VMware Acronyms and Abbreviations

List of VMware acronyms and abbreviations

AAM	Automated Availability Manager
ADM	Application Discover Manager
APM	Application Performance Manager
BYOD	Bring Your Own Device
CB	Chargeback
CBM	Chargeback Manager
CBRC	Content Based Read Cache
CF	Cloud Foundry
CIM	Common Interface Model
CIQ	Capacity IQ
CIS	Cloud Infrastructure Suite
CSI	Clustering Services Infrastructure
DaaS	Desktop as a Service
DAS	Distributed Availability Service
DBaaS	Database as a Service
DD	Data Director
DPM	Distributed Power Management
DRS	Distributed Resources Scheduler
DVS	Distributed Virtual Switch
ERS	Enterprise Ready Server
ESX	Elastic Sky X
ESXi	Elastic Sky X Integrated
EUC	End User Computing
EVC	Enhanced vMotion Compatibility
EVDC	Elastic Virtual Data Center
FDM	Fault Domain Manager
FT	Fault Tolerance
GFE	GemFire Enterprise
GSX	Ground Storm X
HA	High Availability
HCL	Hardware Compatibility List
HoL	Hands-On Labs
IaaS	Infrastructure as a Service
IODM	I/O Device Management
MVP	VMware Mobile Virtualization Platform
NEE	Next-Generation Education Environment
NETIOC	Network I/O Control
NIOC	Network I/O Control
OVDC	Organization Virtual Data Center
P2V	Physical to Virtual
PaaS	Platform as a Service
PAE	Propero Application Environment
PDL	Permanent Device Loss
PSO	Professional Services Organisation
PVDC	Provider Virtual Data Center
S2	SpringSource
SaaS	Software as a Service
SDDC	Software Defined Data Center
SDRS	Storage Distributed Resource Scheduling
SI	Spring Integration
SIOC	Storage I/O Control
SM	Service Manager
SMP	Symmetrical Multi Processing
SQLF	SQLFire
SR-IOV	Single Root I/O Virtualization
SRM	Site Recovery Manager
STS	SpringSource Tool Suite
TAM	Technical Account Manager
V2V	Virtual to Virtual
VAAI	vStorage API for Array Integration
VADM	vCenter Application Discovery Manager
VC	Virtual Center
VCA4-DT	VMware Certified Associate 4 – Desktop
VCAC	vCloud Automation Center
VCAP	VMware Certified Advanced Professional
VCAP4-DCA	VMware Certified Advanced Professional 4 – Datacenter Administration
VCAP4-DCD	VMware Certified Advanced Professional 4 – Datacenter Design
VCAP5-DCA	VMware Certified Advanced Professional 5 – Datacenter Administration
VCAP5-DCD	VMware Certified Advanced Professional 5 – Datacenter Design
VCAP-CID	VMware Certified Advanced Professional – Cloud Infrastructure Design
VCAP-DTD	VMware Certified Advanced Professional – Desktop Design
VCAT	vCloud Architecture Toolkit
VCD	vCloud Director
VCDX	VMware Certified Design Expert
VCDX4-DV	VMware Certified Design Expert 4 – Datacenter Virtualiziation
VCDX5-DV	VMware Certified Design Expert 5 – Datacenter Virtualiziation
VCDX-DT	VMware Certified Design Expert – Desktop
VCIM	vCloud Integration Manager
VCLI	vSphere Command Line Interface
VCM	vCenter Configuration Manager
VCO	vCenter Orchestrator
VCOPS	vCenter Operations
VCP4-DT	VMware Certified Professional 4 – Desktop
VCP4-DV	VMware Certified Professional 4 – Datacenter Virtualization
VCP5-DT	VMware Certified Professional 5 – Desktop
VCP5-DV	VMware Certified Professional 5 – Datacenter Virtualization
vCSA	vCenter Server Appliance
VCSN	vCloud Security and Networking
VDC	Virtual Data Center
VDP	vSphere Data Protection
VDR	VMware Data Recovery
VDS	vNetwork Distributed Switch
VIM	Virtual Infrastructure Management
VIN	vCenter Infrastructure Navigator
VIX	Virtual Infrastructure eXtension
VM	Virtual Machine
VMA	vSphere Management Assistant
VMFS	Virtual Machine File System
VMRC	VMware Remote Console
VMS	vFabric Management Service
VMSA	VMware Security Advisory
VMTN	VMware Technology Network
VMW	VMware
VMX	Virtual Machine eXecutable
VPX	Virtual Provisioning X
VPXA	Virtual Provisioning X Agent
VPXD	Virtual Provisioning X Daemon
VR	vSphere Replication
VRM	vCloud Request Manager
VSA	vSphere Storage Appliance
VSM	VMware Service Manager
VSP	VMware Sales Professional
vswif	Virtual Switch Interface
VTSP	VMware Technical Sales Professional
VUM	vCenter Update Manager
VXLAN	Virtual Extensible Local Area Network

Recreating a missing virtual machine disk descriptor file

How to Recreate Missing VMWare Flat Files
If you ever run into a situation where you restart a VMWare virtual machine and lo and behold you get an error that the file cannot be found, and you look, and the vmdk is there but it has a –flat added to it, this blog may help you to recreate a lost virtual disk descriptor file (VMDK).

How to Tell When it’s Time to Recreate Descriptor FilesHow will you know if you need to recreate the descriptor file?  Well you may need to recreate that missing header/descriptor files if:

• The virtual machine disk file listed in the Data store Browser is your virtual machine’s flat file, and does not have an icon.
• When powering on a virtual machine, you see a File not found
• The disk descriptor file for the virtual machine’s disk does not exist or is corrupted.

As always, your first action would be to attempt to restore the missing descriptor file from backups if possible. If this is not possible, you will need to proceed with recreating the virtual machine disk descriptor file.

A Little Background
Each disk drive for a virtual machine consists of a pair of .vmdk files. One is a text file containing descriptive data about the virtual hard disk, and the second is the actual content of that disk.

For example, a virtual machine named testvm has one disk attached to it. This disk is comprised of a testvm.vmdk descriptor file of under 1 KB, and a 10 GB testvm-flat.vmdk flat file which contains virtual machine content.

Overview of the Steps that will be Performed to Recreate the Descriptor File:

• Identify the size of the flat file in bytes.
• Create a new blank virtual disk that is the same size as the original (Critical to assure proper disk geometry.)
  Rename the descriptor file of the newly-created disk to match the name of the original virtual disk.
• Modify the contents of the renamed descriptor file to reference the flat file.
• Remove the leftover temporary flat file of the newly-created disk, as it is not required.
• Now the details.

Detailed Steps:

To create a virtual machine disk:

• Log onto the terminal of the VMWare host using Putty or other terminal emulation software.
• Navigate to the directory that contains the virtual machine disk with the missing descriptor file using the following command: # cd /vmfs/volumes/vmfsvolume/dir
• Identify the type of SCSI controller the virtual disk is using. You can do this by examining the virtual machine configuration file (.vmx). You can download a copy of the .vmx file to your desktop using the data store browser and open using Notepad or similar text editor.
• The controller is identified by the line scsi#.virtualDev , where # is the controller number. There may be more than one controller and controller type attached to the virtual machine, such as lsisas1068 (which is the LSILogic SAS controller), lsilogic, or buslogic. The following example uses lsilogic:present = “true”
  scsi0.sharedBus = “none”
  scsi1.present = “true”
  scsi1.sharedBus = “virtual”
  scsi1.virtualDev = “lsilogic”

• Identify and write down the exact size of the -flat file using the command:# ls -l vmdisk0-flat.vmdk-rw——- 1 root root 4294967296 Aug 11 12:30 vmdisk0-flat.vmdk

You can use vmkfstools command to create a new virtual disk:

# vmkfstools -c 4294967296 -a lsilogic -d thin temp.vmdk

The command uses the following flags:

-c size (this is the size of the virtual disk.)

-a virtual_controller (Whether the virtual disk was configured to work with BusLogic, LSILogic (use for both lsilogic and lsilogic SAS), Paravirtual, or IDE.

HINT: Use lsilogic for virtual disk type “lsilogic” and “lsisas1068”

-d thin (This creates the disk in thin-provisioned format).

HINT: To save disk space, you should create the disk in thin-provisioned format using the flag –d for thin. The resulting flat file then consumes minimal amounts of space (1 MB) instead of immediately assuming the capacity specified with the -c switch. The only consequence to doing this however, is the descriptor file contains an extra line that must be manually removed before turning on the virtual machine.

The temp.vmdk and temp-flat.vmdk files are created as a result.

• Delete temp-flat.vmdk , as it is not needed. You can delete from browser or Run the following command:
• # rm -i temp-flat.vmdk
• Rename temp.vmdk to the name that is required to match the orphaned .flat file (vmdisk0.vmdk, in this example):# mv -i temp.vmdk vmdisk0.vmdk
• Edit the descriptor file using a text editor, you can download to your machine edit and copy it back to the Host, saving the original in case you make a mistake.
• Under the Extent Description section, change the name of the .flat file to match the orphaned .flat file you have. Shown below in red.
• Find and remove the line ddb.thinProvisioned = “1” if the original .vmdk was not a thin disk.
• If it was, retain this line, do not delete. Shown below in red. Make sure you save any changes.
  # Disk DescriptorFile
  version=1
  CID=fb183c20
  parentCID=ffffffff
  createType=”vmfs”# Extent description
  RW 8388608 VMFS “vmdisk0-flat.vmdk”# The Disk Data Base
  #DDBvirtualHWVersion = “4”
  ddb.geometry.cylinders = “522”
  ddb.geometry.heads = “255”
  ddb.geometry.sectors = “63”
  ddb.adapterType = “lsilogic”
  ddb.thinProvisioned = “1”

Upload File Back to Data Store.
The virtual machine is now ready to power on. Verify your changes before starting the virtual machine.

To check the disk chain for consistency, run this command against the disk descriptor file:
# vmkfstools -e filename.vmdk
For a complete chain, you see output similar to:
Disk chain is consistent

For a broken chain, you will see a summary of the snapshot chain and then an output similar to:
Disk chain is not consistent : The parent virtual disk has been modified since the child was created. The content ID of the parent virtual disk does not match the corresponding parent content ID in the child (18)

Your virtual machine should now be powered up and fully functional.

Graphical View  with Steps

First of all, we start by establishing an SSH connection to the host and browsing to the location of the VMs files:

(rather than delete the newdisk.vmdk for the purposes of this example, I have just renamed it to newdisk.vmdkold – the effect is the same)

Ok, so here we have a bunch of virtual machine files, including the virtual disk (newdisk-flat.vmdk), but no valid newdisk.vmdk file to go with it. To start we need to examine the .vmx file to see what type of scsi controller the disk was using, as we will need that information to recreate the descriptor file. Looking at the .vmx file, we can see the following:

We can see from the scsi0.virtualDev line that the disk is using the lsilogic controller. The next piece of information that we need is the exact size of the virtual disk file. We can get this by running ‘ls -l newdisk-flat.vmdk‘:

Armed with the scsi controller type and the disk size, we can now use vmkfstools to create a new disk and descriptor file by running ‘vmkfstools -c 4294967296 -a lsilogic -d thin temp.vmdk‘.

As a result of running that command two new files have been created – temp.vmdk and temp-flat.vmdk. We’re only interested in the descriptor file, so we can delete the disk file by running ‘rm temp-flat.vmdk‘.

The next step is to rename temp.vmdk to newdisk.vmdk, in order for it to match our original disk. We can do this by running ‘mv temp.vmdk newdisk.vmdk‘.

The final part of the process is to edit the newly created newdisk.vmdk file. When we first open the file it looks like this:

We need to change the line referencing the flat vmdk file as follows:

We should now be able to power on the virtual machine!

vSphere HTML5 Web Client #h5client

vSphere HTML5 Web Client #h5client

Today VMware made a new Fling available: vSphere HTML5 Web Client. This is what we all were waiting for! A HTML5 bast Web Client. No Flash! I’ve deployed it in my Homelab to see what it already can do. Of course, it does not have the functionality of the Flash based Web Client, but the performance is great and the design looks nice. The new Web Client is available for both, the vCenter Server Appliance, and the Windows based vCenter

Download: vSphere HTML5 Web Client

Installation can be done in 10 minutes and is very simple. All steps are explained in detail here.

1. Download Appliance
2. Activate SSH and bash Shell on the vCSA
3. Deploy the ova
4. Run a configure Script

The HTML5 Web Client runs on an external Virtual Appliance. The performance is very nice. Here are some impressions:

Home Screen

Virtual Machine Settings

Interactive search

Performance charts

Alarm notifications

 

VMware Virtual Volumes (VVols) - vSphere 6.0

Virtual Volumes (VVols) is one the new feature addition with vSphere 6.0. Virtual volumes are encapsulations of virtual machine files, virtual disks, and their derivatives. Virtual volumes are stored natively inside a storage system that is connected through Ethernet or SAN. They are exported as objects by a compliant storage system and are managed entirely by hardware on the storage side. Typically, a unique GUID identifies a virtual volume.

Virtual volumes are not preprovisioned, but created automatically when you perform virtual machine management operations. These operations include a VM creation, cloning, and snapshotting. ESXi and vCenter Server associate one or more virtual volumes to a virtual machine.

Currently all storage is LUN-centric or volume-centric, especially when it comes to snapshots, clones and replication. VVols makes it storage VM-centric. With VVols, most of the data operations can be offloaded to the storage arrays. VVols goes much further and makes storage arrays aware of individual VMDK files.Virtual volumes encapsulate virtual disks and other virtual machine files as natively stored the files on the storage system.

Note: For every VM a single VVol is created to replace the VM directory in today’s system.

·         1 config VVol  represents a small directory that contains metadata files for a virtual machine. The files include a .vmx file, descriptor files for virtual disks, log files, and so forth.

·         1 VVol for every virtual disk (.VMDK)

·         1 VVol for swap, if needed

·         1 VVol per disk snapshot and 1 per memory snapshot

Additional virtual volumes can be created for other virtual machine components and virtual disk derivatives, such as clones, snapshots, and replicas.

Components of VMware Virtual Volumes (VVols):

There are 3 important objects in particular related to Virtual Volumes(VVols) are the storage provider, the protocol endpoint and the storage container. Let’s discuss about each of the 3 items:

Storage Providers:

·         A VVols storage provider, also called a VASA provider. Storage provider is implemented through VMware APIs for Storage Awareness (VASA) and is used to manage all aspects of VVols storage.

·         Storage provider delivers information from the underlying storage,so that storage container capabilities can appear in vCenter Server and the vSphere Web Client.

·         Vendors are responsible for supplying storage providers that can integrate with vSphere and provide support to VVols.

Storage Container:

·         VVols uses a storage container, which is a pool of raw storage capacity or an aggregation of storage capabilities that a storage system can provide to virtual volumes.

·         The storage container logically groups virtual volumes based on management and administrative needs. For example, the storage container can contain all virtual volumes created for a tenant in a multitenant deployment, or a department in an enterprise deployment. Each storage container serves as a virtual volume store and virtual volumes are allocated out of the storage container capacity.

·         Storage administrator on the storage side defines storage containers. The number of storage containers and their capacity depend on a vendor-specific implementation, but at least one container for each storage system is required.

Protocol EndPoint (PE):

·         Although storage systems manage all aspects of virtual volumes, ESXi hosts have no direct access to virtual volumes on the storage side. Instead, ESXi hosts use a logical I/O proxy, called the protocol endpoint, to communicate with virtual volumes and virtual disk files that virtual volumes encapsulate.

·         ESXi uses protocol endpoints to establish a data path on demand from virtual machines to their respective virtual volumes.

·         Each virtual volume is bound to a specific protocol endpoint. When a virtual machine on the host performs an I/O operation, the protocol endpoint directs the I/O to the appropriate virtual volume. Typically, a storage system requires a very small number of protocol endpoints. A single protocol endpoint can connect to hundreds or thousands of virtual volumes.

VVols Datastore:

·         A VVols datastore represents a storage container in vCenter Server and the vSphere Web Client.

·         After vCenter Server discovers storage containers exported by storage systems, you must mount them to be able to use them. You use the datastore creation wizard in the vSphere Web Client to map a storage container to a VVols datastore.

·         The VVols datastore that you create corresponds directly to the specific storage container and becomes the container’s representation in vCenter Server and the vSphere Web Client.

·         From a vSphere administrator prospective, the VVols datastore is similar to any other datastore and is used to hold virtual machines. Like other datastores, the VVols datastore can be browsed and lists configuration virtual volumes by virtual machine name. Like traditional datastores, the VVols datastore supports unmounting and mounting. However, such operations as upgrade and resize are not applicable to theVVols datastore. The VVols datastore capacity is configurable by the storage administrator outside of vSphere.

Thank You..

vCenter Server 6.0

vCenter Server 6.0

In vSphere 6.0, you will notice considerably new terms, when installing vCenter Server 6.0. As similar to the previous versions of vCenter Deployment, You can install vCenter Server on a host machine running Microsoft Windows Server 2008 SP2 or later or you can deploy vCenter Appliance (VCSA). 

There are 2 different Deployment Models:

·         1. vCenter with an embedded Platform Services Controller

·         2. vCenter with an external Platform Services Controller

One of the Considerable Change, you will notice with installation is deployment models and embedded database. Embedded database has been changed from SQL express edition to vFabric Postgres database. vFabric Postgres database embedded with the installer is suitable for the environments with up to 20 hosts and 200 virtual machines and virtual center server 6.0 continuous to support Microsoft and Oracle Database as external database. with upgrades, where SQL express was installed will be converted to vPostgres. Let’s review the System requirements for the installation:

Supported Windows Operation System for Installation:

·         Microsoft Windows Server 2008 SP2 64-bit

·         Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 64-bit

·         Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 64-bit

·         Microsoft Windows Server 2012 64-bit

·         Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 64-bit

 Supported Databases for Installation:

·         Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 SP1

·         Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 SP2

·         Microsoft SQL Server 2012

·         Microsoft SQL Server 2012 SP1

·         Microsoft SQL Server 2014

·         Oracle 11g R2 11.2.0.4

·         Oracle 12c

vCenter Server 6.0 Components:

Major Components :

·         vCenter Server: It contains all of the products such as virtual center Server, vSphere Web Client, Inventory Service, vSphere Auto Deploy, vSphere ESXi Dump Collector, and vSphere Syslog Collector

·         VMware Platform Services Controller: Platform Services Controller contains all of the services necessary for running the products, such as vCenter Single Sign-On, License Service and VMware Certificate Authority

vCenter 6.0 Deployment Models

vSphere 6.0 introduces two deployment model. virtual center server with external Platform Services Controller and with an embedded Platform Services Controller.

vCenter with an embedded Platform Services Controller:

All services bundled with the Platform Services Controller are deployed on the same host machine as virtual center Server. virtual center Server with an embedded Platform Services Controller is suitable for smaller environments with eight or less product instances.

vCenter with an external Platform Services Controller:

The services bundled with the Platform Services Controller and virtual center Server are deployed on different host machines. You must deploy the VMware Platform Services Controller first on one virtual machine or host and then deploy virtual center Server on another virtual machine or host. The Platform Services Controller can be shared across many products. This configuration is suitable for larger environments with nine or more product instances.

Thank You