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Jeroen W. Pluimers on .NET, C#, Delphi, databases, and personal interests

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Archive for the ‘VMware ESXi’ Category

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SATA controller links for ZFS and ESXi

Posted by jpluimers on 2016/04/08

Some useful links:

M1015 is still used a lot, but there are many choices for SATA/SAS HBAs that are compatible with ESXi and ZFS.

SATA passthrough for many things seem to have stopped with ESXi 5.5 (5.1 and below should work). Some links related to that:

IDE and USB passthrough of CD/DVD devices seem to be fine though:

OEM adapters:

There are many SFF-8088 to SFF-8087 adapters.

–jeroen

via

Posted in ESXi5, ESXi5.1, ESXi5.5, Power User, Virtualization, VMware, VMware ESXi | Leave a Comment »

Getting the ESXi version from the console

Posted by jpluimers on 2016/03/10

Since ESXi is based on busybox, it is using ash a variation of sh (the classic bourne shell) called Almquist shell and most nxes use some form of bash a lot of things won’t work.

For instance, doesn’t support sh –version.

Luckily there are uname -mrs and (more elaborate) vmware -vl to get the version.

Note there is support busybox aliases so alias dir=”ls -laF” works, and you can define aliases for the version information too.

–jeroen

via:

Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, bash, Linux, Power User, SuSE Linux, Virtualization, VMware, VMware ESXi | Leave a Comment »

ZFS, SuperMicro, ESXi passthrough, CrashPlan and other links

Posted by jpluimers on 2016/01/11

Some great blog entries to read:

And:

Finally:

All of the above are somehow related to the Superserver SYS-5028D-TNT4.

When looking at some pictures from the above posts, then an M1015 HBA should be perfect for ZFS (lots of results for ESXi M1015 HBA PCI VMDirectPath IO pass through, and they still seem to be the way to go for ZFS).

There might be a need for extra cooling; for some ideas: Cooling for m1015 Raid Card – [H]ard|Forum

Below are other ServerRAID OEM possibilities supporting 8 internal devices (chipset in parentheses) via:

12 Gbps adapters:

  • EUR ~180: ServeRAID N2215 (SAS3008)
    • EUR ~300: LSI 9300-8i (LSI00344)
  • EUR ~200: ServeRAID M5120 (SAS3008)
  • ServeRAID M5210e (SAS3008)

6 Gbps adapters:

3 Gbps adapters:

  • ServeRAID MR10i (SAS1078)
  • ServeRAID BR10i (SAS1068e)
  • ServeRAID BR10il v2 (SAS1068e)

–jeroen

Posted in ESXi6, Power User, Virtualization, VMware, VMware ESXi | 2 Comments »

D-1541 with increased speed plus support for SR-IOV and DDR3 memory might end up in Supermicro SYS-5028D-TN4T somewhere in februari

Posted by jpluimers on 2016/01/04

I wrote about TinkerTry’s Xeon D-1540 fueled ESXi 6.0 home lab build begins LIVE! before as I think it is an amazing buy.

In the mean time, there are more some bundles of it available, even one shipping from The Netherlands:

Currently these machines (called SYS-5028D-TN4T) contain a Xeon D-1540 processor and use the X10SDV-TLN4F that also lists the Xeon D-1541 processor which will likekly be available on that board starting from about February. The Xeon D-1541 processor which adds new features: is about 5% faster and adds support for both SR-IOV (which can help with virtualisation, but isn’t supported by ESXi on these processors yet), DDR3 memory and Storage Performance Development Kit support for storage acceleration: Intel Xeon D-15×1 Storage Accelerated SKUs.

You have to choose, as they use the FCBGA 1667 which – like any other BGA – are soldered. So if you need these feaures and can wait 2 more months, then go for the Xeon D-1541. Otherwise, order now.

Some articles to help you decide:

On a different topic: if you want to cool the processor better, consider re-applying cooling paste: Socket FCBGA 1667 aftermarket cooling?? | Page 2 | ServeTheHome and ServeThe.Biz Forums.

And finally two more things:

  1. There is a D-1548 too which compared to the D-1540 has the CPU speed, but adds SR-IOV and DDR3 memory support.
  2. There will be 12-core and 16-cores varieties in the Xeon-D series later this  year: Intels Server-Prozessor Xeon D-1500: 16-Kern-Version tritt 2016 gegen ARM-SoCs an | heise online.
    According to the current SuperMicro Xeon-D information these will be available in boards that seem to fit in the SYS-5028D-TN4T system:

    1. X10SDV-12C-TLN4F.
    2. X10SDV-16C+-TLN4F.

Anyway: I think with either processor, you have a great deal!

–jeroen

Posted in ECC memory, Hardware, Memory, Power User, Virtualization, VMware, VMware ESXi | 1 Comment »

How too many vCPUs can negatively affect performance | Gabes Virtual World

Posted by jpluimers on 2016/01/03

Interesting:

Think twice before you give VMs extra vCPUs which they don’t really need. You can negatively impact the performance of your environment since the vmkernel has to try and find a time slot in which it can give all vCPUs access to the physical cores.

Source: How too many vCPUs can negatively affect performance | Gabes Virtual World

Related:

–jeroen

Posted in ESXi5, ESXi5.1, ESXi5.5, Power User, Virtualization, VMware, VMware ESXi | Leave a Comment »

ESXi Embedded Host Client – VMware Labs

Posted by jpluimers on 2015/12/22

Interesting stuff to play with the next few weeks:

This version of the ESXi Embedded Host Client is written purely in HTML and JavaScript, and is served directly from your ESXi host and should perform much better than any of the existing solutions.

Thanks Paul Braren for sharing this.

Source: ESXi Embedded Host Client – VMware Labs

–jeroen

Posted in ESXi5.5, ESXi6, Power User, Virtualization, VMware, VMware ESXi | Leave a Comment »

Create a Custom ESXi Image with ESXi-Customizer-PS Script – YouTube

Posted by jpluimers on 2015/11/27

Via G+ Paul Braren:

Great new video by Alex López (VCA6, and moderator at http://tonymacx86.com), all kinds of great info in this video, check it out!

Create a Custom ESXi Image with ESXi-Customizer-PS Script – YouTube

–jeroen

Posted in ESXi6, Power User, VMware, VMware ESXi | Leave a Comment »

VMware Front Experience: The great VMware Tools dilemma; VMware Tools 10.0.0 Release Notes

Posted by jpluimers on 2015/10/31

Interesting: VMware Tools 10.0.0 Release Notes

Source: VMware Front Experience: The great VMware Tools dilemma

–jeroen

Posted in ESXi6, Power User, Virtualization, VMware, VMware ESXi | Leave a Comment »

ESXi: specifying the ciphers used to serve the vSphere Client

Posted by jpluimers on 2015/08/14

You can specify the ESXi ciphers used to serve the vSphere Client. You can do this both ways: either extend them (make it less secure, but more compatible, for instance to server vSphere Client on Windows Server 2003 / Windows XP), or restrict them to make it more secure.

VMware recommends the cipherList ALL to make it more compatible: VMware KB: vSphere Client and vSphere PowerCLI may fail to connect to vCenter Server 5.0, 5.1 and 5.5 due to a Handshake failure.

However, ALL  is far too wide to be secure. Since cipherList uses the standard cipher list format documented at ciphers – SSL cipher display and cipher list tool.

You can use the cipher lists from Strong SSL Security on nginx – Raymii.org:

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in ESXi5, ESXi5.1, ESXi5.5, ESXi6, Power User, PowerCLI, Virtualization, VMware, VMware ESXi | Leave a Comment »

ESXi Embedded Host Client – VMware Labs

Posted by jpluimers on 2015/08/14

Interesting: ESXi Embedded Host Client – VMware Labs.

Posted in ESXi5, ESXi5.1, ESXi5.5, ESXi6, Power User, Virtualization, VMware, VMware ESXi | Leave a Comment »

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