vSphere Web Client Timeout Value

By default, vSphere Web Client sessions terminate after 120 minutes of idle time. You can change the timeout value by editing the webclient.properties file.

1. On the vSphere Web Client Server, locate the webclient.properties file.

The location of this file depends on the operating system on which the vSphere Web Client is installed.

Operating System:                    File path

Windows 2003:                             %ALLUSERSPROFILE%Application Data\VMware\vSphere Web Client

Windows 2008:                             %ALLUSERSPROFILE%\VMware\vSphere Web Client

vCenter Server Appliance:           /var/lib/vmware/vsphere-client

2. Edit the file to include the line session.timeout = value where value is the timeout value in minutes.

To set the client to never time out, specify 0 value for the timeout.

3. Restart the vSphere Web Client service.

On Windows operating systems, restart the VMware vSphere Web Client service.

On the vCenter Server Appliance, restart the vSphere-client service.

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Configure Default VM Compatibility Setting

The compatibility setting for a VM provides information about the host, Cluster or Datacenter the VM is compatible with.  The VM Summary tab displays the compatibility for the VM. Using vSphere Web Client we can view and configure the default compatibility setting for a VM at the Host (if host is not a part of Cluster), Cluster, or Datacenter level.

Procedure

Select a VM in the inventory and click the Summary tab. The top panel displays the Compatibility setting.

Select a host in the inventory and click the Manage tab. The Default Virtual Machine Compatibility is listed in the VMs section.

Select a Cluster in the inventory, click the Manage tab, and in the Configuration section, click General.

Right-click a Datacenter in the inventory and select Edit Default VM Compatibility.

                

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ESXi 5.5 Hypervisor Enhancements

Hot-Pluggable SSD PCI Express Device: Users are able to hot-add or hot-remove an SSD device while a vSphere host is running, and the underlying storage stack detects the operation.
Support for Reliable Memory Technology:  To provide reliability and great uptime for ESXi Hypervisor, vSphere 5.5 supports a new feature called Reliable Memory, ESXi Hypervisor runs directly in memory, an error in it can potentially crash it and the VMs running on the host.

A CPU hardware feature through which a region of memory is reported from the hardware to vSphere ESXi Hypervisor as being more “reliable”. This information is then used to optimize the placement of the VMkernel and other critical components such as the initial thread (initd), hostd and watchdog process and helps guard against memory errors.

Enhancements for CPU C-States:  vSphere 5.1 and earlier, uses the power management policy called balanced, the balanced policy used only the performance state (P-state), which kept the processor running at a lower frequency and voltage.

In vSphere 5.5, the Balance policy also uses deep processor power state (C-state), providing additional power savings. Another potential benefit of reduced power consumption is with inherent increased performance, with all C-states enabled, turn Turbo mode on to get the maximum power and performance benefit. vSphere 5.5 uses the USB auto-suspend mode to automatically put idle USB hubs in a lower power state.

*Thanking VMware for information and Image

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Multipathing Policy through PowerCLI

To retrieve Multipath Policy of all devices connected with particular host.

Get-ScsiLun –vmhost esxi01.vclass.local –LunType disk

To view the Canonical Name of SCSI devices

Get-ScsiLun –VmHost esxi01.vclass.local –LunType disk | select CanonicalName

copy the Canonical Name of device which need to modify

To change the Multipath Policy of the device to RoundRobin.

Get-ScsiLun –CanonicalName “naa.600003*” –VmHost esxi01.vclass.local | Set-ScsiLun –MultipathPolicy  RoundRobin

Declare a Variable and store the preferred path available for selected device because this will be required parameter for configuring Fixed path policy.

$pathPreffer = Get-SCSILunPath –SCSIPath (Get-SCSILun –CanonicalName “naa.600003*” –vmhost esxi01.vclass.local)

To change the Multipath Policy of the device to Fixed.

Get-VMhhost esxi01.vclass.local | Get-SCSILun –CanonicalName “naa.600003*” | Set-SCSILun –MultiPathPolicy “Fixed” –PreferredPath $pathPreffer

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Virtual Hardware version 10

What’s New in Virtual Hardware version 10, Yes there are few virtual hardware enhancements to virtual hardware 10:

1. LSI Logic SAS now supports Solaris 11 Guest Operating System.

2. New SATA controller, with which we can have 30 devices per controller (earlier which was only 15) and up to 4 controllers gives us a new maximum of 120 devices.

3. Support for additional vGPUs, In vSphere 5.1 vGPU support was introduced and limited to NVIDIA GPUs, but in vSphere 5.5 additional hardware GPU venders like Intel and AMD is included to be supported.

4. The biggest virtual hardware enhancement is support for Advanced Host Controller Interface or AHCI, which is basically a virtual-SATA controller that can support both virtual disk and CD-ROM. VMware ESXi does not provide support for SCSI CDROM, only IDE. The main reason for this feature is for Mac OS X GuestOSes which does not support IDE devices. (If you want to add a CD-ROM device in Mac OS X, it requires AHCI controller).

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