Hypervisor and their virtual disk formats

HYPERVISOR	FORMAT
VirtualBox	VMDK Stream Optimized
VirtualBox	RAW
VirtualBox	VMDK Flat
VirtualBox	VMDK Sparse
VirtualBox	VHD Flat Disk
VirtualBox	VDI Fixed Disk
VirtualBox	VDI Sparse Disk
KVM	RAW
KVM	VMDK Flat
KVM	VMDK Sparse
KVM	VHD Flat
KVM	VHD Sparse
KVM	QCOW2 Flat
KVM	QCOW2 Sparse
XEN	RAW
XEN	VMDK Flat
XEN	VMDK Sparse
XEN	VHD Flat
XEN	VHD Sparse
VMWARE	RAW
VMWARE	VMDK Flat
VMWARE	VMDK Sparse
Hyper-V	VHD Flat
Hyper-V	VHD Sparse

Solution : Vmware VM import Failed to open disk scsi0:0: Unsupported and/or invalid disk type 7. Did you forget to import the disk first?Unable to create virtual SCSI device for scsi0:0, Module DevicePowerOn power on failed.

This error comes when thin provisioned VMDK file is imported as new vm from backup, or clone VM.

error : "Failed to open disk scsi0:0: Unsupported and/or invalid disk type 7. Did you forget to import the disk first?Unable to create virtual SCSI device for scsi0:0,  Module DevicePowerOn power on failed."

solution : reimport the VM using the "zeroedthick"
for doing this.....

Go to /vmfs/volumes/yourdatastore/

and then give the following command

vmkfstools -i Ubuntu-server.vmdk -d zeroedthick Ubuntu-server1.vmdk


after that remove Ubuntu-server.vmdk and rename Ubuntu-Server1.vmdk to Ubuntu-Server.vmdk and continue the process of import it will work.




"zeroedthink" a flat file of full size is created. ( not thin provisioned)


for more information ClickHere


 

Top VMware Virtulization blogs

Are you looking for these

How to start learning vmware
free Vsphere training
troubleshooting vmware

Here is the list of top Virtulization blogs related to vmware
if you want to become vmware master follow these blogs.. I strongly recommend

    * Yellow Bricks (Duncan Epping)
    * Scott Lowe
    * Virtual Geek (Chad Sakac)
    * NTPro.nl (Eric Sloof)
    * RTFM Education (Mike Laverick)
    * Virtualization Evangelist (Jason Boche)
    * VM/ETC (Rich Brambley)
    * Gabe's Virtual World (Gabriel Van Zanten)
    * Virtual Storage Guy (Vaughn Stewart)
    * Virtu-al (Alan Renouf)
    * vSphere-land (Eric Siebert)
    * vCritical (Eric Gray)
    * VMware Tips (Rick Scherer)
    * Frank Denneman
    * The VM Guy (Dave Lawrence)
    * Planet VM (Tom Howarth)
    * The SLOG (Simon Long)
    * VMGuru.nl (Various)
    * Mike D's Blog (Mike DiPetrillo)
    * Hypervizor (Hany Michael)
    * TechHead (Simon Seagrave)
    * vReference (Forbes Guthrie)
    * Pivot Point (Scott Drummonds)
    * Technodrone (Maish Saidel-Keesing)
    * Chris Wolf's blog
    * 2 VCP's (Jon Owings)
    * A Crazy Penguin (Andy Wood)
    * A Day In The Life (Adam Baum)
    * Aaron Delp Blog
    * Andi Mann – Ubergeek
    * Arnim van Lieshout
    * Beaver's Virtual Dam (Steve Beaver)
    * Blue Gears (Edward Haletky)
    * Blue Shift Blog (Kevin Kelling)
    * By The Bell (Steve Kaplan)
    * Cretec's Virtual Blog (Clint Eschberger)
    * Daily Hypervisor (S. Smith & D. Convery)
    * DeinosCloud (Didier Pironet)

    * Double Cloud (Steve Jin)
    * Elastic Vapor (Reuven Cohen)
    * ESX Virtualization (Vladan Seget)
    * Everyday Virtualization (Rick Vanover)
    * Gerbens Blog (G. Kloosterman)
    * GestaltIT (Various)
    * Going Virtual (Brian Norris)
    * Hypervisor.fr
    * Information Week Blog (Various)
    * Infoworld Virtualization Report (D. Marshall)
    * IT 2.0 (Massimo Re Ferre)
    * It's Just Another Layer (Ian K.)
    * J.F.V.I. (Chris Dearden)
    * Jase's Place (Jase McCarty)
    * Jume (Bouke Groenescheij)
    * Ken's Virtual Reality (Ken Cline)
    * Kendrick Coleman (Kendrick Coleman)
    * Knudt Blog (Brian Knudtson)
    * Lori MacVittie (Lori MacVittie)
    * LucD (Luc Dekens)
    * Malaysia VM (Various)
    * My Virtual Cloud (Andre Leibovici)
    * Musings of Rodos (Rodney Haywood)
    * Nickapedia (N. Weaver/T. Nicholas)
    * Peeters Online (Hugo Peeters)
    * Professional VMware (Cody Bunch)
    * Rational Survivability (Christofer Hoff)
    * Rickatron Blog (Rick Vanover)
    * Roger Lund IT/VMware Blog (Roger Lund)
    * Run-virtual (Richard Garsthagen)
    * SearchServerVirtualization Blog (Various)
    * TechProsaic (Hal Rottenberg)
    * The HyperAdvisor (Antone Heyward)
    * The Lone Sysadmin (Bob Plankers)
    * The Lower Case W (Matt Liebowitz)
    * The Virtualization Practice (Various)
    * vDestination (Greg Stuart)
    * vFrank (Frank Brix Pedersen)
    * View Yonder (Steve Chambers)

    * Vinf.net (Simon Gallagher)
    * Vinternals (Stuart Radnidge)
    * Virtual Admin Notes (Anton Zhbankov)
    * Virtual Future (Sven Huisman)
    * Virtual Hints (Matt Lorimer)
    * Virtual Insanity (S. Sauer/A. Sweemer)
    * Virtual Jay (Jay Rogers)
    * Virtual Kenneth's Blog (K. van Ditmarsch)
    * Virtual Lef (Ivo Beerens)
    * Virtual Lifestyle (Joep Piscaer)
    * Virtual Planet (Ricky El-Qasem)
    * Virtual Troll (Heino Skov)
    * Virtual VCP (Rynardt Spies)
    * Virtually Speaking (Dan Kusnetzky)
    * Virtualised Reality (Barry Coombs)
    * Virtualization Buster (Jonathan Franconi)
    * Virtualization Information (S. Snowden)
    * Virtualization Security (Tripwire)
    * Virtualization Stuff (Mark Mac Auley)
    * Virtualization Team (Various)
    * Virtualize Tips (Brian Suhr)
    * Virtualizing the D.C. (Tony Wilburn)
    * Virtually Ghetto (William Lam)
    * VirtualPro (Craig Stewart)
    * vKnowledge.nl (Martijn Baecke)
    * VM Admin (Andy Barnes)
    * VM Bulletin (Rick Schlander)
    * VM Hero (Ryan Marimon)
    * VM Today (Joshua Townsend)
    * VM-Aware (Paul Shannon)
    * VMpros.nl (Sander Daems)
    * VMware Info (Carlo Costanzo)
    * VMware Training and Certification (Scott Vessey)
    * VMwarewolf (Richard Blythe)
    * VMwise (Kanuj Behl)
    * VMworldz (Scott March)
    * vNotion (Anton Gostev)
    * Wikibon Blog (S. Miniman/D. Vellante)








please post the other blogs in comments which you find intresting

various virtualization file extentions

vmware virtual machine (.vmx)
Microsoft virtual pc or vrtual server virtual machines (.vmc)
Syamantec livestate recovery image (.sv2i)
acronis true image backup (.tib)
storageCraft shadowStor (.spf)
parallels virtualization products (.pvs)

what is VMware Fault Tolerance

VMware HA protects against unplanned physical server failure by providing a way to automatically
restart virtual machines upon physical host failure. This need to restart a virtual machine
in the event of a physical host failure means that some downtime—generally less than three
minutes—is incurred. VMware FT goes even further and eliminates any downtime in the event of
a physical host failure

Fault tolarance uses vLockstep technology

VMware FT maintains a mirrored secondary VM on a separate physical host that is kept in lockstep with the primary VM

Everything that occurs on the primary (protected) VM also occurs simultaneously on the secondary (mirrored) VM, so that if the physical host on which the primary VM is running fails, the secondary VM can
immediately step in and take over without any loss of connectivity. VMware FT will also automatically
re-create the secondary (mirrored) VM on another host if the physical host on which the
secondary VM is running fails

If, the hosts running both the primary and secondary VMs failed then
VMware HA will reboot the primary VM on another available server, and VMware
FT will automatically create a new secondary VM. Again, this ensures protection for the primary
VM at all times.
VMware FT can work in conjunction with VMotion, but it cannot work with DRS, so DRS must
be manually disabled on VMs that are protected with VMware FT.

what is VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler

VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler provide automatic distribution of resource utilization across multiple ESX/ESXi hosts that are configured in a cluster

DRS attempts to place each virtual machine on the host that is best suited to run
that virtual machine at that time.(intelligent placement)

three servers have been configured in an ESX/ESXi cluster with DRS enabled.When one of those servers begins to experience a high contention for CPU utilization, DRS uses an internal algorithm to determine which virtual
machine(s) will experience the greatest performance boost by being moved to another server with
less CPU contention.

what is VMware VMotion and Storage VMotion

VMotion, also known as live migration, is a feature of
ESX/ESXi and vCenter Server that allows a running virtual machine to be moved from one physical
host to another physical host without having to power off the virtual machine.This migration
between two physical hosts occurs with no downtime and with no loss of network connectivity to
the virtual machine.

Storage VMotion moves the storage for a
running virtual machine between datastores. Much like VMotion, Storage VMotion works without
downtime to the virtual machine

what is VMware vCenter Update Manager

vCenter Update Manager is a plug-in for vCenter Server that helps users keep their ESX/ESXi
hosts and select virtual machines patched with the latest updates

1. Scans to identify systems that are not compliant with the latest updates
2. User-defined rules for identifying out-of-date systems
3. Automated installation of patches for ESX/ESXi hosts
4. Full integration with other vSphere features
5. Support for patching Windows and Linux operating systems
6. Support for patching select Windows applications inside virtual machines

what is VMware vCenter Server ?

centralized management utility for all ESX/ESXi hosts and their respective virtual machines

its like windows active directory no exactly the same

vCenter Server is a Windows-based (vCenter Server for Linux is also there),
database-driven application that allows IT administrators to deploy, manage, monitor, automate,
and secure a virtual infrastructure in an almost effortless fashion

The back-end database
(Microsoft SQL Server or Oracle) that vCenter Server uses stores all the data about the hosts and
virtual machines.



Editions of VMware vCenter Server
-------------------------------------------
vCenter Server Essentials (small office)
vCenter Server Standard (all features)
vCenter Server Foundation (same as standard but limited to managingn three ESX/ESXi hosts.)

What is Virtual Symmetric Multi-Processing (vSMP)

virtual machines with multiple virtual processors

VMware Virtual SMP allows virtual machines to be created with two or four processors.

What is Storage Virtualization ?

Generally Physical hard disks are used as storage devices.

these physical devices are directly mapped and data is stored on those physical addresses directly.

but when it comes to storage virtualization

SAN etc are used and the storage destination is Logical (or virtual)

storage mapping is done with logical objects

benefits of storage virtualization

Less cost

easy administration (include backup etc)

easy migration of data

Components of vSphere environment

VMware ESX and ESXi
VMware Virtual Symmetric Multi-Processing
VMware vCenter Server
VMware vCenter Update Manager
VMware vSphere Client
VMware VMotion and Storage VMotion
VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler
VMware High Availability
VMware Fault Tolerance
VMware Consolidated Backup
VMware vShield Zones
VMware vCenter Orchestrator



additional products include VMware vCenter Lifecycle
Manager, VMware vCenter Lab Manager, VMware vCenter Stage Manager, and VMware vCenter
Site Recovery

Creating and Managing Virtual Networks Part 1

We start with

1) Identifying the compents of virtual Netwoks

2) creating virtual switches and virtual Switch port groups

3) managing NIC teams

4)managinv Virtual LANs (VLANs)

5)configuring virtual switch security policies

VIRTUAL SWITCH
-------------------------

it resides in vmkernel , it manages traffic between virtual machines


PORT GROUP
------------------

Its on virtual switch (logical object).

it provies services for Service console,Vmkernel and hosted virtual machines

i) service console port : It is configured with an IP address to allow access to service console at that respective address.(vswif)

ii)VMkernel port: it is configured with IP address to allow access to VMotion,
iscsi storage or NAS/NFS storage access,

this is referred as (vmknic)

iii)VM port group:it is switch to switch connection which allows VMs to access physical networks

About ESX Server

 

Esx server is core product of Vmware.

It functions as Hyper visor or Virtulization Layer

It is foundation of Virtual Infrastructure Suite

Its a Bare metal Installation ( It doesn't need operation system )

Its runs only on 64-bit servers

It comes in 3 flavors
1. ESX Full
2. ESXi
3. ESXiFree

As its bare metal installation Hardware resources are highly utilized by
Virtual machines. As resources are not utilized by Host operation system
And one more thing is no limitation on hardware usage.


Esx server has two components

Service Console :

its OS used to manage ESX Server and virtual machines that run on the server.
these include firewall,SNMP agents,Web server.
This Service Console is Redhat Based. and Not the Kernel

VMkernel:

it manages virtual machine's access to the underlying physical hardware
Cpu scheudling
Memory Management
Virtual Switch data processing

Various Virtulization solutions and Vmware Virtual Infrastructure suite

Various virtualization solutions include

Vmware vSphere
Citrix XenServer
Microsoft Hyper-v

there are many other solutions but these are widely used.

Among them Vmware is the top product. Their solutions are stable,efficient and its a complete virtualization solution.

They have developed a pack of solutions and still continuing with its development.
this is called Virtual Infrastructure suite or shortly VI.

this suite contains

Esx server

Virtual SMP (symmetric multi processing)

VirtualCenter

Infrastructure Client

Vmotion

Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS)

High Availability (HA)

Consolidated Backup (VCB)



































i have not mentioned the versions because here i just wanted to focus on showing different products vmware offers in its Vmware Infrastructure Suite.
I will try to brief all the above mentioned topics in coming articles

Compare Vsphere editions

Essentials for Retail

	Essentials Plus for Retail

Standard

Advanced

Enterprise

Enterprise Plus

what is virtualization ?

virtualization is a make belief of things that don't actually exist in real world. ( actual meaning )



Don't ask me if things actually don't exist then what is the use of it :)
 i am going to answer that any way...


 here virtualization is not Simulation or Emulation.

Here we can run multiple operating systems on one server .
These operating systems are called virtual machines.

This virtualization technology is used to convert Hardware to Software

This concept or technology is called virtualization.


what can be virtualized

• Server
• Desktop
• Network
• Storage
• Data Centers

these include virtual switches and virtual LAN etc .. yes physical devices can also be virtualized.

Virtualization tutorial on my Blog

I have attend a virtualization forum in mumbai last year

Venue:	Taj Lands End
Date:	Thursday, 6 Nov 08
Time:	8:00am to 6:30pm

Click here for details

there they have provided many details like
latest in virtualization technologies and trends that are transforming IT environments from the datacentre to the desktop

I found that technology very interesting and took time to learn this upcoming new technology
and post some tutorials and interesting things here..