vSphere 5.1 brings new features and advantages to IT professionals managing virtual environments with VMware. Bill Oyler from St Croix Solutions highlights the top features in the new vSphere version and offers tips on upgrading from older versions.

1. VMware vSphere 5.1:
Upgrade Tips & Top New Features
October 25, 2012
Bill Oyler
Lead Systems Engineer
St. Croix Solutions, Inc.
Slide Deck Will Be Posted: boyler@scsmn.com
www.scsmn.com/vmware2012

2. VMware vSphere 5.1 Update
1. Licensing
2. “Gotchas”
3. Upgrade Tips
4. New Web Interface
5. Enhanced vMotion
6. vSphere Replication & SRM
7. Networking
8. Honorable Mentions

3. Licensing

4. Licensing
" Free upgrade to v5.1 with valid support contract.
" No more vRAM entitlement licensing!
" Licensed by physical CPU (as in the past).
" No price increases. (Some prices went down.)
" vSphere Standard Edition now includes:
" Storage vMotion & Enhanced vMotion
" Fault Tolerance
" Hot Add
" vSphere Replication
p …existing Standard customers will receive these entitlements
automatically!
" Acceleration Kit bundles are 6 CPU and come with vCenter Standard.
" Essentials Plus Kit and all Acceleration Kits now
include Virtual Storage Appliance (VSA).

5. “Gotchas”

6. “Gotchas”
" VMware View 5.1.x is not currently supported
with vSphere 5.1.
" A vSphere 5.1 patch will be released this
month to fix this issue!
" SQL 2012 is not yet supported with any VMware products.
" EMC PowerPath/VE requires a vSphere 5.1 hot-patch plus
PowerPath/VE patch to prevent Purple Screen of Death (KB #2034796).
" Cisco Nexus 1000V requires new version.
" Custom drivers (Ethernet, iSCSI, FC, FCoE) will need to be re-
installed.
" Some server models are no longer supported by VMware.
" Some storage array models are no longer supported by VMware.
" Some databases are no longer supported by VMware.
" Many third-party backup solutions do not support vSphere 5.1 yet.

7. “Gotchas”
" vCenter 5.1 is the first version of vCenter that cannot manage
ESX(i) 3.x hosts.
" OK to mix ESXi 4.x and ESXi 5.x hosts in the same cluster.
p Be careful with virtual hardware versions!
p VM Version 4 = ESXi 3.5+
p VM Version 7 = ESXi 4.x+
p VM Version 8 = ESXi 5.0+
p VM Version 9 = ESXi 5.1+
" VMware Tools 4.x and 5.x are fully compatible with 5.1.
" VMware Tools 3.x and earlier are not supported with 5.1.
" VMFS-3 and VMFS-5 are both supported with 5.1.
" VMFS-5 upgrades are non-disruptive.

8. “Gotchas”

9. “Gotchas”
" VMware Best Practice: If you have the luxury of doing so, create
a brand new VMFS-5 datastore, use Storage vMotion to move
VMs to it, then re-format old VMFS-3 datastore using VMFS-5.

10. Upgrade Tips

11. Upgrade Tips
" VMware Single Sign-On (SSO) is a brand new component that is
required.

12. Upgrade Tips
" vCenter components require much more RAM than in the past.
" vCenter + Single Sign On + Inventory Service installed together = 10 GB RAM minimum
p …plus SQL database = Add 2+ GB RAM
p …plus Update Manager = Add 2+ GB RAM
" VMware Single Sign-On (SSO) is non-trivial* to set up.
" vCenter database upgrade can cause database destruction*.
" SRM upgrade can lead to services that won’t start*.
" Some DBA/SQL experience required*, especially for SSO.
" Installing trusted certificates for VMware products is non-trivial*.
" There are a few bugs* to be aware of.
" WWN display issues in Web Client (KB #2035448).
" Standalone vSphere Replication failover issue (KB #2035929).
* St. Croix Professional Services is highly recommended!!

13. Upgrade Tips
" High-level vSphere 5.1 upgrade strategy:
1. Verify compatibility of all components (software/hardware).
p Upgrade third-party software/hardware/firmware as required.
2. Upgrade VMware View to v5.1.1.
3. Upgrade vCloud Director to v5.1.
4. Upgrade vShield Manager to v5.1.
5. Upgrade vCenter to v5.1.
6. Upgrade SRM & vSphere Replication to v5.1.
7. Upgrade ESXi hosts to v5.1 (plus patch for VMware View compatibility).
8. Upgrade/rebuild datastores from VMFS-3 to VMFS-5.
9. Upgrade Virtual Distributed Switches to v5.1.
10. Upgrade VMware Tools to most current version.
11. Upgrade VM Hardware to v9.

14. New Web
Interface

15. New Web Interface
" 5.1 marks the final release of the vSphere Client for Windows!
" New vSphere Web Client is only supported on specific browsers.
" Internet Explorer 7, 8, 9
p Disable this:
" Firefox 3.6 and later
p VERY SLOW
" Google Chrome 14 and later
p VERY FAST!
" All browsers require Adobe Flash Player 11.1 or later.

16. New Web Interface
" Windows and Linux are supported today.
" Client Integration Plug-In is required for:
p VM Remote Console (but you should use RDP instead!)
p Datastore File Upload/Download
" Mac OS X will be supported in the future
p Works great today on Google Chrome for Mac
p …but there is no Client Integration Plug-In
" Many vCenter plug-ins do not work in the Web Client
(today):
" VMware Update Manager
" VMware Site Recovery Manager
" Many third-party plug-ins

17. New Web Interface
" Demo: Interface Overview
" Cluster
" Host
" VM
" Demo: VMware Tools Upgrade
" Demo: Schedule Virtual Hardware Upgrade

18. Enhanced
vMotion*
* Also commonly referred to as:
• Unified vMotion
• X-vMotion
• vSphere 5.1 vMotion
• Shared Nothing vMotion
• vMotion + Storage vMotion

19. Enhanced vMotion
" Combination of vMotion and Storage vMotion.
" Migrate VMs live between hosts/clusters without shared storage.
" Supported on vSphere Standard* and above.
* Frank Denneman’s blog indicates
support for Essentials Plus customers,
but current GUI blocks Enhanced
vMotion in Essentials Plus.

20. Enhanced vMotion
" Can only be performed in the new Web Client.
" Hosts must be managed by same vCenter.
" Hosts must be part of same Datacenter.
" Hosts must be on the same Layer 2 network (and same vSwitch if
using Virtual Distributed Switch).
" Uses vMotion (LAN) interface for “shared nothing” data transfer; uses
storage fabric for data transfer if destination is on shared storage.
" Maximum of 2 concurrent Storage vMotions (including Enhanced
vMotions) per host.
" DRS and SDRS do not use Enhanced vMotion technology at all, and
will not make any recommendations for Enhanced vMotion migrations.
" Remember that HA still requires shared storage!
" For a true HA/DRS-enabled cluster, you still
need shared storage.

21. Enhanced vMotion
" Storage vMotion and Enhanced vMotion support parallel disk copies
(up to 4 VMDK’s simultaneously).
" Only applies to disk copies
between distinct datastores.

22. Enhanced vMotion
" Demo: Local Storage to Local Storage Migration

23. vSphere
Replication
& SRM

24. vSphere Replication 5.1
" Now included in all editions of vSphere 5.1 from Essentials Plus
and above at no additional cost.
" Baseline replicas can be “seeded” at remote site easily.
" Up to 500 VMs can be replicated.
" RPO can be between 15 minutes and 24 hours.
" Can be used for local replication within the same vCenter.
" Leverages Microsoft VSS to quiesce the file system as well as VSS-
aware applications, such as SQL and Exchange.
" Only block-level changes are transferred across the network.

25. vSphere Replication 5.1
" Demo: vSphere Replication Setup

26. Site Recovery Manager 5.1
" SRM now supports vSphere Essentials Plus.
" SRM now supports “Reprotect” with vSphere
Replication.
" Storage DRS and Storage vMotion are now supported
with SRM.
" SRM client is currently only available from the “legacy”
Windows vCenter Client.
" …except for vSphere Replication, which is managed from
the Web Client.
" …but VMware promises to release a complete SRM Web Client
within 90 days of GA.
p i.e. December 2012?

27. Site Recovery Manager 5.1
" Demo: SRM Overview
" Demo: DR Test

28. Networking

29. Networking
" Virtual Distributed Switch Health Check detects common problems:
" VLAN assignment (requires 2+ pNICs)
" MTU mis-match (requires 2+ pNICs)
" NIC teaming/load balancing mis-match (requires 2+ pNICs & 2 hosts)

30. Networking
" Automatic Network Rollback helps recover from typical
configuration mistakes on management interfaces (i.e. “user error”):
" VLAN mismatches
" IP address conflicts
" MTU size conflicts
" NIC teaming/load balancing conflicts
" NIC speed/duplex mismatches
" DNS and routing mismatches
" Available on Virtual Distributed Switch
(VDS) as well as Virtual Standard Switch (VSS)
" Now you can “safely” run management traffic through your VDS!
" Enabled by default in v5.1.

31. Networking
" If you really mess up your Virtual Distributed Switch…
" Now you can easily “Restore” it from the Direct Console UI (DCUI):

32. Networking
" BPDU Filter for Standard and Distributed vSwitch:
" Not the same as BPDU Guard.
p Can still allow Layer 2 loops.
" Will prevent entire ESXi host from having ports blocked by upstream
switch’s BPDU Guard feature.
" Not enabled by default; you must enable it manually:

33. Networking
" Demo: Network Health Check
" Demo: Virtual Distributed Switch Export & Restore
Configuration
" Demo: Automatic Rollback for Management Network

34. Networking
“Roughly the year 1999 was the peak of when
jumbo frames would have been most beneficial.”
- Requiem for Jumbo Frames
http://codingrelic.geekhold.com/2011/12/requiem-for-jumbo-frames.html

35. Honorable
Mentions

36. Honorable Mentions
" vSphere Data Protection (VDP): Small-scale backup solution based on
Avamar.
" 1 million IOPS from a single virtual machine is technically possible.
" VMware Tools upgrade will not require reboot (starting with next update).
" …but only on Windows Vista or later VMs.
" Linked clone support for 32 hosts per cluster on VMFS (View & vCD).
" 16 Gbps Fibre Channel HBA support.
" SDRS can now detect datastores backed by same physical disks.
" Storage I/O Control can detect optimal latency threshold.
" Transient All Paths Down (“APD”) situations no longer cause ESXi hosts to
get disconnected in vCenter or traffic to “halt” forever.
" HA now detects Permanent Device Loss (“PDL”) and shuts down VMs.
" vShield Endpoint (agentless anti-virus) included in
Essentials Plus and above.

37. Additional VMware Resources
" Yellow Bricks Blog
" Duncan Epping (VMware)
" www.yellow-bricks.com
" Frank Denneman Blog
" Frank Denneman (VMware)
" frankdenneman.nl
" Virtual Geek Blog
" Chad Sakac (EMC)
" virtualgeek.typepad.com
" Virtualization Evangelist Blog
" Jason Boche (local Minnesota vExpert)
" www.boche.net

38. Questions?
October 25, 2012
Bill Oyler
Lead Systems Engineer
St. Croix Solutions, Inc.
Slide Deck Will Be Posted: boyler@scsmn.com
www.scsmn.com/vmware2012