Virtualization Adapted Adapting Business Processes for Virtual Infrastrcuture (and vice-versa)

2010/03/18

How to create a virtual appliance (OVF/OVA)

Filed under: virtualization — Tags: , , , , , , , , — iben @ 16:08

How to create a virtual appliance 

Background:

The Open Virtualization Format (OVF) specification is a standard being developed within the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) association to promote an open, secure, portable, efficient, and extensible format for the packaging and distribution of software to be run in virtual machines.

For use within an organization, Level 1 or Level 2 compatibility may be good enough, since the OVF package is distributed within a controlled environment where specific purchasing decisions of hardware or virtualization platforms can ensure consistency of the underlying feature set for the OVF.

Level 1. Only runs on a particular virtualization product and/or CPU architecture and/or virtual hardware selection. This would typically be due to the OVF containing suspended virtual machines or snapshots of powered on virtual machines, including the current run-time state of the CPU and real or emulated devices. Such state ties the OVF to a very specific virtualization and hardware platform.

Notes:

  Virtual machines created from OVF sources with SCSI LSI Logic disk controller might not start up after conversion to an ESX destination 
OVF sources with LSI Logic disk controllers might fail to boot when imported to an ESX destination. This is because Converter Standalone might change the controller type to Bus Logic instead of preserving the source controller type. 
Workaround: Using VI client, edit the settings of the imported virtual machine to change the controller type from Bus Logic back to LSI Logic. This will enable the virtual machine to boot.


While exporting a virtual machine from an ESX 3.5 host to OVF “folder of files” format by using Converter Standalone, the vNICs are forcibly changed from their native type 
While exporting a virtual machine source from an ESX 3.5 host to the OVF “folder of files” format, Converter Standalone changes the source vNICs from their native type (vmxnet, vlance, or e1000) to either PCNet32 (vlance) or E1000 (e1000). This might result in an unexpected lack of network connectivity when the OVF is imported. 
Workaround: Edit the .vmx file to manually modify the vNIC type after importing the virtual appliance. 


NOTE: VMXNET3 is recommended for all vSphere Virtual Machine Guests.

How to Make a Portable Virtual Appliance

You can export a virtual machine to a virtual appliance, making it available to other users to import into their inventories. The resulting virtual appliance is an OVF 1.0 appliance and contains one virtual machine. OVF Virtual Appliances contain many files that are typically compressed into an archive that can be put on removable media or downloaded from a server. This file much be decompressed prior to being imported and is more cumbersome to use. Consider using OVA for internal enterprise use.

OVA is also available – this format is a single file that is easier to distribute within an organization. The OVA format is not simply a tar. It places certain restrictions on the ordering and naming of files. These rules ensure that OVA archives are easy to stream – a tool or hypervisor does not need to download an entire OVA first and then unpack it.

You cannot select a virtual appliance destination for physical machine sources or virtual appliance sources.

The OVF created as a result of this conversion is not compatible with Workstation 6.5.x, nor with Converter 3.0.3.

Install Converter Standalone in Windows

You can install Converter Standalone onto a physical or a virtual machine. The Local setup installs the Converter Standalone server, Converter Standalone agent, and Converter Standalone client for local use. For remote access, you can create a Client-server installation. With remote access you can create and manage conversion tasks remotely.
When you install the Converter Standalone agent and the Converter Standalone server, the local machine becomes a server for conversions, which you can manage remotely. When you use the local machine with the Converter Standalone client, you can convert the full range of machine types.

Start the Wizard for a Conversion

The Conversion wizard helps you specify your source machine, the destination for the machine, and to select the machine’s settings.
  1. Start the VMware vCenter Converter Standalone application.
  2. Click Convert Machine in the application menu.
The Specify Source page introduces the conversion process: Specify Source, Specify Destination, View/Edit Options, and Ready to Complete.

What to do next

You can now select the source machine type to convert.

Select a Source to Convert

You can select from several source options for the type of machine to convert. If you are converting a virtual machine that runs on a VMware DRS cluster that vCenter Server manages, set VMware DRS Power Management (DPM) to manual to avoid DPM powering off the ESX hosts used by Converter Standalone. When the conversion process completes, restore DPM to its original settings. For information about how to change DPM settings, see the Resource Management Guide.
  • Select a VMware Infrastructure Virtual Machine Source
    You can convert a virtual machine that resides on an ESX host or ESX host that vCenter Server manages.

What to do next

You can now select the destination for your new virtual machine.

Select a Destination for the New Virtual Machine

Prerequisites

The source virtual machine must be powered off.

Procedure

  1. On the Destination page, select Virtual Appliance from the drop-down menu.
  2. In the Virtual appliance details pane, type the virtual appliance name in the Name text box.
  3. Click Browse to select a destination location.
    The destination folder can be local or a remote machine shared over the network.
  4. (Optional) If you are connected to a remote Converter Standalone server, click Connect as and provide the user credentials to be used when connecting to the destination machine.
    You must manually type the path to the destination.
  5. Select the Distribution format from the drop-down menu.
    You can create virtual appliance packages that contain monolithic compressed .vmdk files only. You can store the resulting files in an .ovf folder or place them in a single .ova tarred file.
  6. Click Next to customize the virtual appliance.

You selected to export a virtual machine to a virtual appliance.

What to do next

On the View/Edit Options page, you can make more precise settings to the conversion task.

Then begin the conversion. Once conversion is complete you can move the OVA file to a location where it can be accessed by an administrator with privileges to create virtual machines on the VMware vCenter Server.

Use vCenter to import a virtual machine from OVF/OVA

Start the Deploy OVF Template Wizard
You deploy an OVF template with the Deploy OVF Template wizard.

Procedure

Select File > Deploy OVF Template

On the Source page, you can specify to deploy an OVF template from a file or from a URL.

  • Deploy from a File
    You can deploy from a file that is either a OVF (.ovf file) or a OVA (.ova file) format. The OVF format is optimal for a web server or image library and deploys from a set of files. The OVA format is optimal for deploying from physical media and is packaged in a single file.
  • Deploy from a URL
    You may deploy the OVF template from a URL.

2009/05/06

vmxnet3 – features and use information – tips and tricks

Filed under: virtualization — Tags: , , , , , — iben @ 00:01
vmxnet3 – features and use information – tips and tricks
  
UPDATED for Windows 2008 Core

Glad to see this has been posted and we can talk about it now… please share your experiences and let us know if these tips work for you and what sort of performance benefits you’ve noticed when using this new driver.

We’ve been switching our Windows and Linux VMs to use “VMXNET Enhanced” for some time now and see public information on the new VMXNET3 NIC for guests…
This Thread has been started to help with procedures on the conversion of existing machines from older NIC to newer NIC as it is not 100% straightforward and there are some tricks to remove old hardware and change to new hardware. This would be similar in the physical world to changing from a 100 BaseT PCI Card to a GigE card. The old drivers need to be removed, new drivers installed, and IP Addresses moved over. If you just remove the old NIC and install the new one you may end up with a IP Address Conflict error saying the Address you are trying to use is already in use on another Network Interface. The problem is that when you open Device Manager the old NIC is hidden. See below for steps on how to overcome this.
Question: What is VMXNET3?
Answer: VMXNET3 builds upon VMXNET and Enhanced VMXNET as the third generation paravirtualized virtual networking NIC for guest operating systems.
New VMXNET3 features over previous version of Enhanced VMXNET include:
• MSI/MSI-X support (subject to guest operating system kernel support)
• Receive Side Scaling (supported in Windows 2008 when explicitly enabled through the device’s Advanced configuration tab)
• IPv6 checksum and TCP Segmentation Offloading (TSO) over IPv6
• VLAN off-loading
• Large TX/RX ring sizes (configured from within the virtual machine)

What’s New in vSphere 4.0

http://communities.vmware.com/viewwebdoc.jspa?documentID=DOC-9225&communityID=2701
http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/VMW_09Q1_WP_vSphereNetworking_P8_R1.pdf

From the Cisco document:VMware vSphere 4 and Cisco Nexus 1000V Series

VMware vNetwork module that encompasses the vDS and VMXNET-3 enables inline monitoring and centralized firewall services and maintains the virtualmachine’s network run-time characteristics.

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/switches/ps9441/ps9902/solution_overview_c22-529767-00.pdf

Tech Notes

Flexible shows up in Windows Device Manager as an “VMware
Accelerated AMD PCNet Adapter” and Enhanced vmxnet show up as “VMware
PCI Ethernet Adapter”.
http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1001805
Flexible — The Flexible network adapter
identifies itself as a Vlance adapter when a virtual machine boots, but
initializes itself and functions as either a Vlance or a vmxnet
adapter, depending which driver initializes it. VMware Tools versions
recent enough to know about the Flexible network adapter include the
vmxnet driver but identify it as an updated Vlance driver, so the guest
operating system uses that driver. When using the Flexible network
adapter, you can have vmxnet performance when sufficiently recent
VMware tools are installed. When an older version of VMware Tools is
installed, the Flexible adapter uses the Vlance adapter (with Vlance
performance) rather than giving no network capability at all when it
can’t find the vmxnet adapter.
Enhanced vmxnet — The enhanced vmxnet adapter is
based on the vmxnet adapter but provides some high-performance features
commonly used on modern networks, such as jumbo frames. This virtual
network adapter is the current state-of-the-art device in virtual
network adapter performance, but it is available only for some guest
operating systems on ESX Server 3.5. This network adapter will become
available for additional guest operating systems in the future.

Networking Error, IP Address Already Assigned to Another Adapter
KB Article 1179
Updated Jan. 07, 2009
Why do I see an error message that “The IP address XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX…” is already assigned to another adapter?

Solution
Under certain conditions, you may see the following error message from a Windows guest operating system:
The IP address XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX you have entered for this network
adapter is already assigned to another adapter Name of adapter. Name of
adapter is hidden from the network and Dial-up Connections folder
because it is not physically in the computer or is a legacy adapter
that is not working. If the same address is assigned to both adapters
and they become active, only one of them will use this address. This
may result in incorrect system configuration. Do you want to enter a
different IP address for this adapter in the list of IP addresses in
the advanced dialog box?
In this message, XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX is an IP address that you are
trying to set and Name of adapter is the name of a network adapter that
is present in the registry but hidden in Device Manager.
This can occur when you change a network connection’s TCP/IP configuration from DHCP to a static IP address if:

  • You have upgraded VMware virtual network adapters (for example

when you migrate a virtual machine from an older to a new version of
VMware software.)

  • You have added and removed network adapters multiple times.

The cause of the error is that a network adapter with the same IP
address is in the Windows registry but is hidden in the Device Manager
(My Computer > Properties > Hardware > Device Manager). This
hidden adapter is called a ghosted network adapter.

Using the Show hidden devices option in the Device Manager (View

Show hidden devices) does not always show the old virtual NIC

(ghosted adapter) to which that IP Address is assigned

Microsoft addresses this issue in their Knowledge Base article
269155, which is available at the time of this writing at
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=269155.

To resolve this problem, follow these steps to make the ghosted
network adapter visible in the Device Manager and uninstall the ghosted
network adapter from the registry:
1. Select Start > Run.
2. Enter cmd.exe and press Enter.
3. At the command prompt, run this command:
set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1
4. Enter Start DEVMGMT.MSC and press Enter to start Device Manager.
5. Select View > Show Hidden Devices.
6. Expand the Network Adapters tree (select the plus sign next to the Network adapters entry).
7. Right-click the dimmed network adapter, and then select Uninstall.
8. Close Device Manager.

How to remove these “phantom” NICs from Windows 2008 Server Core

  1. Copy devcon.exe over to the server core server (extract devcon.exe from \SUPPORT\TOOLS\SUPPORT.CAB on a Windows 2003 R2 x64 disc).
  2. Run devcon.exe findall =net (this should list all NICs on the system, including the phantoms). Example output:
    PCI\VEN_15AD&DEV_0720&SUBSYS_072015AD&REV_10\4&B70F118&0&0088: VMware PCI Ethernet Adapter #2
    PCI\VEN_15AD&DEV_0720&SUBSYS_072015AD&REV_10\3&18D45AA6&0&88: VMware PCI Ethernet Adapter
    PCI\VEN_15AD&DEV_07B0&SUBSYS_07B015AD&REV_01\FF565000EB16A3FE00: vmxnet3 Ethernet Adapter
    3 matching device(s) found.
    Observe that vmxnet3 was the active NIC and the others needed to be removed.
  3. devcon -r remove “@PCI\VEN_15AD&DEV_0720&SUBSYS_072015AD&REV_10\3&18D45AA6&0&88″ removed the first one.
  4. Repeat for the remaining unwanted NICs
  5. Reboot the machine to restart all services

Reference: http://vmtoday.com/2009/11/vsphere-upgrade-breaks-active-directory/

Performance

http://blogs.vmware.com/networking/2009/04/considerations-for-maximum-network-performance.html

For UDP, use vmxnet3 to be able to configure a larger vNIC Rx ring size.  Because UDP can be a lot more bursty (due to lack of flow-control), having a larger Rx ring size helps to provide buffering/elasticity to better absorb the bursts.  The new vmxnet3 allows resizing the vNIC’s Rx ring size, up to around 1 to 2 thousand buffers.  As a side note, there is some negative performance impact with larger ring size due to larger memory foot print. The new vxmnet3 vNIC is more efficient than the e1000 vNIC.  Also in general, ESX 4 has some performance improvements over ESX 3.5.

Line Rate 10GigE

Howie Xu, Director of R&D for VMkernel IO remarked recently that after talking with a few customers, many are still unaware we can achieve line rate 10GigE performance on ESX 3.5. Read “10Gbps Networking Performance on ESX 3.5u1” posted on VMware’s network technology resources page.

The story only gets better with vSphere 4 and ESX 4 with the new Intel Nehalem processors. Initial tests from engineering show a staggering 30Gbps throughput.

Choosing a Network Adapter for Your Virtual Machine
KB Article 1001805
Updated May 05, 2009
 
 
Details
  
The Virtual Machine wizard’s Choose Networks window allows you to specify a network and a network adapter. The network adapter choices available depend on these factors:
  • The version of the virtual machine, which depends on what host created it or most recently updated it
  • Whether or not the virtual machine has been updated to the latest version for the current host
  • The guest operating system

The Choose Networks window makes available only those network adapters that make sense for the virtual machine you are creating. Each adapter type is discussed in some detail in “Available Network Adapters,” below. Here is an overview of what Choose Networks might offer you:

  • For virtual machines native to VMware Workstation 4x, VMware GSX Server 3, or VMware ESX Server 2.x, you can explicitly choose between Vlance and vmxnet
  • For most 32bit virtual machines native to VMware Workstation 5 or 6, VMware Server 2, or VMware ESX Server 3, only the Flexible adapter is available
  • For most 64bit virtual machines and for 32bit Microsoft Windows Vista virtual machines, only the e1000 adapter is available
  • For certain guest operating systems on VMware ESX Server 3.5 and later, you can choose the Enhanced vmxnet adapter in addition to the Flexible or e1000 adapter mentioned for that guest type in the previous bullets
Solution
  
Available Network Adapters
 
The following network adapters might be available for your virtual machine, depending on the factors discussed above:
  • Vlance — Vlance (also called PCNet32) is a faithful virtual implementation of a common, if now somewhat aging, physical network adapter. Most 32bit guest operating systems, except for Windows Vista, have built-in support for this card so a virtual machine configured with this network adapter can use its network immediately.
  • vmxnet — The vmxnet virtual network adapter has no physical counterpart. VMware makes vmxnet available because Vlance, a faithful implementation of a physical card, is far from optimal for network performance in a virtual machine. Vmxnet is highly optimized for performance in a virtual machine. Because there is no physical card of type vmxnet, operating system vendors do not provide built-in drivers for this card. You must install VMware Tools to have a driver for the vmxnet network adapter available.
  • Flexible — The Flexible network adapter identifies itself as a Vlance adapter when a virtual machine boots, but initializes itself and functions as either a Vlance or a vmxnet adapter, depending which driver initializes it. VMware Tools versions recent enough to know about the Flexible network adapter include the vmxnet driver but identify it as an updated Vlance driver, so the guest operating system uses that driver. When using the Flexible network adapter, you can have vmxnet performance when sufficiently recent VMware tools are installed. When an older version of VMware Tools is installed, the Flexible adapter uses the Vlance adapter (with Vlance performance) rather than giving no network capability at all when it cannot find the vmxnet adapter.
  • e1000 — e1000 is a faithful virtual implementation of a physical network adapter that is broadly supported by newer operating systems, specifically most 64bit operating systems and both 32 and 64bit Windows Vista. e1000 performance is intermediate between Vlance and vmxnet.
  • Enhanced vmxnet — The enhanced vmxnet adapter is based on the vmxnet adapter but provides some high-performance features commonly used on modern networks, such as jumbo frames. This virtual network adapter is the current state-of-the-art device in virtual network adapter performance, but it is available only for some guest operating systems on ESX Server 3.5. This network adapter will become available for additional guest operating systems in the future.

    • 32/64bit versions of Microsoft Windows 2003 (Enterprise and Datacenter Editions). You can use enhanced vmxnet adapters with other versions of the Microsoft Windows 2003 operating system, but a workaround is required to enable the option in the VI Client. For more information, see Enabling enhanced vmxnet adapters for Microsoft Windows Server 2003.
    • 32bit version Microsoft Windows XP Professional
    • 32/64bit versions Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.0
    • 32/64bit versions SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10
    • 64bit versions Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.0

    Enhanced VMXNET is supported only for a limited set of guest operating systems:

Adapter Caveats
  
This section discusses some potential issues you might have.
 

 

Migrating virtual machines that use enhanced vmxnet. Enhanced vmxnet is new with ESX Server 3.5. Virtual machines configured to have enhanced vmxnet adapters cannot migrate to older ESX Server hosts, even though virtual machines can usually migrate freely between ESX Server 3.0 and ESX Server 3.0.1.

Upgrading from ESX Server 2.x to ESX Server 3.x. When a virtual hardware upgrade operation transforms a virtual machine created on an ESX Server 2.x host to an ESX Server 3.x host, Vlance adapters are automatically upgraded to Flexible. In contrast, vmxnet adapters are not upgraded automatically because certain guest operating systems — specifically most or all Linux versions — do not reliably preserve network settings when a network adapter is replaced. Because the guest operating system thinks a Flexible adapter is still Vlance, it retains the settings in that case. If the upgrade were to replace a vmxnet adapter with a Flexible adapter, the guest operating system would erroneously discard the settings.
 
After the virtual hardware upgrade, the network adapter is still vmxnet, without the fallback compatibility of the Flexible adapter. Just as on the original older host, if VMware Tools is uninstalled on the virtual machine, it is unable to access its network adapters.

 

Network adapters on multi-boot Linux. The Virtual Machine Settings dialog box and New Virtual Machine wizard allow creation of only those virtual network adapters that are supported for the selected guest operating system. If you change the guest operating system, the existing network adapters are not affected. When you switch a multi-boot Linux system between 32bit mode and 64bit mode, a problem arises because most 32bit Linux versions do not support e1000 adapters while most 64bit Linux versions support only e1000 adapters. Consider configuring your virtual machine with one of each type of network adapter (e1000 and Flexible). You can then set up your guest operating system to use only the network adapter for which it has a driver in each mode.
 
You can add the second adapter any time the virtual machine is powered off, but you need to change the configured guest operating system type from 32bit to 64bit or vice-versa in order to be offered the other network adapter. Since changing that setting before rebooting into the other bit depth can potentially improve the efficiency of virtual machine scheduling, plan to change the guest operating system type setting before your first reboot into the other bit depth.

Adding virtual disks. Adding an existing older (ESX Server 2.x) virtual disk to an ESX Server 3.x virtual machine results in a de-facto downgrade of that virtual machine to ESX Server 2.x. If you are using ESX Server 3.x features, such as enhanced vmxnet or Flexible network adapters, the virtual machine becomes inconsistent. When you add an existing ESX Server 2.x virtual disk to an ESX Server 3.x machine, you should immediately use the Upgrade Virtual Hardware command to restore the virtual machine to the ESX Server 3 version.
Note: Executing Upgrade Virtual Hardware changes the ESX Server 2 virtual disk so it is no longer usable on an ESX Server 2 virtual machine. Consider making a copy of the disk before you upgrade one of the two copies to ESX Server 3 format.

If you must migrate a virtual machine between newer and older hosts, do not choose enhanced vmxnet but instead one of the older adapter types. Flexible or e1000 are offered whenever enhanced vmxnet is offered.

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