vSphere 5 vReference card – Storage section

Forbes GuthrieNo Comments

Here’s a preview of the Storage section from the upcoming vSphere 5 vReference Card.

This is the last section I plan to include, so I hope to get a full beta of the card out in the next week or so.  Formatting can be onerous and usually takes longer than I expect, but it’s not too far off.  I laid it all out last week, but it takes up about 50% more real estate than 2 sides of A4/Letter paper provides. It calls for some clever typographical ingenuity to squeeze it in while still making it vaguely legible without a sub-atomic microscope.

I realize there are lots of VCP4s out there that only have until the end of February to upgrade, so I know folk are keen that I’m finished soon.  Until then you can still grab each section individually: Networking, Resources, Availability, VM, vCenter, Install, Hosts, and the Storage bit below.

To help expedite the process make sure you let me know if you spot anything which needs correcting on any of these sections (or anything you think I should add or remove). Anything still in grey are areas I’ve not been able to confirm are still valid with vSphere 5.

Just drop your comments below or catch me on twitter (@forbesguthrie).

Click on the images below to see it full size or you can view/print it as a PDF here.

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Does 2008 R2 Failover Clustering require a change to the Notify Switches policy?

Forbes Guthrie2 Comments

Background

VMware have recommended for quite some time that we stick to multicast when configuring NLB (MS’s Network Load Balancing) where possible:

VMware recommends that you use multicast mode, because unicast mode forces the physical switches on the LAN to broadcast all Network Load Balancing traffic to every machine on the LAN.

If you need to use unicast, then to prevent port flooding you should change the Port Group’s “Notify Switches” policy to No – the default being Yes.

Windows 2008 R2 Failover Clustering

According to this white paper from Microsoft,

Multicast functionality has been discontinued in Windows Server 2008 failover clustering, and cluster communications now use User Datagram Protocol (UDP) unicast.

So Microsoft clustering gurus, does this mean for Window 2008 R2 Failover Clusters we should also change the “Notify Switches” policy off? Is the recommended setting for MS NLB clustering now applicable to MS’s latest version of MSCS?

 

vSphere 5 vReference card – Host section

Forbes GuthrieNo Comments

Here’s a preview of the Host section for ESXi 5 from the upcoming vSphere 5 vReference Card.

I’d love to hear your feedback on the section’s content, as I’m likely to drop anything I can’t be sure is absolutely correct. Anything still in grey are areas I’ve not been able to confirm are still valid with vSphere 5.

Just drop your comments below or catch me on twitter (@forbesguthrie).

Click on the images below to see it full size or you can view/print it as a PDF here.

 

 

vSphere 5 vReference card – Install section

Forbes GuthrieNo Comments

Here’s a preview of the Install section for ESXi 5 from the upcoming vSphere 5 vReference Card. I’ve gone fairly heavy on the Image Builder and Auto Deploy areas. Probably much more than they deserve in relation to their importance, but they are new and generally less understood so I thought I’d start in verbose mode.  I can always pair it down before the section makes it into the card. Do you think it’s worthy information?

I’d love to hear your feedback on the section’s content, as I’m likely to drop anything I can’t be sure is absolutely correct. Anything still in grey are areas I’ve not been able to confirm are still valid with vSphere 5.

Just drop your comments below or catch me on twitter (@forbesguthrie).

View/print it as a PDF here.