We have a VM Ware ESXi virtual machine, where the guest is reporting high fragmentation. The host virtual machine file is not fragmented. The datastore is on a RAID 5 array.
Does the fragmentation of reported by the guest OS matter?
I'm trying to ensure that the revert process is as reliable as possible in our lab manager environments. We frequently (daily) revert a 10-12 server workspace to a previous version, upgrade it, test on it. Every few weeks, I hit a new problem after a revert, and a team or two has to wait while I monkey around.
The servers are Win2K3 servers running various applications. They are members of an domain, external to the workspace.
Question: What do you do to achieve 100% reliable revert? Any suprises in store for me, beyond the following? Better resolutions to these problems?
Note: Unfortunately, fenced workspaces are not practical in this scenario. These are unfenced environments. Saving the workspace to a to configuration and cloning tends to be far too slow for daily use - even though we've made disks as small as practical (10GB per machine).
Snags hit:
Machine changes password (?) or some other credentials with DC every x weeks. The snapshot can't connect to domain. Prevent by
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Netlogon\Parameters] "DisablePasswordChange"=dword:00000001
Computers revert from snapshot with incorrect times, times out of sync between machines. Chaos ensues. Final resolution: Make sure host is running NTP client - one of ours was not, ensure clients sync to host. Per VMWare, that was the root of many of our problems.
Summary good answers
- Take snapshot with power off. Prevents a variety of problems, including NTP.
All my nerdly life, I've dealt with this limitation of Windows Domains
- Login - console
- Integrated auth to something (usually web app)
- My credentials can't move to another server (e.g. database or file system). They have to trust machine 2.
Is there a configuration that changes this behavior? In many many cases, 3 hops would be amazingly convenient.
What is the specific reason that credentials should not delegate twice (client->server->server)?
I'm wondering if I can export my Lab Manager templates directly into a cheaper ESX host. Easy enough to import from other ESX hosts. I imagine validating machines in LM and then moving the nicely configured templates off to a plain ESX host. That would save Lab Manager resources for things that really need to be there.
Possible? Seems like it ought to be - Lab Manager just runs on ESX. Anyone tried it? How?
Using LM 3, ESX 3.5. (I'm also digging around LM forums, will let you know what we find out)