VMware vSphere 6.7 Optimize Upgrade Troubleshoot w. Ebook

This lecture gives students some information about the pace of the course, my expectations about your background, the topics we will be covering and the value I will add to the presentation in the form of Best Practices, General Tips, troubleshooting skills development and more.

In this lecture, you will learn about the type of hardware required by ESXi including ESXi hardware scalability. We will cover key steps to installing the ESXi hypervisor and also how to recover ESXi if it won't boot after an unplanned power loss.

ESXi allows administrators to review and update Password Strength Rules to ensure that ESXi only accepts passwords that conform to your organization's requirements. In this lecture, I will explain the advanced tuneables that control ESXi's password strength rules - so you can modify them to your requirements.

In this lecture, learn about the virtualization features your CPU must support in order to run ESXi 6.7. You will also learn about post-install tasks that must be performed to configure the Management Interface on your freshly installed ESXi host.

In this lecture, we will see how to use the DCUI to perform the following ESXi 6.7 tasks:

• Configure a VLAN tag for ESXi management networking

• Set the IPv4 and/or IPv6 addresses for the management interface for our ESXi host

• Set the DNS server IP(s) so we can do local DNS name resolution

• Test management networking configuration for correct operation

• Restart local host agents to restore an ESXi host management network interface back to normal operation

• Learn about the virtual consoles active on the ESXi 6.7 physical console

In this video, I show you how to access the ESXLab remote lab environment using both Microsoft Terminal Services (RDS / RDP) client and also using the ESXLab HTML 5 Browser to RDP gateway service. RDP is always the best choice. The HTML 5 to RDP gateway service can be used when your firewall doesn't allow outbound RDP connections to foreign systems.

In this lab demo, I take you through the steps to perform an interactive install of ESXi 6.7

In this lecture we will learn how to:

• Access the ESXi 6.7 command line via the local console and via SSH

• Stop and start  the ESXi Shell and SSH services from the command line (troubleshooting tip)

• Stop and start the ESXi Shell and SSH services automatically on next reboot

• Launch the DCUI from the command line (ESXi Shell or SSH) to fix a system where the DCUI service is disabled / broken

• Review recent log file entries from the ESXi console

• Browse ESXi host log file contents and key configuration files via a web browser

In this brief video I show you how to use pam_tally2 to unlock an account (such as the root account) that has been locked due to too many attempts to log in using an incorrect password. Enjoy!

In this lecture we will earn:

• What happened to legacy vSphere C# client

• How to launch and use the new Host Client

• How to create local users via Host Client and also via the command line (Troubleshooting Tip)

• How to assign users permissions on an ESXi host via Host Client and command line (Troubleshooting Tip)

• How to manually change a user's password from the command line (Troubleshooting tip)

• How to join a standalone ESXi 6.7 host to Active Directory (so you can assign permissions on domain accounts)

In this lecture, learn how to configure ESXi 6.7 services including:

• Configuring time services with NTP

• Monitoring ESXi host hardware health

• Working with ESXi's service management interfaces using both Host Client and the command line (Troubleshooting Tip)

• Working with ESXi's firewall including how to restrict access to specific services and from specific networks

• Review various ESXi host logs using Host Client

• The locations of key ESXi log files on the command line

• Which log files to check first if you are encountering problems

In this lecture you will learn how to:

• Size ESXi host pCPU and pRAM correctly for your workload

• The benefits of memory deduplication using Transparent Page Sharing (TPS)

• The features and concerns surrounding TPS and Knowledge Base articles you need to read before you enable TPS

• Why enabling TPS will improve memory efficiency by 20+% with little practical risk to your VMs

• How to enable TPS by editing an ESXi advanced configuration setting

In this lecture you will learn:

• The 3 different network types supported by ESXi 6.7

• The Shared Storage options available to ESXi 6.7

• The features, benefits and uses of adding local flash backed storage to  your ESXi host

• The performance benefits of using local Flash Backed Storage for VM paging files

• Using VMFS file systems for host flash backed storage

• Tips and best practices for configuring local host flash backed storage

Lockdown mode is a great way to minimize the chances of someone doing ad-hoc host management on your ESXi host. In this lecture we will see how to:

• Enable Normal or Strict Lockdown Mode on our host

• Use exception lists to ensure key people can still interact with our ESXi host

• Use command line tools to get host status and information

• Use command line tools to enter/exit Maintenance mode

• Use command line tools to safely shutdown or reboot an ESXi host

In this Hands-on Lab Demo, I take you through how to build an Exception user list, how to enable Lockdown Mode and how to verify that Normal Lockdown mode will deny access to valid users who are not on the Exception List.

VMware Installation Bundles (VIBs) are packages you can add to your ESXi host to patch defects, update features, add drivers and apply security fixes. In this lecture you will learn how to:

• Apply VIBs using Host Client

• Upload and apply VIBs on the command line

• List all installed VIBs using both Host Client and the Command line

• Decide which VIBs you should use and which VIBs you should avoid

• How to determine if a package requires a reboot in order to take effect

• How to safely shutdown and reboot your ESXi host from the command line

• The VIB Acceptance Level that you should never use

• The components that make up a VIB

In this lecture you will learn how to:

• Apply troubleshooting strategies to identify problems

• Configure physical host BIOS settings to meet VMware's requirements

• Use local accounts to protect against losing the root account password

• How to use Host Client to restart local management services if they fail

• How to restart local management agents from the command line (troubleshooting tip)

• ESXi host agent command line syntax - explained

In this lecture I identify two great sources of information on how you can secure your ESXi host. They are:

• Security Technical Inforamtion Guides (STIGs), and

• VMware Hardening Guides

I also talk about the ESXLab remote lab environment available for working through vSphere 6.7 labs

In this lecture, I cover:

• ESXi physical networking features and supported physical NICs (pNICs)

• Ultra fast, high end pNICs you can use with ESXi

• The 3 types of Virtual NICs (vNICs) you can select for your VMs

• Which vNIC you should choose for speed

• Use cases for selecting vNICs that emulate legacy pNICs

• The 3 types of vSwitch configurations - Isolated, Uplinked and Teamed

In this lecture, you will learn about:

• The 3 TCP/IP stacks supported by ESXi

• How Ethernet frames are handled by vSwitches

• The use cases for multi-homing Virtual Machines

• How to create a new, empty vSwitch using Host Client

• How to add a VMkernel NIC to a vSwitch to enable VMkernel networking

• How to add a new Port Group to a vSwitch for VM to VM and VM to Physical Peer networking

In this lecture I will show you how to use ESXi command line tools to:

• List your vSwitch configuration (2 ways)

• Create a new, empty vSwitch

• And pNIC uplinks to a vSwitch

• Add a VM Port Group to a vSwitch

• Change the Maximum Transfer Unit (MTU) of a vSwitch (in advance of using Jumbo Frames)

• List and add VMkernel NICs to expand VMkernel networking

• Enable and disable VMkernel NICs

• Change the MTU of VMkernel NICs so that VMkernel networking will experience higher throughput and lower protocol overhead (suitable for VMotion, IP Storage, NFS Share and other uses)

• Check to see if a VMkernel NIC is enabled for VMotion (and how to enable it if it isn't)

We will also see how to

• Review vSwitch properties

• Configure a pNIC team on a vSwitch

• Review and enable Cisco Discovery Protocol

• Review pNIC settings and connectivity

In this hands-on lab demo I show you how to create vSwitches, VMKernel NICs and Port Groups from the command line (great troubleshooting skills to have). I also show you how to review and update the configurations for these items.

In this lecture I will identify and explain popular ESXi command line tools you can use to review and troubleshoot ESXi networking. We will cover how to:

• Ping remote peers

• Test network connectivity to a remote service

• See network hops between your ESXi host and a remote peer

• Check the SSL encryption status of a connection to a remote peer

• Display detailed network statistics for your ESXi host

• How to capture packets received by your ESXi host

In this lecture I cover:

• Design goals for Virtual Networking

• vSwitch features and capabilities including Security, Traffic Shaping, pNIC Teaming and vLANs

• vNIC and pNIC port assignments

This lecture covers the 3 vSwitch Security Policies:

1. Promiscuous Mode

2. MAC Address Changes

3. Forged Transmits

You will learn how to use these policies to limit risky behavior at the VM / vNIC level to help keep your network more secure.

In this lecture, I discuss Traffic Shaping which is the ability to assign and enforce bandwidth limits to selected Port Groups and VMkernel NICs.

Jumbo Network frames (with payloads between 1,5001-9,000 bytes) should dramatically improve network throughput and reduce protocol overhead. In this lecture I will show you how to do Jumbo Frames right!

I take you through all of the steps necessary to configure, enable and Jumbo Frames on a vSwitch. Testing Jumbo Frames for reliability under stress is critical because many lower cost pSwitches do not have the speed to keep up with heavy, large packet network traffic - leading to packet transmit errors, receiver overruns, and more.

In this lecture I introduce the topic of pNIC Teams. I explain the goals of pNIC teaming which include higher throughput and higher network bandwidth. I explain how vSwitch frame forwarding works and I identify the 5 pNIC teaming strategies supported by ESXi.

In this lecture I explain the default pNIC teaming strategy - Route by Originating Port. I explain how it works, the Pros and Cons and give an example of how Ethernet frames flow from vNICs to pNICs to pSwitches (and back again).

I also cover Route by MAC Hash. This is a variant of Route by Originating Port that uses MAC address rather than vSwitch Port numbers to pair vNICs with pNICs.

In this lecture I explain the Route by IP Hash pNIC teaming option. Cisco people would know this as Etherchannel. ESXi supports Etherchannel pNIC teams. Route by IP Hash provides superior pNIC load balancing and fault detection.

I talk about the Pros, Cons, how to configure a Route by IP Hash team on both ESXi and (generically) on a pSwitch. I also identify the limitations of this pNIC teaming strategy.

Route by pNIC Load is the best pNIC teaming strategy for actively load balancing vNIC network traffic dynamically across pNIC teams. I identify the features, benefits, limitations and use cases for this strategy.

I also cover Active / Stand-by pNIC teams. This is a teaming strategy you can use when you have a small number of vSwitches sharing a generous number of pNICs. It allows you to assign Active pNICs to individual Port Groups and / or VMkernel NICs to ensure predictable bandwidth availability, while providing redundancy to ensure continued network availability in the case of a pNIC path failure.

In this lecture, I cover 2 topics: Network Failure Detection policies and pNIC Teaming best practices and use cases.

Network Failure Detection policies include Link State only or Beacon Probing. Link State check for pNIC links and stop using pNICs if link is lost. Beacon Probing uses network broadcasts to check the health of a pNIC team. Beacon probing is the preferred strategy for most pNIC team options.

pNIC Teaming use cases discusses the best pNIC Team strategy based on your scenario. Do you have unmanaged pSwitches or managed pSwitches? Do you use standard or distributed vSwitches? Learn which pNIC strategy is the right choice for you based on your circumstances.

In this short lecture, I explain the role of vSwitch pNIC rebalancing and the importance of automatically updating the pSwitch to make it aware of new vNIC to pNIC assignments.

ESXi supports 3 diffrent vLAN tagging strategies:

1. Virtual Switch Tagging

2. External Switch Tagging, and

3. Virtual Guest Tagging

I explain each of these strategies, how to implement them and their features, benefits and limitations.

In this lecture, I explain why ESXi insists on using only enterprise class pNICs by explaining the two tasks that ESXi offloads to pNICs:

1. Frame Checksum Handling, and

2. TCP Segment Offloading

By offloading these tasks to the pNIC, ESXi achieves faster networking with lower host pCPU and pRAM use.

There are specific use cases where you want to assign physical hardware directly to a VM. In this lecture I show you how to do it using:

1. DirectPath - the ability to assign a pNIC or a GPU directly to the hardware layer of a VM, and

2. SRIOV - the ability to take a pNIC or GPU and share it at the hardware level to multiple VMs

I also show you how to configure pDevices for both DirectPath and SRIOV use.

In this final lecture for this chapter, I cover:

• vSwitch best practices

• How to monitor vNIC and pNIC performance using esxtop

• How to query pNIC statistics (TX, RX, errors, packets / bytes sent, etc.) from the command line

• Network design best practices

• Suggestions for designing physical networks

• Options for free pSwitch health and activity monitoring

In this lecture I cover:

• NAS Components

• Defining NFS shares on Linux for ESXi use

• Review of Mounted NFS Shares

• How to query an NFS server for share definitions using the command line

• How to mount an NFS share using Host Client

• How to safely disconnect an NFS share via Host Client

In this lecture, I cover:

• How to increase the number of concurrently mounted NFS shares on and ESXi host

• Troubleshooting tips to help resolve why and NFS mount doesn't work as expected

• NFS v3 Speed and Multipath limitations

• NFS tips and best practices

• Use cases for publishing shares read-only and read-write

• Benefits and risks of using NFS v4.1

• NFS v4.1 path redundancy and why active-active multipathing is not supported

• NFS v4.1 best practices

• How to upgrade your NFS mounts from NFS v3 to NFS v4.1

• NFS Pros and Cons

In this lecture, I cover:

• Capabilities of Virtual Hardware version 14

• pCPU and vCPU sockets and cores

• VM memory declarations and use

• Updating default vNIC properties including how to manually assign a vNIC MAC address

In this lecture, I cover:

• Virtual SCSI Disk overview

• The 3 types of virtual SCSI controllers - BusLogic, LSILogic and Paravirtual and their use cases

• Which controller is best for Microsoft Fail Over Clusters and which is the Performance king

• The performance benefits of using multiple virtual SCSI controllers

• Which pvSCSI driver image you should use for modern Windows Operating Systems

In this lecture, I cover:

• USB controller and device support

• Best choice for VM NICs based on use cases

• The VMware Remote Console Application

• VMware Tools and the VMware Communications Interface (VMCI)

• Suggestions for reducing a VM's resource footprint

In this lecture I cover:

• Virtual machine constituent files

• Snapshots, troubleshooting snapshots and the Snapshot Manager

• Snapshot constituent files

Topics covered in this lecture include:

• Hardware capabilities of Virtual Hardware versions 8 through 14

• Guest OS security tips

• Using Nmap to port scan a freshly deployed VM to ensure it is properly secured

• Considerations before you upgrade a VM's virtual hardware

The topics I cover in this lecture include:

• How to manually upgrade vHardware and VMware Tools in a VM

Command line tools that let you:

• List VMs and shut down a selected VM

• Get the power status of a VM

• How to power on, shut down, power suspend and reboot a VM

• How to give up ownership and take ownership of a VM

• A review of other VM configuration capabilities from the command line

In this final lecture for this chapter, I cover:

• VM vHardware best practices

• Best practices for Windows VMs

• Tips for streamlining a VM for efficiency

• The VMware Guest OS Optimization Tool

• Tips for upgrading Virtual Hardware

• A roster of popular, supported Guest OSes

• Lab tasks for this chapter

In this hands-on lab demo, I take you through the steps to install, configure and run the VMware Guest OS Optimization tool. This template driven tool will help you streamline Windows desktop and server operating systems by disabling legacy or unneeded services, reducing your VM's vCPU and vRAM resource needs, optimizing the OS configuration for your virtual environment and much, much more.

This is a great tool to use on newly created VMs before you deploy them to production.

In this lecture, I cover two major topics:

1. How to do an automated install of vCenter appliance using a JSON response file

2. An overview of vCenter components

In this hands-on lab demo, I'll show you how to install vCenter Appliance 6.0 using a JSON file and the vCSA command line installer.

In this lecture, I cover:

1. Upgrade and migration paths that lead to vCenter appliance 6.7

2. How to complete the first Stage of upgrading a legacy vCenter appliance to vCenter 6.7

In this lecture I explain the 3 options available for deciding what to upgrade:

1. Configuration only

2. Configuration plus historical Task & Event data

3. Configuration, Task & Event data and historical ESXi host and VM performance data

In this lecture I present two major topics:

1. An introduction to vSphere Web Client and HTML 5 Client

2. vCenter appliance post install tasks

Completing vCenter post install tasks are critical. They allow you to:

1. Review and finalize your network, timezone, e-mail and password management services and policies

2. Review and manage vCenter services

3. Monitor vCenter resource use and availability

4. Make one-time or scheduled vCenter backups

5. Ensure you do not lose access to vCenter due to password aging

In this hands-on lab demo, I show you how to use the vCenter Appliance migration wizard to migrate your configuration data, tasks & event data and performance data from your legacy vCenter 6.0 appliance to vCenter Server Appliance 6.7.

In this lecture you will learn about:

1. How to join the base Photon OS and vCenter to Active Directory

2. How to add Active Directory accounts to vCenter and grant them the Administrator role

3. The purpose and use of the Administrator@<sso-domain> account

4. How VMware manages cross product inventory trees and the role that Global Permissions has in making super administrators

5. vCenter Console handlers. How to set your preference (web consoles vs. VMRC consoles)

vCenter lets you configure Lockdown Mode for your ESXi hosts. You can configure:

1. Lockdown mode including Disable / Normal / Strict

2. Exception lists to ensure that approved accounts can still access and administer ESXi hosts that are in Lockdown Mode

3. The differences and implications between Normal and Strict Lockdown Mode

4. Lockdown Mode best practices

In this lecture I introduce the VMware Certificate Authority (VMCA) service and describe the 3 modes of operation:

Default - where VMCA creates and installs signed certificates for ESXi hosts and vCenter Servers

Enterprise - where VMCA installs signed certificates on ESXi and vCenter that are trusted by your root Certificate Service

Custom - where VMCA acts as a certificate repository but does not create, install or verify certificates

This lecture covers two major topics:

• vCenter and vCenter Administrator best practices

• Options to ensure continuous vCenter availability using traditional VM backups, vCSA clone VMs and vCenter High Availability

In this final lecture in this chapter, I cover:

1. Why VMware is moving to vCenter Appliance and away from vCenter for Windows

2. How to query and manage vCenter Services using the command line (great for troubleshooting vCenter)

3. Key vCenter Log files and directories - where to look when things go wrong!

This lecture provides an introduction to rapid VM deployment using a copy-and-customize strategy. Templates are no-power-on VMs that are used as a source for copy/customize VM deployment. Clones are one-time copies of VMs (that may be powered on or powered off)

In this lecture I continue with our discussion of VM clones. I explain what is the same (between the source and target VM) and what is different. I also explain how Guest OS Customization works so that your new VM has new Guest OS identity and network properties (to avoid IP address, MAC address and Guest OS name clashes)

In this lecture I introduce the topic of importing and exporting VMs. VMware provides two license free, vendor neutral formats for Virtual Machine exchange:

• Open Virtual Machine (OVF) - where a VM is distilled down to compressed key files in a sub-directory, and

• Open Virtual Machine Archive (OVA) - where the same VM files are then added to an archive (a file that contains files)

OVF and OVA VMs are safe to copy, file transfer, have very small storage foot prints and make the sharing or migration of VMs fast and easy.

In this lecture I discuss the importance of right-sizing vCPU and vMemory - so that you don't provide too little (and leave the VM resource starved) or too much (and provide resources to VMs that they don't need while possibly denying those resources to other VMs that need them).

I also provide you with strategies for right-sizing vCPU and vMemory and show you how to calculate how much vCPU and vRAM is optimal to meet (and slightly exceed) a VM's actual CPU and memory needs.

VMware supports hot-adding vCPU, vMemory and other hardware objects (SCSI controllers, SCSI disks, vNICs, USB controllers and more).

In this lecture I explain the features, benefits and mechanics of enabling and using hotplug virtual hardware for vCPU and vMemory.

You can increase VM storage and performance by using multiple vDisks spread across multiple vSCSI controllers.

In this lecture, I explain how to hot-add vDisks, the benefits of using multiple vSCSI controllers in in performance VMs and use cases for both pvSCSI and LSI SAS virtual SCSI controllers

In this lecture I take you through the process of monitoring VM activity and performance (including limitations) using the esxtop tool. We look at VM vCPU performance, vMemory performance, disk I/O performance and more. esxtop is the only tool available that lets you analyze VM activity down to 2-second intervals. It exposes performance data that is unavailable using Web Client / HTML 5 Client performance charts.

In this final lecture for this chapter, we wind down our discussion of VMs with a presentation of VM best practices and troubleshooting tips. Most VM problems are due to either resource starvation or mis-configuration. I show you where to look and what to look for to identify problems and suggest things you can do to resolve the issue.