Then Hyper-Vacate your datatacenter — stat!

Thanks to a new feature in VMware vSphere 4.1 to convert and import virtual machines — also known as V2V — from a Hyper-V host, Hyper-Vacating is now easier than ever.  From the What’s New in vSphere 4.1 document:

vCenter Converter Hyper-V Import. vCenter Converter allows users to point to a Hyper-V machine. Converter displays the virtual machines running on the Hyper-V system, and users can select a powered-off virtual machine to import to a VMware destination. See the vCenter Converter Installation and Administration Guide.

It has always been possible to import a Hyper-V VM — even before vSphere 4.1 — by simply treating it as a powered-on physical machine;  this is still a valid approach for those that prefer to do a hot conversion.  The new enhancement in 4.1 allows a cold conversion, which is worth considering to ensure a completely consistent V2V copy.

Downtime?

A cold conversion will require some downtime for the Hyper-V virtual machine.  As a vSphere administrator, you may not be familiar with the nuances of Hyper-V, but the good news is that users serviced by a Hyper-V infrastructure are not unfamiliar with downtime.  That’s because tasks like removing a snapshot require VMs to be powered off.  Therefore, do not be too concerned with this brief outage.

Visual Walk-Through

If you have installed vCenter Server with vCenter Converter and plug-in, a wizard will guide you through the entire process.  Take a look at some of the key steps:

Select Hyper-V as the source type:

Allow a Converter agent to be installed on the Hyper-V host:

Select a powered-off virtual machine from the listed inventory:

Customize the destination vSphere VM as needed.  You can convert to vSphere thin provisioning and make a number of other modifications, such as disabling the Hyper-V components inside the guest.

After the process begins, a summary can be found by right-clicking the task in the vSphere Client:

Hyper-Vacated!

Hopefully, you have already standardized on the best virtualization platform available, but if you find yourself needing to move Hyper-V VMs to vSphere, this new vCenter Converter capability could save the day.

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For those in a hurry, here is the executive summary: buy the book, it is an excellent practical guide and reference.

The cover promises Tips, How-Tos, and Best Practices for Working with VMware vSphere 4 — and the Maximum vSphere delivers on all counts.

vSphere accommodates a wide range of business requirements and therefore often provides various ways to meet those different needs.  Siebert uses a consistent approach throughout to clearly organize and present options faced when making decisions; storage technologies, networking hardware, monitoring tools, and many other areas are examined — clearly articulating advantages and disadvantages of one choice over another so readers can better understand broader implications.

One of the first things that I noticed, and liked, was the robust table of contents in addition to a useful index.  When using a reference like this, it is always better to be able to quickly locate applicable sections.

The overall flow of the book is great — but I suspect that most readers will skip around and focus on specific areas of interest.  Interestingly, Siebert did not start out with a long, drawn-out tutorial on installation in chapter one.  Instead, he chose to describe what is new in vSphere 4 — very useful for VI3 administrators looking to get up to speed quickly.  Don’t fret, installation and upgrade do receive ample coverage later in the book.

It was interesting to see a large section at the end devoted to building your own vSphere lab — very useful for experimenting and learning the features.  Siebert even discusses one of the very popular topics here at VCritical, running ESX on ESX.

Siebert covers the whole range of VMware vSphere, from ESX and ESXi to vCenter Server to vShield Zones and beyond.  My impression is that even the most virtualized vSphere administrator would learn a few things from Maximum vSphere.

Unfortunately, there is a serious error on page 31:  it’s Elastic Sky, not Electric Sky.  How that passed technical review, we may never know.

At well under 400 pages, Maximum vSphere is not huge by technology-book standards — but it is chock full of content, especially considering the conservative use of product screen shots.  Check it out.

Disclaimer: The publisher provided a review copy of the book, but did not influence the content of this article.

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Recently, I was working on a project that required a large number of VMs that I had used previously but were no longer registered on a VMware ESXi host — they were just waiting patiently on a SAN LUN for their day to come.

Using the vSphere Client to connect the VMFS datastore to a host was a snap.  However, I was not enthusiastic about the several dozen clicks that would have been needed to bring them all back into the inventory for use, so I came up with a simple PowerCLI command to do all the work.

I was so pleased with the power of PowerCLI that I had to share…

Register all virtual machines on a datastore

Connect to vCenter Server with a PowerCLI session and adjust the obvious placeholders to suit your environment:

$esxhost= Get-VMHost myhost.example.com
dir 'vmstores:\myvCenterServer@443\DC1\CX4-02-LUN12\*\*.vmx' |
 % {New-VM -Host $esxhost -VMFilePath $_.DatastoreFullPath}

A few moments later, all the VMs are correctly registered and ready for action.

Build a local hosts file with PowerCLI

Another issue I encountered was the lack of DNS for guest operating systems at an offsite lab.  There was no way to connect to the various VMs by name, only IP address — not my favorite approach.  Since vSphere has information about guest networking, I quickly generated a list of IP addresses and VM names in a format suitable for pasting into my local hosts file:

Get-VM | sort-object -Property Name |
 Get-VMGuest | % {$_.ipaddress[0] + "`t" + $_.VMName}

PowerCLI to the rescue again.  What are your favorite PowerCLI one-liners?

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4. VM Encapsulation

No matter how you slice it, VMware vSphere is simply the best virtualization platform available.  Let’s take a look at a few points to back up this claim.

Favorable Reviews

VMware vSphere 4.1 launched last month and has been very favorably reviewed by mainstream technical media:

• InfoWorld: VMware vSphere 4.1 keeps the virtualization crown
• eWeek: VMware vSphere 4.1 Features Large Capacity Cluster, VM Density

Gartner Magic Quadrant

Recently, Gartner, Inc. published the Magic Quadrant for x86 Server Virtualization Infrastructure and placed VMware in the Leaders Quadrant.  Please see the full report for details.

In-Depth Virtualization Platform Comparisons

If you find yourself in a situation where you need to clearly articulate your requirements for the advanced capabilities of VMware vSphere, have no fear — VMware provides very helpful material to guide users through concise platform comparisons.  From a Windows admin considering Hyper-V to upper management helpfully suggesting the “free” XenServer hypervisor, you should have no trouble explaining why the exclusive features found in vSphere are the only choice for building your private cloud.

All of this great material has been updated for vSphere 4.1:

• vSphere 4.1 Features and Benefits Comparison – Excellent matrix covering vSphere, Hyper-V, XenServer, and RHEV
• vSphere 4.1 Competitive Reviewer’s Guide – Comprehensive coverage of capabilities
• The VMware Advantages website – Perfect overview of the key advantages; links are easy to email around
• Why Choose VMware Whitepaper – Based on the material from the above website; easy to read and share

Another great technical resource to bookmark is the vSphere 4.1 link collection from Eric Siebert, purveyor of quality VMware information.

The Best is the Best

There is only one best and only one virtualization platform that offers all of the advanced capabilities of VMware vSphere.

Related posts:

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2. VMworld 2010 – TA8188: Competitive Platform Shootout
3. Book Review: Maximum vSphere
4. Hyper-Vacating Your Datacenter with vSphere 4.1

However, one limitation that some have discovered while using this lab-testing technique is the lack of ability to use snapshots with virtual ESX systems.  In fact, after taking a snapshot of a virtual ESX VM, you will see the system boot into the recovery shell like so:

Ouch.

Can we fix it?

I asked some super-smart engineers inside VMware about the issue, and of course they know all about it and how to make it work.

The solution is to enable an undocumented advanced configuration option on the physical ESX host like so:

In other words:

• Log into the console of the physical VMware ESX 4 host
• Run the following command: esxcfg-advcfg -s 1  /COW/PermitVmfsOnRedoHierarchy
• Verify the setting with the “get” flag: esxcfg-advcfg -g /COW/PermitVmfsOnRedoHierarchy

Do I even need to say that this stuff is not supported by VMware Global Support Services (GSS)?  Well, I just did.

Yes we can!

After executing that one command on your physical machine, take a snapshot and boot up your virtual ESX:

Everything works just like you need it to now — you can even create a snapshot hierarchy:

Now what?

Were you constrained by the lack of virtual ESX snapshots?  What interesting things will you use this for?

Related posts:

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2. VMware vSphere 4 has a Snapshot Alarm
3. Hyper-V snapshots: not for production
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Thank you for supporting VCritical in the latest round of vSphere-land top virtualization blogs from Eric Siebert.

I am very pleased to be voted into the #12 slot among a huge selection of talented professionals, moving up one notch from my previous position at lucky #13.

The message is clear — I will continue writing about VMware and competitive topics and I very much appreciate your ongoing support!

Best regards,

Eric

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In my HP BladeSystem c7000 enclosure with BL460 G6 (Nehalem) blades, the SD slot is easily exposed by sliding each blade out of the chassis:

Once the SD flash card is in place, it is trivial to install VMware ESXi:

You may also be interested in articles from Rick Scherer and TechHead on this topic.

Hyper-V on Flash?

Sure, Hyper-V Server — but not Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V — supports boot-from-flash when purchased from a server OEM, but to the best of my knowledge there are no vendors shipping such configurations at this time.  Note that Microsoft recommends a 16GB flash drive for Hyper-V Server deployment (compared to a slender 1GB for ESXi 4), but a PlayStation Portable is an acceptable substitute in a pinch.

Motivation

Two great reasons for running ESXi from flash:

• Eliminate the need for local disks — lower power and cooling requirements
• Provide dual-boot capabilities in a lab environment

Why would you run VMware ESXi from flash?

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From What’s New in VMware vSphere 4.0:

Enhanced ESX Error Reporting — vSphere 4.0 gives you the ability to report per-host network, storage and VMFS issues to the vSphere Client in the Events tab. Each error event also provides a link to a specific Knowledge Base article that explains the event and provides detailed remediation steps to resolve the error. vSphere 4.0 also has the ability to set specific alarms for such events, with the help of the Events and Alarms feature. See vSphere Basic System Administration.

I experienced the feature firsthand recently while reconfiguring some physical switches in my lab, causing the following event:

Clicking the link took me to KB 1009542 with much more specific detail about the warning.

Very nice enhancement.

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4. Book Review: Maximum vSphere

VMware VI and vSphere SDK: Managing the VMware Infrastructure and vSphere by Steve Jin is a new book that offers something for a variety of VMware techies.

Steve Jin is the creator of the VI Java API, an open-source alternative to the official VMware SDK that overcomes some of the challenges of the native Web Services interface.  The primary advantage of the VI Java API is improved productivity due to a serious reduction in code — up to 70 percent.  Plus, it gives developers object-oriented programming and compile-time type checking not offered in Web Services.  But don’t mistake this API for an performance-degrading wrapper — it actually performs better than the two official VMware Java SDKs!

Even for non-developer types, it is quite easy to kick the tires — just download the Eclipse IDE for Java, the VI Java API, some sample code like PrintInventory.java, and fire it up.  This tutorial is helpful to get the project set up correctly.

As for the VI SDK, system administrators do not need to even read a line of code to benefit from this book.  Taking time to understand the ways in which various components interact and function will improve the overall understanding of a VMware vSphere environment — not to mention troubleshooting methodologies.

On the other hand, those managing VMware vSphere with the PowerCLI may encounter limitations from time to time that necessitate interacting with the SDK instead of the excellent PowerShell cmdlets.  Doing so is not for the faint of heart — LucD recently elucidated this process.  Therefore, even if you never intend to write a single line of VI Java API code, gaining a better appreciation of the VI SDK may just help you with your PowerCLI scripts.

If you have made VMware part of your career, it makes sense to consider this one for your bookshelf.  Also check out Duncan Epping’s review.

Disclaimer: The publisher provided a review copy of the book, but did not influence the content of this article.

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Top 6 posts — by page views

1. VMware ESX 4 can even virtualize itself — still the #1 Google result for “ESX 4″
2. Create ESXi 4 USB flash drives with Workstation
3. Yes, NIC teaming is not unsupported
4. Hands off that CSV!
5. The VMware ESXi 4 64MB Hypervisor Challenge
6. Hyper-V Linux Smokescreen

Top 6 posts — by reader comments

1. Hands off that CSV!
2. VMware ESX 4 can even virtualize itself
3. Layers and Layers of FUD
4. Microsoft tries deception, gets caught
5. SCVMM/PRO Complexity: High
6. Live Migration “significantly more complicated”

As I was pulling together these stats, I was not all that surprised to find that the more competitive posts tend to be the ones with the most comments.  The how-to posts ranked higher by page view — because they are linked to by many others around the blogosphere.

My sincere thanks go out to all of the readers, commentators, and fellow virtualization bloggers.

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