How to Use the Inventory Snapshot for vSphere

 
How to Use the Inventory Snapshot for vSphere by VMware Labs..

Hi All,

After so many days i m updating my blog again which will be really helpful for those who wants to save there vcenter server settings or just planning to deploy there development vCenter enviroment to the Production. Using this tool you can snapshot your dev environment and recreate it on the production server, saving your time of createing cluster and resource pools adding host etc...

"inventory snapshot" is the latest tool from vmware labs is used for this. This free vSphere tool allows you to take a snapshot of an entire vCenter inventory and then reproduce that inventory on the same vCenter server or another vCenter server. Thus, you could reproduce a vCenter cluster on the same vCenter server or another server.


Downloading Inventory snapshot for vSphere.

To use the tool , you would need vSphere 4.1 (including vCenter). With your vSphere infrastructure already up and running, you can download the inventory snapshot here

Unzip the file and place it in an convenient location.

You'll also need the latest version of Java installed AND VMware's PowerCLI.

From the inventory snapshot ZIP file, you can run inventorysnaphsot.bat

Keep in mind that PowerCLI is required because inventory snapshot will be creating a PowerCLI script that you will be modifying and then using to recreate your entire vSphere infrastructure (or a piece of it) on the same or another server.


Using Inventory snapshot

Once you have met the requirements and have Inventory Snapshot ready to use run inventorySnapshot.bat to bring up the UI. In Linux and MacOS, you use the inventorySnapshot.sh shell script to bring up the graphical user interface.

You'll enter your vCenter hostname, username, password, and a path to store all the inventorysnapshot PowerCLI (PS1) snapshot files.

 

                                                  Figure 1 : This will run multiple PowerCLI scripts and brings up this screen:
 

                                                   Figure : 2


Notice the 4 tabs on the top. From here, you can review the actual code that will be used to recreate the vSphere inventory.

On the Host Info tab, you will configure the username and password for each ESXi server as passwords are not captured as part of the inventory snapshot.

                                                   Figure : 3

                                                    Figure 4

Finally, you'll create your PowerCLI script which will be used to recreate the inventory (and is modified based on the choices you selected here).

                                        Figure 5


That script should be called something like createInventory.PasswordModified.PS1. Now, connect to the new vCenter server where you want to recreate the captured inventory. With PowerCLI, you'll do this with Connect-VIServer.

Once connected, run the new script and you'll be able to recreate your vSphere infrastructure.

Now you can deploy your vcenter Environment in just some keystrokes.  :-) 

Change the SID and computer name of a virtual machine

Hi Guys,

Today i am going to introduce a new and interesting scenario, where all teh Vmware &  Wintel Administrator feel uncomfortable to work with Cloned Virtual MAchines.

Like  you clone a vm in minutes to test something, but find that the SID remains the same. A simple utility exists that enables you to quickly change the SID and the computer name of a cloned virtual machine.

1. The utility is called NewSID v4.10 and is available for download free of charge.

Figure A

2. Next, Run the command prompt and run the auto option (switch A) to create a new SID and rename the computer. It takes a few minutes for the process to complete and the computer to reboot (Figure B). When you log in to the computer again, the SID is brand new and the computer automatically renamed.

With the command newsid.exe /a [newcomputername]

Figure B

 Now Check your computer Information by going to computer properties. Vola.

you did the Change Of your computer name and SID.

Download Link : http://ituploads.com/microsoft/microsoft-sysinternals-new-sid-tool/

Description of vSphere, Vcenter Server, VMware Hypervisor & vSphere Client etc...

Hi guys,

I know you are lil bit confused why I written down all those name started from Latter “V”. Well Today I m going to differenciate all those things  so you will not confused next time, As I do when I started working with VMware… Hope this will be a interesting topic for you….So read Carefully….

1.     Vsphere 5.0 : This is a complete package of Vmware Hypervisor ESXi (OS) + vSphere Client(Management Point)..

    And other things you can understand better by below scenario....

Scenario : 1 - ESXi Server Ready..But no way to administer it. No Management Point..

Solution :Vmware vSphere Client installed and now it's ready to manage the ESX server and there VM.

Scenario : 2 - Multiple ESXi Server are ready but how to manage them along for Vmotion, Distributed Power Management (DPM), Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS), High Availability (HA) etc..

Solution : VMware vCenter Server installed on a single machine as a Linked point and now we can manage multiple ESXi Server via Vmware vSphere Client ...

If you find reading this helpful and cleared your doubts than comment and if still have any doubts den query me. will try out to clear your doubts more clearly...Thanks..

R

Physical to virtual Coversion (P2V)

Hi All,


Today we will learn " how to migrate from Physical to Virtual or P2V migration."As we know that in today's world, Virtualization is need of every organization.. As we know while using VMware we can run up to 255 virtual machine in a single box .. So everyone is now run there servers or machine's in a single box and migrating there existing machine's in to virtual.. So here i m telling you how to migrate from physical to virtual environment with ease....


First of all you need to download and install the VMware Converter . There are so many features of it .



VMware Converter is designed to do the following:

• convert local and remote physical servers with NO DOWNTIME
• convert many P2V conversions at the same time with a centralized console
• convert third party VMs to VMware. For example- MS Virtual PC, MS Virtual Server, Backup Exec LiveState, & Ghost.
• Clone and backup physical machines to virtual machines as part of a DR plan.

When VMware converter installed your vSphere is ready to migrate the Physical machine's in to Virtual.

Step 1 -Right click on vSphere Server  & click on  “Select import machine…”

Step 2 -Fill the target’s info like: IP, Username, Password, OS type.

Step 3- Leave the default click yes.”It will install vCenter converter agent temorarily on remore source machine and automatically uninstall it after successful completion of migration.”

Step 4- It will start deploying agent on Source machine..

Step 5- Select a ESXi server to receive new VM,  Select a shared datastore..

Step 6- Finish converting options then click next, we can increase volumes on target

Step 7 : - Now it will show you the configuration overview of the VM you are going to import.

Step 8 : -Status show in Tasks & events panel, wait for 100% complete.

Finally you got your physical machine in Virtual Box.. But dont forget to remove the physical machine from the network to avoid name or IP Confliction...Have a good day techies...

Introduction & Installation of VMware ESXi 5

         Vmware ESXi 5

qESXi Installation Requirements

qWhat Happened to ESX Server ?

qInstalling Vmware ESXi 5

qESXi Initial Configuration

qInstalling the vSphere Client

Vmware ESXi

•Runs directly on your hardware

•It is “the operating system”

•Talks directly to your hardware including NIC and storage controller

Requirements :

•64-Bit CPU with Inter VT or AMD-v enable

•2098 MB of RAM is the minimum but likely you’ll want 8GB+

• Gig-E or 10 Gig-Ethernet controller

What happened to ESX Server ? Is it obsolete..

• ESX Server ha been deprecated/discontinued

qRedhat Linux-based service console required more frequent updates and had a larger attack surface

qMaintaining two platforms didn’t make senses

qTook longer to install and boot

qUsed more resources

•  ESXi type-1 hypervisor

qThinner

qLess updates

qMore Secure

qStill has a very thin local CLI

qLoads and installs super-fast

qPerforms all the advanced features of ESX

Download by  Vmware Website..

 • You can download the Vmware vSphere & other tools from vmware official website. http://www.vmware.com/download

•ESXi Image (Including Vmware Tools )  Size : 321 MB

•ESXi Offline Bundle(Auto Deploy Feat.)  Size : 318 MB

•Vmware vCenter Server and Modules  Size :  2.2 GB

•Vmware vSphere Client  Size : 304 MB

Installation of VMware ESXi 5  Server

1. Burn ISO file to CD and put in drive

2.Make sure VT is enabled in sever BIOS

3.Boot the CD

4.Answer installation questions, reboot, and you are ready to use ESXi 5

5.Perform Initial configuration (Recommended)

6.Connect with vSphere Client  

                                  

                                          (Video : How to Install ESXi 5.0 Server)

You can take reference from this video..

Initial configuration  of VMware ESXi 5  Server

1. Login with F2 and root password

2.Configure IP address, SM, DG, DNS servers, Hostname, and domain

3.Add to your DNS name

4.Add to vCenter by DNS name

5.Optional:

•Configure NTP on the ESXi Server

•Connect ESXi server to SAN

•Cofigure lockdown mode

•Enable tech support mode and remote tech support mode

• Note : New in ESXi 5, the root password is set at installation time.

      (Video Added : How to configure ESXi after installation)

Installing the vSphere Client

•Available in either a windows version or a new web-based version

•Only Windows version offers 100% of features today

•vSphere Client is now downloaded from VMware .com

•vSphere Client is also found on vCEnter installation media

•Hardware requirements to run the Windows vSphere Client are low

•Windows version requires that you install the .NET client

•Web-based version requires that you install Adobe Flash

(Video Added : How to install vSphere Client)

Thanks for Watching .....                                   

Hypervisor & there types.

Hypervisor & There Types

Hi guys,

Today I m telling about “Hypervisor & types of Hypervisor”. Most of the times we get confused in hypervisor and Hyper-v(Microsoft Proprietry) and thinks that both are same. But it becomes easy to understand after reading this article. Hope it will be useful to you..

Hypervisor

A hypervisor is a thin virtualization platform that allows multiple operating systems to run on a computer at the same time.

The hypervisor manages the virtual machine’s access to physical resources.

Hypervisor’s are currently classified as two types:

Type -1 : Bare metal Hypervisor  (Ex: VMware ESX Server 4 )

Type -2 : Hosted Hypervisor  (Ex: Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2)

Type -1 

Bare Metal Hyper visor

Bare metal OS Virtualization platforms install the hypervisor directly on to the hardware.

·         VMware ESX

·         Microsoft Hyper-V

·         Citrix Xenserver

Type -2

Hosted Hypervisor

Host-based OS virtualization platforms require the hypervisor to run on the installation of an underlying host operating system like windows Server 2003, Linux or MACOSX.

·         Vmware Server, workstation & Fusion

·         Microsoft Virtual server 2005 R@, Virtual PC

·         Parallels

I hope guy you enjoy reading this..Thanks..

File types & its details used in VMWARE(ESX or ESXi).

Hi Guys,

Today i am shring an important information of files being used by Virtual Machines. And can play a important role to troubleshoot Virtual Machines using in ESX, ESXi, Virual Machine Workstation or Webserver etc...

VMware Virtual Machine Files

 VMDK files – VMDK files names as (Vmware Virtual Disk file) are the actual virtual hard drive for the virtual guest operation system . You can create dynamic or fixed virtual disks. With dynamic disks, the disks start small and grow as the disk inside the guest OS grows. With fixed disks, the virtual disk started out at the same (large) disk size decided initally while creating VM.

Log files – Log files are just that- a log of VM server activity for a single virtual server. Log files can be used only while doing any troubleshooting with a virtual machine.It can be more than 1 or 2 and modified each time while we Start, Suspend or reboot the Virtual Machine. 

VMX files – a VMX file is the primary configuration file for a virtual machine. When you create a new virtual machine and answer questions about the operating system, disk sizes, and networking, those answers are stored in this file. As you can see from the screenshot below, a VMX file is actually a simple text file that can be edited with Notepad.

VMEM – A VMEM file is a backup of the virtual machine’s paging file. It will only appear if the virtual machine is running, or if it has crashed.

VMSN files – these files are used for VMware snapshots . A VMSN file is used to store the exact state of the virtual machine when the snapshot was taken. Using this snapshot, you can then restore your machine to the previous state as when the snapshot was taken.

VMSD files -- A VMSD file stores information about Vmware snapshots metadata. You’ll notice that the names of these files match the names of the snapshots.

NVRAM files – These files are the BIOS for the virtual machine. The VM must know how many hard drives it has and other common BIOS settings. The NVRAM file is where that BIOS information is stored.

VMSS files - A VMSS file is Vmware Suspended virtual machine state and it is created while you suspend any Virtual machine . its stores the information of the running application while suspending the machine.

VMXF Files - A VMXF file is VMware team member file which creates when you create any Virtual machine and its shows the information about the client MetaData Attributes & VMID.

Thanks for reading...

ESX & ESXi : What's the Difference??

Hi Guys,


This is my first post in "Virtualization". Well i hope you all know that what is virtualization and how easily it is swallowing the scenario of "Single H/W Single OS". 


Here i am posting about the difference between  ESX & ESXi(Most comman Ques. in interviews) .The two most sucessful Bare Metal O/S of VMWARE.

1.      Service Console

ESX Server :  Having built-in virtual machine called the “service console”. This service console is a modified version of RHEL that is installed and running in every ESX Server. So most of the command line tools are similar to RHEL, Like there are number of ESX-related tools in the service console, most of which start with “esxcfg-“ and run by accessing the service console with SSH or via Putty.

ESXi Server : VMware ESXi Server has no service console, there is no SSH access to the server and there are no 3rd party applications that can be installed on the server. VMware came up with is the Remote Command line Interface (RCLI). This is an application which install as a VM and it is used to perform scheduled or ad hoc scripting on the VMware Infrastructure. ESXi RCLI is its own command line where ESX server service console scripting would be made up of most Linux utilities.


2. ESXi Server’s service console (firewall)


The ESXi security profile configuration consists of a couple of services that you can either enable or not enable with inbound access. Here is a comparison between the two




Esx-i Security profile having 2 services only.

VMware ESX Server (full) Security Profile


3 Vmware ESXi Server has a " Yellow Service Console" Screen
Instead of the full ESX Server “service console” boot (which looks like a Linux server booting), ESXi has a tiny “Direct Console User Interface (DCUI)”. Unofficially, I like to call this the “yellow firmware console”. In this ESXi console, all that you can configure are some very basic ESXi server options such as the root user password, network settings, and a couple other items. In the graphic below, you can see why I call it “yellow”:

4 VMware ESXi Server is extremely thin = fast installation + fast boot
Because the service console has been removed from ESXi, the footprint in memory has been reduced to 32MB. In comparison, the full ESX Server on disk footprint is about 2GB.
Because the hypervisor is so small, the installation happens in about 10 minutes (or so) and the server boots up in 1-2 minutes. This is quite different from the full ESX server installation and boot, both of which are longer