ESDL- Creating Virtual Switches in the Hypervisor - Part-2

Dear All,

Here we will see the creation of vSwitch in Hypervisor (VMware ESXI-5.5)

Step 1) It is same like to open the inventory from vsphere client with ESXI IP address username and password. Create atleast 3 VM.

 Step2) Click on Inventory and click on Configuration in tab, you will get Hardware and software option
out of this select Networking that shows you the Management network has been connected with NIC card.

***** Here one thing plz keep in mind to install ESXi 5.5 on the server where two NIC cards has been installed  so next steps that are related with creation of Virtual switches that is very easy.

Step3) Vswitch having a Management Netork only..

steps 4) Click on Add  then one window come with below showing two options

  step 5) Assign name and VLAN ID for respective virtual machine

step 6) Now that will automatically part of VSwitch 0.

  Steps 7) Newly added vm is now a part of vswitch 0.

steps 8) go to the getting started tab.

  step 9) select first VM and go to edit configuration settings. click on network adapter. Immediately Network labels will come select newly added network.

Steps 10) Same for VM2

Steps 10) Same for VM3

 Steps 11) Now, they will be looking like below mentioned picture. 

  step 12) Now, we will create here New Virtual Switch

 Step 13) Click on create vsphere standard switch - (Now vswitch 1 earlier vswitch 0)

Step 14) Assign Name and ID

Step 15) after assign the name and ID

steps 16) After creation of new VSwitch in hypervisor the following network connection will come.

At the last Second virtual Switch i.e. vSwitch1 does not content any physical address because the ESXi installed machine just have single NIC. If someone install ESXi on 2 NIC card available machine then vSwitch0 & vSwitch1 will connect with 2 different NIC.

ESDL- Creating Virtual Switches in the Hypervisor - Part-1

Dear All,

Here one of the important task that need to be covered.
Before actual implementation we need to get some concepts about virtual switches and many more.

Definition - What does Virtual Switch (VSwitch) mean?

A virtual switch (vSwitch) is a software application that allows communication between virtual machines. A vSwitch does more than just forward data packets, it intelligently directs the communication on a network by checking data packets before moving them to a destination. 

Virtual switches are usually embedded into installed software, but they may also be included in a server’s hardware as part of its firmware. A virtual switch is completely virtual and can connect to a network interface card (NIC). The vSwitch merges physical switches into a single logical switch. This helps to increase bandwidth and create an active mesh between server and switches.

Techopedia explains Virtual Switch (VSwitch)

A virtual switch is meant to provide a mechanism to reduce the complexity of network configuration. This is achieved by reducing the number of switches that need to be managed after taking the network size, data packets and architecture into account. Because a virtual switch is intelligent, it can also ensure the integrity of the virtual machine's profile, which includes network and security settings. This proves a big help to network administrators as moving virtual machines across physical hosts can be time-consuming and pose security risks.

A virtual switch has a few key advantages:

• Helps in easy deployment and migration of virtual servers
• Allows network administrators to manage virtual switch deployed through a hypervisor.
• Compared to a physical switch, it's easy to roll out new functionality, which can be hardware or firmware related.

There are two ways are available for to create vswitches

1) In Hyper-V Windows 2008/2012 or 2) VMware ESXI- vSphere client.

We will see one by one.

Here we go through vSwitch in Hyper-V 

Quick terminology

As I discuss Client Hyper-V in this article, for simplicity I'll use the terms Host Machine and Virtual Machine. , Figure A illustrates what I mean by these terms.

Figure A

Host machine verses virtual machine.

The Virtual Switch Manager

In order for a virtual machine created with Client Hyper-V to connect to a network and to the Internet, it must have access to a virtual switch. So the first order of business is to launch the Virtual Switch Manager and create and configure how you want the virtual network connection to work. To begin, launch the Hyper-V Manager using the tile on the Start Screen, navigate to the Actions pane, and select the Virtual Switch Manager action, as shown in Figure B.

Figure B

You'll launch the Virtual Switch Manager to create a virtual network connection.

When you see the Virtual Switch Manager screen, as shown in Figure C, you'll notice that the first thing that you must do is choose what type of virtual switch you want to create. As you can see here are three options: External, Internal, and Private.

Figure C

The Virtual Switch Manager offers you three types of virtual switches to choose from.

Of course, the one you choose will depend on how you want to use your virtual machine and in most cases you'll choose the External option. However, let's take a moment to examine each of these options so that you have a good understanding of what each one does.

• When you select an External virtual switch, your virtual machine will be able to access all resources available on your physical network including host machine and the Internet.
• When you select an Internal virtual switch, your virtual machine will only have a network connection with the host machine. In other words, the virtual machine will not be able to access resources on your physical network nor will it have access to the Internet.
• The only time that you would want to select the Private virtual switch, is if have more than one virtual machine running at one time and you only want a connection between your virtual machines.

Each of these types of virtual switches is illustrated in Figure D.

Figure D

Each type of virtual switch has specific uses.

Before I move on, I just want to point out that you can indeed have more than one virtual switch. For instance, you could have both an External virtual switch and an Internal virtual switch. You could then experiment with virtual machines in different types of network configurations.

Configuring an External virtual switch

As I mentioned, in most cases you'll choose to create an External virtual switch in Windows 8's Client Hyper-V. When you do, the Virtual Switch Manager will present you with the set of options shown in Figure E.

Figure E

You'll use the Virtual Switch Manager to set up your External virtual switch.

Starting from the top, you can assign your virtual switch a name and provide a description in the Notes section. As you can see, I have provided both a name and notes for my example virtual switch.

Moving down to the Connection type section, you'll notice that while the connection type that you selected previously is selected here, in this case External, you could change your mind and select one of the other two types of network switches.

When the Connection type is set to External network, you'll see that your system's network card is shown in the drop down text box and that the Allow management operating system to share this network adapter check box is selected. To simplify what this check box selection means, think of it as sayingAllow host machine and virtual machine to use the same network card. In order for both machines to use the same network card to access the physical network, the Virtual Switch Manager actually creates two virtual network cards, one for the host machine and one for the virtual machine, and then connects these to the virtual switch. The virtual switch is then connected to the physical network card which is already connected to the physical network. This configuration is illustrated in Figure F.

Figure F

The host machine is actually connected to a virtual network card.

In most cases, you'll leave the default selections for the External network just as they are. However, let's examine how these options work. Let's suppose that your system has two network cards in it: an Ethernet card called NC1 and Wireless card called NC2. If so, you could separate the network connections of your virtual machine and your host machine such that each would use a separate network card. To do so, you would select the network card that you wanted to use for the External network, say NC2, and then clear the Allow management operating system to share this network adapter check box. Then, the host machine would use NC1 to connect to the physical network and the virtual machine would use NC2 to connect to the physical network.

As you can see, by default the Enable virtual LAN identification for management operating system in the VLAN ID section is not selected. Chances are that you won't use this feature in a typical Client Hyper-V configuration. If you had a VLAN, or Virtual Local Area Network, you could use this option to specify an identification number that could be used to isolate network traffic from the host machine.

Other options

There are a two other sets of options that you can configure from within the Virtual Switch Manager and these appear in the left panel. The first one is called Extensions and it appears under your virtual switch. The second one is called MAC Address Range and appears under Global Network Settings. Again, both of these are advanced features and chances are that you won't use them in a typical Client Hyper-V configuration, but they are worth taking a look at, just so you know what they are all about.

Virtual Switch Extensions settings, shown in Figure G, provide you with a way to enable and add third-party extensible plug-ins to the virtual switch. These plug-ins can add enhanced networking and security features to a virtual network switch.

There are two options in the Switch extensions list: Microsoft NDIS Capture and Microsoft Windows Filtering Platform. As you can see, by default the Microsoft Windows Filtering Platform check box is selected while the Microsoft NDIS Capture check box is not. Without getting too technical, Capturing extensions are used to capture and monitor packet traffic while Filtering extensions are used to inspect, drop, or exclude packets. You can learn more about Virtual Switch Extensionshere.

Figure G

Virtual Switch Extensions can add enhanced networking and security features to the virtual switch.

As I said, these types of Virtual Switch Extensions won't generally be used in a typical Client Hyper-V configuration, so just leave the default settings as they are.

MAC Address Settings, shown in Figure H, displays the range of MAC addresses that are available to be assigned to the virtual network cards that the Virtual Switch Manager can create. Under normal circumstances, the default range of MAC addresses is sufficient for Client Hyper-V and you won't need to alter it.

Figure H

MAC Address Settings displays the range of MAC addresses that are available to be assigned to virtual network cards.

Completing the configuration

When you are done configuring your External virtual switch, click OK. When you do, you'll see a warning message indicating that during the virtual network connection procedure, the network connection for the host machine may temporarily go offline. When you click Yes, the changes will be applied and you'll see a progress bar. These steps are illustrated in Figure I.

Figure I

When you are done configuring your External virtual switch, click OK.

Checking the connection

Many of the folks that I have spoken to about setting up an External switch find it surprising that the host machine is actually connected to a virtual network card after you set up a virtual switch for your virtual machine. But its true and you can see for yourself by investigating the Network Connections tool or even on the command line with IPConfig.

Figures J and K show before and after screenshots of the Network Connections tool and the results from running the IPConfig command on the host machine.

Figure J

Running the Network Connections tool on the host machine.

Figure K

Running the IPConfig command on the host machine.

ESDL- Running Multiple Concurrent operationg system using bare metal Hypervisor

Dear All,

After successful completion of earlier task we have to move forward.
Our next task is again very easy.

Regarding the Bare Metal Hypervisor, and its installation configuration is we already discussed in my previous blogs(Read 3rd August and 8th July 2014 Blog).

Now, here we have run at least  2 OS concurrently. For this, follow the steps.
1) first, Access the Bare metal hypervisor through vSphere client with exact IP address, user name, and password.
2) Inventory with an IP address of bare metal will open. right click.
3) follow the procedure for creation of VM.
4) at the last your VM is ready by don't have the OS in it.
5) for this purpose open the VM in new console.
6) Once, it is opened there will be option CD/DVD. click it.
7) There is option Connect ISO to datastore, click it
8) datastore will open. just click on then automatically OS iso will installed on the VM.
If this 8 steps is not working then
9) there is again second option is also present connect ISO to local disk. click it
10) In new window there is upload and download option is present.click to upload data store.
11) once it is uploaded press ctrl+alt+del then automatically OS iso will install in existing VM.

ESDL- Dynamically adding and reducing the resources on Hot VMs

Dear all,

Before going with this problem statement first we have to see what is meant by resources-
Some definitions are-
1) Aggregate Computer hardware, software, documentation, supplies and support services etc.
2) A resource, or system resource, is any physical or virtual component of limited availability within a computer system. Every device connected to a computer system is a resource.
3) Computer Resources is a locally owned and operated business providing services to both home users and businesses.

After this we make a tentative list of resources

General resources

• CPU 
• Random access memory and virtual memory – see memory management.
• Hard disk space.
• Network throughput.
• Electrical power.
• Input/output operations.

Now, the basis of this we go with our VMware workstation-10 for the same problem definition.
Follow the steps

 1) Here, we will not make any change at the time of creation of Vm we just click next and next.
2) We set all default as VM as for us.
Once it is created then we start our work.

When VM has been created, it has two option
1) Power on VM &
2) Edit virtual machine Devices

Select 2 option and then you will get all the list of resources associated with that VM ,
List as follow
1) HDD
2) Network Adapter
3) Memory
4) CPU
5) Sound Card
6) USB, etc..

 Now, you can add some resources and remove some resources.
This is very simple task just take short time for execution.

ESDL- Creating a Virtual Machine using vSphere Client 5.0

Basic Installation of VMware ESXi

For installation, you will need a server with a USB stick and a client computer with a copy of the Windows operating system.

• Perform the VMware ESXi 5.0 Installation instructions on the server.
• Perform the VMware vSphere Client 5.0 Installation instructions on the client computer. You can download the client using a web browser. To do this, enter the IP address for the host server, where you installed ESXi, in the address entry.

• After the client has been downloaded and installed, start the vSphere Client and choose your host.

• Now, you can log in using the IP address and the user name and password previously assigned to you.

Creating VMware vSphere Client Virtual Machines

• You will now see the user interface for the vSphere Clients, which you can use to configure your virtual machines.
  
• The CPU and the RAM will be detected automatically and can be assigned. Thus, you will merely need to allocate hard disk storage space in the first step.
  
• In this example, storage space will be drawn through NFS and made available from an IOMega Storage "cube". This configuration has already been prepared.
  
• To add the hard disk storage area, click on the ESXi machine, go to Configuration, and click the Storage tab on the left. Hard disks are not yet displayed there, therefore you will have to add the storage using the Confirm button.
  

• Now you can create the virtual machines. To do this, go to File / New / Virtual Machines
  

• From there, you will be able to choose between the Typical and Custom options.
  

• If you have not yet familiarized yourself with virtual machines, the Typical option is worth recommending.
  
• The following settings still need to set.
  
  • Name and Location: Assign the name of the computer for this, such as Windows 7 64Bit.
    
  • Data Store: Assign some storage (a datastore) to the virtual machine, an NFS share in this case.
    
  • Guest Operating System: Using this entry, you can assign a specific operation system to the machine, Microsoft Windows 7, for example.
    
  • Network: Enter the number of virtual NICs that you want to use here. The maximum possible is 4 vNICs.
    
  • Create a Virtual Disk: In this step, you will specify how much storage space you want to provide to the virtual machine. This value can be changed later.
    
  • Ready to Complete: This last step will present the values that you have just configured for confirmation.
    

• 

  Recommend: Typical
• 

  Overview after configuration has been completed.

• The virtual machine has now been created.
  
  

• Now, you need to assign, for example, a Windows 7 image to the machine and boot it. To do this, first click on the name of your machine and then on the Keyboard Video Mouse (KVM) icon.
  

• Click the CD button to either add an image from either a hardware CD drive or choose one from an NFS datastore. Note: the image must first have been uploaded into the NFS datastore. With an NFS datastore, this can also be done from vSphere Datastore management or a Widows system.
  

• Now, start the selected OS wizard and make the usual settings.
  
• You now have a fully functional virtual machine.
  

VMware Tools

• To make the virtual machine even more dynamic, you can install the VMWare tool. This tool offers the following advantages:
  • Special programs and drivers for the guest operating system
  • Simplified handling of the virtual machine
  • Improved performance
  • Installation under vShpere
  • Freeware

  

• You can install the VMWare Tools on the KVM for the machine. To do this, go to VM / Guest / Install VMWare Tools
  
• From there, a window will be opened under Windows to start the setup wizard.
  
• Once you have installed the tool, the virtual machine will have to be restarted.