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ESXTOP Commands Troubleshooting storage performance issues can be difficult. ESXTOP Command tool can help. Note: Alway check with your storage vendor for assistance before spending too much time trying to solve storage issues. The differences between NAS, NFS, SAN, iSCSI is enormous and requires expertise. Command Strings and Switches I thought I’d post some useful CLI ESXTOP commands to help with monitoring storage for when you start having performance problems resulting from over subscribed storage. 1. Monitor overall storage performance per HBA: esxtop d f b,c,d,e,h,j s,2 2.  Monitor storage performance per LUN: * esxtop u f b,c,f,h s,2 3. Monitor storage performance per VM: * esxtop v f b,d,e,h,j s,2 * These options are only available in ESX 3.5 and greater. The columns we are going to pay attention to are CMDS/s, DAVG/cmd, KAVG/cmd and GAVG/cmd. Below is a brief description of each of these values. CMDS/...

VMWARE vNIC types and vNIC features – vSphere 5.x 1. Virtual Network Adapters (vNIC) for vSphere VMs · Standard VM is deployed with one Network Adapter (vNIC) · Different types of vNIC adapters are available for VM. · Type of network adapter will be selected depending on the VM’s Hardware version · Following are the different types of vNICS available · Flexible. · This Is the default vNIC type for 2-bit guests used for VMs and deployed on ESX 3.x. · Function as Vlance adapter if VMWare Tools are not installed. · Will function as VMXNET if VMWARE Tools are installed. § Vlance : It is emulated version of the AMD 79C970 PCnet32- LANCE NIC, and it is an older 10 Mbps NIC with drivers available in most 32-bit guest operating systems except Windows Vista and later. A virtual machine configured with this network adapter can use its network immediately. § VMXNET : The VMXNET virtual network adapter has no physical counterpart. VMXNET is optimized for performance...

When you browse a VM folder on a datastore you find different types of files listed there . Each file has specific role in a VM functioning. We  will learn here for which purpose which files are created. Typically you will find following types of files in a VM directory: VMDK files –  VMDK files names as (VMware Virtual Disk file) are the actual virtual hard drive for the virtual guest operation system. You can create dynamic or fixed virtual disks. With dynamic disks, the disks start small and grow as the disk inside the guest OS grows. With fixed disks, the virtual disk started out at the same (large) disk size decided initially while creating VM. Log files  – Log files are just that- a log of VM server activity for a single virtual server. Log files can be used only while doing any troubleshooting with a virtual machine. It can be more than 1 or 2 and modified each time while we Start, Suspend or reboot the Virtual Machine.   V...

Updated versions of HP Customized version of ESXi 5.0 U3 /5.1 U2 / 5.5 U2 (November 2014) are available. The new versions fix  a critical AMS issue causing inability to initiate vMotion or enable services, and reporting of HEAP Global errors. See What’s new section below for details Driver Versions in HP supplied VMware ESX/ESXi images October 2014 VMware FW and Software Recipe HP VMware vSphere 5.5 U2 Customized Image Release Notes for November 2014 HP VMware vSphere 5.1 U3 Customized Image Release Notes for November 2014 Download : VMware ESXi 5.0 U3 Installable HP Customized ISO Image (November 2014) VMware ESXi 5.1 U2 Installable HP Customized ISO Image (November 2014) VMware ESXi 5.5 U2 Installable HP Customized ISO Image (November 2014) What’s New: AMS Fixes Fixed critical AMS issue causing inability to initiate vMotion or enable services, and reporting of HEAP Global errors when attempting...

Active Directory Domain Services Overview http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh831484.aspx What is Active Directory? http://www.microsoft.com/en-in/server-cloud/windows-server/active-directory-overview.aspx Active Directory Services Overview (wiki) http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/1026.active-directory-services-overview.aspx Microsoft Active Directory: An Introduction (Microsoft Virtual Academy video series) http://channel9.msdn.com/Series/IntroToAD Wiki: Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) Portal (Fantastic!) http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/13752.wiki-active-directory-domain-services-ad-ds-portal.aspx Wiki: Active Directory Features in Different Versions of Windows Server http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/19037.active-directory-features-in-different-versions-of-windows-server.aspx AskDS / AskPFEPlat The AskDS blog remains the most amazing place on the internet ...