Thursday, March 5, 2015

Challenging Issues in VMware


Issue 1: VM live migration takes 15-20 minutes to complete the vMotion from one host to another host.
Background: 1 VC Server, 2 Hosts part of HA and DRS enabled Cluster.
Reason for the Issue: Since the VMs vMotion traffic had to reach the external Switch for vMotion to happen, it was taking longer time than expected. Since, we introduced cross over cable connectivity for vMotion traffic, it was internal, and so the vMotion happened in seconds.
Solution: Introduced Cross over cable connectivity for vMotion Traffic.
Steps:
1.       Add a physical NIC and attach the cross over cable.
2.       Create a vSwitch and select the physical NIC which has cross over cable attached.
3.       Create a VMKernel port group for vMotion.
4.       Perform vMotion.
Issue: the CPU Performance was poor for 2 of the Virtual Machines in the Host in a HA enabled Cluster.
Reason for the Issue:   The hyper threading was enabled for the Host. Both the VMs were HIGH priority VMs and were always utilizing max CPU.  The CPU affinity was setup for the both the VMs. Unfortunately, The 1 st VM was pinned to CPU0 (Logical Processor1) and 2 nd VM was pinned to CPU1 (Logical Processor 2). Basically, both the HIGH priority VMs were pinned to the same PHYSICAL CORE.As a result, the CPU Utilization was very poor.
Solution:  Pinned the 2 nd VM to another Physical CPU, in turn the CPU utilization was improved a lot better.
Troubleshooting Steps:
1.       Analyzed the VM’s Task Manager.
2.       Analyzed the ESXTOP performance statistics.
3.       The results were strange when checking the ESXTOP Results. CPU USED % was very LOW compared to CPU UTIL %. As both the CPUs were utilizing CPU all the time, the CPU UTIL % was HIGHER. Since the CPU was BUSY all the time scheduling CPU cycles for the both the VMs, both the VMs were unable to use the CPU resource to its maximum. Finally all these things resulted in VMs poor CPU performance.


Issue: One of the VM’s didn’t restart when the host fails though it’s part of HA in Vmware 3.5?
Note: In vSphere 4, this has been improved with the introduction of the concept “DRS Over reservation”. As part of DRS over reservation, the DRS will create a ghost VM in one of the hosts in the cluster identical to the VM which didn’t restart due to HIGH Reservation. And then the DRS will automatically load balance the cluster (defragment the resources) and accommodate the HIGH Reservation n that host.
Reason for the Issue:  The Admission control was enabled and the Admission control policy we used was “The % of the cluster resources reserved as failover spare capacity”. The VM had huge CPU and Memory reservation. The aggregate % for the cluster was HIGH but that resources were fragmented and none of hosts had enough resources to accommodate the VM.
Solution:
1.       Reduced the Memory and CPU Reservation for other VMs that didn’t require.
Troubleshooting Steps tried:
1.       Select the Cluster and select the Summary tab.
2.       See the VMware HA stuff in the right hand side.
3.       Also, click on Advanced RUN TIME info to see more info on % of the cluster resources available
Issue: vMotion didn’t happen at all between the hosts in vSphere 4.1 Update 2.
Reason for the Issue:  The value set for “Migrate” in Advanced Options was 0.
Solution: Changed the value for “Migrate” in Advanced Options from 0 to 1.
Troubleshooting Steps tried:
1.       Restarted the Management agents on an ESX Server
2.       Checked the VMKernel networking configuration.
3.       Tested the VMKernel and Service Console network connectivity with the vmkping and ping command
4.       Verified that Name Resolution and Time Synch were valid on ESX.
5.       Both the ESX were able to see the shared storage, enough resources were available.
6.       There was no CD ROM or floppy drive connected to the VM.

Issue : On-Board NICs will be missing in HP Servers with vSphere 4.1 Update 2

Solution: Separate ISO Image was available for HP Servers. VMware ISO image didn’t have the drivers required for On-board NICs.

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