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Before installing ESXi5.5, you need to design and plan the entire environment, because virtualization involves a number of technologies such as server technology, network technology, and storage technology, so the architecture of virtualization covers the selection of CPUs, the design of networks, the way of shared storage, The need for virtualized resources and the knowledge to install ESXi patterns. A good VMware vsphere installation design determines the effect of eventual virtualization.
1, the selection of the CPUWhether using a X86 server or a rack, tower, or blade server, CPU selection is critical. Now the mainstream CPU in the market is the Intel Company and AMD products, the two companies of the CPU of the virtualization has a good support, the specific choice of which products, we need to be based on the actual situation.
The general installation of ESXi requires a 64-bit CPU, and the choice of which CPU needs to consider many other factors, the most important of which is the virtualization technology options, in particular, the choice of Intel Virtualization Technology (Intel VT) CPU or choose AMD Virtualization (amd-v ) Technology of the CPU. At this point, some readers may wonder why they can only choose the CPU of these two technologies. The reason is simple because only CPUs with these two technologies provide virtualization capabilities. However, it is important to note that not all Intel or AMD CPUs support this technology, which is generally supported by new CPUs in recent years, so for a virtualized platform that uses the old server, you must look carefully to see if the selected CPU supports virtualization technology.
In addition, it is also important to select the CPU, which is the selected CPU to support hardware-enforced Data Execution Prevention (DEP) technology, which must be available and enabled. Specifically, you must enable the Intel XD bit (execute disable bit) or AMD NX bit (no execution bit). In addition, some newly purchased servers are not powered on by default virtualization Intel VT or AMD-V technology, need to turn on virtualization technology in the motherboard BIOS, can use the detection function to test the server's CPU support virtualization technology.
When the CPU hardware requirements are met, the next thing to do is to make a count of the virtual machine CPU resources on the virtualization, and VMware vsphere, which is installed on the physical computer, has a maximum of 320 logical processors. The logical processor described here can be either a core processor or a processor using Hyper-Threading technology. Theoretically, a virtual machine can be configured with up to 64 virtual processors, but when used in practice, the number of virtual processors that a client operating system can support is not so large, as follows:
A single processor, each processor is quad-core, which provides four logical processors.
A dual processor, each processor is quad-core, which provides eight logical processors.
A four processor, each processor is dual-core, which provides eight logical processors.
A four processor, each processor is dual-core, and uses a Hyper-threading system, which provides 16 logical processors.
Of course, a logical processor in a virtual machine is not computationally equivalent to one of the cores in the physical processor, nor does it say that with four processors, each processor is dual-core and has a hyper-threading system, which provides 16 logical processors, and only 16 virtual machines can be built. VMware vsphere can use a logical processor on a physical computer to configure multiple virtual machines and run them concurrently. How much of a virtual machine is created depends on two points: one is the physical resources available to run the VMware vsphere Server, and the other is the maximum capabilities of VMware vsphere. ESXi servers with sufficient physical resources can support the configuration of more than one virtual machine.
2, the design of the networkThe planning of the network is related to whether the whole virtualization system can operate normally. Refers to the network, the first will be involved in the natural network card, due to the realization of multiple network virtualization functions, so the server network card will have a certain requirements. The virtual machine running on the Hyper-V host communicates through the physical network card on the host.
Before we start the presentation, let's take a look at the first example. Suppose we have a high-performance physical host, but only 1 gigabit physical NICs. We installed VMware VSphere on the physical host and created a connection between the virtual network and the physical host's unique NIC, where the virtual machines established on this host are communicating through this network card. We built this virtual system in the initial phase of the operation, multiple external requests simultaneously access the virtual machine, its performance is not affected. However, with the increase of virtual machines and the increase of network access, the VMware vsphere hosts with only 1 physical network cards are stuck in communication, and some virtual machines even have the phenomenon of network delay and packet loss. How to solve this problem at this time? In fact, it is simply not possible to put all of the virtual machine's network traffic to a network of 1 physical network cards, should be placed on a network with redundancy and better bandwidth. This example shows that if you decide to use VMware vsphere Virtualization technology, you must ensure that the server's number of ports and network scalability are meeting the development of the virtual machine business when you purchase the server, which is one of the content of network planning.
In real-world network planning, you might also want to consider different kinds of network types, because different network types may be used for different network traffic, or different types of network cards may be used for better bandwidth. VMware vsphere networks include virtual machine networks, highly available networks, virtual machine live migration networks, management networks, ISCSI San Networks, and FC San Networks.
In addition to considering the above factors, the network planning should also consider the redundancy and bandwidth design of these networks. iSCSI Sans, for example, typically require at least 4 gigabit NICs to have 4GB of bandwidth, and if you are using a FA SAN, you need at least 2 8GB HBA cards to have 4GB of bandwidth. Whatever the way, when designing VMware vsphere virtualized networks, be sure to ensure that the number and bandwidth of network cards meet your business needs. Be aware, however, that VMware vsphere does not support wireless networks.
3. Storage planningIf you are using a single ESXi host, and the host is connected to multiple hard disks, such as Dell R520, then we can use the native storage device to hold the virtual machine files. VMware vsphere Host-attached storage includes: can be connected via direct-attached storage, using the serial marching-order technology connection (Serial Advanced technology Attachment――sata), external string marching-order technology connection (external Serial Advanced Technology Attachment――esata), parallel high technology connection (Parallel Advance technology attachment――pata), Serial Attached scsi (Serial attached scsi――sas), SCSI, USB, and FireWire connected storage.
If it is a single ESXi host, each using direct attached storage device, then you can solve the problem of insufficient space of single host virtual machine; If you connect 2 separate hosts, you can migrate virtual machines from one ESXi host to another ESXi host via VMware vsphere. Without shared storage during the migration process, virtual machines are not interrupted, which is an important feature in VMware vsphere-the ability to migrate virtual machines on non-shared storage. However, if in a direct-attached storage device, when an ESXi host fails, the virtual machines in this ESXi host will also stop working until the ESXi host resumes work, which can cause a prolonged outage of the business.
You can also use VMware's new technology, which is the VMware Virtual san,vmwarevirtual SAN is the first VMware software-defined storage product, Vmwarevirtualsan directly into the Vmwarevsphere core, Provides a new generation of converged hypervisor storage capabilities. The software centrally manages the industry standard x86 server's internal disk and Flash memory devices for outstanding and flexible virtual machine shared storage. Based on an internal benchmark, the Vmwarevirtualsan reads up to 2 million iops (input/Output Operations/sec) 1 on a 32-node cluster, with read and write performance of 640,000 ioPS.
4. Memory PlanningVMware Vsphere supports a maximum of 4TB of memory and allocates up to 1TB of memory per virtual machine. VMware vsphere has dynamic memory technology that allows you to dynamically load the memory that is consumed by the virtual machine as it works, saving some memory space. However, in memory planning, the virtual machine can not run memory and physical machine memory equivalent, after all, leave more memory space is good, in case of a rainy.
For the old server to increase memory, in the purchase of memory as far as possible to choose the same brand and frequency of the original server memory, if the use of different brands or different frequency of memory, you want to detect compatibility and stability, in general, 1333 MHz and 1066 MHz two different frequencies of memory plug together, will be reduced to a common frequency. On some servers, it is important to note the order in which the memory is plugged in (the order in which different brands of servers plug in memory is different) and select the mode of memory in the motherboard BIOS, such as ECC, mirroring, or optimizer.
The next step is to install VMware ESXi, and there are a number of ways and means to install VMware ESXi, including:
1. Interactive ESXi installation (small recommended)For small deployments that are less than five hosts, we recommend that you use an interactive installation. Boot the installer from a CD or DVD, bootable USB device, or PXE boot the installer from a location on the network. Follow the prompts in the installation Wizard to install ESXi to disk.
2. Scripted ESXi InstallationRunning scripts is an effective way to deploy multiple ESXi hosts using an installation that does not require manual intervention. The installation script contains the host configuration settings. You can use this script to configure multiple hosts with the same settings. The installation script must be stored in a location where the host can be accessed via HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, NFS, CDROM, or USB. You can use PXE
Boot the ESXi installer or boot from a CD/DVD or USB drive.
3. Auto Deploy ESXi installation (large recommended)VSphere 5.5 provides several ways to install ESXi using Auto Deploy.
4. Using the ESXi Image Builder CLI to customize the installationYou can use the ESXi image Builder CLI to create an ESXi installation image with a custom set of updates, patches, and drivers. The ESXi Image Builder CLI is a PowerShell CLI command set that you can use to create an ESXi installation image that has a custom set of ESXi updates and patches. You can also include third-party network or storage drivers that are published between VSphere versions. You can use the Auto deploy feature to deploy an ESXi image created using image Builder by burning it to the installation DVD method or through VCenter Server.
This first describes the use of the interactive ESXi installation method, first need to download the ESXi image file, insert the ESXi installer CD/DVD into the Cd/dvd-rom drive, or connect the installer USB flash drive and restart the meter
Computer. Set the BIOS to boot from the CD-ROM device or USB flash drive.
During the boot process, you can see basic information about the CPU and memory of the host
In the first installation boot screen that appears, click Enter to confirm that the installation continues
On the Select Disk page, select the drive on which you want to install ESXi, and then press Enter. Press F1 to get information about the selected disk. Note When you select a disk, do not rely on the order of the disks in the list. The disk order is determined by the BIOS and may be improperly sequenced. This problem may occur with systems that add or remove drives continuously. If you select a disk that contains data, the Confirm Disk Selection page is displayed. If installed on a disc that has a previous ESXi or ESX installation or VMFS data store, the installer can provide multiple choices.
If you select a disk that is located in a virtual SAN disk group, the resulting installation will depend on the disk type and group size:
If you select SSD, the SSD and all underlying HDDs in the same disk group will be purged.
If you select HDD and the disk group has more than two disks, only the selected HDD will be cleared.
If you select an HDD disk and the disk group has no more than two disks, the SSD and the selected HDD will be cleared.
Select the keyboard type for the host. After installation, you can change the keyboard type in the direct console.
Enter the root password for the host. The password cannot be left blank, but to ensure security when booting the system for the first time, enter a password that is not less than 7 digits. You can change your password in the direct console after installation.
Press the F11 key to start the installation.
When the installation is complete, remove the installation CD, DVD, or USB flash drive. Press the ENTER key to restart
If you perform a new installation, or if you choose to overwrite an existing VMFS data store, the VFAT staging and VMFS partitions are created on the host disk during the reboot operation.
For some servers have no longer configure the optical drive, so need to install ESXi by other means, the production of USB disk boot disk is a very good way to replace the CD/DVD installation mode, using USB to install is very convenient, because the ESXi image file itself is not big, So we can make full use of the old U disk less than 2GB, we recommend using 1GB USB as the ESXi system boot disk.
For the production of ESXi u disk boot disk, can be made by the third-party tools under Windows, but also in the Linux system through the instructions to make a USB drive boot disk, the following I made from Windows and Linux system to make USB drive boot disk.
Under Windows, you need to use third-party software to make USB drive boot disk production, here I am using UltraISO software, which is a professional burning software, its version is 9.6.1, after the need to prepare a USB drive larger than 512M, as an administrator to start the boot UltraISO. Then open the ISO package for VMware esxi, select Menu Bar-start-write HDD image
Write to disk hard disk impact interface in China, select Write, write-on disk will be formatted as FAT32 format of the disk, if the USB flash drive before the data, you can copy it out, so as not to cause loss after formatting.
Click Write, UltraISO will be written in USB-HDD, and will be syslinux v3 boot sector write, about 10-20 minutes of time, the USB drive boot disk is finished.
This procedure is performed on a Linux computer, and the operating system detects the USB flash drive as/dev/sdb. If your USB flash drive is not detected as/DEV/SDB, or if you are unsure how the USB flash drive is detected, determine how the flash drive is detected. Then on the VMware website, download the ESXi ISO image Vmware-vmvisor-installer-5.x.x-xxxxxx.x86_64.iso, including the Isolinux.cfg file. In the terminal window, run the following command.
1. Create a partition table on a USB flash drive, using the command:
Fdisk/dev/sdb
A type D to delete the partition until you delete it all.
B type N to create a primary partition that spans the entire disk 1.
C type T to set the type of the FAT32 file system to the appropriate setting, such as C
D Type A to set the activity tag on partition 1.
E type p to print the partition table.
The result should resemble the following text:
disk/dev/sdb:2004 MB, 2004877312 bytes
255 heads, Sectors/track, 243 cylinders
Units = Cylinders of 16065 * 8225280 bytes
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/DEV/SDB1 1 243 1951866 C W95 FAT32 (LBA)
F Type W to write to the partition table and exit.
The actual process is:
Command (M for help): P
disk/dev/sdb:8166 MB, 8166703104 bytes
Heads, Sectors/track, 7788 cylinders, total 15950592 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * MB = bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): bytes/512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): bytes/512 bytes
Disk IDENTIFIER:0X4BD294D1
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/DEV/SDB1 * 0 3311615 1655808 Hidden hpfs/ntfs
Command (M for help): D
Selected partition 1
Command (M for help): N
Partition Type:
P Primary (0 primary, 0 extended, 4 free)
E Extended
Select (default p): P
Partition number (1-4, default 1): 1
First sector (2048-15950591, default 2048):
Using Default Value 2048
Last sector, +sectors or +size{k,m,g} (2048-15950591, default 15950591):
Using Default Value 15950591
Command (M for help): t
Selected partition 1
Hex code (type L to list codes): C
Changed system type of partition 1 to C (W95 FAT32 (LBA))
Command (M for help): a
Partition number (1-4): 1
Command (M for help): P
disk/dev/sdb:8166 MB, 8166703104 bytes
Heads, Sectors/track, 7788 cylinders, total 15950592 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * MB = bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): bytes/512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): bytes/512 bytes
Disk IDENTIFIER:0X4BD294D1
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/DEV/SDB1 * 2048 15950591 7974272 C W95 FAT32 (LBA)
Command (M for help): W
The partition table has been altered!
Calling IOCTL () to re-read partition table.
Warning:if you has created or modified any DOS 6.x
partitions, please see the Fdisk manual page for additional
Information.
Syncing disks.
2 format the USB flash drive using the Fat32 file system.
Mkfs.vfat-f 32-n USB/DEV/SDB1
3 run the following command.
Syslinux/dev/sdb1
Cat/usr/share/syslinux/mbr.bin >/dev/sdb
4 mount the USB flash drive.
Mount/dev/sdb1/usbdisk
5 mount the ESXi installer ISO image.
Mount-o Loop Vmware-vmvisor-installer-5.x.x-xxxxxx.x86_64.iso/esxi_cdrom
6 Copy the contents of the ISO image to/usbdisk.
Cp-r/esxi_cdrom/*/usbdisk
7 Rename the Isolinux.cfg file to Syslinux.cfg.
Mv/usbdisk/isolinux.cfg/usbdisk/syslinux.cfg
8 in the/usbdisk/syslinux.cfg file, change the append-c boot.cfg line to append-c boot.cfg-p 1
9 Uninstall the USB flash drive.
Umount/usbdisk
10 Uninstall the installer ISO image.
Umount/esxi_cdrom
Now, the USB flash drive can boot the ESXi installer. If an error such as Menu.c32:not a com32r image is present at boot, you need to copy a new MENU.C32 file to the USB flash drive, overwriting the original file
cp/usr/lib/syslinux/menu.c32/mnt/usb/
ESXi settingsThe console of VMware ESXi 5.5 is more streamlined, efficient, and convenient, allowing administrators to modify administrator passwords directly in the VMware ESXi 5.5 console interface, the settings and modifications of console management addresses, and the actions of the VMware ESXI5 console. In VMware ESXi 5.5, press the F2 key, enter the administrator password (the password you set when installing VMware ESXi 5.5), and then press ENTER to enter the System Settings dialog box.
Enter the System Customization dialog box, where you can complete password modifications, configure the Management network, test the Management Network, restore network settings, and configure your keyboard.
If you need to modify the VMware ESXi5.5 Administrator password, you can move the cursor everywhere press ENTER, in the pop-up Configure Password dialog box, enter the original password, and then enter a new password 2 times and press ENTER to complete the password modification.
Network configuration
In the options, you can select the Management Interface network card, console management address, setting the VMware ESXi host name, and so on. First move the cursor to configure Management network, and then press ENTER to enter the Configure Management Network dialog box.
Press ENTER in the options to open the Network Adapters dialog box, where you can select the default management network card for the host to select from when the host has multiple physical networks and display the status of each network card in the status list.
In addition to the option to manage network cards in the VMware ESXi console interface, you can also set or select on the vsphere client interface. The difference before is that if an error occurs during Setup, the connection to VMware ESXi is disconnected and the control of VMware ESXi is lost when the vsphere client is set up, and this does not occur in the VMware ESXi console settings. You can reset it even if you set the error. Therefore, in practice, it is not recommended to use vsphere client to modify the network of VMware ESXi to avoid losing connectivity if it is not necessary.
In the options, you can set a VLAN ID for the Management network, which is not normally set up and modified.
In the options, set the VMware ESXi management address. By default, the default choice for Vmwareesxi is using the dynamic IP address and network configuration, which is to use DHCP to assign the network, use DHCP to assign the management IP, and try to use the ESXi deployment in a large data center , in practice, a static IP address should be set for VMware ESXi, so select Set static IP address and network configuration, and set a static IP This is set to 192.168.1.101, and the corresponding subnet mask and default gateway are set for it.
In the options, you can set a IPV6 address for our ESXi server, by default the IPV6 service is turned on by using the ICMP stateless configuration (AUTOCONF), if you want to set a static IPv6, you need to select the Do NET automatic configuration and set the static address and default gateway.
In the Settings page, set the DNS address with the VMware ESXi host name.
In the Setup interface, set the DNS suffix name, DNS suffix name can also add suffixes in the design host name, the system defaults to Localdomain, if the name is not modified, the current Vmwae The ESXi host full name is Esxi.localdomain, and if there is no internal DNS name in the same network as VMware ESXi, you can maintain the default value, in general, there will be a DNS server in the network, you need to change the DNS domain name in the network.
Later, you will also need to add a record of the VMware ESXi host on the DNS server in the network and point to the IP address of the VMware ESXi host.
After setting or modifying the network parameters, press ESC to return to the previous Settings menu, a dialog box pops up, prompts you to change and restarts the management network, press Y to confirm and restart the management network, and if you do not immediately restart the management network, you can choose to restart the network manually from the previous menu.
In the network settings, one option is to manually start the management network, and when you configure the VMware ESXi Management Network, you can manually restart the management network if an error occurs that prevents the VMware vsphere client from connecting to VMware vsphere.
If you want to test whether the current VMware ESXi network is correct, can connect to the corporate network, you can choose, in the Pop-up dialog box, test to the gateway address or a specified other address of the ping test, when using the ping command and a response, the corresponding address will be displayed after the OK prompt.
When we are in the normal operation of the process, encountered a network setup error or configure the host file error, this time need to restore the network settings, in the VMware ESXi Settings page, there is a call, is the network recovery, in the network recovery interface, you can restore the network settings, Restore the standard switch settings and restore the distributed switch VDS.
In the Restore Network dialog box, select F11, the network will be restored, at this time, if there is a virtual machine on VMware ESXi, then the virtual opportunity can not communicate, if you are using VMware vSphere client connected to VMware ESXi, it will cause disruption, and the management network becomes automatically acquired IP address (DHCP).
If you do not select the correct keyboard mode during the installation process, you can select and set the keyboard again in the options on the Settings page.
If you want to launch ESXi shell and ssh in VMware ESXi, you can set it in the options, in addition to using the console and VMware vSphere client to manage VMware ESXi, and connect to VMware via the network using SSH clients ESXi and manage it. By default, the SSH feature of VMware ESXi does not start, and in addition to this, you can set the time-out for the ESXi shell.
VMware ESXi provides view logs, select in the Console interface, view logs according to options, select 1 is System log, 2 is Vmkernel log, 3 is configuration log, 4 is management Agent (host) log, 5 is VirtualCenter Agent (VPXA) log and VMware ESXi obsercattion log (VOBD).
For example, select 1 to view the system's logs.
Second, you can view the supported information, select, can view the specific information. In the supported information, see the VMware ESXi basic information, such as Serial number, License Serial number, SSL thumbprint (SHA1), and SSH DSA Key fingerprint.
Option to restore VMware ESXi to its default state, which includes:
1. The VMware ESXi console address reverts to DHCP, and the name on the computer is restored to the name that was just installed.
2, the system administrator password is emptied
3. All running virtual machines will be logged out.
If you select this option, the dialog will pop up, press F11 to restore the installation settings, press ESC to cancel this operation, if you press F11 to determine the recovery, the system will require a reboot, after the system Recovery settings, because the system administrator password is emptied, so the administrator needs to restart the console within the first time, Enter the Configure Password dialog box to set the new administrator password. Because the management network, host names are restored to the default values, you also need to re-set the management address and set the host name and so on.
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