One setting most admins get caught off-guard is vSwitch Failback setting in combination with HA. If the management network vSwitch is configured with Active/Standby NICs and the HA isolation response is set to “Shutdown” VM or “Power-off” VM it is advised to set the vSwitch Failback mode to No. If left at default (Yes), all [...]

Last week at VMworld and the VCDX defense panels I heard the term “Best Practices” a lot. The term best practice makes me feel happy, shudder and laugh at the same time. Now when it comes to applying best practice I always use the analogy of crossing the road: I am born and raised in [...]

Yesterday the VMworld Labs opened up to the public and if you want to take vCloud Director for a spin I’m recommending doing the following labs: Private cloud – Management: Lab 13 VMware vCloud Director Install and Config Lab 18 VMware vCloud Director Networking Private Cloud – Security: Lab20 VMware vShield Its best to complete [...]

I received a lot of questions about Hyperthreading and NUMA in ESX 4.1 after writing the ESX 4.1 NUMA scheduling article. A common misconception is that Hyperthreading is ignored and therefore not used on a NUMA system. This is not entirely true and due to the improved Hyperthreading code on Nehalems, the CPU scheduler is [...]