This is a level 200 - 300 presentation. It assumes: Good understanding of vCenter 4, ESX 4, ESXi 4. Preferably hands-on We will only cover the delta between 4.1 and 4.0 Overview understanding of related products like VUM, Data Recovery, SRM, View, Nexus, Chargeback, CapacityIQ, vShieldZones, etc Good understanding of related storage, server, network technology Target audience VMware Specialist: SE + Delivery from partners

1. vSphere 4.1: Delta to 4.0Tech Sharing for Partners Iwan ‘e1’ Rahabok, Senior Systems Consultant e1@vmware.com | virtual-red-dot.blogspot.com | tinyurl.com/SGP-User-Group | facebook.com/e1ang August 2010

2. Audience Assumption This is a level 200 - 300 presentation. It assumes: Good understanding of vCenter 4, ESX 4, ESXi 4. Preferably hands-on We will only cover the delta between 4.1 and 4.0 Overview understanding of related products like VUM, Data Recovery, SRM, View, Nexus, Chargeback, CapacityIQ, vShieldZones, etc Good understanding of related storage, server, network technology Target audience VMware Specialist: SE + Delivery from partners

3. Agenda New features Server Storage Network Management Upgrade

4. 4.1 New Feature (over 4.0, not 3.5): Server

5. 4.1 New Feature (over 4.0, not 3.5): Server

6. 4.1 New Feature (over 4.0, not 3.5): Storage

7. 4.1 New Feature (over 4.0, not 3.5): Network

8. 4.1 New Feature: Management

9. Builds: ESX build 260247 VC build 258902 Some stats: 4000 development weeks were spent to get to FC 5100 QA weeks were spent to get to FC 872 beta customers downloaded and tried it out 2012 servers, 2277 storage arrays, and 2170 IO devices are already on the HCL

10. Consulting Services: Kit The vSphere Fundamentals services kit Includes core services enablement materials for vSphere Jumpstarts, Upgrades, Converter/P2V and PoCs. The update reflects what’s new in vSphere 4.1 - including new resource limits, memory compression, Storage IO Control, vNetwork Traffic Management, and vSphere Active Directory Integration. The kit is intended for use by PSO Consultants, TAMs, and SEs to help with delivering services engagements, PoCs, or knowledge transfer sessions with customers. Located at Partner Central – Services IP Assets https://na6.salesforce.com/sfc/#version?selectedDocumentId=069800000000SSi For delivery partner: Please download this.

11. 4.1 New Features: Server

12. PXE Boot Retry Virtual Machine -> Edit Settings -> Options -> Boot Options Failed Boot Recovery disabled by default Enable and set the automatically retry boot after X Seconds 12

13. Wide NUMA Support Wide VM Wide-VM is defined as a VM that has more vCPUs than the available cores on a NUMA node. A 5-vCPU VM in a quad-core server Only the cores count, and hyperthreading threads don’t ESX 4.1 scheduler introduces wide-VM NUMA support Improves memory locality for memory-intensive workloads. Based on testing with micro benchmarks, the performance benefit can be up to 11–17%. How it works ESX 4.1 allows wide-VMs to take advantage of NUMA management. NUMA management means that a VM is assigned a home node where memory is allocated and vCPUs are scheduled. By scheduling vCPUs on a NUMA node where memory is allocated, the memory accesses become local, which is faster than remote accesses

14. ESXi Enhancements to ESXi. Not applicable to ESX

15. Transitioning to ESXi ESXi is our architecturegoing forward

16. Moving toward ESXi Permalink to: VMware ESX and ESXi 4.1 Comparison Service Console (COS) Agentless vAPI-based Management Agents Hardware Agents Agentless CIM-based Commands forconfiguration anddiagnostics vCLI, PowerCLI Local Support Console CIM API vSphere API Infrastructure Service Agents Native Agents:NTP, Syslog, SNMP VMware ESXi “Classic” VMware ESX

17. Software Inventory - Connected to ESXi/ESX From vSphere 4.1 Before Enumerate instance of CIM_SoftwareIdentity Enhanced CIM provider now displays great detail on installed software bundles.

19. Additional Deployment Option Scripted Installation Numerous choices for installation Installer booted from CD-ROM (default) Preboot Execution Environment (PXE) ESXi Installation image on CD-ROM (default), HTTP/S, FTP, NFS Script can be stored and accessed Within the ESXi Installer ramdisk On the installation CD-ROM HTTP / HTTPS, FTP, NFS Config script (“ks.cfg”) can include Preinstall Postinstall First boot Cannot use scripted installation to install to a USB device

20. PXE Boot Requirements PXE-capable NIC. DHCP Server (IPv4). Use existing one. Media depot + TFTP server + gPXE A server hosting the entire content of ESXi media. Protocal: HTTP/HTTPS, FTP, or NFS server. OS: Windows/Linux server. Info We recommend the method that uses gPXE. If not, you might experience issues while booting the ESXi installer on a heavily loaded Network. TFTP is a light-weight version of the FTP service, and is typically used only for network booting systems or loading firmware on network devices such as routers.

21. PXE boot PXE uses DHCP and Trivial File Transfer Protocol (TFTP) to bootstrap an OS over network. How it works A host makes a DHCP request to configure its NIC. A host downloads and executes a kernel and support files. PXE booting the installer provides only the first step to installing ESXi. To complete the installation, you must provide the contents of the ESXi DVD Once ESXi installer is booted, it works like a DVD-based installation, except that the location of the ESXi installation media must be specified.

22. Additional Deployment Option

23. Sample ks.cfg file # Accept the EULA (End User Licence Agreement) vmaccepteula # Set the root password to vmware123 rootpw vmware123 # Install the ESXi image from CDROM install cdrom # Auto partition the first disk – if a VMFS exists it will overwrite it. autopart --firstdisk --overwritevmfs # Create a partition called Foobar # Partition the disk identified with vmhba1:c0:t1:l0 to grow to a maxsize of 4000 partition Foobar --ondisk=mpx.vmhba1:C0:T1:L0 --grow –maxsize=4000 # Set up the management network on the vmnic0 using DHCP network –bootproto=dhcp --device=vmnic0 --addvmportgroup=0 %firstboot --level=90.1 --unsupported --interpreter=busybox # On this first boot, save the current date to a temporary file date > /tmp/foo # Mount an nfs share and put it at /vmfs/volumes/www esxcfg-nas -add -host 10.20.118.5 -share /var/www www

24. Full Support of Tech Support Mode There you go  2 types Remote: SSH Local: Direct Console

25. Full Support of Tech Support Mode Enter to toggle. That’s it! Disable/Enable Timeout automatically disables TSM (local and remote) Running sessions are not terminated. All commands issued in Tech Support Mode are sent to syslog

26. Full Support of Tech Support Mode Recommended uses Support, troubleshooting, and break-fix Scripted deployment preinstall, postinstall, and first boot scripts Discouraged uses Any other scripts Running commands/scripts periodically (cron jobs) Leaving open for routine access or permanent SSH connection Admin will benotified when active

27. Full Support of Tech Support Mode We can also enable it via GUI Can enable in vCenter or DCUI Enable/Disable

28. Security Banner A message that is displayed on the direct console Welcome screen.

29. Total Lockdown

31. Additional commands in Tech Support Mode vscsciStats is now available in the console. Output is raw data for histogram. Use spreadsheet to plot the histogram Some use cases: Identify whether IO are sequential or random Optimizing for IO Sizes Checking for disk mis-alignment Looking at storage latency in moredetails

32. Additional commands in Tech Support Mode Additional commands for troubleshooting nc (netcat) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netcat tcpdump-uw http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tcpdump

33. More ESXi Services listed More services are now shown in GUI. Ease of control For example, if SSH is not running, you can turn it on from GUI. ESXi 4.0 ESXi 4.1

35. During normal operations:DCUI: misconfigs / restart mgmt agents vCLI vCenter vSphere APIs TSM: Advanced troubleshooting (GSS) ESXi Remote Access Local Access

36. Common Enhancements for both ESX and ESXi 64 bit User World Running VMs with very large memory footprints implies that we need a large address space for the VMX. 32-bit user worlds (VMX32) do not have sufficient address space for VMs with large memory. 64-bit User worlds overcome this limitation. NFS The number of NFS volumes supported is increased from 8 to 64. Fiber Channel End-To-End Support for 8 GB (HBA, Switch & Array). VMFS Version changed to 3.46. No customer visible changes. Changes related to algorithms in the vmfs3 driver to handle new VMware APIs for Array Integration (VAAI).

37. Common Enhancements for both ESX and ESXi VMkernel TCP/IP Stack Upgrade Upgraded to version based on BSD 7.1. Result: improving FT logging, VMotion and NFS client performance. Pluggable Storage Architecture (PSA) New naming convention. New filter plugins to support VAAI (vStorage APIs for Array Integration). New PSPs (Path Selection Policies) for ALUA arrays. New PSP from DELL for the EqualLogic arrays.

38. USB pass-through New Features for both ESX/ESXi

39. USB Devices 2 steps: Add USB Controller Add USB Devices

40. USB Devices Only devices listed on the manual is supported. Mostly for ISV licence dongle. A few external USB drives. Limited list of device for now

43. USB Devices Up to 20 devices per VM. Up to 20 devices per ESX host. 1 device can only be owned by 1 VM at a given time. No sharing. Supported vMotion Communication via the management network DRS Unsupported DPM. DPM is not aware of the device and may turn it off. This may cause loss of data. So disable DRS for this VM so it stays in this host only. Fault Tolerance Design consideration Take note of situation when the ESX host is not available (planned or unplanned downtime)

44. MS AD integration New Features for both ESX/ESXi

45. AD Service Provides authentication for all local services vSphere Client Other access based on vSphere API DCUI Tech Support Mode (local and remote) Has nominal AD groups functionality Members of “ESX Admins” AD group have Administrative privilege Administrative privilege includes: Full Administrative role in vSphere Client and vSphere API clients DCUI access Tech Support Mode access (local and remote)

46. The Likewise Agent ESX uses an agent from Likewise to connect to MS AD and to authenticate users with their domain credentials. The agent integrates with the VMkernel to implement the mapping for applications such as the logon process (/bin/login) which uses a pluggable authentication module (PAM). As such, the agent acts as an LDAP client for authorization (join domain) and as a Kerberos client for authentication (verify users). The vMA appliance also uses an agent from Likewise. ESX and vMA use different versions of the Likewise agent to connect to the Domain Controller. ESX uses version 5.3 whereas vMA uses version 5.1. 49

47. Joining AD: Step 1

48. Joining AD: Step 2 1. Select “AD” 2. Click “Join Domain” 3. Join the domain. Full name. @123.com

49. AD Service A third method for joining ESX/ESXi hosts and enabling Authentication Services to utilize AD is to configure it through Host Profiles

51. netlogond is the Likewise Site Affinity service - detects optimal AD domain controller, global catalogue and data caches. Launched from /etc/init.d/netlogond script.

52. lsassd is the Likewise Identity & Authentication service. It does authentication, caching and idmap lookups. This daemon depends on the other two daemons running. Launched from /etc/init.d/lsassd script.root 18015 1 0 Dec08 ? 00:00:00 /sbin/lsassd --start-as-daemon root 31944 1 0 Dec08 ? 00:00:00 /sbin/lwiod --start-as-daemon root 31982 1 0 Dec08 ? 00:00:02 /sbin/netlogond --start-as-daemon

53. ESX Firewall Requirements for AD Certain ports in SC are automatically opened in the Firewall Configuration to facilitate AD. Not applicable to ESXi Before After

54. Time Sync Requirement for AD Time must be in sync between the ESX/ESXi server and the AD server. For the Likewise agent to communicate over Kerberos with the domain controller, the clock of the client must be within the domain controller's maximum clock skew, which is 300 seconds, or 5 minutes, by default. The recommendation would be that they share the same NTP server.

55. vSphere Client Now when assigning permissions to users/groups, the list of users and groups managed by AD can be browsed by selecting the Domain.

56. Info in AD The host should also be visible on the Domain Controller in the AD Computers objects listing. Looking at the ESX Computer Properties shows a Name of RHEL(as it the Service Console on the ESX) & Service pack of ‘Likewise Identity 5.3.0’

57. Memory Compression New Features for both ESX/ESXi

58. Memory Compression VMKernel implement a per-VM compression cache to store compressed guest pages. When a guest page (4 KB page) needs to swapped, VMKernel will first try to compress the page. If the page can be compressed to 2 KB or less, the page will be stored in the per-VM compression cache. Otherwise, the page will be swapped out to disk. If a compressed page is again accessed by the guest, the page will decompressed online.

59. Changing the value of cache size

60. Virtual Machine Memory Compression Virtual Machine -> Resource Allocation Per-VM statistic showing compressed memory

61. Monitoring Compression 3 new counters introduced to monitor Host level, not VM level.

62. Power Management

63. Power consumption chart Per ESX, not per cluster Need hardware integration. Difference HW makes have different info

64. Performance Graphs – Power Consumption We can now track the Power consumption of VMs in real-time Enabled through Software Settings ->Advanced Settings -> Power -> Power.ChargeVMs 65

65. Host power consumption In some situation, may need to edit /usr/share/sensors/vmware to get support for the host Different HW makers have different API. VM power consumption Experimental. Off by default

66. ESX Features only for ESX (not ESXi)

67. ESX: Service Console firewall Changes in ESX 4.1 ESX 4.1 introduces these additional configuration files located in /etc/vmware/firewall/chains: usercustom.xml userdefault.xml Relationship between the 2 files “user” overwrites. The default files custom.xml and default.xml are overridden by usercustom.xml and userdefault.xml. All configuration is saved in usercustom.xml and userdefault.xml. Copy the original custom.xml and default.xml files. Use them as a template for usercustom.xml and userdefault.xml.

68. Cluster HA, FT, DRS & DPM

69. Availability Feature Summary HA and DRS Cluster Limitations High Availability (HA) Diagnostic and Reliability Improvements FT Enhancements vMotionEnhancements Performance Usability Enhanced Feature Compatibility VM-host Affinity (DRS) DPM Enhancements Data Recovery Enhancements

70. DRS: more HA-awareness vSphere 4.1 adds logic to prevent imbalance that may not be good from HA point of view. Example 20 small VM and 2 very large VM. 2 ESXi hosts. Same workload with the above 20 collectively. vSphere 4.0 may put 20 small VM on Host A and 2 very large VM on Host B. From HA point of view, this may result in risks when Host A fails. vSphere 4.1 will try to balance the number of VM.

72. Increased limits for VMs/host and VMs/cluster

73. Cluster limits for HA and DRS:

74. 32 hosts/cluster

75. 320 VMs/host (regardless of # of hosts/cluster)

76. 3000 VMs/cluster

78. Supports 320x5 VMs/cluster? NO

80. Cluster can only support 320x3 VMsX X

82. HA Operational Status Just another example 

83. HA: Application Awareness Application Monitoring can restart a VM if the heartbeats for an application it is running are not received Expose APIs for 3rd party app developers Application Monitoring works much the same way that VM Monitoring: If the heartbeats for an application are not received for a specified time via VMware Tools, its VM is restarted. ESXi 4.0 ESXi 4.1

84. Fault Tolerance

86. No data-loss Guarantee vLockStep: 1 CPU step behind Primary/backup approach A common approach to implementing fault-tolerant servers is the primary/backup approach. The execution of a primary server is replicated by a backup server. Given that the primary and backup servers execute identically, the backup server can take over serving client requests without any interruption or loss of state if the primary server fails

87. New versioning feature FT now has a version number to determine compatibility Restriction to have identical ESX build # has been lifted Now FT checks it’s own version number to determine compatibility Future versions might be compatible with older ones, but possibly not vice-versa Additional information on vSphere Client FT version displayed in host summary tab # of FT enabled VMs displayed there For hosts prior to ESX/ESXi 4.1, this tab lists the host build number instead. FT versions included in vm-support output /etc/vmware/ft-vmk-version:product-version = 4.1.0build = 235786ft-version = 2.0.0

88. FT logging improvements FT traffic was bottlenecked to 2 Gbit/s even on 10 Gbit/s pNICs Improved by implementing ZeroCopy feature for FT traffic Tx, too For sending only (Tx) Instead of copying from FT buffer into pNIC/socket buffer just a link to the memory holding the data is transferred Driver accesses data directly- no copy needed

89. FT: unsupported vSphere features Snapshots. Snapshots must be removed or committed before FT can be enabled on a VM. It is not possible to take snapshots of VMs on which FT is enabled. Storage vMotion. Cannot invoke Storage vMotion for FT VM. To migrate the storage, temporarily turn off FT, do Storage vMotion, then turn on FT. Linked clones. Cannot enable FT on a VM that is a linked clone, nor can you create a linked clone from an FT-enabled VM. Back up. Cannot back up an FT VM using VCB, vStorage API for Data Protection, VMware Data Recovery or similar backup products that require the use of a VM snapshot, as performed by ESXi. To back up VM in this manner, first disable FT, then re-enable FT after backup is done. Storage array-based snapshots do not affect FT. Thin Provisioning, NPIV, IPv6, etc

90. FT: performance sample MS Exchange 2007 1 core handles 2000 Heavy Online user profile VM CPU utilisation is only 45%. ESX is only 8% Based on previous “generation” Xeon 5500, not 5600 vSphere 4.0, not 4.1 Opportunity Higher uptime forcustomer emailsystem

91. Integration with HA Improved FT host management Move host out of vCenter DRS able to vMotion FT VMs Warning if HA gets disabled and following operations will be disabled Turn on FT Enable FT Power on a FT VM Test failover Test secondary restart

92. VM-to-Host Affinity

93. Background Different servers in a datacenter is a common scenario Differences by memory size, CPU generation or # or type of pNICs Best practice up to now Separate different hosts in different clusters Workarounds Creating affinity/ anti-affinity rules Pinning a VM to a single host by disabling DRS on the VM. Disadvantage Too expensive as each cluster needed to have HA failover capacity New feature: DRS Groups Host and VM groups Organize ESX hosts and VMs into groups Similar memory Similar usage profile …

96. Soft Rules Soft Rules DRS will follow a soft rule if possible Will allow actions User-initiated DRS-mandatory HA actions Rules are applied as long as their application does not impact satisfying current VM cpu or memory demand DRS will report a warning if the rule isn’t followed DRS does not produce a move recommendation to follow the rule Soft VM/host affinity rules are treated by DRS as "reasonable effort"

97. Grouping Hosts with different capabilities DRS Groups Manager Defines Groups VM groups Host groups

98. Managing ISV Licensing Example Customer has 4-node cluster Oracle DB and Oracle BEA are charged for every hosts that can run it. vSphere 4.1 introduces “hard partitioning” Both DRS and HA will honour this boundary. Rest of VMs Oracle DB DMZ VM Oracle BEA DMZ LAN Production LAN

99. Managing ISV Licensing Hard partitioning If a host is in a VM-host must affinity rule, they are considered compatible hosts, all the others are tagged as incompatible hosts. DRS, DPM and HA are unable to place the VMs on incompatible hosts.Due to the incompatible host designation, the mandatory VM-Host is a feature what can be (undeniably) described as hard partioning. You cannot place and run a VM on incompatible host Oracle has not acknowledged this as hard partitioning. Sources http://frankdenneman.nl/2010/07/vm-to-hosts-affinity-rule/ http://www.latogalabs.com/2010/07/vsphere-41-hidden-gem-host-affinity-rules/

100. Example of setting-up: Step 1 In this example, we are adding the “WinXPsp3” VM to the group. The group name is “Desktop VMs”

101. Example of setting-up: Step 2 Just like we can group VM, we can also group ESX

102. Example of setting-up: Step 3 We have grouped the VMs in the cluster into 2 We have grouped the ESX in the cluster into 2

103. Example of setting-up: Step 4 This is the screen where we do themapping. VM Group mapped to Host Group

104. Example of setting-up: Step 5 Mapping is done. The Cluster Settings dialog box now display the new rules type.

105. HA/ DRS DRS lists rules Switch on or off Expand to display DRS Groups Rule details Rule policy Involved Groups

107. Enhancement for Anti-affinity rules Now more than 2 VMs in a rule Each rule can have a couple of VMs Keep them all together Separate them through cluster For each VM at least 1 host is needed 101

108. DPM Enhancements Scheduling DPM Turning on/off DPM is now a scheduled task DPM can be turned off prior to business hours in anticipation for higher resource demands Disabling DPM It brings hosts out of standby Eliminates risk of ESX hosts being stuck in standby mode while DPM is disabled. Ensures that when DPM is disabled, all hosts are powered on and ready to accommodate load increases.

109. DPM Enhancements

110. vMotion

111. vMotionEnhancements Significantly decreased the overall migration time (time will vary depending on workload) Increased number of concurrent vMotions: ESX host: 4 on a 1 Gbps network and 8 on a 10 Gbps network Datastore: 128 (both VMFS and NFS) Maintenance mode evacuation time is greatly decreased due to above improvements

112. vMotion Re-write of the previous vMotion code Sends memory pages bundled together instead of one after the other Less network/ TCP/IP overhead Destination pre-allocates memory pages Multiple senders/ receivers Not only a single world responsible for each vMotion thus limit based on host CPU Sends list of changed pages instead of bitmaps Performance improvement Throughput improved significantly for single vMotion ESX 3.5 – ~1.0Gbps ESX 4.0 – ~2.6Gbps ESX 4.1 – max 8 Gbps Elapsed reduced by 50%+ on 10GigE tests. Mix of different bandwidth pNICs not supported

113. vMotion Aggressive Resume Destination VM resumes earlier Only workload memory pages have been received Remaining pages transferred in background Disk-Backed Operation Source host creates a circular buffer file on shared storage Destination opens this file and reads out of it Works only on VMFS storage In case of network failure during transfer vMotion falls back to disk based transfer Works together with aggressive resume feature above

114. Enhanced vMotion Compatibility Improvements Preparation for AMD Next Generation without 3DNow! Future AMD CPUs may not support 3DNow! To prevent vMotion incompatibilities, a new EVC mode is introduced.

115. EVC Improvements Better handling of powered-on VMs vCenter server now uses a live VM's CPU feature set to determine if it can be migrated into an EVC cluster Previously, it relied on the host's CPU features A VM could run with a different vCPU than the host it runs on I.e. if it was initially started on an older ESX host and vMotioned to the current one So the VM is compatible to an older CPU and could possibly be migrated to the EVC cluster even if the ESX hosts the VM runs on is not compatible

116. Enhanced vMotionCompatibility Improvements Usability Improvements VM's EVC capability: The VMs tab for hosts and clusters now displays the EVC mode corresponding to the features used by VMs. VM Summary: The Summary tab for a VM lists the EVC mode corresponding to the features used by the VM.

117. EVC (3/3) Earlier Add-Host Error detection Host-specific incompatibilities are now displayed prior to the Add-Host work-flow when adding a host into an EVC cluster Up to now this error occurred after all needed steps were done by the administrator Now it’ll warn earlier

118. Licencing Host-Affinity, Multi-core VM, Licence Reporting Manager

119. Multi-core CPU inside a VM Click this

120. Multi-core CPU inside a VM 2-core, 4-core, 8 core. No 3-core, 5 core, 6 core, etc Type this manually

121. Multi-core CPU inside a VM How to enable (per VM, not batch) Turn off VM. Can not be done online. Click Configuration Parameters Click Add Row and type cpuid.coresPerSocket in the Name column. Type a value (2, 4, or 8) in the Value column. The number of virtual CPUs must be divisible by the number of cores per socket. The coresPerSocket setting must be a power of two. Notes: If enabled, CPU Hot Add is disabled

122. Multi-core CPU inside a VM Once enabled, it is not readily shown to administrator This is not shown easily in the UI. VM listing in vSphere Client does not show core Possible to write scripts Iterates per VM Sample tools CPU-Z MS SysInternals

123. Customers Can Self-Enforce Per VM License Compliance When customer use more than they bought Alert by vCenter But will be able to continue managing additional VMs. So can over use. Customers are responsible for purchasing additional licenses and any back-SNS. So Support & Subscription must be back dated. This is consistent with current vSphere pricing.

124. Thank You I’m sure you are tired too 

125. Useful references http://vsphere-land.com/news/tidbits-on-the-new-vsphere-41-release.html http://www.petri.co.il/virtualization.htm http://www.petri.co.il/vmware-esxi4-console-secret-commands.htm http://www.petri.co.il/vmware-data-recovery-backup-and-restore.htm http://www.delltechcenter.com/page/VMware+Tech http://www.kendrickcoleman.com/index.php?/Tech-Blog/vm-advanced-iso-free-tools-for-advanced-tasks.html http://www.ntpro.nl/blog/archives/1461-Storage-Protocol-Choices-Storage-Best-Practices-for-vSphere.html http://www.virtuallyghetto.com/2010/07/script-automate-vaai-configurations-in.html http://searchvmware.techtarget.com/tip/0,289483,sid179_gci1516821,00.html http://vmware-land.com/esxcfg-help.html http://virtualizationreview.com/blogs/everyday-virtualization/2010/07/esxi-hosts-ad-integrated-security-gotcha.aspx http://www.MS.com/licensing/about-licensing/client-access-license.aspx#tab=2 http://www.MSvolumelicensing.com/userights/ProductPage.aspx?pid=348 http://www.virtuallyghetto.com/2010/07/vsphere-41-is-gift-that-keeps-on-giving.html

126. vSphere Guest API It provides functions that management agents and other software can use to collect data about the state and performance of a VM. The API provides fast access to resource management information, without the need for authentication. The Guest API provides read‐only access. You can read data using the API, but you cannot send control commands. To issue control commands, use the vSphere Web Services SDK. Some information that you can retrieve through the API: Amount of memory reserved for the VM. Amount of memory being used by the VM. Upper limit of memory available to the VM. Number of memory shares assigned to the VM. Maximum speed to which the VM’s CPU is limited. Reserved rate at which the VM is allowed to execute. An idling VM might consume CPU cycles at a much lower rate. Number of CPU shares assigned to the VM. Elapsed time since the VM was last powered on or reset. CPU time consumed by a particular VM. When combined with other measurements, you can estimate how fast the VM’s CPUs are running compared to the host CPUs