NFS or Fibre Channel Storage for VMware vSphere?

Final decision depends what do you want to get from your storage. Check out my newly uploaded presentation on SlideShare:  http://www.slideshare.net/davidpasek/design-decision-nfsversusfcstorage-v03 where I'm trying to compare both options with special requirements from real customer engagement.

If you have any storage preference, experience or question please feel free to speak up in the comments.

What type of NIC teaming, loadbalancing and physical switch configuration to use for VMware's VXLAN?

As a former CISCO UCS Architect I'm observing VXLAN initiative almost 2 years so I was looking forward to do the real customer project. Finally it is here. I'm working on vSphere design for vCloud Director (vCD). To be honest I'm responsible just for vSphere design and someone else is doing vCD Design because I'm not vCD expert and I have just conceptual and high-level vCD knowledge. I'm not planning to change it in near future because I'm more focused on next generation infrastructure and vCD is in my opinion just another software for selling IaaS. I'm not saying it is not important. It is actually very important because IaaS is not just technology but business process. However nobody knows everything and I leave some work for other architects :-)

We all know that vCD sits on top of vSphere providing multi-tenancy and other IaaS constructs and since vCD 5.1 the network multi-tenancy segmentation is done by VXLAN network overlay. Therefore I have finally opportunity to plan, design and implement VXLANs for real customer.

Right now I'm designing network part of vSphere architecture and I describe VXLAN oriented design decision point bellow.

VMware VXLAN Information sources:

• S1: VMware  vShiled Administration Guide [Official source]
• S2: VMware KB 2050697 [Official source]
• S3: Duncan Epping blog post here. [Unofficial source]
• S4: VMware VXLAN Deployment Guide available here. [Official source]

I would like to thanks Duncan for his blog post back in October 2012 right before Barcelona VMworld 2012 where VXLANs were officially introduced by VMware. Even it is unofficial information source it is very informative and I'm verifying it against official VMware documentation and white papers.  Unfortunately I have realized that there is a lack of trustful and publicly available technical information till today and some information are contradictory. See bellow what confusion I'm facing and I would be very happy if someone help me to jump out from the circle.

Design decision point:
What type of NIC teaming, loadbalancing and physical switch configuration to use for VMware's VXLAN?

Requirements:

• R1: Fully supported solution
• R2: vSphere 5.1 and vCloud Director 5.1
• R3: VMware vCloud Network & Security (aka vCNS or vShield) with VMware distributed virtual switch
• R4: Network Virtualization and multi-tenant segmentation with VXLAN network overlay 
• R5: Leverage standard access datacenter switches like CISCO Nexus 5000, Force10 S4810, etc.

Constraints:

• C1: LACP 5-tuple hash algorithm is not available on current standard access datacenter physical switches mentioned in requirement R5
• C2: VMware Virtual Port ID loadbalancing is not supported with VXLAN Source: S3
• C3: VMware LBT loadbalancing is not supported with VXLAN Source: S3
• C4: LACP must be used with 5-tuple hash algorithm Source: S3, S2, S1 on Page 48. [THIS IS STRANGE CONSTRAINT, WHY IT IS HASH DEPENDENT?] Updated 2013-09-11: It looks like there is a bug in VMware documentation and KB Article. Thanks @DuncanYB and @fojta for confirmation and internal VMware escalations.

Available Options:

• Option 1: Virtual Port ID
• Option 2: Load based Teaming
• Option 3: LACP
• Option 4: Explicit fail-over

Option comparison:

• Option 1: not supported because of C1
• Option 2: not supported because of C2
• Option 3: supported
• Option 4: supported but not optimal because only one NIC is used for network traffic. 

Design decision and justification:
Based on available information options 3 and 4 complies with requirements and constraints. Option 3 is better because network traffic is load balanced across physical NICs. That's not a case for option 4.

Other alternatives not compliant with all requirements:

• Alt 1: Use physical switches with 5-tuple hash loadbalancing. That means high-end switch models like Nexus 7000, Force10 E Series, etc.
• Alt 2: Use CISCO Nexus 1000V with VXLAN. They support LACP with any hash algorithm. 5-tuple hash is also recommended but not strictly required.

Conclusion:
I hope some information in constraints C2, C3, and C4 are wrong and will be clarified by VMware. I'll tweet this blog post to some VMware experts and hope someone will help me to jump out from the decision circle.
If you have any official/unofficial topic related information or you see anything where I'm wrong, please feel free to speak up in the comments.
Updated 2013-09-11: Constraint C4 doesn't exists and VMware doc will be updated.
Based on updated information LACP and "Explicit fail-over" teaming/load-balancing is supported for VXLANs. LACP is better way to go and  "Explicit fail-over" is alternative in case LACP is not achievable on your environment.

Storage System Performance Analysis with Iometer

Excellent write up about IOmeter usage is here.

Quick troubleshooting of ESX and 10Gb Broadcom NeXtreme II negotiated only to 1Gb

I have just realized that my vmnic(s) in one DELL blade server M620 (let's call him BLADE1) is connected only at 1Gb speed even I have 10Gb NIC(s) connected to Force10 IOA blade module(s). It should be connected at 10Gb and another blade  (let's call him BLADE2) with the same config is really connected at 10Gb speed.

So quick troubleshooting ... we have to find where is the difference

Let's go step by step ...

1. NIC ports on ESX vSwitch in BLADE1 are configured to  use auto negotiation so no problem here
2. Ports on Force 10 IOA are also configured for auto negotiation and configuration is consistent across all ports in switch modules so that's not a problem.
3. ESX builds are the same on both blade servers.
4. What are NIC firmwares? On BLADE1 there is 7.2.14 and on BLADE2 7.6.15

Bingo!!! Let's upgrade NIC firmwares on BLADE1 and check if this was the root cause of the problem ...

Using SSL certificates for VMware vSphere Components

Streaming the certificate replacement and management process in a VMware environment can be challenging at times. For instance, changing certificates for a vCenter 5.1 is a hugely laborious process. And in a typical environment where there are a large number of hosts running, tracking and managing their certificates is difficult and time consuming. More importantly, security breaches due to lapsed certificates can prove to be very expensive to the organization. vCert Manager from VSS Labs provides fully automated management of SSL Certificates in a VMware environment across the entire lifecycle.

VSS Labs has solution to simplify SSL management. For more info look at http://vsslabs.com/vCert.html

To be honest I had no chance to test it because I avoid signed SSL certificates if possible. However when I'll have a customer who requires SSL I definitely have to evaluate VSS Labs solution.

OpenManage Integration for VMware vCenter 2.0

OpenManage Integration for VMware vCenter 2.0 is new generation of DELL vCenter Management Plugin targeted as plugin for vSphere 5.5 Web Client.

Looking forward to test it with vSphere 5.5 in my lab.

Configure Force10 S4810 for SNMP

Enable SNMP in Force10 S4810 switches is straight forward. Bellow is configuration sample.

conf

! Enable SNMP for read only access
snmp-server community public ro

! Enable SNMP traps and send it to SNMP receiver 192.168.12.70
snmp-server host 192.168.12.70 version 1
snmp-server enable traps

Configuring Dell EqualLogic management interface

All credits go to Mike Poulson because he published this procedure back in 2011.
[Source: http://www.mikepoulson.com/2011/06/configuring-dell-equallogic-management.html]

I  have just rewrote, formated, and slightly changed the most important steps for EqualLogic out-of-band interface IP configuration.

The Dell EqualLogic iSCSI SAN supports an out-of-band management network interface. This is for managing the device from a separate network than the iSCSI traffic is on. So this is a quick set of commands that are used to configure the management (in this case eth2) interface on the device.

The web interface is nice and all but you have to have your 10Gig network setup before you can access it. Also the "setup" does not really give you an easy option to configure the management interface.

Steps:
Login to Console Port with grpadmin username and grpadmin password.

After you run setup you will need to know the "member name". You can get your member name by running the command

member show

This will list the name, Status, Version, Size information for each member configured on the array. Here is example

grpname> member show
Name Status Version Disks Capacity FreeSpace Connections
---------- ------- ---------- ----- ---------- ---------- -----------
member01 online V4.3.6 (R1 16 621.53GB 0MB 0
grpname>

The member name for my device is member01.

Once you know the member name you will need to set the IP address for your management interface. This IP address will need to be one that you can access from your management network. The port is an untagged port similar to other out-of-band management ports on devices (network switches).

To configure the IP use steps described below.

• First set the interface to be management ONLY. Use the member command again.

member select member01 eth select 2 mgmt-only enable

• Set the IP address and Network Mask

member select member01 eth select 2 ipaddress xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx netmask 255.255.255.0

• Enable the interface (by default the MGMT (eth2) interface is disabled and will not provide a LINK).

member select member01 eth select 2 up

• Then you will be asked to confirm that you wish to enable the Management port

This port is for group management only. If enabling, make sure it is connected to a dedicated management network. If disabling, make sure you can access the group through another Ethernet port.
 
Do you really want to enable the management interface? (y/n) [n] y

• To view current IP and state of an Eth interface use

member select member01 show eths

Once that is complete you can use the management IP address to establish an http or https connection to the Array.

Veeam Backup Components Requirements

Veeam is excellent backup software for virtualized environments. Veeam is relatively easy to install and use. However when you have bigger environment and looking for better backup performance is really important to know infrastructure requirements and size appropriately your backup infrastructure.

Here are hardware requirements for particular Veeam components.
 
Veeam Console
  Windows Server 2008 R2
  4GB RAM + 0.5GB per concurrent backup job

Veeam Proxy
  Windows Server 2008 R2
  2GB RAM + 0.2GB per concurrent task

Veeam WAN Accelerator
  Windows Server 2008 R2
  8GB RAM
  Disk for cache

Veeam Repository
  Windows Server 2008 R2, Linux or NAS (CIFS) 
  4GB RAM + 2GB per each concurrent ingress backup job
 

DELL Force10 S6000 as a physical switch for VMware NSX

Based on this  document http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/products/nsx/vmw-nsx-dell-systems.pdf
DELL Force10 S6000 is going to be fully integrated with VMware NSX (NSX is software defined networking platform).

Dell Networking provides:

• Data center switches for robust underlays for L2 overlays
• CLI for virtual and physical networks
• Network management and automation with Active Fabric Manager
• S6000 Data Center Switch Gateway for physical workloads to connect to virtual networks
• Complete end-to-end solutions that include server, storage, network, security, management and services with world wide support

Dell S6000 use cases:

• Extend virtual networks to physical servers -  S6000 works as VXLAN gateway to VLANs on physical network (VXLAN VTEP).
• Connect physical workloads reachable on a specific VLAN to logical networks via an L2 service
• Connect physical workloads reachable on a specific port to logical networks via an L2 service
• Connect to physical workloads in a Physical to virtual migration
• Migration from existing virtualized environments to public clouds, creating hybrid clouds
• Access physical router, firewall, load balancer, WAN optimization and other network resources

I cannot wait to test it in my lab or on customer PoC engagement. After hands-on experience I'll share it on this blog. 

What’s New in vSphere 5.5

On this article I'll try to collect all important (at least for me) vSphere 5.5 news and improvements announced at VMworld 2013. I wasn't there so I rely on other blog posts and VMware materials.

Julian Wood reported about vCloud Suite 5.5 news announced at VMworld 2013 at
http://www.wooditwork.com/2013/08/26/whats-new-vcloud-suite-5-5-introduction/

Chris Wahl wrote deep dive blog posts into vSphere 5.5 improvements at
http://wahlnetwork.com/category/deep-dives/5-5-vsphere-improvements/

Cormac Hogan listed storage improvements in vSphere 5.5 at
http://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2013/08/whats-new-in-vsphere-5-5-storage.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=linkedin&goback=%2Egde_3217230_member_269944857#%21 

Thanks Julian, Chris, and Cormac for excellent blog posts and keep informed as who was not able to attend VMworld 2013.

BTW: Official VMware What's New paper is at http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/vsphere/VMware-vSphere-Platform-Whats-New.pdf 

Here are few citations with my comments from above blog posts. I'll mention just improvements which are important and/or interesting for me. I will concentrate on these topics and in near future I have to find and test more hidden details.

1. Management: VMware is strongly recommending using a single VM for all vCenter Server core components (SSO, Web Client, Inventory Service and vCenter Server) or to use the appliance rather than splitting things out which just add complexity and makes it harder to upgrade in the future. << "This is excellent approach and I really like it."
    
2. Management: The vCenter Appliance has also been beefed up and with its embedded database supports 300 hosts and 3000 VMs or if you use an external Oracle DB the supported hosts and VMs are the same as for Windows. << "Finally"
    
3. Storage: vSphere 5.5 now supports VMDK disks larger than 2TB. Disks can be created up to 63.36TB in size on both VMFS and NFS.The max disk size needs to be about 1% less than the datastore file size limit. << "The last vSphere storage limit disappeared however how big datastores we will create?"
    
4. Storage: vSphere Flash Read Cache leveraging local SSDs to eliminate read IO operations from datastores and save storage performance (IOPSes) for other purposes (writes, other workloads, etc.)  For more info look at http://wahlnetwork.com/2013/08/26/vsphere-5-5-improvements-part-5-vsphere-flash-read-cache-vflash/ or http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2013/08/26/introduction-to-vsphere-flash-read-cache-aka-vflash/ << "Sounds good but pernixdata.com looks better."
    
5. Storage: vSphere vSAN leveraging SSD and SATA server internal disks and form it into shared storage pool. VMware promised it is match better than VSA (VMware Storage Appliance). For more info look at http://wahlnetwork.com/2013/08/26/vsphere-5-5-improvements-part-4-virtual-san-vsan/ << "We will see. have you tested VSA? I still believe real storage is real storage. At least now. However if someone considers vSAN I would recommend to invest into really good server disks and SSDs."
    
6. Storage: PDL AutoRemove in vSphere 5.5 automatically removes a device with PDL from the host. PDL stands for Permanent Device Lost and receive it from storage array as a SCSI Sense Code. << "It would be beneficial when some storage admin removes empty LUN. Then nothing should be done on vSphere in case storage send appropriate SCSI Sense Code. MUST BE CAREFULLY TEST IT!!!"
    
7. Networking: LACP in 5.5 gives you over 22 load balancing algorithms and you are now able to create 32 LAGs per host so you can bond together all those physical Nics. << "Finally, Nexus 1000v had it already from the beginning."
    
8. Networking: Flow based marking and filtering provides granular traffic marking and filtering capabilities from a simple UI integrated with VDS UI. You can provide stateless filtering to secure or control VM or Hypervisor traffic. Any traffic that requires specific QoS treatment on physical networks can now be granularly marked with COS and DSCP marking at the vNIC or Port group level. << "Nice improvement, but I have never had such requirement so far."
    
9. High Availability: Someone mentioned to me that VMware announced vSphere 5.5  Multi-processor Fault Tolerance (FT) in VMworld 2013.  << "This would be interesting but must be validated as I cannot find any official statement or some blog post about it. It seems to me it was Fault Tolerance tech preview like in VMworld 2012 session I attended last year."
    
10. Authentication:  SSO 2.0 is now a multi-master model. Replication between SSO servers is automatic and built-in. SSO is now site aware. The SSO database is completely removed. For more info look at http://wahlnetwork.com/2013/08/26/vsphere-5-5-improvements-part-7-single-sign-on-completely-redesigned/  << "Finally, previous SSO 1.0 was a nightmare!!!"
     
11. Disaster Recovery: VMware Replication (VR) now supports more VR Server Appliances responsible for replication, more point in time instances (aka snapshots), the ability to use Storage vMotion on protected VMs, and vSphere Web Client will show you details on your vSphere Replication status when you click on the vCenter object. For more info look at http://wahlnetwork.com/2013/08/26/vsphere-5-5-improvements-part-6-site-recovery-manager-srm-and-vsphere-replication/ << "Cool. Good evolution."

DELL OpenManage Essentials (OME)

OpenManage Essentials (OME) is a systems management console that provides simple, basic Dell hardware management and is available as a free download.

DELL OME can be downloaded at https://marketing.dell.com/dtc/ome-software?dgc=SM&cid=259733&lid=4682968

Patch 1.2.1 downloadable at
http://www.dell.com/support/drivers/us/en/555/DriverDetails?driverId=P1D4C

For more information look at DELL Tech Center.

Data Center Bridging

DCB 4 key protocols:

•  Priority-based Flow Control (PFC): IEEE 802.1Qbb
•  Enhanced Transmission Selection (ETS): IEEE 802.1Qaz
•  Congestion Notification (CN or QCN): IEEE 802.1Qau
•  Data Center Bridging Capabilities Exchange Protocol (DCBx)

PFC - provides a link level flow control mechanism that can be controlled independently for each frame priority. The goal of this mechanism is to ensure zero loss under congestion in DCB networks.PFC is independent traffic priority pausing and enablement of lossless packet buffers/queuing for particular 802.1p CoS.

ETS - provides a common management framework for assignment of bandwidth to frame priorities. Bandwidth can be dynamic based on congestion and relative ratios between defined flows. ETS provides minimum, guaranteed bandwidth allocation per traffic class/priority group during congestion and permits additional bandwidth allocation during non-congestion.

CN - provides end to end congestion management for protocols that are capable of transmission rate limiting to avoid frame loss. It is expected to benefit protocols such as TCP that do have native congestion management as it reacts to congestion in a more timely manner. Excellent blog post about CN is here.

DCBX - a discovery and capability exchange protocol that is used for conveying capabilities and configuration of the above features between neighbors to ensure consistent configuration across the network. Performs discovery, configuration, and mismatch resolution using Link Layer Discovery Protocol (IEEE 802.1AB - LLDP).

DCBX can be leveraged for many applications.
One DCBX application example is iSCSI application priority - Support for the iSCSI protocol in the application priority DCBX Type Length Value (TLV). Advertises the priority value (IEEE 802.1p CoS, PCP field in VLAN tag) for iSCSI protocol. End devices identify and tag Ethernet frames containing iSCSI data with this priority value.

DELL Force10 I/O Aggregator 40Gb Port Question

Today I have received question how to inter connect DELL Force10 IOA 40Gb uplink with DELL Force10 S4810 top of rack switches.

I assume the reader is familiar with DELL Force10 datacenter networking portfolio.

Even if you have 40Gb<->40Gb twinax cable with QSFPs between IOA and Force10 S4810 switch it is in IOA side configured by default as 4x10Gb links grouped  in Port-Channel 128.

If you connect it directly into 40Gb port in Force10 S4810 switch the 40Gb port is by default configured as 1x40Gb interface.

That’s the reason why it doesn’t work out-of-the-box. Port speeds are simply mismatched.

To make it correct you have to change 40Gb switch port to 4x10Gb port. Here is the S4810 command to change switch port from 1x40Gb to 4x10Gb:

stack-unit 0 port 48 portmode quad

Here is the snip from S4810 configuration where 40Gb port 0/48 is configure as 4x10Gb port in port-channel 128

interface TenGigabitEthernet 0/48
no ip address
!
port-channel-protocol LACP
  port-channel 128 mode active
no shutdown
!
interface TenGigabitEthernet 0/49
no ip address
!
port-channel-protocol LACP
  port-channel 128 mode active
no shutdown
!
interface TenGigabitEthernet 0/50
no ip address
!
port-channel-protocol LACP
  port-channel 128 mode active
no shutdown
!
interface TenGigabitEthernet 0/51
no ip address
!
port-channel-protocol LACP
  port-channel 128 mode active
no shutdown

interface Port-channel 128
no ip address
portmode hybrid
switchport
no shutdown

Best Practices for Faster vSphere SDK Scripts

Reuben Stump published excellent blog post at http://www.virtuin.com/2012/11/best-practices-for-faster-vsphere-sdk.html about performance optimization of PERL SDK Scripts.

The main takeaway is to minimize the ManagedEntity's Property Set.

So instead of

my $vm_views = Vim::find_entity_views(view_type => "VirtualMachine") ||

  die "Failed to get VirtualMachines: $!";

you have to use

# Fetch all VirtualMachines from SDK, limiting the property set

my $vm_views = Vim::find_entity_views(view_type => "VirtualMachine",

          properties => ['name', 'runtime.host', 'datastore']) ||

  die "Failed to get VirtualMachines: $!";

This small improvement have significant impact on performance because it eliminates big data (SOAP/XML) generation and transfer between vCenter service and the SDK script.

It helped me improve performance of my script from 25 seconds to just 1 second. And the impact is even better for bigger vSphere environment. So my old version of script was almost useless and this simple improvement help me so much.

Thanks Reuben for sharing this information.
 

DELL Blade Chassis power consumption analytics in vCenter Log Insight

DELL Blade Chassis has a capability to send power consumption information via syslog messages. I have never understood  how to practically leverage this capability. When VMware released vCenter Log Insight I have immediately realized how to leverage this tool to visualize blade chassis power consumption.

I prepared short video how to create blade chassis power consumption graph in vCenter Log Insight. The video is located at http://youtu.be/fda1cLW8enA

ESXi Advanced Settings for NetApp NFS

Here are NetApp 
Net.TcpipHeapSize=30
Net.TcpipHeapMax=120
NFS.MaxVolumes=64
NFS.HeartbeatMaxFailures=10
NFS.HeartbeatFrequency=12
NFS.HeartbeatTimeout=5

Enabled SIOC or if you don't have Entrprise+ license set NFS.MaxQueueDepth=64, 32 or 16 based on storage workload and utilization

Unified Network, DCB and iSCSI challenges

iSCSI SAN is Storage Area Network. Storage need lost less fabric. If, for any reason, unified fabric need to be used then quality of ethernet/IP network  is crucial for problem less storage operation.

For example DELL EqualLogic supports and leverage DCB (PFC, ETS and DCBX).
iSCSI-TLV is a part of DCBX. However the DCB protocol primitives must be supported end to end so if one member of the chain doesn't support it than it is useless.

How DCB makes iSCSI better is deeply explained here. 

So think twice if you really want converged network (aka unified fabric) or dedicated iSCSI network is better option for you.

DELL EqualLogic general recommendations for VMware vSphere ESXi

Bellow are eight major recommendations for DELL EqualLogic implementation with vSphere ESXi:

1. Delayed ACK disabled
2. LRO disabled
3. If using Round Robin, set IOs to 3
4. If  ENTERPRISE or ENTERPRISE+ license and ONLY with Enterprise/Enterprise+  install MEM 1.1.2
5. Extend login_timeout to 60 seconds.
6. Don’t have multiple VMDKs on a single Virtual SCSI controller.  (major cause of latency alerts)
7. Align partitions on 64K boundary
8. Format with 64K cluster (allocation unit) size with Windows

CISCO Nexus 1000v - Quality Of Service configuration

class-map type queuing match-any n1kv_control_packet_mgmt_class
 match protocol n1k_control
 match protocol n1k_packet
 match protocol n1k_mgmt

class-map type queuing match-all vmotion_class
 match protocol vmw_vmotion

class-map type queuing match-all vmw_mgmt_class
 match protocol vmw_mgmt

class-map type queuing match-any vm_production
 match cos 0

policy-map type queuing uplink_queue_policy
 class type queuing n1kv_control_packet_mgmt_class
   bandwidth percent 10
 class type queuing vmotion_class
   bandwidth percent 30
 class type queuing vmw_mgmt_class
   bandwidth percent 10
 class type queuing vm_production
   bandwidth percent 40

port-profile type ethernet uplink
 service-policy type queuing output uplink_queue_policy