VC, SUS, vNet, VLANs and a partridge...

So, recently I've been doing a lot of research on Virtual Connect, primarily because I've recently purchased some!

I've bought the following:

1.  HP c3000 BladeSystem chassis
2. 2 x HP 1/10GB Virtual Connect Ethernet modules
3. 2 x Cisco 3020 Blade switches (wouldn't SwitchBlades sound cooler?!) for mezz 2 for storage connectivity (ISCSI/NFS).
4. 8 x bl460c G1 blades for ESX and Hyper-V hosts...and maybe some other nonsense.

This will happily replace my 7!!! DL360G5's and use less power, produce less heat and make less noise...well maybe not the last.  BUT it will do the first 2 which saves money!

On to the point of this post...

In trying to understand the joys of Virtual Connect magic, I acquired the HP Virtual Connect Ethernet Cookbook which can also be found here (along with other supposedly useful bits).

After reading thru this and analyzing the differences in the scenarios I've come up with these differences and explanations:

Virtual Connect

Its like a switch with its legs cut off...but it feels like a bridge except it has more then an in and out port, but maybe not really if you consider you setup virtual connections inside it from each blade out to the external net...so maybe many bridges virtually layered? Or just a switch that looks like a single contact point to an upstream switch (no spanning tree).  Or maybe it's a switch that won't participate in a Spanning Tree.  Bottom-line...its Virtual Connect!

vNet vs SUS

This was the harder one and really the juice of the VC for me to understand how to pass VLANs. Here's my simplest explanation.

• vNet = Check a box to Tunnel VLAN traffic and it will pass all traffic as it is received...it dumbly hands it from one interface to the other never looking inside the envelope.
• SUS = Is all nosey and analyzes VLAN traffic and is told whether Adam's Left hand (Blade A, onboard NIC 1) is allowed to see all the VLANs or only VLAN 0 or 101 or 0 AND 101-104; or his Right hand (Onboard NIC 2) can see this versus that.  And then Brenda's Left hand (Blade B port 0) can see this or that, etc.  Ok, that wasn't simple.  Basically, with SUS, you can determine exactly what VLANs (including 0) are mapped to exactly which blade ports (if not ALL or NONE).

So really SUS allows you much more granularity on your traffic...if you want it.

So for all those Virtual Connect experts out there...I invite more in depth or probably more accurate explanations  as I couldn't really find just that...vNet vs SUS for dummies.

Enjoy.

vCenter 5.1.0a: Rollercoasters and you

Hello,
So for the past week(!), I've been trying to get vCenter 5.1.0a installed for a certain environment and it has been an experience!

*NOTE FOR ANYONE NOT INTERESTED IN READING:  I want to give credit to a series of posts by Derek Seaman that I ended up using for reference.  They didn't end up solving (or having anything to do with) the problems experienced below, but they are well written and informative and I will refer to them in the future for a vCenter install.

For full disclosure, I did go in pretty blind.  I figured, I've been doing this for a while and pretty familiar with vcenter, lets just get the ISO going and see how it smells.  Well, when I saw multiple addons/prereq's, I realized it was a new beast.  Bear in mind, the current one is only 5.0 which was still the more traditional install.

At first, I tried to upgrade the current vCenter (running as a VM) and that blew up for some reason that I don't recall.  When I looked at the programs list though, there was a bunch of older version software (thanks for keeping 4.0, 4.1, 5.0 versions of the client installed) and honestly, that VM always felt a bit sluggish and the vcenter service would commonly not start.  So, I decided to move it to a different datastore and shut it down.

Before shutting it down, I deployed a new 2008 R2 vm from my template which I've used on many other machines. I took a snapshot of the vm at each stage while installing and was very methodical on installing the 3 different, check...4 different aspects to a modern vCenter install.

1. Single Sign-On
2. Inventory Service
3. vCenter
4. Web Client (supposedly optional, but required for 5.1 (and beyond) features...)
1. Check out my other post on this subject

Moving on, after installing the first 2 without a hitch, vCenter would NOT install.  I kept getting this...

and then this...

 

So I when hitting up Giggle for the problem, I found a link saying to give the Network Service permissions on the C:\ drive and that would fix it. Admittedly, this did reference older 4.0 or 4.1 installs, but was my exact error # 28038.  Now, I don't know if you know this, but it is not trivial to modify the permissions on C:\Program Files, c:\Program Files (x86) or c:\Windows in 2008 R2...meaning it won't let you.  Specifically Administrators has special permissions set and "Change Permission" is not one of them; obviously neither is Full Control.  Based on that and considering the web wasn't blowing up about 5.1 on 2008 R2, I theorized this wasn't my answer.

The other suggestions were around "making sure its not a domain controller" and "remove the ADAM or AD LDS role" which neither was installed of course.  I kept seeing references to IPv6 for name resolution, but I've used DNS once or twice in my time, so that wasn't the problem (yes I did triple check all resolution directions just to make sure).  IPv4 worked fine, but so did IPv6; if you just ping the name on a 2008R2 server, often you will get a reply from the IPv6 addreess.

Another thing was that my template was fully patched as of 6/10/2012 or something, but in the Programs list, it had Visual 2008 or 2005 redistributable patches as well as Silverlight.  I couldn't imagine how any of that was screwing this, but I uninstalled them anyway, but that didn't fix the install.

So...I was stumped and it was 2am.  I had 2 choices...completely registry-disable IPv6 and/or completely rebuild.  I of course was tired of screwing around and rebuilt.  Again very methodical...snapshots at each stage.  I didn't even patch the server...just install os, install vmware tools, configure IP, add to domain, and then start vcenter install. 

This time I chose the simple install considering I was doing just that.  Guess what...worked no problem including the web client install (which previoulsy had not worked due to some other variable I can't remember)! I suspect that either a patch was getting in the way or one of the pre-setup bits I had done on the template had somehow screwed it up.

So, sometimes punting really is the best and only choice.

Go Pats!

Again, for anyone looking for a very descriptive walkthrough of a 5.1 vCenter install, please reference Derek Seaman's 796000 step process to installing vCenter 5.1.0a! (its really only 13).

NEW!!! WEBIFIED vCENTER! Get your's now!

Soooo...VMWare has decided to scrap the "thick destkop client" and go to a web-based front end. 5.1 is apparently the last version that will "support" the desktop client and even now, the new features for 5.1, such as hardware version 9, are only available thru the web interface...so its required now.

I'm always fearful when a company tries to force a web frontend, but sometimes (often times?) they turn out ok. Many firewalls are web (personal favorite Astaro/Sophos has a very good web frontend), many NAS boxes are web, even enterprise storage like Nexenta is web, but VMWare Infrastructure (classic name) is a pretty complex product doing alot of things, so I hope they do it right and make it perform and not cumbersome to use. The desktop client was pretty durn good....

Also, a little birdie told me that this and the VCSA (Virtual Center Server Appliance) are coming from a desire at VMWare to be non-dependant on Microsoft to run their product (I'm cleaning up the language a bit on their behalf).  Now of course I can't fault them and appreciate simplicity, but it still needs to be usable.  Oracle as a backend (for more than 5 hosts) is certainly not what I would call "common" even in medium size companies so is that really the best choice? Plus as far as companies go, can anyone really argue that Oracle is somehow "better" than Microsoft?

I'm predicting the future of vCenter will ONLY be the VCSA (I guess they'll have to incorporate VUM somehow), but don't see Oracle-as-the-only choice being viable.

Good luck VMWare and I hope it turns out well.