- HA
- DRS
- Snapshot
- FT
- vMotion
- SvMotion
VMware Engineer at a tech company with 501-1,000 employees
The DRS and snapshot features are valuable. vRA and vROps management could be simpler.
Pros and Cons
- "It gives us the ability to be running over 250+ VMs on five physical hosts and in various flavours of guest OSs."
- "The only improvement that is needed that come to mind are improvements in the vRealize Automation and vRealize Operations management simplicity."
What is most valuable?
How has it helped my organization?
It gives us the ability to be running over 250+ VMs on five physical hosts and in various flavours of guest OSs. Previously, we did not have this option.
What needs improvement?
The only improvement that is needed that come to mind are improvements in the vRealize Automation and vRealize Operations management simplicity.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've used it for six years.
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What was my experience with deployment of the solution?
We have not had any issues with deployment.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
We have not had any issues with stability over the six years we have been using the solution.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The solution has scaled well.
How are customer service and support?
I would give the technical support 7-8/10.
How was the initial setup?
In terms of the setup, it was generally straightforward overall. However, it was relatively complex to set-up vRealize Automation 6.
What about the implementation team?
Implementation was done in-house.
What was our ROI?
We made an ROI after three years of using the solution.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
My advice when it comes to pricing is that pricing is a bummer, especially when it comes to SnS coverage. From the feedback I have received from other users, that’s a concern for most of the customers.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
The products we looked at prior to this one were Hyper-V and RHEV.
What other advice do I have?
Overall, I strongly recommend this product.
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor. The reviewer's company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: We're partners.
Independent Analyst and Advisory Consultant at Server StorageIO - www.storageio.com
Putting some VMware ESX storage tips together
PART I
Have you spent time searching the VMware documentation, on-line forums, venues and books to decide how to make a local dedicated direct attached storage (DAS) type device (e.g. SATA or SAS) be Raw Device Mappings (RDM)' Part two of this post looks at how to make an RDM using an internal SATA HDD.
Or how about how to make a Hybrid Hard disk drive (HHDD) that is faster than a regular Hard Disk Drive (HDD) on reads, however more capacity and less cost than a Solid State Device (SSD) actually appear to VMware as a SSD'
Recently I had these and some other questions and spent some time looking around, thus this post highlights some great information I have found for addressing the above VMware challenges and some others.
The SSD solution is via a post I found on fellow VMware vExpert Duncan Epping’s yellow-brick site which if you are into VMware or server virtualization in general, and particular a fan of high-availability in general or virtual specific, add Duncan’s site to your reading list. Duncan also has some great books to add to your bookshelves including VMware vSphere 5.1 Clustering Deepdive (Volume 1) and VMware vSphere 5 Clustering Technical Deepdive that you can find at Amazon.com.
Duncan’s post shows how to fake into thinking that a HDD was a SSD for testing or other purposes. Since I have some Seagate Momentus XT HHDDs that combine the capacity of a traditional HDD (and cost) with the read performance closer to a SSD (without the cost or capacity penalty), I was interested in trying Duncan’s tip (here is a link to his tip). Essential Duncan’s tip shows how to use esxcli storage nmp satp and esxcli storage core commands to make a non-SSD look like a SSD.
______________________________________________________________________
The commands that were used from the VMware shell per Duncan’s tip:
esxcli storage nmp satp rule add –satp VMW_SATP_LOCAL –device mpx.vmhba0:C0:T1:L0 –option “enable_local enable_ssd”
esxcli storage core claiming reclaim -d mpx.vmhba0:C0:T1:L0
esxcli storage core device list –device=mpx.vmhba0:C0:T1:L0
______________________________________________________________________
After all, if the HHDD is actually doing some of the work to boost and thus fool the OS or hypervisor that it is faster than a HDD, why not tell the OS or hypervisor in this case VMware ESX that it is a SSD. So far have not seen nor do I expect to notice anything different in terms of performance as that already occurred going from a 7,200RPM (7.2K) HDD to the HHDD.
If you know how to decide what type of a HDD or SSD a device is by reading its sense code and model number information, you will recognize the circled device as a Seagate Momentus XT HHDD. This particular model is Seagate Momentus XT II 750GB with 8GB SLC nand flash SSD memory integrated inside the 2.5-inch drive device.
Normally the Seagate HHDDs appear to the host operating system or whatever it is attached to as a Momentus 7200 RPM SATA type disk drive. Since there are not special device drivers, controllers, adapters or anything else, essentially the Momentus XT type HHDD are plug and play.
After a bit of time they start learning and caching things to boost read performance (read more about boosting read performance including Windows boot testing here).
Screen shot showing Seagate Momentus XT appearing as a SSD
Note that the HHDD (a Seagate Momentus XT II) is a 750GB 2.5” SATA drive that boost read performance with the current firmware. Seagate has hinted that there could be a future firmware version to enable write caching or optimization however, I have waited for a year.
Disclosure: Seagate gave me an evaluation copy of my first HHDD a couple of years ago and I then went on to buy several more from Amazon.com. I have not had a chance to try any Western Digital (WD) HHDDs yet, however I do have some of their HDDs. Perhaps I will hear something from them sometime in the future.
For those who are SSD fans or that actually have them, yes, I know SSD’s are faster all around and that is why I have some including in my Lenovo X1. Thus for write intensive go with a full SSD today if you can afford them as I have with my Lenovo X1 which enables me to save large files faster (less time waiting).
However if you want the best of both worlds for lab or other system that is doing more reads vs. writes as well as need as much capacity as possible without breaking the budget, check out the HHDDs.
Thanks for the great tip and information Duncan, in part II of this post, read how to make an RDM using an internal SATA HDD.
PART II
In the first part of this post I showed how to use a tip from Dunacn Epping to fake VMware into thinking that a HHDD (Hybrid Hard Disk Drive) was a SSD.
Now lets look at using a tip from Dave Warburton to make an internal SATA HDD into an RDM for one of my Windows-based VMs.
My challenge was that I have a VM with a guest that I wanted to have a Raw Device Mapping (RDM) internal SATA HDD accessible to it, expect the device was an internal SATA device. Given that using the standard tools and reading some of the material available, it would have been easy to give up and quit since the SATA device was not attached to an FC or iSCSI SAN (such as my Iomega IX4 I bought from Amazon.com).
Image of internal SATA drive being added as a RDM with vClient
Thanks to Dave’s great post that I found, I was able to create a RDM of an internal SATA drive, present it to the existing VM running Windows 7 ultimate and it is now happy, as am I.
Pay close attention to make sure that you get the correct device name for the steps in Dave’s post (link is here).
For the device that I wanted to use, the device name was:
______________________________________________________________________
From the ESX command line I found the device I wanted to use which is:
t10.ATA_____ST1500LM0032D9YH148_____Z110S6M5
Then I used the following ESX shell command per Dave’s tip to create an RDM of an internal SATA HDD:
vmkfstools -z /vmfs/devices/disks/ t10.ATA_____ST1500LM0032D9YH148_____Z110S6M5
/vmfs/volumes/datastore1/rdm_ST1500L.vmdk
______________________________________________________________________
Then the next steps were to update an existing VM using vSphere client to use the newly created RDM.
Hint, Pay very close attention to your device naming, along with what you name the RDM and where you find it. Also, recommend trying or practicing on a spare or scratch device first, if something is messed up. I practiced on a HDD used for moving files around and after doing the steps in Dave’s post, added the RDM to an existing VM, started the VM and accessed the HDD to verify all was fine (it was). After shutting down the VM, I removed the RDM from it as well as from ESX, and then created the real RDM.
As per Dave’s tip, vSphere Client did not recognize the RDM per say, however telling it to look at existing virtual disks, select browse the data stores, and low and behold, the RDM I was looking for was there. The following shows an example of using vSphere to add the new RDM to one of my existing VMs.
In case you are wondering, why I want to make a non SAN HDD as a RDM vs. doing something else' Simple, the HDD in question is a 1.5TB HDD that has backups on that I want to use as is. The HDD is also bit locker protected and I want the flexibility to remove the device if I have to being accessible via a non-VM based Windows system.
Image of my VMware server with internal RDM and other items
Could I have had accomplished the same thing using a USB attached device accessible to the VM'
Yes, and in fact that is how I do periodic updates to removable media (HDD using Seagate Goflex drives) where I am not as concerned about performance.
While I back up off-site to Rackspace and AWS clouds, I also have a local disk based backup, along with creating periodic full Gold or master off-site copies. The off-site copies are made to removable Seagate Goflex SATA drives using a USB to SATA Goflex cable. I also have the Goflex eSATA to SATA cable that comes in handy to quickly attach a SATA device to anything with an eSATA port including my Lenovo X1.
As a precaution, I used a different HDD that contained data I was not concerned about if something went wrong to test to the process before doing it with the drive containing backup data. Also as a precaution, the data on the backup drive is also backed up to removable media and to my cloud provider.
Thanks again to both Dave and Duncan for their great tips; I hope that you find these and other material on their sites as useful as I do.
Meanwhile, time to get some other things done, as well as continue looking for and finding good work a rounds and tricks to use in my various projects, drop me a note if you see something interesting.
Additional Information
Which Enterprise HDDs to use for a Content Server Platform
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
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Infrastructure Engineer at a non-profit with 5,001-10,000 employees
It enabled deployment of the virtual machines via templates and distributed switches. If the browser crashes, then any progress is lost on the vCenter.
What is most valuable?
vMotion between the hosts, deployment of the virtual machines via templates and distributed switches are some valuable features of this product.
How has it helped my organization?
It allowed us to move from a physical environment to a virtual environment. It also allowed us to install much more of the hardware, i.e., up to 30+ virtual machines on a single physical server.
What needs improvement?
There is need for high availability for the vCenter and also a faster/responsive vCenter web interface. True high availability for a vCenter is required in the current virtualised world. With the introduction of 6.5, VMware has now introduced true HA with heartbeat monitoring.
As VMware have gradually decided to move from the C++ thick client to the flash based web portal, and now to the HTML5 web based portal, the legacy flash based web portal for vCenter 5/6.0 was sluggish and slow. On many occasions when going through nested windows for VMware configuration, the flash plugin or browser would crash. Fingers crossed with the new HMTL5 based web portal as so far it's been solid. Even though it doesn't currently have all the features of the flash based portal, I hope VMware releases a fully-functioning HTML5 in the next release of vCenter.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have used this solution for six years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Sometimes we have encountered vCenter/vSphere issues that requires the service to restart or the server restarts. The web interface has a lot going on and if the browser crashes, then any progress is lost on the vCenter.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I did not encounter any scalability issues for the VMs.
How are customer service and technical support?
The technical support is good. I had to use it for iSCSI related issues and was told to upgrade to latest build. However, it didn't fix the issue.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I was not using any other solution previously.
How was the initial setup?
I set up a clustered virtual environment and distributed switches with integration into EMC VNX using VLANs for each SP for iSCSI traffic.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
It is expensive for the private sector but it does have a good pricing policy for the charity sector.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We tested Hyper-V - but this was back in 2009. It was very basic then.
What other advice do I have?
You need to place more time into the design phase. You should also build higher spec servers in order to save costs on the licensing.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
VI Specialist at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees
I value the support for this application.
What is most valuable?
I value the support for this application.
How has it helped my organization?
If you compare the trend of each version, you can see that the practical features add to this product's value.
What needs improvement?
It would be very useful if they would configure the built-in backup application on this product.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have used it for more than five years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
There were some stability issues. If you assign a non-dedicated resource to this product, you can see the issue in storage.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
There were no scalability issues as such. However, it depends on the license that you buy.
How is customer service and technical support?
Technical support was at a high level.
How was the initial setup?
If you have a good understanding from the system how the solution works, it can be simple. Otherwise, it can be confusing.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
If you compare it with the applicable features provided, the cost is reasonable.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We evaluated Microsoft Hyper-V.
What other advice do I have?
You should at least try this product once.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Infrastructure Senior Specialist at a financial services firm with 51-200 employees
Leverages the migration with unshared storage. Helps manage main and DR sites simultaneously.
What is most valuable?
VMware is the market leader in virtualization. I like the following vMotion improvements in the current version:
- vMotion across virtual switches: There are no restrictions now to migrate VMs across switches (standard/distributed). It is valuable to me for an upgrade or when moving my datacenter.
- vMotion across vCenter Servers: This leverages the migration with unshared storage. In simple terms, VM1 is running on a certain host/cluster, which runs on a certain datastore and is managed by vCenter 1. It can be vMotioned to different ESXi hosts, which have different datastores managed by another vCenter server, called vCenter 2.
- Long Distance vMotion: I can now perform reliable migrations between hosts and sites that are separated by high network round-trip latency times. This is an official definition. For me, it helps me to manage main and DR sites simultaneously and in an effective way.
How has it helped my organization?
- Reduces the data center footprint: Fewer servers and less power consumption
- Reduces the overall footprint of your entire data center
What needs improvement?
They still have restrictions on fault tolerance features and managing snapshots.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been using VMware products since 2009 and this version for more than six months.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
We have not encountered any stability issues.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We have not encountered any scalability issues.
How are customer service and technical support?
I am satisfied with the technical support. Some support cases needed to be escalated, but overall it is good.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I used different solutions from different vendors. VMware products are the most stable/scalable products on the market. VMware can integrate easily with other vendors.
How was the initial setup?
The setup was easy. Some basics should be taken into consideration first.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Just focus on the features you need. Sometimes we misunderstand feature and pricing equations.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I tested it myself in my lab. Also, I visited some companies which work with this product to see it in action.
What other advice do I have?
This solution has lots of features. Just be aware of all of them and you will get the most out of it.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Systems Administrator at CityServiceValcon
Provides high availability and DRS.
What is most valuable?
The most valuable features are high availability and DRS.
- High availability: High availability is particularly valuable to my company because I know that if one of my hosts should fail, we will experience minimal interruption. The VMs affected will be booted back up in minutes on another host. This is critical to our business continuity.
- DRS: Prevents us from having to micromanage the placement of our VMs. They stay running in optimal spaces on our hosts. If we were to license Fault Tolerance (FT), we could potentially lose a host and have all the VMs continue to run without interruption. However, this is unnecessary in our line of business.
How has it helped my organization?
It allows multiple VM servers to live and move across several hosts, as resources change.
What needs improvement?
I would like to see better licensing and less complexity of use.
- Licensing: Any licensing after essentials plus becomes very granular. In turn, it is very expensive to license the features that you want. This is unfortunate, because IT for most companies is perceived as a “black hole” for costs. It becomes hard to justify because you cannot directly pin a value to it. Because of the perception, it is sometimes difficult to approve such large purchases, especially for something you can’t physically hold in your hands.
- Complexity: There is a benefit in having granular controls. In many cases, this is largely unnecessary. You may need to look for a feature that maybe you don’t have to change often. Maybe you only have to change it once. You can sometimes spend large amounts of time and effort to find it, which can be fairly frustrating.
For how long have I used the solution?
We have used this solution for about six years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
There have been some stability issues. Adding plugins and vendor modules sometimes causes some pretty unexpected results.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
There have been some scalability issues. The Essentials Plus licensing is very restrictive and has no upgrade paths to other licensing models.
How is customer service and technical support?
Technical support is very good. That is, if you can get a support rep on the phone in a timely manner with whom you can overcome language barriers.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup was fairly easy. Adding on and configuring made it complex pretty quickly.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Skip Essentials and Essentials Plus. You will outgrow it, and then you will be stuck with a very expensive jump to Professional.
What other advice do I have?
Consider alternatives like AHV before jumping in feet first.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Information System Engineer at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
It provides a centralized management interface for ESXi hosts.
What is most valuable?
A lot of the features of this product are valuable to us such as vMotion, HA, online modify VM specs, etc.
How has it helped my organization?
vCenter provides a centralized management interface for ESXi hosts. It's not only a management tool but also a performance monitor. It's easy for us to update hundreds of ESXi hosts in a few weeks. It helps us manage thousands of VMs.
What needs improvement?
vCenter is much more important than ever. The vCenter HA solution is the area in which VMware should improve. (I know vCenter version 6.5 has a similar feature, but it's not released yet.)
For how long have I used the solution?
I have used this solution for more than 10 years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I have not encountered any stability issues.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
VMware's strategy is a step away from Windows. In the future, they will focus on virtual appliances. The only pain is it's risky to migrate from vCenter Windows to a virtual appliance.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I'm also using Hyper-V Server 2012 R2 along with SCVMM 2012 R2. It's really painful for VMware users since Microsoft's hypervisor solution has a lot of bugs/problems and is hard to fix.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is a wizard. You just need to follow default settings to finish the setup, then it is ready to work with. If you are using a virtual appliance, then the only thing you need to do is import to the ESXi host.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
vCenter is expensive. It's worse to buy if you have a high volume of ESXi hosts.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We evaluated another solution namely the SCVMM 2012 R2 solution.
What other advice do I have?
For new users, virtual appliance is the best choose as it is saving costs and is much easier to set it up as well.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Veeam ONE trial product is quite impressive BUT expensive per socket licensing model
Chief Information Officer at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
Helps to migrate from one storage vendor to another. Moves virtual machines off of arrays for maintenance or upgrade.
What is most valuable?
- Storage vMotion helps a lot when migrating from one storage vendor to another
- Storage vMotion migrates a virtual machine and its disk files from one data store to another while the virtual machine is running, with no down time.
- We can move virtual machines off of arrays for maintenance or upgrade
- We have the flexibility to optimize disks for performance or to transform disk types
How has it helped my organization?
We migrated our storage from IBM DS4700 & V7000 to VNX 5400 smoothly through storage vMotion.
What needs improvement?
I would like to see data recovery responsible for the virtual machine snapshot. It is not reliable as the parent snapshot gets corrupted and the whole corresponding snapshots collapse.
For how long have I used the solution?
We have been using this solution since 2009.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I did not encounter any issues with stability.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I did not encounter any issues with scalability.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is straightforward. The only complexity appears with inherited network security policies.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Pricing is a little bit high, but you have to value stability, scalability and the support level which are the most valuable parts of any solution.
What other advice do I have?
Choose VMware to gain the proper stability, scalability, and flexibility with premium support.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

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Another great tip - if you use Nimble Storage install the Nimble Connection Manager software on your hosts for the pathing management. It works very well with these devices for connectivity.