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Using desktop SSD in server

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Five years ago before Christmas I bought my first SSD – Crucial MX300 750GB. I have put it into my linux server running some web hosting (running this blog for example), my emails. Second MX300 was put into Linux MD Raid1. Disk were running two years in this setup, then I have migrated into virtualized setup, running ESXi, booted from USB drive. SSD were re-used and running as hw Raid 1 using LSI-9211 card.

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Deploy OVF using OVFTool

VMware OVF Tool is a command-line utility that can import and export Open Virtualization Format (OVF) packages to and from many VMware products.

This tool can be used to deploy OVF/OVA packages instead of vSphere GUI, where OVF deploy sometimes just don’t work and is pain to troubleshoot, since it is web browser based. I was missing in OVF documentation example how to deploy virtual machine to specific folder and resource pool. This is important, when you have rights assigned just to specific resource pool and vmFolder.

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Performance impact when using VMware snapshots

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Using vmware and snapshots? You probably know about vmware best practices about snapshots, which includes

  • The maximum supported amount of snapshots in a chain is 32. However, VMware recommends that you use only 2-3 snapshots in a chain.
  • Use no single snapshot for more than 24-72 hours. Snapshots should not be maintained over long periods of time for application or Virtual Machine version control purposes.
  • An excessive number of delta files in a chain (caused by an excessive number of snapshots) or large delta files may cause decreased virtual machine and host performance.
  • Be especially diligent with snapshot use on high-transaction virtual machines such as email and database servers

But what is real performance inpact of snapshot?

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Snapshoting virtual machine running mysql database

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Backup in virtualized enviroment is mostly based on snapshoting entire virtual machine and saving this state to backup repository. This snapshot does not include memory of virtual machine. When you restore virtual machine from this snapshot filesystem is in unclean state, but journal filesystem can handle this. From mysql point of view server crash happended and database can be corrupted and unrecoverable, depending on what queries where running during snapshot. This unpredicted and unconsistent state you don’t want to have as a backup of your data. Read More »Snapshoting virtual machine running mysql database

VMware backup script

I have been searching for simple and easy script to backup selected virtual machines running on esxi server, which will:

  • run on linux – do not require windows machine; can’t use PowerCLI
  • do not require direct access to esxi host using ssh (as other backups scripts like ghettoVCB.sh do) and will use API
  • support multiple esxi hosts managed by vcenter
  • have clear code – that means no perl hell (including big vsphere perl sdk)
  • have short code
  • can be put into cron

I was unable to find any to comply my requirements. I’m learning python, so I searched for some python vsphere libs and found psphere. Then backup.py has born.

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