Run Linux Containers on vSphere using Lightwave and Photon

It looks like the vsphere administrator that also support Linux containers may have gotten a little help thanks to two new open source projects.

For those of you that need a little intro into Linux Containers The Linux Containers (LXC) feature is a lightweight virtualization mechanism that does not require you to set up a virtual machine on an emulation of physical hardware. The Linux Container allows you to run a single application within a container (an application container) whose name space is isolated from the other processes on the system in a similar manner to a chroot jail. Making running many copies of application configurations on the same system a viable option over lots of VMs running on a host.
An example configuration would be a LAMP stack, which combines Linux, Apache server, MySQL, and Perl, PHP, or Python scripts to provide specialised web services.

If you are still with me let's take a look at project Photon and project Lightwave.

From the VMWare blog

Two open source projects were just announced by the Cloud-Native Apps group: Project Photon and Project Lightwave. Both of these projects will be foundational elements for running Linux containers and supporting next-generation application architectures. This marked a big milestone in the lifecycle of VMware Cloud-Native Apps, and at first glance may seem to be a lot more relevant to application developers than the traditional vSphere audience, but there really is a great tie-in to the Software-Defined Data Center. 

From the project Photon site

We recognized the need to expand our customers’ capabilities for developing and running cloud-native apps. Our customers let us know they wanted to take advantage of new technologies such as containers that allow them to easily package their applications as well as scale them in real-time, so we aimed to provide easy portability of containerized applications between on-prem and public cloud. We knew that our customers needed an environment that provided consistency from development through production, to smooth integration and deployment and speed time to market. To address these challenges, we have introduced Project Photon, a lightweight Linux operating system for cloud-native apps. Photon is optimized for vSphere and vCloud Air, providing an easy way for our customers to extend their current platform with VMware and run modern, distributed applications using containers. Photon provides the following benefits: Support for the most popular Linux container formats including Docker, rkt, and Garden from Pivotal Minimal footprint (approximately 300MB), to provide an efficient environment for running containers Seamless migration of container workloads from development to production All the security, management, and orchestration benefits already provided with vSphere offering system administrators with operational simplicity.

From the Lighwave site
Lightwave is an open source project comprised of standards-based, enterprise-grade, identity and access management services targeting critical security, governance, and compliance challenges for cloud-native apps. The project’s code is tested and production-ready having been used in VMware’s solutions to secure distributed environments at scale. Here are a few of its features: Multi-tenancy to simplify governance and compliance across the infrastructure and application stack and across all stages of application development lifecycle Support for SASL, OAuth, SAML, LDAP v3, Kerberos, X.509, and WS-Trust Extensible authentication and authorization using username and password, tokens and PKI infrastructure for users, computers, containers and user defined objects Project Lightwave pairs well with Project Photon (which we also announced today), our lightweight Linux OS optimized for cloud-native applications, to provide an enforcement layer for identity and access management via VMware vSphere and vCloud Air

So it looks like there may be a fairly simply way to move over to a VMware based Linux Container infrastructure with enterprise level security and backing. These projects could very well change the standard enterprise model for public and private cloud application hosting.

vSphere 6 - The next Generation

Go ahead cringe at the title. Feel better now?

OK so this month VMware announced vSphere 6, looks like a lot has changed. Here is the breakdown

From the VMware Press release

"VMware vSphere® 6, the newest edition of the industry-defining virtualization solution for the hybrid cloud and foundation for the software-defined data center. With more than 650 new features and innovations, VMware vSphere 6 will provide customers with a highly available, resilient, on-demand cloud infrastructure to run, protect and manage any application. VMware vSphere 6 will be complemented by the newest releases of VMware vCloud® Suite 6, VMware vSphere with Operations Management™ 6, and VMware Virtual SAN™ 6."

 Seems like a big deal right? Ill break down a little bit of what matters to us, the engineers:


What’s New in VMware vSphere 6.0?
Compute

• Increased Scalability – Increased configuration maximums: Virtual machines will support up to 128 virtual CPUs (vCPUs) and 4TB virtual RAM (vRAM). Hosts will support up to 480 CPU and 12TB of RAM, 2,048 virtual machines per host, and 64 nodes per cluster.
• Instant Clone – Technology, built in vSphere 6.0, that lays that foundation to rapidly clone and deploy virtual machines, as much as 10x faster than what is currently possible today. 

Storage

• Transform Storage for your Virtual Machines – vSphere Virtual Volumes* enables your external storage arrays to become VM-aware. Storage Policy-Based Management (SPBM) allows common management across storage tiers and dynamic storage class of service automation. Together they enable exact combinations of data services (such as clones snapshots) to be instantiated more efficiently on a per VM basis. 

Network

• Network IO Control – New support for per-VM Distributed vSwitch bandwidth reservations to guarantee isolation and enforce limits on bandwidth. 
• Multicast Snooping - Supports IGMP snooping for IPv4 packet and MLD snooping for IPv6 packets in VDS. Improves performance and scale with multicast traffic.
• Multiple TCP/IP stack for vMotion - Allows vMotion traffic a dedicated networking stack. Simplifies IP address management with a dedicated default gateway for vMotion traffic.

Availability

• vMotion Enhancements – Perform non-disruptive live migration of workloads across distributed switches and vCenter Servers and over distances of up to 100ms RTT. The astonishing 10x increase in RTT offered in long-distance vMotion now makes it possible for data centers physically located in New York and London to migrate live workloads between one another.
• Replication-Assisted vMotion – Enables customers, with active-active replication set up between two sites, to perform a more efficient vMotion resulting in huge time and resource savings – as much as 95 percent more efficient depending on the size of the data.
• Fault Tolerance (up to 4-vCPUs) – Expanded support for software based fault tolerance for workloads with up to 4 virtual CPUs.

Management

• Content Library – Centralized repository that provides simple and effective management for content including virtual machine templates, ISO images and scripts. With vSphere Content Library, it is now possible to store and manage content from a central location and share through a publish/subscribe model.
• Cross-vCenter Clone and Migration – Copy and move virtual machines between hosts on different vCenter Servers in a single action.
• Enhanced User Interface – Web Client is more responsive, more intuitive, and more streamlined than ever before.

So how does vSphere 6 compare with previous versions? Its Different to say the least (feature set)

*Image from vmwarearena.com

Configuration maximums were increased. Quite a big difference.

*Image from blogs.vmware.com

Also New!

vSphere Content Library provides a centralized repository that provides simple and effective management for content including VM templates, ISO images, and scripts.  With Content Library, it is now possible to store and manage content from a central location and share through a publish/subscribe model.

Support for OpenStack clouds with the release of VMware Integrated OpenStack (VIO). VIO has made vSphere not only compatible, but optimized for OpenStack through many core integrations.  VMware Integrated OpenStack is an add-on package.

Just Passed the VCP550D

I took the VMWare VCP550D delta exam to day since my VCP5 was going to expire in March 15th 2015. The test cost $120 and is 65 questions long with a 75 minute time limit. their isnt a lot of time and as a matter of fact I failed the test the first tie due ti running out of time. this time I passed with a score of 500.

I used the following resources to pass this test:

• The VMware mylearn website 
• The exam blueprints
• This Whats New video

All the documentation needed is in the blueprint. Some of the questions I had to think on consisted of vSphere Editions, vCOPs (badges and what elements make them up) and Distributed Switches. the wording on those questions seems like it's meant to throw you off, read them slowly. there are also questions for  vSAN, VDP, and Replication, along with the standard VCP questions.

If you qualify for the test take it soon before time runs out.

2015 vExpert!

Well it finally happened I was granted the honorary title of vExpert. this has motivated me to kick up the blogging. Look forward to more post from me in the future.

I wan to cover some of the following but am also taking request.
vSphere 6
Horizon 6
Nutanix NOS 4.1
and more randomness

I really want to thank the VMWare vExpert selection pannel for selecting me for 2015

 

Nutanix NOS 4 Awesomeness

This week I was able to deploy a Nutanix 1350 at a clients location for for a small VDI deployment. during the deployment which consisted of unboxing the Nutanix block, plugging the network ports, and laying down the software using Nutanix's foundation software; I noticed now much simpler everything has gotten. it only took about 6 hours from start to finish tho deploy the Nutanix and copy an Windows server VM over for vCenter. Try doing that with 3 servers and a SAN.

The Nutanix ships with KVM out of the box but supports Hyper-v, ESX, and KVM. One of the first things I noticed with NOS 4 was the increased performance when moving files around on the data-store, cloning a 40GB VM took under 1 minute from hitting the go button to the new clone flashing to the vmware start screen in the console. keep in mind the the 1000 series is the at the bottom of the product line in regards to specs. Performance improvements have been added to NOS 4.0, increasing overall system performance in 20% compared to NOS 3.5.

some of the NOS 4 changes are:

Hybrid On-Disk De-Duplication
De-duplication allows the sharing of guest VM data on premium storage tiers (RAM and Flash).

Shadow Clones (Official Support)
Shadow Clones is finally out of tech-preview. Shadow Clones intelligently analyze the I/O access pattern at the storage layer to identify files shared in read only mode (ie: Linked Clone Replica).
 
Tunable Fault Tolerance (RF-3)

Smart Pathing (CVM/AutoPathing 2.0)
The new and improved CVM AutoPathing 2.0 prevents performance loss during rolling upgrades minimizing I/O timeout by pre-emptively redirecting NFS traffic to other CVMs. Failover traffic is automatically load-balanced with the rest of the cluster based on node load.

Availability Domains (Failure Domain Awareness)
Also known as ‘Block Fault Tolerance’ or ‘Rack-able Unit Fault Tolerance’ the availability domain feature adds the concept of block awareness to Nutanix cluster deployments.

Snapshot Browser
The new snapshot browser functionality allow administrator to see and restore point-in-time array-based snapshots from a VM or a group of VMs in a local or remote protection domain.

Snapshot Scheduling via PRISM

One-Click NOS Upgrade
Nutanix one-click upgrade automatically indicates when a new NOS version is available and it will auto-download the binaries if the auto-download option is enabled. With a single-click to upgrade all nodes in a cluster Nutanix will use a highly parallel process and reboot one CVM at a time using a rolling upgrade mechanism. The entire cluster upgrade can be fully monitored by the administrator.

Cluster Health
Nutanix Cluster Health is a great asset in maintaining availability for Tier 1 workloads. Cluster Health gives the ability to monitor and visually see the overall health of cluster nodes, VMs and disks from a variety of different views. With the ability to set availability requirements at the workload level, Cluster Health will visually dissect what’s important and give you guidance on how to take corrective action.
(click on the image to enlarge)

Prism Central (Multi-Cluster UI)
Nutanix now provides a single UI to monitor multiple clusters in the same or different datacenters. Prism Central avoid administrations from having to sign individually to every cluster and provide aggregated cluster health, alerts and historical data.

PowerShell Support and Automation Kit
One of the big new things for workflow automation in Nutanix NOS 4.0 are the addition of PowerShell cmdlets to interact with the Nutanix API’s.

Sources:
http://myvirtualcloud.net/?p=6218
http://nutanix.com

NFS Disconnects bug vSphere 5.5 U1

Intermittent NFS APDs on ESXi 5.5 U1 

It looks like there is a bug in ESXi 5.5 U1 with disconnecting NFS datastores. Here is a summary of the issue:



When running ESXi 5.5 Update 1, the ESXi host frequently loses connectivity to NFS storage and APDs to NFS volumes are observed. You experience these symptoms:

• Intermittent APDs for NFS datastores are reported, with consequent potential blue screen errors for Windows virtual machine guests and read-only filesystems in Linux virtual machines
• Note: NFS volumes include VSA datastores.
• For the duration of the APD condition and after, the array still responds to ping and netcat tests are also successful, and there is no evidence to indicate a physical network or a NFS storage array issue.
• The NFS storage array logs and traces also do not indicate any evident issue, other hosts not running ESXi 5.5 U1 continue to work and can read and write to the NFS share without issue.

Looks Like it affects all NFS appliance and SAN makes and models 

Upgrading to vSphere 5.5

Here is some good info on the prereqs, order, and steps on how to upgrade to vSphere 5.5. the most important thing to do is to read the release notes before the upgrade and also verify that the gear you are using is on the HCL here is the link for the release notes

After giving it a go in the lab and running into a few issues where the install would roll back (SEE HERE) I decided to also give the fresh install a try. The new install went without a hitch

Everything you need to know

Upgrade
Methods of upgrading vCenter 5.5

Fresh install
Install best practices
Methods for installing vCenter 5.5
Installing vCenter server 5.5 BP

This is the upgrade order directly from vmware. you can find the full article here.

This table describes the sequence in which the vSphere 5.5 and its compatible VMware products must be updated:

Supported Update Sequence

	VCD	VCNS	View Composer	View Connection Server	vCenter Server	VR / SRM	vCOPS	VDP	VSA	ESXi	VMware Tools	vShield Edge	vShield App	vShield Endpoint	View Agent/ Client
Update Sequence Number	1
		2
			3
				4
					5*
						6	6	6	6
										7*
											8
												9	9	9	9

* If using a Cisco Nexus 1000V, see vSphere 5.5 and its compatible third-party products in the Additional Information section of this article before upgrading the vCenter Server (sequence step 5) or the ESXi hosts (sequence step 7).

Note: If you need to update multiple products in your environment, start with updating the product with the lowest sequence number. After you update the product, update the product with the next sequence number. If a product is not present in your environment, update the subsequent product. If you need to update two products with the same sequence number, the order of update does not matter.

Before you update the vCenter Server, disable vCenter Server from vCloud Director. Also ensure that you stop or disable other VMware services so that they do not communicate with vCenter Server during the update process. For more information, see the product documentation.


You really need to verify that all the products you are using will be supported. my lab is limited and I could not check any alternate configurations other than those set aside in the upgrade and install guides.