SNMP trap provides a very useful way to monitor vSphere. You can use either GUI or vSphere API to configure up to 4 trap receivers. With that I can use alarm to monitor events or state changes.
If you use vSphere API to add SNMP receivers, you will need the OptionManager managed object. The related options you want to set are: snmp.receiver.1.name, snmp.receiver.1.port, snmp.receiver.1.community, snmp.receiver.1.enabled. There are 3 more sets with similar names but different numbers (2, 3, 4). Read more... (459 words, estimated 1:50 mins reading time)
After playing with the vCenter appliance simulator feature documented by William, I got into a show stopper that vCenter service (VPXD) could not be started. I don’t think it’s related to the simulator feature at all. My guess is that it’s caused by a sudden power off of the virtual machine but didn’t try to reproduce the problem that way – I care more to fix it than anything else. Read more... (419 words, estimated 1:41 mins reading time)
While reading articles about Microsoft Hyper-V, I found that Hyper-V seemed to have different states for virtual machines from VMware vSphere. The virtual machine in Hyper-V is represented by the Msvm_ComputerSystem class. If you are familiar with VMware vSphere, you know the equivalent in vSphere is VirtualMachine. At first sight, the Hyper-V APIs may not look straight-forward. The Hyper-V APIs is actually based on Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI), which is essentially CIM from DMTF. Read more... (519 words, estimated 2:05 mins reading time)
I just took three day Cisco Nexus 1000V training before Christmas. It’s a pretty good experience to play with the commands in the VSM appliance although I am still not quite familiar with these commands yet. Nevertheless, I managed to run through all the 9 labs thanks to the online lab that I could access even after class. To help myself to remember what I did, I listed a few commands that often needed in managing Nexus 1000V. Read more... (1110 words, estimated 4:26 mins reading time)
In my previous article, I introduced the Remote Desktop Connection Manager. It’s highly recommended to use it over the virtual machine console which all goes through the ESXi management IP therefore is not good for performance especially when there are many concurrent connections to virtual machines running on a same physical host.
Even if you are convinced on connecting to virtual machines directly, you will find it’s not convenient to add many virtual machines to the Remote Desktop Connection Manager. That is why I decided to write a small tool to automate it. Read more... (402 words, 2 images, estimated 1:36 mins reading time)
One of the key new features in vSphere 5.1 is the Single Sign On. Because it’s new and also complicated, I’ve heard it’s not easy to get it right the first time. Experts recommend that you should play with it in a test or staging environment before upgrading your production environment. Read more... (791 words, estimated 3:10 mins reading time)
I recently started to use the new Flex based vSphere Web Client while working on the open source vijava to support vSphere 5.1. Overall I like the look and feel, and particularly the extensibility story around the new architecture. However, I am not impressed by the performance – I saw way more “loading…” and clock cursor than I expected. Technically, I don’t think that is the direction VMware wants to bet on as the primary user interface for its flagship product vSphere. Read more... (1084 words, estimated 4:20 mins reading time)
During the Hadoop Summit 2012 last month, I learned the release of the open source (Apache license) Serengeti project from VMware. The week after, I downloaded the OVA file from VMware site, and gave my first try with a development environment after browsing through the user guide which introduces a fairly easy process to get a Hadoop cluster to run on vSphere. Read more... (573 words, 2 images, estimated 2:18 mins reading time)
Recently I got several questions and even a bug on supporting the next release of vSphere in the open source VI Java API. The questions are mostly from VMware partners who have early access of the private beta of next release of vSphere and want to ship their own products at the same time of vSphere GA. I figure more partners may have the same question, therefore decide to answer it all here with a possible work around. Read more... (480 words, estimated 1:55 mins reading time)
While working at VMware, I always wondered what Cisco Nexus 1000V looked like from VMware vSphere API. Because I didn’t have access to such a system, I had no way to investigate further. This remained a myth to me until I joined VCE where I found many Vblock systems with Cisco Nexus 1000V as part of standard configuration.
Within VMware vSphere API, there are two managed object types defined related to distributed virtual switch: DistributedVirtualSwitch, and VmwareDistributedVirtualSwitch. As you can guess, the latter type is a subtype of the first one. Read more... (477 words, estimated 1:54 mins reading time)
This is a wrap-up post of recent series on vSphere guest operating system management APIs. If you missed them, here are a few links to related posts: [Note: these are not related to the vSphere Guest API.] Read more... (386 words, estimated 1:33 mins reading time)
My last post explained how to download file from a guest operating system. Naturally this post is about how to upload file. After a quick sample code, I will discuss how to extend the capability of existing APIs that run program inside guest operating system. My next post will wrap up this series of guest related APIs in vSphere API.
Let’s take a look at a sample code: (To run it, first check out the simple prerequisites in a previous post) Read more... (427 words, estimated 1:42 mins reading time)
In my last few posts I discussed how to use the Guest Operating System Management API to run program, set/read environment variables. From this post, I will talk about how to move files to and from a Guest Operating System, and advanced features like moving whole directory only implemented in the Guest Operating System Management API. Read more... (558 words, estimated 2:14 mins reading time)
While reading my last post on reading environment variables from a guest operating system, you may wonder how to set environment variables. Don’t be disappointed if I tell you that there is NO direct support for setting an environment variable.
However, you have a workaround - use a command directly. Unlike reading variables, there is no standard ways to do it for different operating systems. You have to first figure out what type of operating system and then run different commands. For example, if you are targeting Windows family of operating systems, you simply run the following: Read more... (473 words, estimated 1:54 mins reading time)
My last post explained how to run, kill, and list programs in guest operating system on VMware. In that post, I mentioned that you can actually use the same API, GuestProgramDirector in particular, to read environment variables. I think the explanation is detailed enough for an implementation.
Still, a good sample provides more details. That is why I decided to write a quick sample just to show how to read environment variables. While trying the sample by myself, I did find more that I will discuss after the sample code. Read more... (353 words, estimated 1:25 mins reading time)
In my last article, I announced the Guest Operating System Management API for vSphere. As promised, I will write samples to show how to use the APIs. This post explains the GuestProgramDirector type with an example.
Let’s take a quick look at the following sample: Read more... (470 words, estimated 1:53 mins reading time)
Having created a sample to run a program in guest operating system using GuestProgramManager, I started to write a similar one to show how to use the GuestFileManager. Compared with the GuestProgramManager, the GuestFileManager is much more complicated to use. Read more... (244 words, estimated 59 secs reading time)
My former colleague Emad Benjamin at VMware has just published a new book on running Java on vSphere. When I was still there, I had the opportunity to review the Chapter 5 of his book.
As many of you know, Emad is a well-known expert on this subject who has spoken at various events like VMworld and helped numerous customers. You can buy his book at Amazon or from publisher directly. Remember to bring it to next year’s VMworld for his autograph.:-) Read more... (435 words, estimated 1:44 mins reading time)
Disclaimer: These are my personal thoughts, and strictly mine.
I missed the big launch of vSphere 5 on July 12 because I was having my vacation. When I came back, I found so many discussions around the vSphere 5 licensing change. It’s understandable that people don’t like changes, especially if the changes may have financial impacts.
Technically, the vRAM pooling simplifies the licensing model, as pointed out by Carter Shanklin. Money wise, Read more... (405 words, estimated 1:37 mins reading time)
If you are familiar with social media or research papers, you must know tagging already – You use keywords to label an entity, be it a blog post, an article, or something else, so that it can be easily searched out. So it’s a very useful feature in managing information.
In vSphere 4.0, VMware added tagging capabilities to the managed entities. According to the API reference of 4.1, it’s still an experimental feature and Read more... (413 words, 1 image, estimated 1:39 mins reading time)
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