To install vcb follow the instructions on this link.

The first time I came in contact with vcb I created some batch files to make vcb snapshots. I encountered all kind of problems. Snapshots that vcb didn’t remove. unexpected errors no vss support and some more issues.

To overcome some of these problems I created a vbs script vcbBackup.vbs. The full howto is comming soon for now only the code. Read more…

We already posted a solution. This is the official unofficial unsupported VMware KB

• You cannot launch the vSphere Client
• If you install the vSphere Client in Windows 7 or Windows 2008 R2 and try to connect to the vSphere server, you see the errors:
  • Error parsing the server "<servername>" "clients.xml" file.
  • The type initializer for VirtualInfrastructure.Utils.HttpWebRequestProxy’ threw an exception.

The vSphere Client is not currently supported in Windows 7 or Windows 2008 R2 and it does not run in Compatibility Mode.

This issue may occur because of the .NET loading mechanism change in Windows 2008 R2 and Windows 7.

There are 2 possible workarounds. Perform one of these options:

• Install a Windows XP virtual machine in Windows 7 or Windows 2008 R2 using Windows XP Mode.
• Bypass the normal .NET Framework loading mechanism.
  Warning: This workaround is unsupported.
  To bypass the normal .NET Framework loading mechanism:

1. Download the file system.dll. This file is typically located in  %SystemRoot%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\ directory of a non-Windows 7 or Windows 2008 R2 machine with .NET v3.5 SP1 installed.

2. Copy the file to C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\Infrastructure\Virtual Infrastructure Client\Launcher\lib.
Note: If the lib directory does not exist, create it.

3. Open VpxClient.exe.config in a text editor. The file is located at C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\Infrastructure\Virtual Infrastructure Client\Launcher.

4. Add the following three lines to VpxClient.exe.config, just before </configuration>:
<runtime>
<developmentMode developerInstallation="true"/>
</runtime>

5. From Windows 2008 R2 or Windows 7 System Properties, click the Advanced tab > Environment Variables.

6. Create a new System variable called DEVPATH and assign the value:
C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\Infrastructure\Virtual Infrastructure Client\Launcher\Lib
Note: For 32bit operating systems, replace Program Files (x86)with Program Files.
You can now launch vSphere Client from a Windows 7 or Windows 2008 R2 machine. You may have to right-click on the vSphere Client icon and choose Run as administrator.

vSphere 4.0 introduces a new para-virtualized network device – VMXNET3.  We recently published a paper demonstrating its performance characteristics, compared to that of enhanced VMXNET2 (the previous generation of high performance virtual network device from VMware).

Some highlights of this paper are:

(1) Throughput gains of up to 92% for 10G TCP/IPv4 Rx workloads with large socket buffer, which greatly improves bulk data transfer performance in a data center environment.

(2) Dramatic gains across all configurations of IPv6 traffic, with significant CPU usage reduction and throughput improvement over enhanced VMXNET2.
In a nutshell, VMXNET3 offers performance on par with or better than its predecessors on both Windows and Linux guests. Both the driver and the device have been highly tuned to perform better on modern systems.  Furthermore, VMXNET3 introduces new features and enhancements, such as TSO6 and RSS. TSO6 makes it especially useful for users deploying applications that deal with IPv6 traffic, while RSS is helpful for deployments requiring high scalability.  Moving forward, to keep pace with an ever-increasing demand for network bandwidth, we recommend customers migrate to VMXNET3.
For more details, please read our full paper from here.

Performance problems can arise in any computing environment. In a virtualized computing environment performance problems can arise due to new and often subtle interactions occurring in the shared infrastructure. Uncovering the causes of those problems requires an understanding of the available performance metrics and their relationship to underlying configuration issues.

A new guide covering performance troubleshooting for VMware vSphere 4, including ESX 4.0 hosts, is now available. This document uses a guided approach to lead the reader through the observable manifestations of complex hardware/software interactions in order to identify specific performance problems. For each problem covered, it includes a discussion of the possible root-causes and solutions. Topics covered include performance problems arising from issues in the CPU, memory, storage, and network subsystems, as well as in the VM and ESX host configuration.

The document is available on the VMware Performance Community.

vSphere has a new feature called Fault Tolerance that allows for a VM to be running in vLockstep on two physical servers at the same time.  In the event of a failure of the primary VM, the secondary VM will immediately take over with no downtime for the VM.  There is a great whitepaper that covers FT architecture and performance.  There have also been a couple of blog posts on VROOM! recently that cover FT performance as well.  One uses VMmark to show how FT has excellent performance in a heavily loaded multi workload environment.  The other blog post shows how an Exchange VM maintains excellent performance while supporting 2000 users with FT enabled.

FT currently requires that 1vCPU VMs be used.  This presents a challenge for some applications that have traditionally been run in 2vCPU VM configurations.  At the same time, new processors have features that provide much higher performance than in the past.  When combined with the performance enhancements of ESX 4, it is now possible to get much better performance per core. 

Read more…

• Converter 4.0 boot cd is missing
• Unable to perform a cold clone with Converter 4.0.

There is no boot CD for Converter 4.0 and it does not support cold cloning.

To perform a cold clone you must:

• Use Converter 3.0.x Standalone Enterprise Edition from http://www.vmware.com/download/download.do?downloadGroup=CONVERTER3.
• Use the VMware vCenter Converter Boot CD for vCenter Server. The most recent version is at http://www.vmware.com/download/download.do?downloadGroup=VC250U4.

Recently we published a whitepaper describing the VMware Virtual Machine Monitor (VMM) execution modes in vSphere 4.0. The VMM may choose hardware support for virtualization whenever it’s available or may choose software techniques for virtualization when hardware support is unavailable or not enabled on the underlying platform. The method chosen by the VMM for virtualizing the x86 CPU and MMU is known as the "monitor mode".

This paper attempts to familiarize our customers with default monitor modes chosen by the VMware VMM for many popular guests running on modern x86 CPUs. Most workloads perform well under these default settings. In some cases the user may want to override the default monitor mode. We provide a few examples in which the user may observe performance benefits in overriding the default monitor modes and two ways by which the user can override the defaults.

The default monitor mode chosen by the VMM for a particular guest depends on the available (or enabled) hardware features on the underlying platform and the guest OS performance in that mode. The difference in the availability of virtualization support on modern x86 CPUs and the guest OS performance when using those features (or when using software techniques when those features are unavailable) leads to a complex problem of choosing the appropriate monitor mode for a given guest on a given x86 CPU.  For more details please download and read our full paper from here.

Symptoms

• If you configure VMware High Availability (HA) in VirtualCenter 2.5, you may see the message:
   
• This message does not appear to cause any failures.

Resolution

This message occurs with ESX 3.5/4 and vCenter 2.5/4. It indicates that the Service Console does not have network redundancy.

This message can be safely ignored.

You can, however, prevent this message by:

Read more…

This article provides steps which may be useful when upgrading to ESX 4.0 and vCenter 4.0.

Note: This article assumes that you have read the vSphere Upgrade Guide. This upgrade guide contains definitive information. If there is a discrepancy between the guide and this article, assume that the guide is correct.

Note: Read the VMware vSphere 4.0 Release Notes for known installation issues.

Read more…