For last 4 to 5 years I have worked on VMware Virtualization Platform and Linux based Virtual Hosts. In my very short experience, I found out some very important things that can help any System Admin who is managing VMware Infrastructure. I have also written some Perl and Bash based scripts to automate some the tasks that help me out in managing backups of VMs and keep an eye on some of the very important aspects.
Here I will share those scripts and those aspects with you all, and hope that anyone who faces the same situation can easily resolve it.
The main aspects are listed below, more to come very soon.
Disaster Recovery and Backups
When I started work on VMware, the main thing or concern of my client and employer was the backups of Virtual Machines and Data that is being saved on those virtual machines.
I will very soon be sharing a complete method of how to make this a very easy task to manage and be on top of everything. I have written few custom scripts to verify everything, and using the ALL TIME FAMOUS GhettoVCB scripts to take backups of VMs.
Service Console
Service Console is a port / console through which you are directly connected to the VMware Server. This is the most important part of VMware which needs to be configured very well.
One more thing that I have learned after my little experience is that, one should always have a secondary / backup service console.
I will also be explaining this in my coming posts, how to configure service console and how to make backup service consoles.
VM Recovery from Backup After Crash
This is something that initially created allot of issues for me, but as time passed and after going through allot of documents and communities this became very clear to me. In fact now I think this is the most easiest task that can be completed in few minutes.
Creating and Managing Datastores
What is a Datastore? Datastore is just like another partition or your can also take it as a special mount point, where all your data is kept in VMware. Datasore can be on the local hard disk or over network or every a USB device connected. Inside a normal Datastore, you will find Virtial Machines, VM Disks, VM Configuration files and any other files that you want to place in the Datacenter ( such as a separate folder for ISO files and some scripts, etc).
ESX Host behind VPN and Firewall
This is something that I have found to be very very useful and very secure method. I have managed many VMware ESX hosts, and believe me I think this is the most secure method to put your ESX host over internet. In this method what happens is that, your main ESX host is actually not on Public IP but is only accessible through a Local IP and that is also only when you are connected to a VPN Server that is running on one of the Virtual Machines. I usually use an OpenVPN server for this.
Here I will share those scripts and those aspects with you all, and hope that anyone who faces the same situation can easily resolve it.
The main aspects are listed below, more to come very soon.
Disaster Recovery and Backups
When I started work on VMware, the main thing or concern of my client and employer was the backups of Virtual Machines and Data that is being saved on those virtual machines.
I will very soon be sharing a complete method of how to make this a very easy task to manage and be on top of everything. I have written few custom scripts to verify everything, and using the ALL TIME FAMOUS GhettoVCB scripts to take backups of VMs.
Service Console
Service Console is a port / console through which you are directly connected to the VMware Server. This is the most important part of VMware which needs to be configured very well.
One more thing that I have learned after my little experience is that, one should always have a secondary / backup service console.
I will also be explaining this in my coming posts, how to configure service console and how to make backup service consoles.
VM Recovery from Backup After Crash
This is something that initially created allot of issues for me, but as time passed and after going through allot of documents and communities this became very clear to me. In fact now I think this is the most easiest task that can be completed in few minutes.
Creating and Managing Datastores
What is a Datastore? Datastore is just like another partition or your can also take it as a special mount point, where all your data is kept in VMware. Datasore can be on the local hard disk or over network or every a USB device connected. Inside a normal Datastore, you will find Virtial Machines, VM Disks, VM Configuration files and any other files that you want to place in the Datacenter ( such as a separate folder for ISO files and some scripts, etc).
ESX Host behind VPN and Firewall
This is something that I have found to be very very useful and very secure method. I have managed many VMware ESX hosts, and believe me I think this is the most secure method to put your ESX host over internet. In this method what happens is that, your main ESX host is actually not on Public IP but is only accessible through a Local IP and that is also only when you are connected to a VPN Server that is running on one of the Virtual Machines. I usually use an OpenVPN server for this.
