It’s Alastair here, today I am very pleased to release the vSphere 5 AutoLab, a free tool for the VMware community.

What is the AutoLab?

The AutoLab is a quick easy way to build a vSphere environment for testing and learning using a single desktop or laptop PC and VMware Workstation, Fusion or ESXi. The whole lab runs in VMs on that one PC, even ESXi runs in a VM and can then run it’s own VMs.

What’s in the AutoLab?

The Autolab download contains a set of shell VMs and a lot of automation.  Once built the lab contains two ESXi servers, a Windows Domain controller, a Windows Virtual Centre, a FreeNAS storage appliance and a FreeSCO Router to link it to the outside world.

The download has been kept very small for easy download and distribution, it contains only free, open source, software. You will also need the installers for vSphere and Windows, you should use evaluation licenses for both vSphere (built in) and Windows.

What can I do with the AutoLab?

• Run VMs on the lab ESXi servers, using iSCSI shared storage
• Build an HA and DRS cluster
• Work with vSphere Networking
• Practice the upgrade from vSphere 4.1 to vSphere 5.0
• Use PowerShell and the VCLI to manage the lab
• Rebuild the whole lab quickly and with minimal effort
• Choose how much automation you want in the lab build
• Take the lab with you on your laptop

Will my laptop/PC be able to run the AutoLab?

If your laptop has 8GB of RAM and a recent CPU you should be able to run the lab. Here is my three year old laptop that is upgraded to 8GB of RAM running the whole lab including VMs running on the ESXi servers inside the lab.

Where can I get the AutoLab?

http://www.labguides.com/autolab/

The AutoLab lives on LabGuides.com since it is an offshoot from the effort that Nick Marshall and I working on. Can you guess what that project is?

The Installation Instructions are in a pdf and you should take a look at those to get a better idea of what is involved.  Then there are two different downloads, both contain the same VMs but with slightly different configuration and different packaging. The download for VMware Workstation should also work with Player and Fusion.  The other contains a vApp for deployment onto ESXi 5.0. Download one  and get started by following the guide.

I hope that the AutoLab will save you a lot of time and frustration in building vSphere labs.  I will be posting on ProfessionalVMware the details of the automation that is in the AutoLab so you can reuse or modify the work.

You can contact me through my other blog http://www.demitasse.co.nz/wordpress2/about/

So all of us have Windows boxes in our shops that need to be installed, have some apps dropped on them and managed, even if we don’t really want them. That install process, has gotten easier over time with templates and what not, however, you still need to build that golden image, etc. Well, for that, there is Ninite.com

Ninite.com

Click the link above and you’ll be presented with a plethora of commonly installed software for Windows boxes. Much like this:

Well, what’s the big deal about that? Well, first it’s all in one place. Second, after you’ve made your selections you download an installer that drops all the packages onto your box silently… That is, there is no “Next, Next, Next, Finish”. Also, if it detects a package that you may have already installed, it will either update it, or ignore it if it’s already current.

Finally, there is a pretty good opportunity here to integrate this tool into your automation efforts. (Hint: Blog post coming).

Security & Other Concerns

Updating based on the comments on this post:

There were some concerns around “does it install the toolbars” and security of the apps. Ninite covers this here: http://ninite.com/help/how-ninite-works/

Specifically:

Ninite tries to behave exactly like a technical friend you’ve asked to install a few apps for you. This means that Ninite installers, regardless of when or where they were created:
Say “No” to toolbars or other junk
Always install the latest version of an app
Install the right 32-bit or 64-bit version for a PC
Install apps in the PC’s language
Skip apps that are already up-to-date
Upgrade an app if it’s out of date

And regarding security:

“Downloads come from the publishers’ sites and are checked for correct digital signatures or matching SHA-1 hashes before Ninite uses them.”

So, while that may not work in all environments, it more or less covers the basics (checking the binary, pulling from the source, killing toolbars, etc. As always, drop a comment if you have a concern or question. Also note: I’m not affiliated with Ninite, just found it extremely useful.

We’ll skip the reason you need tools installed. We’ll also skip a bit on the other ways to do this in PowerCLI. Rather, we’ll bring you a way to do this in Orchestrator.

Note:

If you’re not using vCO, you should be. Why? I covered that here. Additionally, there are some excellent vCO resources here.

VMware Tools Workflows

vCO ships with four workflows for managing VMware tools:

• Mount tools installer
• Unmount tools installer
• Upgrade VMware tools
• Upgrade VMware tools at next reboot

All of these are found in the vCenter library of workflows that rolls with the vCenter plug-in. Specifically they’re found under “Library > vCenter > Virtual machine management > VMware Tools”

Mount/Unmount tools installer

These two workflows take a single VM as input and can be used when provisioning a new VM. In the case of Unmount, they are also useful in ensuring a VM does not have the tools installer mounted before a VMotion. The real power with these two comes in your ability to use them as a part of a larger workflow however.

The mount and unmount workflows both have identical schema and an identical amount of code in their scripting blocks. Let’s take a look at each:

Schema

Code

vm.mountToolsInstaller();

vm.unmountToolsInstaller();

A bigger workflow

Well, I said the power in this was when you wanted to do more than a handful of VMs right, so here’s the bigger workflow promised:

Lots of little cross-wise lines, etc. Working around the workflow:

• Get a list of everything
• Make sure we have VMs left to parse
• Set the active VM
• Is it powered on?
  • If not, increase the count, start from step 2
  • If yes, should we mount or unmount the tools?
    • If yes, mount em, continue
    • If no, unmount the tools and continue

Confused? Well, I’ll spare the additional code as you can likely figure it out, and have uploaded the completed workflow here.

Upgrade Tools (on next reboot)

The next two in our list are the upgrade tools workflows which more or less function like their PowerCLI counterparts mentioned above. The first has a really really simple schema, so we’ll skip it. The more interesting one is “on next reboot”:

Of this, the more curious part is what’s going on behind the “Upgrade Tools” bit:

if (vm.summary.guest.toolsVersionStatus != “guestToolsNeedUpgrade”) {
    System.log(“Tools do not require upgrade for vm: ” + vm.name);
}
else {
    System.log(“Upgrading tools for vm: ” + vm.name);
    task = System.getModule(“com.vmware.library.vc.vm.tools”).upgradeToolsAtNextReboot(vm);
}

Do I need an upgrade? OMG Yes I do, send a call to the vCenter API to upgrade the tools at next reboot. Or so. This too could be worked into a larger workflow like we did before. That said I’ll leave it as an exercise for the end user this time.

Summary

Is vCO awesome? You bet! This time around we mounted and unmounted your VMware tools, and set the tools to upgrade at the next VM reboot, you know, in case you don’t have a maintenance window.

As always, if you have any questions drop a line in the comments or hit me up on twitter here.

The RPM version of the VMware tools installer for Linux guests seems to have gone the way of the dinosaur. In addition, the tools ISO for Linux has been provided as it’s own download, that is hidden away on the ESX or ESXi download pages, rather than the “Tools and Drivers” page.

Not sure why, but “Tools and Drivers” seems like an obvious choice to me.

When was the last time you found yourself configuring VMware tools on Linux? Did having to incessantly press enter accepting the defaults drive you nuts too? I think I might be the last one to the game on this, but today I was stumbling through configuring VMware tools on a few Linux VMs. Stumbling, over a terminal services session, over VPN, over some rural interwebs carrier.

A less than ideal sort of situation. The solution… other than get better internets, was to execute both “~/vmware-tools-distrib/vmware-install.pl” and “/usr/bin/vmware-config-tools.pl” with the “–default” (two dashes, then default) option. Like this:

What this does, is instead of making you hit enter for each of the options (because, ya know… you change them all that often), and accepts the defaults, making the entire install that much easier.

While going over TA1541 – Cool Little Things Marketing Did Not Tell You About vSphere 4.0 from this years VMworld, and came across this gem, a service console tool, that’s been there since ESX 3.5, and will report on all sorts of SCSI statistics.

[root@esxServerOfDoom root]# /usr/lib/vmware/bin/vscsiStats -?
/usr/lib/vmware/bin/vscsiStats: invalid option — ?
  VscsiStats — This tool controls vscsi data collection for virtual machine disk
                disk I/O workload characterization. Users can start and stop online data
                data collection for particular VMs as well as print out online histogram data.
                Command traces can also be collected and printed.

Awesome, no? It gets better. This doc: “Using vscsiStats for Storage Performance Analysis” is a must read, as are the docs it links to:

• Storage Workload Characterization and Consolidation in Virtualized Enviornments. This paper serves as an excellent example of vscsiStats in action.
• vscsiStats: Fast and Easy Disk Workload Characterization on VMware ESX Server) and playing with the tool. Check out his presentation if you’d like more detail.

Go GO GO!

Saving one of the best for last. This tool is every bit as awesome as any of the other tools listed this week, and then some. Why? What other tool can you point at your vCenter and with a few clicks, generate a Visio. Yeah, that’s right, virtual infrastructure documentation in a few clicks. It can be pulled down from here.

Check it out:

Managing VMware vSphere 4 with The Virtualization EcoShell from Eric Sloof NTPRO.NL on Vimeo

Have another tool you find useful? Let us know in the comments!

I’ve covered this one before, but it is so awesome it needs to be mentioned twice. It really is that good. What does it do? It latches your vCenter, and will check your clusters for HA/vMotion compatibility, and will let you know what is broken if there is something ‘off’. They have several videos and downloads available from their site here.

Have another tool you’ve found useful? One that you wish someone let you know about before you started virtualizing? Let us know in the comments.

This one goes without saying. Veeam’s Fast SCP is another file copy tool, but designed specifically to SCP or securely copy files, and do it very fast.

Consider pulling this down and giving it a shot the next time you are going to spend most of an evening or two copying a few TB of VM files about. You will love every second it saves you. Veeam’s Fast SCP can be downloaded from here.

Have another tool that you’ve found essential? One that makes your life easier? One you wish you had known about when you started virtualizing? Let us know in the comments.

The next up in the list of tools I’ve found essential to managing a virtual environment is TeraCopy. TeraCopy is not actually strictly a virtualization tool, but it will make your life as an administrator much easier. So what does TeraCopy do? It copies files from one location in windows to another… really REALLY fast. Afterall, who wants to wait for a few hundred gig of ISO or VM files to copy about?

TeraCopy looks like this:

Basically, drag the files you want to copy into the interface, then select copy, and go. It’s that easy. Teracopy can be downloaded from here.

Have any other tools you consider essential to managing your virtual environment? Let us know in the comments.