Tag: windows

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Allocation Unit Size and Automatic Windows In-Guest UNMAP on VMware

I posted shortly after ESXi 6.0 came out a while back explaining how to do in-guest UNMAP with Windows. See the original post here:

Direct Guest OS UNMAP in vSphere 6.0

The high-level workflow if you don’t want to read the post is:

  1. You delete a file in Windows
  2. Run Disk Optimizer to reclaim the space
  3. Windows issues UNMAP to the filesystem
  4. ESXi shrinks the virtual disk
  5. If EnableBlockDelete is enabled on the ESXi hosts, ESXi will issue UNMAP to reclaim the space on the array

This had a few requirements:

  • ESXi 6.0+
  • VM hardware version 11+
  • Thin virtual disk
  • CBT cannot be enabled (though this restriction is removed in ESXi 6.5 see this post)

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Pure Storage Python Toolkit Intro with Windows

Most of my scripting work here at Pure Storage has mostly been via PowerShell or at times Javascript (for like vRO). But I think it is time to get back into Python especially because of the VMware support for it now.

Pure Storage has an automation toolkit that helps get you started managing the FlashArray so you don’t have to deal with the direct REST work in your Python scripts. You can find information about that here:

http://pythonhosted.org/purestorage/index.html

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VAAI XCOPY not being used with Powered-On Windows VM

This is an issue I discovered along with my good friend and former colleague Drew Tonnesen a few years back which has cropped up a few times in recent days. I noticed there wasn’t really any information about it online, so made sense to put a quick post together.

In short, Windows 2012 R2 virtual machine clone or Storage vMotion operations complete much slower when powered-on as compared to when power-off. The common explanation is that VAAI XCOPY does not work when the VM is powered-on. This is not exactly true. Let me explain. Continue reading “VAAI XCOPY not being used with Powered-On Windows VM”

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Required network ports for Python ScaleIO install on Windows

I just posted about using the EMC-provided Python script to install and configure ScaleIO on Windows. Using this  script makes these steps much easier, especially in very large environments (you can find that post here). One of the next logical questions is concerning firewall requirements and this process. To achieve this automation, the script is going all over the place connecting to servers, copying files, starting services and issuing configuration commands. Therefore it is hitting a variety of network ports on the target hosts. So let’s talk about what exactly those ports are.

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Installing/config of EMC ScaleIO on Windows using the Python script

In previous posts I have discussed installing and configuring EMC ScaleIO on Windows using manual methods. In VMware or pure Linux environments I have used the provided Python script/wizard to help automate the installation and configuration of ScaleIO. Mostly due to the fact that using this script is much simpler and less-error prone than using the manual methods. And in my opinion, at least, should be the preferred method of installation when possible.

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Unattended/silent deployment of ScaleIO features on Windows Server

Two posts in two days. Phew! So much to talk about, but this is a quick one. In my previous post I wrote about installing ScaleIO on Windows hosts via a manual/user-controlled process using the CLI and running the MSI install file on each server. In larger environments this may not be practical where an automated deployment solution is required. Furthermore, it is invariably necessary to also deploy the software in a “silent” unattended mode so that end-users do not need to interact with the installer. Luckily this is a pretty simple process in Windows environments using the MSI ScaleIO installer.

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