vSphere shows VMware Tools in Ubuntu as out of date

I have updated my previous post http://bit.ly/afTX7f with instructions on how to address this particular issue.  

Installing VMware Tools from vSphere’s install/upgrade feature on some Ubuntu versions doesn’t work.  Instead manually install the Ubuntu VMware Tools package from within the guest.  Once the package is installed, vSphere may not show the new VMware Tools as being ”OK”, instead it shows it as “Out of Date”.  Not a big deal, run vSphere’s VMware Tools Install/Upgrade feature after the initial package is installed and it should change to “OK”.

Systems monitoring puzzle in the great VMware vCenter as a VM vs. physical machine debate

The following article pretty much sums up my views on why I think running vCenter as a virtual machine is the best solution for most environments (notice I didn’t say all environments): http://bit.ly/awhXYb 

What I didn’t see addressed in the article was concerns regarding systems monitoring when running vCenter as a VM.

Avoid 802.1q Native VLAN’s with VMware

“VMware recommends you not associate any ESX Server virtual switch port group VLAN IDs with the native VLAN. Also, as long as you avoid using native VLAN for your VLAN port groups, there is no native VLAN related configuration necessary on the ESX Server systems.”

The easiest way to comply is to not assign any native VLAN the external switch port.  In switching it is often a common practice to assign a desired data port VLAN as the native VLAN.  But with VMware let the external switch go ahead and tag your VLAN(s) and then your vSwitches will be happy and behave as intended.

VMware ESX Server 3 802.1Q VLAN Solutions (originally written for ESX 3, but applies to ESX 4)
The Great vSwitch Debate - A great series of articles on vSwitches

How-to install VMware Tools in Ubuntu

Post Out-Dated

For up-to-date information visit https://help.ubuntu.com/community/VMware/Tools

Update your package lists:
sudo apt-get update

Check to see if Linux kernel headers are installed:
apt-cache search linux-headers-$(uname -r)

If you do not see the “Linux kernel header” package after executing the above command, then perform the next step, otherwise skip it …

If Linux kernel headers are not installed:
sudo apt-get install linux-headers-$(uname -r)

Install VMware Tools
sudo apt-get install open-vm-tools

Configure VMware Tools
sudo /usr/bin/vmware-config-tools.pl
Leave all answers as defaults

Restart Networking with vmxnet

WARNING: During the next five (5) steps you will temporarily lose network connectivity, you can optionally skip these steps and execute them at a more convient time.

sudo /etc/init.d/networking stop
sudo rmmod pcnet32
sudo rmmod vmxnet
sudo modprobe vmxnet
sudo /etc/init.d/networking start

Check to see if VMware-tools is running
ps -ax|grep vmware

You should see the following process running:
/usr/lib/vmware-tools/sbin32/vmware-guestd –background /var/run/vmware-guestd.pid

Check to see if balloon driver is running on host
Click on the link to learn how-to check to see if balloon driver is running

Check to see if VMware tools is out of date
From the vSphere client click on the Summary tab for the VM and in the General block look to see if VMware Tools shows “OK” or “Out of date”.

If it shows Out of date then right-click on the VM and  select Guest->Install/Upgrade VMware Tools.  It will take a while for the task to complete, when it is done processing the VMware Tools status should show “OK”.

References
How-To Install VMware Tools in Ubuntu

How-To See if Balloon Driver is Running in VM

SSH into the host where the VM is running.

Type ‘esxtop‘
Press ’m‘ for memory view
Press ‘f‘ to add a field
If there is no asterix by the ‘MCTL‘ item, press ‘I‘
Return to view

‘MCTL‘ column shows ‘Y‘ or ‘N‘ indicating whether balloon driver is running.
‘MCTLSZ‘ indicates the amount of guest memory reclaimed by balloon driver.
If the balloon driver is not running then install VMware Tools.

References:

• Does My VM Run Balloon Driver?
• Interpreting esxtop Statistics

ESX vs. Hyper-V R2

Here are a couple of interesting posts:

• Hyper-V passes Microsoft’s checkmarks exam: isn’t that always the case?
• Comparing VMware ESX and Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V
• VMware Infrastructure – Architecture Advantages

VMware Data Backup & Recovery

Here is a great tool for small to medium sized businesses at no additional cost if you have vSphere advanced version or above. It allows backup of the VM files to NFS, SMB, etc.  Unlike VCB this doesn’t require you or someone else to write code to do the backups, it is a full blown end user application. 

• VMware Data Recovery (VDR)
• VirtualizationAdmin: vDR Part One
• VirtualizationAdmin: vDR Part Two
• vDR File Level Restores (FLR)

VMware vCenter Server 2.5 for Linux

http://bit.ly/JOEfT

VMware ESX or ESXi?

VMware will Quit Offering ESX

VMware has officially stated that in the future, ESXi will be the exclusive focus, not ESX. Third party vendors were notified over a year ago and their development efforts reflect this.

Frequency of Patching

ESX is built on 64-bit Linux kernel 2.6 and is compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.2 & CentOS version 5.2.  About 90% of all ESX patches, many of which require rebooting are related to Red Hat. The ESXi’s appliance-based model requires a lot less patching and is generally more secure and reliable.

No Service Console in ESXi

You don’t need a service console unless you already have a lot of existing service console scripts that you don’t wish to port over.  DCUI combined with RCLI, PowerCLI and vCLI gives you what you need, but removes some of the hidden dangers of the service console.  In the service console it is easy to do destructive stuff that you should never be allowed to do.  ESXi is a lot cleaner, no need for service console configuration tasks.   The service console can only manage one host, RCLI can manage multiple hosts.

DCUI (use to initially set super-user password & IP info) then use tools below:

Remote CLI

Power CLI

vSphere CLI 

Smaller Memory Footprint in ESXi

ESXi uses a 70Mb RAM footprint vs. 300Mb RAM + 600Mb Swap with ESX, boots much more quickly.

No Web Access Client Support in ESXi

Use vSphere Client through the vCenter Server instead… much better. If your excuse is that vSphere Client is only for Windows check this out:
Using vSphere Client on Ubuntu Linux with Single Application RDP.

Related Links

How does VMware ESXi Server compare to ESX Server?

Solution Oriented Blog – Time to Upgrade from ESX to ESXi

VMware Knowledge Base – ESX vs. ESXi comparison

VMware ESX to ESXi Upgrade Center

VMware ESXi Chronicles