News

blog.scottlowe.org reports random reboots, check out this Blog Post : Random Reboots with VMware ESX 3.5 Update 3

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I’ve been communicating with a reader who is experiencing random reboots of virtual machines on his HA/DRS-enabled cluster running VMware ESX 3.5 Update 3. At first, I thought his problem was related to the bug with VM failure monitoring that I discussed here, but upon further discussion the random reboots are continuing to occur even when VM failure monitoring is disabled. The only relief the reader has been able to find thus far has been to completely disable VMware HA on his cluster, which—to be honest—is a less than acceptable solution.

After a little bit of digging around, I turned up this VMware Communities thread, in which several other users also indicate they are seeing the same kinds of problems. The thread closes out by referencing this post by Duncan Epping regarding the VM failure monitoring bug. Clearly, though, this bug should not be affecting users who do not have VM failure monitoring enabled. I also found this blog post about another user having the issue, although it sounds like his problem was solved by disabling VM failure monitoring.

Further research turned up this KB article on a post-Update 3 patch that may address some of the random reboot issues. Judging from the KB article, it looks like the random reboots may be caused due to an unexpected interaction between VMotion and an option to automatically upgrade VMware Tools. This is just speculation, of course, but the symptoms seem to fit.

Have any other users out there experienced this problem? If so, what was the fix, if any? It sounds like there may be more to this issue than perhaps I first suspected.
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Thanks for this update, if this is a problem, we need to know about it.

Full Post : http://blog.scottlowe.org/2008/12/23/random-reboots-with-vmware-esx-35-update-3/

http://www.yellow-bricks.com has a blog titled : Heap size VMFS3

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Posted by Duncan Epping in December 19th, 2008

I was talking to a fellow consultant today. He ran into the following error messages at one of his customer sites:

vmkernel: 8:18:59:58.640 cpu2:1410)WARNING: Heap: 1370: Heap_Align(vmfs3, 4096/4096 bytes, 4 align) failed. caller: 0×8fdbd0
vmkernel: 8:18:59:58.640 cpu2:1410)WARNING: Heap: 1266: Heap vmfs3: Maximum allowed growth (24) too small for size (8192)

During the conversation I knew I’d seen this problem before. But the problem that I witnessed was related to a high threshold value in Vizioncore vFoglight. I knew it was possible to change the setting:

1. Open vCenter, and click a specific host
2. Click on the “Configurations” tab
3. Click on Advanced Settings, VMFS3
4. Change the value of “VMFS3.MaxHeapSizeMB”

The default value is 16MB, this allows for a maximum of 4TB of open vmdk’s on a single host. The max setting is 128MB which allows for a maximum of 32TB of open vmdk’s on a single host. Keep this in mind when designing your environment.

Keep in mind that this is ESX 3.5 only, you can’t change the heap size in ESX 3.0.x.
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Looked like something that we could all run into.

Full Post http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2008/12/19/heap-size-vmfs3

Microsoft has a new Security Advisory : Microsoft Security Advisory (961040)

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Microsoft is investigating new public reports of a vulnerability that could allow remote code execution on systems with supported editions of Microsoft SQL Server 2000, Microsoft SQL Server 2005, Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express Edition, Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Desktop Engine (MSDE 2000), Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Desktop Engine (WMSDE), and Windows Internal Database (WYukon). Systems with Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 Service Pack 4, Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 3, and Microsoft SQL Server 2008 are not affected by this issue.

Microsoft is aware that exploit code has been published on the Internet for the vulnerability addressed by this advisory. Our investigation of this exploit code has verified that it does not affect systems that have had the workarounds listed below applied. Currently, Microsoft is not aware of active attacks that use this exploit code or of customer impact at this time
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Please refer to the following link for more information.

Full Post http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/advisory/961040.mspx

http://www.mikedipetrillo.com has a blog write up on Microsoft, and them fibbing about their licensing Titled : Microsoft Lies to Their Customers – Again

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Over the past couple of weeks I’ve seen a trend at customer sites. Nearly every customer I visited in the New York city area told me the same thing when the competition was brought up.
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So for those playing along at home. Here’s the part where I show you where to find the correct information on Microsoft’s site.



Windows Server 2008: Microsoft Licensing FAQ for Windows Server 2008 clearly states the following.

Q. Do the virtualization licensing rights of Windows Server 2008 apply when used with non-Microsoft software virtualization technologies?

A: Yes. The use rights apply regardless of the virtualization product being used.

Windows Server 2003: Page 7 of the “Licensing Microsoft Windows Server 2003 R2 to Run with Virtualization Technologies” document also states the following.

If you have assigned a single license of Windows Server Standard Edition to the server running ESX, then you may run one instance at a time of Windows Server Standard Edition. If you have assigned a single license of Windows Server Enterprise Edition to the server running ESX, then you may run up to four instances at a time of Windows Server. You may not run a fifth instance under the same Enterprise Edition license because that right requires that the fifth instance be running hardware virtualization software and software managing and servicing the OSEs on the server. However, Datacenter Edition permits unlimited running of instances in virtual OSEs.
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Thanks Mike, always looking out for us.

Full Post : http://www.mikedipetrillo.com/mikedvirtualization/2008/12/microsoft-lies-to-their-customers-again.html

http://www.hypervizor.com has a nice Video titled : Video Tutorial: VMware SRM : 01 Installation

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This is the first video tutorial in a series to come for VMware Site Recovery Manager (SRM), one of the most interesting and efficient products from VMware. It’s my very first video in my blog also so please leave your comments and let me know your opinion. Don’t forget to subscribe to my RSS feed to be notified in time for future videos.
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Check it out.

Forums are now working, Thanks.

The forum is down, for a unkown reason, thats what I get for free.

I’ll post when I find it back up.