ESX 3.5 patch 10 – what's that?

Forbes GuthrieNo Comments

According to the vSphere 4.0 release notes (http://www.vmware.com/support/vsphere4/doc/vsp_esx40_vc40_rel_notes.html )

vCenter Server 4.0 becomes unresponsive in large environments if managing ESX Server 3.5 hosts prior to ESX 3.5 patch 10
vCenter Server 4.0 can become unresponsive in large environments after 30 days if it manages any ESX Server 3.5 hosts prior to ESX Server 3.5 patch 10.
Workaround: Upgrade to ESX Server 3.5 Update 4 if you are running ESX Server 3.5 with vCenter Server 4.0.

What exactly is “patch 10”?   How do you know what build level qualifies?  Is there a single patch that can be applied?

If you upgrade to vCenter 4 and things become unresponsive after 30 days, patching all your disparate ESX servers isn’t going to be something that most large organizations can do quickly.  I’d say this is an important one.

I posed the question to my local SE, and several VMware contacts I have, but no-one seems to know.  Can anyone out there on the tubes clarify this one?

Welcome to vReference

Forbes GuthrieNo Comments

I’ve moved. vmreference.com is so old school.  I’ve decided to “keep up with the Joneses”, and become hip with the new vReference moniker.  After VMware decided to rename everything (again), I thought it might be a good idea to go with the flow.
It was also a good chance to update my website.  Hopefully I haven’t single handedly broken those interwebz tubes, but let me know if any of the links haven’t come across properly.  I’ll keep the old URL, and permanently forward the DNS entry in the next couple of days, but please update your blogrolls and any links to my site or the ESX3 reference card.  The new RSS feed is simply:

http://feeds2.feedburner.com/vreference

I’m currently working my way through all the vSphere4 documentation, and hope to have the vReference reference card for version 4 ready in the coming weeks.  I plan to create a brand new one, and maintain them both separately.  In the meantime, you might want to check out my growing vSphere4 notes .

I’m always looking for feedback, so if you have any, pop over here and let me know.

I for one welcome our new vReference overlords!

Free vSphere4 documentation notes

Forbes Guthrie1 Comment

You’ll be glad to hear that I’m in the process of collating information for a new vSphere4 reference card. I hope to have the first draft out in a only few weeks.

As part of that effort, I’ve been trawling through all the new GA ESX4 documentation. I thought I’d offer my condensed notes up as a free download in the meantime. These notes aren’t meant to be comprehensive, or for a beginner; just my own personal notes. They’re snippets I found interesting while reviewing the official VMware documentation, either because:

  • They were new to ESX4
  • They were new to me
  • I thought they might be useful for the next reference card
  • I wanted reinforcement in that area

However, I think for anyone who is familiar with ESX3 and perhaps a VCP, that it should bring you up to speed fairly quickly. The VMware documentation is about 1800 pages. These notes aren’t complete yet (I’ll keep adding to it over the coming weeks – so check back for more), but so far I’ve covered about half of the documentation in only 14 pages of notes.

I hope they’re useful to you as well: vSphere4 Documentation Notes Get the latest notes here

Hidden GUI disk policy

Forbes Guthrie2 Comments

Whilst reviewing the new ESX4 Web Admin Guide last night, I came across a “new feature”.  If you log into a ESX4 WebAccess session and add a new disk to a VM, you have the option to change the “Write caching” policy from the GUI.  This option isn’t available from the vClient view.

ESX4 disk policy

After a bit of investigation, if you go with the “Optimize for Safety” option (the default), it adds the line scsi0:1.writeThrough = “TRUE” in the vmx file.  If you select the “Optimize for Performance”, then it omits this line.  Interestingly if you use the vClient to add a disk, it doesn’t add this line.

This means that by default, adding a disk via ESX4 webAccess produces different results than doing it via the vClient. I suspect this is an option which was removed from the vClient, but they forgot to remove it from the webAccess.