Enabling Jumbo frames in VMware environments

An essential feature that we should always leave configured when working with gigabit networks is to modify the MTU value (Maximum Transfer Unit – Maximum Transfer Unit) What is the size (in bytes) of the largest data unit you can send with IP, by default, LAN networks use an MTU of 1500 bytes. On VMware and all devices that make up the gigabit ethernet network (typically the iSCSI storage network) its value must be raised to 9000 bytes, We should enable it in the storage cabin, on the switch (Some switches have it enabled by default), on VMware ESX hosts / VMware ESXi (vSwitch & Port Group) and at the NIC level on equipment that is directly connected. All this in order to take advantage of the gigabit network and be able to send larger packets.

Upgrade VMware ESXi 4.0 a 4.1 manually

Algo típico de estos días es ir actualizando nuestros entornos virtuales a la versión 4.1 los que tengan VMware ESXi 4.0 y quieran migrarlos a VMware ESXi 4.1, en este documento vemos cómo actualizar los host que tengamos descentralizados de una forma rápida pero manual, lo realizaremos mediante VMware vSphere CLI (Command-Line Interface) y bajándonos el fichero a que nos permitirá dicha actualización.

Migrate VMware vCenter 4.0 32bit to VMware vCenter 4.1 (64bit) + Update Manager

In this document, we'll look at how we can upgrade our VMware vCenter environment 4.0 to VMware vCenter 4.1, eye! we will take into account that in the source installation we have the vCenter in a 32 bits and (As we know) vCenter 4.1 can only be installed in systems of 64 Bit, therefore we are going to have to migrate all the configuration of a server (x86) to another (x64). If the source server is already 64 bit there would be so much complication. Once we have updated vCenter and its components to the 4.1 we will now be able to update the ESX hosts(i) a 4.1.

Upgrading from VMware ESX 4.0 to ESX 4.1 manually

If we intend to upgrade our VMware ESX hosts 4.0 or VMware ESXi 4.0 to the new version of vSphere 4.1 manually, This is, without using VMware Update Manager we can do it in a simple way. We will only have to download a couple of files, copy them to the host and apply them to update the computer, Previously we will have shut down all the virtual machines that the host runs or we have moved them to other computers and put the computer in maintenance mode.

Free VMware Backups with ghettoVCB

ghettoVCB.sh is one of the few good scripts I know that can help us make copies of our VMware environment for free, This is, we will be able to make backups on both ESX and ESXi servers without a license! We can say that it behaves the same as the traditional VCB, Takes a snapshot of the virtual machine to be copied, It copies the virtual machine's files to a directory and then deletes the snapshot. ghettoVCB is a script that must be run on the VMware ESX server itself(i), we can schedule it to run using 'Cron’ or as in my case I will run it from a remote computer using the utility plink.exe. In addition, ghettoVCB stores backups in an ESX datastore(i), In this document we will see at the end how to make the backup in a Windows folder that we have thanks to NFS.

Integrating Citrix XenDesktop 4 with VMware vSphere

Si queremos usar Citrix XenDesktop con un entorno virtual de VMware vSphere tendremos que realizar unas configuraciones extra, todo ello es para poder conectarnos desde el XenDesktop Delivery Controller a los escritorios virtuales de nuestro entorno vSphere y por lo tanto gestionado por la plataforma de virtualización de VMware, pudiendo usar VMware View Composer si nos interesase.