Few days ago I read some information about memory tweaking on my PC / USB ESXi 4.0 whitebox. I got the this hardware configuration at home:

• Asus P6T SE (HCL)
• Intel Core I7 920 2.66 GHz, 4.8 GT/s, 4x 256kb, 8 MB, Boxed
• OCZ Gold 6 GB, PC3-12800, 1600 MHz, 8, Non-ECC, Kit Of 3 
• OCZ Fatal1ty 700 Watt, 20+24 Pins, 80 Plus Rating
• Network Intel® PRO/1000 PT Dual Port Server Adapter
• 2x Samsung SpinPoint F1 1 TB, 7200 Rpm, 32 MB, S-ATA II/300
• Antec Gamersgear Twelve Hundred Black
• XFX GeForce GTX 275
• Samsung SH-S222A DVD-writer 22x
• Storage ESXi: cheap NAS, nothing special, only too slow

The OCZ Gold 3 stripes with 2 GB each are default rated on 1066Mhz, but they can communicate with 1600Mhz (triple channel!). Time to change some settings in the bios of my Asus P6T SE motherboard.

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VMware Infrastructure 3 Support

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Some “blogging” colleagues posted their home lab configuration on the internet, see the list below:

• Simon S. – VMware ESX(i) Home Lab – Why, What and How? Considerations when building your own home lab
• Duncan – My Homelab
• Gabe – White box ESX home lab
• Jason Boche – EMC Celerra NS-120
• Bouke – v-Water: ESXi overclocked, watercooled
• Simon – vT.A.R.D.I.S – 10 ESXi node cluster on a trolley as demonstrated at London VMUG
• Dave – Whitebox HCL
• Eric’s articles on whiteboxes
• Maish – Install ESX on your Laptop – I had a Crazy Idea
• Ultimate ESX whitebox
• Iomega IX4-200D

I also give it a try and post my test lab on my blog.

I own 3 physical machines that I moved a few months ago to the datacenter at my work in Soest (the Netherlands). With a VPN tunnel from my Cisco ASA 5505 (at home) to the datacenter, my 50/50 mbit ISP, it feels like the systems are near me
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Latest Version: 2.8 | January 31, 2010

RVTools is a windows .NET 2.0 application which uses the VI SDK 2.5 to display information about your virtual machines and ESX hosts. Interacting with VirtualCenter 2.5, ESX 3.5, ESX3i or ESX4i RVTools is able to list information about cpu, memory, disks, nics, cd-rom, floppy drives, snapshots, VMware tools, ESX hosts, datastores, switches, ports and health checks. With RVTools you can disconnect the cd-rom or floppy drives from the virtual machines and RVTools is able to list the current version of the VMware Tools installed inside each virtual machine. and update them to the latest version

Whats new:

On vHost tab field "# VMs" now only powered on VMs are counted.

On vHost tab field "VMs per core" now only powered on VMs are counted.

On vHost tab field "vCPUs per core" now only powered on VMs are counted.

On vDatastore tab field "# VMs" now only calculated for VM’s which are powered on.

Health check "Number of running virtual CPUs per core" now only powered on VMs are counted.

Health check "Number of running VMs per datastore" now only powered on VMs are counted.

During Installation there will be an application event source created for RVTools. This to fix some security related problems.

Some users run into a timeout exception from the SDK Web server. The default web service timeout value is now changed to a higher value.

New fields on vHost tab: NTP Server(s), time zone information, Hyper Threading information (available and active), Boot time, DNS Servers, DHCP flag, Domain name and DNS Search order

New Health Check: Inconsistent folder names.

Improved exception handling on vDisk, vSwitch and vPort tab pages.

Download: here

Information: here

Source: here

VMware Infrastructure Management Installer | 29 Jan 2010 (Localized version)
VirtualCenter 2.5 Server Update 6 | 29 Jan 2010 | Build 227640
Virtual Infrastructure Client | 29 Jan 2010 | Build 227671

VMware Infrastructure Management Installer | 29 Jan 2010 (English only version)
VirtualCenter 2.5 Server Update 6 | 29 Jan 2010 | Build 227637
Virtual Infrastructure Client | 29 Jan 2010 | Build 227637

What’s New

Guest Operating Systems Customization Improvements

Customization support for the following guest operating systems has been added in this release:
For more complete information about supported guests included in this release, see the VMware Compatibility Guide.

• Windows 7 Enterprise (32-bit and 64-bit)
• Windows 7 Ultimate (32-bit and 64-bit)
• Windows 7 Professional (32-bit and 64-bit)
• Windows 7 Home Premium (32-bit and 64-bit)
• Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard Edition (64-bit)
• Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise Edition (64-bit)
• Windows Server 2008 R2 Datacenter Edition (64-bit)
• Windows Server 2008 R2 Web Server (64-bit)

Support for Firefox 3.x Browsers with VirtualCenter Web  Access

This release adds support for Firefox 3.x browsers with VirtualCenter Web Access. Firefox 3.x is not a supported browser for ESX Server 3.5 Update 5 Web Access with this release

Note: In many public documents, VMware ESX Server 3.5 is now known as VMware ESX 3.5, and VMware ESX Server 3i version 3.5 as VMware ESXi 3.5. These release notes continue to use the earlier convention to match the product interfaces and documentation. A future release will update the product names.

Source information: VMware 

Information: VMware vCenter Upgrade Guide

Carlo Costanzo from VMwareInfo.com has posted the following helpful article:

The SVGA II driver installed by VMware Tools doesn’t work with 2008 R2 or Windows 7.  Console sessions will randomly lockup.

http://communities.vmware.com/thread/218244?start=105&tstart=0

According to the thread there is a WDDM driver in U1 that you can install manually to fix the problem by browsing to -

“C:\Program Files\Common Files\VMware\Drivers\wddm_video“

A good one

You can monitor/check your ESX performance with esxtop, by generating a share to your vCenter Server and view the results with Perfmon you can follow this article.

Create Credentials:

1. I created a new share on my vCenter 2003 on E:\Logging\

2. I created a new user with username: Logging and password: Logging

3. On the new created folder I add the Logging account with full permissions to the security rights:

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Guillermo Musumeci has written a good tool for removing HP Proliant Support Pack, also a good tip @ Twitter: “Nice tool before p2v action” indeed, you must remove all driver software before you start p2v .

Download: Here

Xtravirt published vLogView 1.0.4.0, with this tool you can view/search easy in VMware ESX events, by connecting vCenter server you can add multiple hosts and download the logfiles for some troubleshooting.

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