ESX to ESXi and here is a link with helps.
This seemingly easy information is actually not easy to get. At first glance, it should be in the config property of HostSystem (managed object representing an ESX or ESXi). The config property has a sub property called systemResources, typed as HostSystemResourceInfo. But you will get null for the systemResources property most, if not all, of the time, as reported in VI Java API forum.
Interestingly enough, HostSystem has a systemResources property in peer to the config property as well. Luckily, it’s not null so you can dig down for something. Still, with 3 sub properties of complex types included, how to get the memory from the data object?
Here are the steps to collect and calculate the numbers: Read more... (455 words, 1 image, estimated 1:49 mins reading time)
VMware vSphere provides comprehensive performance metrics for your needs on performance monitoring and diagnosis. These stats are available through not only vSphere Client but also vSphere APIs. To understand the overall performance management concepts, you want to read this article: Fundamentals of vSphere Performance Management.
Once having the basics, you may wonder what types of stats are exposed. The following table summaries all the 315 performance counters available in vSphere 4.1. As you might have guessed, the information is generated using open source Sphere Java API and then imported into WordPress using WP-Table Reloaded. You can easily sort and search the table.
Update: Carter Shanklin and Luc Dekens have articles on performance counters as well: Read more... (3359 words, estimated 13:26 mins reading time)
If you manage a vSphere infrastructure, you may want to collect logs for troubleshooting, debugging, etc. You can get these logs from vSphere Client manually. You can also use vSphere API to collect them automatically.
The related managed object type in vSphere API is the DiagnosticManager. It helps to access logs from either a vCenter server or ESX server. It has no property but three methods:
1. queryDescriptions() provides a list of diagnostic files for a given system. It takes in an optional parameter host for specifying the HostSystem to extract information from. When you connect to the ESX server directly, the parameter isn’t needed. In vSphere Java API, you just pass in a null. When you connect to the vCenter server and the parameter isn’t specified, the method assumes you’re looking for vCenter logs. The return of this method is an array of DiagnosticManagerLogDescriptor data objects. The data object includes six properties: creator, fileName, format, info, key, and mimeType. Read more... (637 words, estimated 2:33 mins reading time)
Last week I answered a question in VMware Web Services SDK forum about asterisks in vSphere API reference. Underneath these asterisks comes a note saying “May not be present.” What does it really mean?
The asterisks normally show up after properties or sub-properties defined with a managed object. As it says, it’s possible that there is NO value to the property.
How can it be like this?
There are two major causes. First, it reflects the different implementations of ESX, ESXi and vCenter. As a quick example, you can find many of the properties in the “content” (type: ServiceContent) come with asterisks.
On a vCenter server, you will find values to almost all the properties, but not quite so for ESX/ESXi. But we have one API reference document, so it’s natural to mark whatever possible no value as “may not present.”
Secondly, it may be as such depending on the state of a managed object. For instance, a virtual machine can be a bare machine without an OS installed. Therefore, the “guest” property of the virtual machine could have no value at all.
What does it mean to you? Read more... (357 words, estimated 1:26 mins reading time)
According to a recent post by Duncan, there is an issue with password in ESX(i) 4.1. Only the first 8 characters of a password are taken and validated. A VMware KB article offered solutions to this issue. Read more... (210 words, estimated 50 secs reading time)
The following tables list all the managed object types in VI 3.5, vSphere 4 and 4.1. A short description is provided for each type explaining its major responsibilities.
Note that the managed object types are added in an incremental way. The types in older versions are still supported in newer versions. The complete types in a verion include ones in the correpsonding table plus all the ones in all older version tables.
Hope this post gives you a high level overview of functionalities of the vSphere APIs. Check out other blogs such as best practices (1-5, 6-10) on how to use them in general. And don’t forget my book which introduces them extensively with many read to use samples.
Table 1 Managed Object Types in VI 3.5 Read more... (1338 words, estimated 5:21 mins reading time)
Examining logs is an important way for debugging and troubleshooting a system. There are about ten log files in the ESX server for the hostd agent, which listens API calls, with the same naming pattern as hostd-?.log under the /var/log/vmware directory. The hostd-index file has the number of currently used log files.
The log entry has a similar format to that of VC server logs. Following is a quick sample:
[2008-06-21 07:24:40.769 ‘SOAP’ 64834480 trivia] Received soap request from []: checkForUpdates
The log level can be configured in the /etc/vmware/vpxa.cfg file. Just look for a section like the following. The possible levels are the same as those of VC logs: none, error, warning,info, verbose, or trivia, in an order from less to more detailed messages. Read more... (179 words, estimated 43 secs reading time)
Every time I google for VI(vSphere) Java API, I get something new. Here is yet another one I just found. It’s a blog article Easy VMware Development with VI Java API and Groovy by Aaron Sweemer. By reading his blog site, I came to know Aaron is actually my colleague at VMware working as a Sr. System Engineer in Cincinnati Ohio. He is the principal blogger at Virtual Insanity. Read more... (211 words, estimated 51 secs reading time)
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