Gotchas Session

1. Gotchas Session 08/20/2009

2. Set up of Disaster recovery for junior colleges – in flood zone. If they have to shutdown 6 weeks to rebuilding. Another campus. Build servers one at each site, more storage. Question: sense a pitful if the link goes down who is the master and synchronization pitfall. How is data replicated? Simple as knowledge is minimal. • Answer: Double take can replicate between disaster recovery. Marathon is also a application that can be use. • Orcale can be used to replicate databases. Have one as ready only can be set to manual or automatic failover. • SAN can support replication. • Customer doesn’t know as yet what is needed. • Question: Microwave, if there is a failure in the link who is master. • Suggestion: Never Fail. Allows virtual center to promote a master on failure. • Dataguard – Oracle Replication. • Question 2:

3. Question 2: • Developers want access to create virtual machines to allow checkout. How are limits set when they use checkout. • Answer: Can use View – this will limit storage. Usually used for desktop environment. Lifecycle Manager – think provisioning. Can consolidated storage – they think they need 40 gig but will get 10 gig. • Vision Corp – Lab Manager. V Control handles this – templates – requested by developers, creation is in the background.

4. V Optimizer – does not work with windows dynamic disks. Basic disks only.

5. Question 3: • Has anyone upgrade from 3.5 To V Center 4.0. Migration – any issues. How do licenses work? Only run in test environment. • Answer: Vision Core – V Fog Light captures performance information. • Did resource pools have to be recreated? • Capacity Monitoring Software: Also V Kernel? • Does it provide information on bottlenecks. Software seems to be more of a modeling software. • Comparisons: Setup and running – VKernel acts like an appliance. Foglight allows monitoring for physical and virtual.

6. Vkernel – provides stats on storage.

7. Question 4: Hyper9 reports OS statistics. • Question 5: How many desktop per Core? Consider if users are using multimedia, dual monitors. • Question 6: Interested in covering topic at next WMUG? Interest in View, ESX? Majority is interested. • Hyper9 – database keeps track of configuration and changes over a period of time. Baseline Configuration function. Able to setup alerts.

8. Vesi – Free Product - similar to Hyper9. www.thevesi.org • HP C7000 chassis quad core, 32 Gigs 2 fiber ports and 6 nics. Limitation with blades with regards failure and redundancy. Supported 30-40 vm’s lower as using chassis.

9. Question: Training for 6 vm’s. Has image running VMserver 2.0 Have to change node names for each VM. Asking if anyone has script to change name. • Suggestion: NLite – free product. Unattended install files. Search google “open source ghost” • Suggestion: Sysprep the vm’s before Ghost. Use runonce to batch file.

10. Question: Is anyone successfully using recovery data manager? • Answer: Built in appliance within VSphere – basic backup function. • Suggestions: VRanger / Shadow Protect / Netapp takes snapshots / I365 EVault

11. Question: Tools for Windows GSX running workstation to ESX environment. • Suggestion: VMFKS Tools / Vision Core V to V or P to V / Plate Spin / Shadow Protect / VM Conversion / V Converter • Check VMUG forum page?

12. Question: Licensing V3.5 to 4.0. Vsphere with Vmotion is being retired at the end of the year. • Question: Has anyone used HP Matrix or Cisco Nexus. • Answer: More information in November.