Favorite question of interviewer : Difference between Esxi 4 & esxi5

Hi Guys,

A really interesting topic .. For which i was searched a lot . And ofcourse this is the most favourire question now a days in vmware interviewer and terror for candidates.. So i bring some points here .. Which will surely help you...

Features	vSphere 4.1	vSphere 5.0
Hypervisor	ESX & ESXi	Only ESXi
VMA	Yes VMA 4.1	Yes VMA 5
HA Agent	AAM Automatic Availability Manager	FDM Fault Domain Manager
HA Host Approach	Primary & Secondary	Master & Slave
HA Failure Detection	Management N/W	Management N/W and Storage communication
HA Log File	/etc/opt/vmware/AAM	/etc/opt/vmware/FDM
DNS Dependent on DNS	Yes	NO
Host UEFI boot support	NO	boot systems from hard drives, CD/DVD drives, or USB media
Storage DRS	Not Available	Yes
VM Affinity & Anti-Affinity	Available	Available
VMDK  Affinity & Anti-Affinity	Not Available	Available
Profile driven storage	Not Available	Available
VMFS version	VMFS-3	VMFS-5
VSphere Storage Appliance	Not Available	Available
Iscsi  Port Binding	Can be only done via Cli using ESXCLI	Configure dependent hardware iSCSI and software iSCSI adapters along with the network configurations and port binding in a single dialog  box using the vSphere Client.
Storage I/O control for NFS	Fiber Channel	Fiber Channel & NFS
Storage Vmotion Snapshot support	VM with Snapshot cannot be migrated using Storage vMotion	VM with Snapshot can be migrated using Storage vMotion
Swap to SSD	NO	Yes
Network I/O control	Yes	Yes with enhancement
ESXi firewall	Not Available	Yes
vCenter Linux Support	Not Available	vCenter Virtual Appliance
vSphere Full Client	Yes	Yes
vSphere Web Client	Yes	yes with lot of improvements
VM Hardware Version	7	8
Virtual CPU per VM	8 vCpu	32 vCpu
Virtual Machine RAM	255 GB	1 TB of vRAM
VM Swapfile size	255 GB	1 TB
Support for Client connected USB	Not Available	Yes
Non Hardware Accelerated 3D grpahics support	Not Available	Yes
UEFI Virtual BIOS	Not Available	Yes
VMware Tools Version	4.1	5
Mutlicore vCpu	Not Available	Yes  configure at VM setting
MAC OS Guest Support	Not Available	Apple Mac OS X Server 10.6
Smart card reader support for VM	Not Available	Yes
Auto Deploy	Not Available	Yes
Image Builder	Not Available	Yes
VM's per host	320	512
Max Logical Cpu per Host	160	160
RAM per Host	1 TB	2 TB
MAX RAM for Service Console	800 MB	Not Applicable (NO SC)
LUNS per Server	256	256
Metro Vmotion	Round-trip latencies of up to 5 milliseconds.	Round-trip latencies of up to 10 milliseconds. This provides better performance over long latency networks
Storage Vmotion	Moving VM Files using moving to using dirty block tracking	Moving VM Files using I/O mirroring with better enhancements
Virtual Distributed Switch	Yes	Yes with more enhancements like deeper view into virtual machine traffic through Netflow and enhances monitoring and troubleshooting capabilities through SPAN and LLDP
USB 3.0 Support	NO	Yes
Host Per vCenter	1000	1000
Powered on virtual machines  per vCenter Server	10000	10000
Vmkernel	64-bit	64-bit
Service Console	64-bit	Not Applicable (NO SC)

Comparison between VMFS3 & VMFS5

Comparison between VMFS3 & VMFS5

There are so many people who want to know what is this VMFS3 And VMFS5. First of All i will let you know what is this. So come on.

VMware VMFS (Virtual Machine File System) is VMware, Inc.'s cluster file system. It is used by VMware ESX/ ESXi Server.

•             VMFS version 3 is used by ESX Server v3.x and vSphere (4.x). Beginning from ESX 3 and VMFS3, virtual machine configuration files are stored in the VMFS partition by default. -- Officially named "VMware Virtual Machine File System"

•             VMFS version 5 is used by ESXi Server v5.x and vSphere (5.x). It introduced unified 1MB block-size (upgraded VMFS5 volumes will however inherit the VMFS3 block size value), and larger LUN-sizes than 2TB, but the maximum VMDK-file size remain at 2TB (minus 512 bytes, irrespective of the file‐system block size), same as VMFS3. Older versions of ESX/ESXi cannot read or write VMFS5 volumes. Beginning from ESXi 5.0 and VMFS5, virtual machine configuration files are stored in the VMFS5 partition by default.

VMFS3	VMFS5
Single Largest extent of 2TB less 512bytes	Single largest extent of 64TB
Uses MSDOS partition table	Uses GPT partition table
Supports 64TB Spanned Volume (32 extents x 2TB)	Supports 64TB Spanned Volume (32 extents with any size combination)
Different block size based on the datastore size (1MB/2MB/4MB/8MB)	Unified 1MB Block Size
Max size of RDM in virtual compatibility mode would be 2TB less 512bytes	Max size of RDM in virtual compatibility mode would be 2TB less 512bytes.
Max size of RDM in physical compatibility mode would be 2TB less 512bytes.	Max size of RDM in physical compatibility mode would be 64TB.

                    

How to bring ORPHAN Virtual Machine online.(Grayed out Virtual Machine.)

How to bring ORPHAN Virtual Machine online.(Grayed out Virtual Machine.)

Hi All,

Good day to you..

There are so many issues we seen while the Virtual machine becomes "Grayed Out" and inaccessible through vCenter or any other way . So many people still wonder to "how to bring it back in the previous condition" . I am sharing the process to make it easy, so you can use it and make your task easy..

Scenario : The virtual machine is grayed out and in vCenter server and (orphaned) started showing.

Orphaned Virtual Machine

 To bring it back online please follow these steps.

(Most Important  : Before doing this task you must note down the orphaned virtual machine Name, Host/Cluster Name, Resource pool if any, Datastore, Virtual machine folder path  in Specified datastore, as it will be required while adding them back to the vcenter. Also remove the orhaned virtual machine from inventory of the vcenter by clicking on " Remove from inventory" .  )

1. First of all select the Orphaned VM and find the Datastore & the folder of the virtual machine where it resides. In my example its "Datastore1"

2. Now go to the specified datastore by selecting  the configuration> Storage option on vcenter server or ESX (in case of stand alone host) .

3. "Right Click "  on the residing datastore and click on "Browse Datastore".

4. Go to the specified folder of orphaned virtual machine . And select the file which extension name will be  ".vmx" followed by the virtual machine name and select "right click > "Add to Inventory".

5. After Selection it, It will open "Add to Inventory" wizard . Now provide the Name of the original virtual machine, Vcentr name, ESX Host details, Resource pool, and it will finish the wizard with the summary details.

6 . Now you can verify all the details and check the virtual machine .. It will be back .. Mission Accomplished.

Have a good day techies. :)

Thanks for Reading...

Correction of Misaligned VM Disk

Hi All,

As we know in real IT world we need the speed and performance while accessing application and files . And  in world of virtual environment of servers we need this more, but there are some flaws come in to the picture while implementing 2003 server in virtual environment Here we will  discuss about the misaligned disk of VM servers and how to correct it...

What is VM Misaligned Disk.

When looking at performance problems traditionally storage is usually the first place many of us would look and for a good reason. In many of the environments these storage problems are caused by misaligned file systems. Why is that? Well fairly simple, misalignment causes overhead. Just look at this diagram:

If you look at the Guest OS and the Array, you will see that in order to read 1 Guest OS cluster the Array needs to read two chunks. With a single VM running on a datastore and your array the impact might not be severe but when you have dozens or hundreds running it will be substantial while it is completely unnecesarry.

How to correct VM Misalignment.

Before you begin:

Log into vCenter and Shut down the VM with misaligned disks.                                                         Rename the server to <server name-old>

  1.Start VMware vCenter Converter Standalone Client ver.5 with Run As administrator

  2.Select Convert Machine

   3. Select source type: VMware Infrastructure virtual machine

   Specify server connection information to vCenter server

 4.    Ignore Security Warning

 5.    Select VM with misaligned disks

6.    Select destination type: VMware Infrastructure virtual machine

Specify VMware Infrastructure server details for vCenter

 7.Ignore Security Warning

 8.  Enter the original server name as destination and put it in the correct folder

 

9. Select destination host and datastore.

NB! The datastore can not be the same as source

  10.  Edit Data to copy

11.      Data copy type: Select volumes to copy and click Advanced ->Destination Layout

 12.  Select Thin provisioning for all disks

Select correct datastore

Select Ignore page file and hibemation file

Select Create optimized partition layout

 13.   Verify and Click Finished to start

 14.     When the job  completed log into vCenter and verify that the new aligned VM is using the same network adapter and connected to the same network label as the original misaligned VM. If not, this has to be corrected before you can power on the new aligned VM.

 15.    Power on the new aligned VM and verify that all disk are aligned

From command prompt run: wmic partition get Index, Name, StartingOffset

Misaligned disk will have StartingOffset 32256

Aligned disk will have StartingOffset 32768 , 1048576 or amy other StartingOffset dividable with 4096

After you finish

When the customer has verified that the new aligned VM is ok, delete the original misaligned VM named <server name-old>.

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.  :-)