Cracking the contents of the VMware VMU vibs files

I was patching my ESXi server today with the VMware Host Update Utility and was thinking about a couple of things.  First when I do an update the VMU first downloads a bunch of data to my C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\VMware\VMware VI Update\vmw, about 1.2GB of data.

I was thinking that if I wanted to switch back to using a scripting tool then I would have to re-download all of the patches again manually and then script it up.  So I wanted the shortcut to see if I really needed to download it again. Inside the MetaData directory, there are four zip files; 4.0 ESX and ESXi, and 4.1 ESX and ESXi. and then in the vibs directory there are a bunch of vibs files ranging from 60 to 130 MB.  Those had to be the patches.

Any search on how to open a VIBS file came up empty so I then looked at the Metadata zips again and opened them all up.  Inside there is a file called Packages.  Once I looked into it I noticed that it was all names of the patches, but was was most interesting was the filename was a .deb file.

So I renamed one of the .vibs file to a .deb copied it over to my Linux server and ran the command ar vx something.deb, and viola, it opened up and showed its contents. 

Unfortunately for me, it looks like the contents inside the .deb / .vibs file is not easily compatible the downloaded manual patches, but I learned a little more on how the VMware VMU architecture works.

What I found very interesting was that even though it was for ESXi, these are debian patch packages, so still somewhere in that tiny ESXi Hypervisor, there is some Linux, however small.

Thanks to http://www.g-loaded.eu/2008/01/28/how-to-extract-rpm-or-deb-packages/ on how to extract DEB packages

Success in improving RAID speeds

After a long and hard trial process, I have increased the speed of my RAID5 array on an IBM ServeRAID-6M to a very acceptable level

Before I worked on this, guests on a 5 disk RAID5 were getting 5MB/s and after-wards I am getting the following Speeds

• Windows 2003, 12GB, Read tests with HD_speed are 92 MB/s
• Ubuntu 9.04 server, 8GB Read+Write tests, using dd are 32 MB/s

My second RAID was only 3 disks because I had a problem with 2 of the disks. Here are my suggestions for building a RAID5 from used parts

• Test the READ and WRITE speeds of each disk by itself. I had 1 U320 disk that was reading fine at 60 MB/s but crippled down and would only write at 5 MB/s
• Have the same interface; one disk was a U160, and it could only read at 50 MB/s
• Do not include any disks that are considerably slower than others, it will slow down the whole array.
• Not sure this is true with all Array controllers, but make sure that both the disks and the array are set to write back, not write through. Also the setting for the disks can only be change while they are not in an array, and cannot be change once they are built into an array

These are my preferences, and not sure they will affect anything.

• When building the array use the largest stripe size. The ServeRAID-6M goes up to 64K
• When formatting the VMFS Datastore choose a larger block size like 4MB or 8MB.
  

ESXi on USB - Part II

I have been working with a test version of ESX 4i, 4.0 U2 on a USB stick. I installed it the USB stick like I documented on my August 4th post. I like it but seeing some problems. For some reason it is slowing down my system. When I benchmark my ESX host it is only getting 5MB/s on disk access for the guests.

Now these guests are either on a single SCSI U320 disk attached to a ServeRaid-6M, or in a RAID 5 config on that same card, and they are behaving poorly.

I believe that somehow the ESX hypervisor is writing to the USB stick and slowing the whole system down. So I am going back to an installable version on a SCSI disk

ESXi on USB

I found this great little tutorial on how to install ESXi onto a USB stick. I know that there are a bunch of ways, but this was fast, simple, and can be done from windows with tools that I already have: WinRAR and WinImage

http://www.vladan.fr/how-to-install-esxi-40-on-usb-memory-key

Give it a shot.

UPDATE: I use this on a dedicated system so I am not concerned with data loss, but from my tests with 4.0 U2 the hypervisor will grab a partition and format it with VMFS.

Improving SCSI performance on ESXi Whitebox

OK, the upgrade to SCSI went well, I converted from a SATA to SCSI system.

Added the following components:

• IBM ServeRAID 6M, PCI-X card
• 1 36GB drive to use as boot, and ISO storage
  
• 5 74GB drives in RAID5 to be used as main datastore (272 GB)
• 1 500GB SATA drive from old ESXi Server. Source Datastore to move data onto RAID5

Now everything was going well, but was noticing that the speed performance was slow. Now I expected it to be slower with writes on RAID5, but I was expecting the reads to scream.

That was not what was happening. So I started using HD_Speed and noticed some things.

• Read speed on SATA drives 115
• Read Speed on SCSI RAID5 4.5

That was a big difference. So I did some digging and did the following changes to make some improvements

• Moved the ServerRAID 6M to PCI-X slot 1 because it was 133 Mhz, Removed the other SCSI card because if there was anything in Slot 2, it downgrade to 100 Mhz and the card was only rated at 133.
• Made sure that the Cache was on
• Upped the queue limit from 64 to 96 into the BIOS

After I did that the Read speed moved up to 45. Not bad. One other thing that I noticed is that when you move to larger downloads like 4MB it would move up to the 100 to 200 range.

Also I could benchmark 2 servers simultaneously from the SCSI RAID5 and it did not impact each other.

Upgrading Home ESX host to SCSI

Curently I am upgrading my ESX host from SATA to SCSI. I am doing this for the following reasons:

• ESXi will not recogonize SATA as RAID array.
• While SATA is cheap, I have noticed that running 4 or 5 VM's concurrently on the same datastore that is comprised of 1 disk it will tax the datastore where I can see delays in the guest systems.
• Noticing heavy background disk access that does not show up on the Performance Graphs for the disk. Essentally it is useless busy disk time.
• I have this cool IBM ServeRAID 6M card I want to give a try with some SCSI disks

Now my current ESX host has a 73GB SCSI drive that is used for the boot of the ESXi OS and to store the ISO's and a 500GB sata for the storage of the Guest VMs. I plan to replace it with a 6 disk 73GB RAID 5 SCSI array and see how it performs.

Currently I have only half of the disks, and awaiting the purchase of the remaining ones from ebay to complete my conversion.

Getting VMware Patch Notices Automatically

Hello all.

I found this extremely interesting and surprised that no one has told you about this. VMware has a ListServ for it's patch releases. Great for getting automatic notices of vulnerabilities of your vmware products.

Here is the link to get onto the ListServ
http://lists.vmware.com/mailman/listinfo/security-announce

Here is the archive of their archives:
http://lists.vmware.com/pipermail/security-announce/

Sign up right now

Re-installation of VMware tools for Ubunutu

I needed this procedure for when I upgraded my ESX server from 3i to 4i

Do the following commands to remove the VMware tools that are already there:

cd /usr/bin
sudo .vmware-uninstall-tools.pl


Use Ubuntu community documents for installation: VMware Tools

External Expansion from IBM

Still stumbling. Looking for an external SCSI chassis for my whitebox. I know about the HP StoroageWorks, but looking for what IBM has to offer:

• Found this EXP400 on Ebay: Auction
• Lead me to an IBM web site for the EXP400 which is discontinued: EXP400 info at IBM
• Found the current Expansion Arrays, but they are all SATA or Fiber Channel: Current IBM Expansion Arrays

All in all, the EXP400 looks like a good product. Here are the drives that can go into it:

• 40K1023 73.4GB 10K rpm Ultra320 SCSI HDD
• 40K1024 146.8GB 10K rpm Ultra320 SCSI HDD
• 40K1025 300GB 10K rpm Ultra320 SCSI HDD
• 40K1026 36.4GB 15K rpm Ultra320 SCSI HDD
• 40K1027 73.4GB 15K rpm Ultra320 SCSI HDD
• 40K1028 146.8 15K rpm Ultra320 SCSI HDD

Here is the location to translate the P/N to FRU & Newest part numbers: Hard drive Accessories

Getting a cheap FC card into ESXi server

I am looking to see if I can add a cheap Fiber Channel (FC) to my ESX server.

Stumbled across this when looking for a StorageWorks on Ebay - FCA2404

• Found it on the VMware ESX hcl. looks like it works for ESX3i, but not 4i
• Found a HP web site for documentation: FCA2404 documentation
  
• Found the drivers for it: FCA2404 Drivers
  
• Works with windows 2000, 2003, and 2008 so believe the HP is continuing support for it
• Only a 2GB FC card, but do you need more for a home test sever
  

About this Blog

Hello, Hello, Hello

Ok, sometimes I get curious and want to try things. Some times I succeed, and some times I do not, but most of all, I like to document my attempts to solve problems.

Now while I have many interests and solutions, this will focus on a certain subset of them. First of all Virtualization. There might be some Linux, Windows, and Scripting, but almost all of it will center around accomplishments related to a virtualization and computers.

Some of my recent endeavors that I plan to document later are as follows:

• Setting up and working with Nagios
• Getting Microsoft Cluster services to work with ESX 3i
• FreeNAS as a file share repository
• Using iSCSI with ESX

I hope that more than myself find these topics interesting.