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storage solutions.
Answer: A NAS is a single storage device that operate on data files, while a SAN is a local
network of multiple devices that operate on disk blocks.
Because NAS devices control the file system, they offer increased flexibility
when using advanced storage functionality such as snapshots.
With 10GE connectivity, NAS devices can offer performance on par with many
currently installed fibre channel SANs
If your SAN has existed for a year or more, you are more than likely struggling with the
following questions:
What features are different among NAS vendors, and how will that impact
me?
Eastern Computer can help answer all your SAN growth questions, and deliver an architecture
that meets your business needs.
Customized NAS Offerings
Given the breadth of use cases for NAS devices, Eastern Computer can customize our NAS
offerings to meet your needs. Here are some of the services delivered to our customer base:
Benefits:
Helps in determining the aging of files and how much content is not
being accessed or modified.
Single assessment that tells you all you need to know about the data
residing on your file servers.
Differences in Appearance
The first thing to look at when debating if you are using a SAN or a NAS is how the operating
system sees the storage. Does the operating system see the storage as being on a remote
computer? Or does the operating system see the storage as being local? If the operating
system and/or programs knows the storage is not local, you are probably working with a NAS.
A good example of this is with Microsoft Windows network drives. If you map a network drive in
windows you get a drive letter, but windows shows this drive as a network drive. Only the one
user has access to it, and windows will not let you use this drive for many functions.
If you connect to a SAN Windows cant tell the storage is actually somewhere on the network. It
treats the storage as if it was connected directly to the server. It is accessible to any user
logged into the system; and you can use it just like any other drive.
NAS Protocols
When working with a SAN vs a NAS there are different protocols involved. When you connect
to a NAS you will typically be working with Network Attached File Systems (NFS) or Common
Internet File Systems (CIFS). In Windows, if you map a network drive to an NFS or CIFS
volume, it will be treated as I have stated above, it is usable by the one user, and you are limited
in what you can do.
In Linux/Unix network drives are treated differently. When you mount an NFS or CIFS volume it
is treated much like it was a local disk and is available to all users on the system unless the file
system permissions do not allow it.
SAN Protocols
When working with a SAN the most common protocols are iSCSI and Fiber Channel. Typically
when working with the iSCSI protocol you will operate over an Ethernet network, and when
working with Fiber Channel you will operate over a fiber optic network. However, this is not
always the case. There is another protocol called Fiber Channel over Ethernet (FCOE). And
there is nothing stopping you from using iSCSI over a fiber optic network.
FCOE operates a lot like iSCSI. iSCSI is an implementation of the SCSI protocol where the
SCSI operations are wrapped in a TCP Packet and sent over the network. When the storage
system receives the TCP packet, it extracts the SCSI command and executes it on the local
storage. It then takes the result, wraps it in another TCP packet it sends it back to the client
machine. FCOE does the same thing, only it uses the Fiber Channel protocol instead of the
SCSI protocol.
Capability
ESX
ESXi
Service Console
Present
Removed
Troubleshooting
performed via
Service Console
ESXi Shell
Active Director
Authentication
Enabled
Enabled
Secure Syslog
Not Supported
Supported
Management
Network
Service Console
Interface
VMKernel Interface
Jumbo Frames
Supported
Supported
Hardware Montioring
3 rd Party agents
installed in Service
console
Supported in ESX
Supported in ESXi
Software patches
and updates
Needed as smilar to
linux operation system
Only experimental
Not present
Scripted Installtion
Supported
Supported
vMA Support
Yes
Yes
Major Administration
command-line
Command
esxcfg-
esxcli
Rapid deployment
via Auto Deploy
Not supported
Supported
Custom Image
creation
Not supported
Supported
VMkernel Network
Used for
vMotion,Fault
Tolarance,Stoarge
Connectivity
HA in to turnoff the HA in that cluster and re-enable the vmware HA to get the agent
installed.
10. For further troubleshooting , review the HA logs under /Var/log/vmware/aam
directory.
Power off All the VMs are powered off , when the HA detects that the network
isolation occurs
Shut down All VMs running on that host are shut down with the help of VMware
Tools, when the HA detects that the network isolation occurs.If the shutdown via
VMWare tools not happened within 5 minutes, VM's power off operation will be
executed. This behavior can be changed with the help of HA advanced options.
Please refer my Post on HA Advanced configuration
Leave powered on The VM's state remain powered on or remain unchanged,
when the HA detects that the network isolation occurs.
How to add additional isolation address for redundancy?
By default, VMWare HA use to ping default gateway as the isolation address if it
stops receiving heartbeat.We can add an additional values in case if we are using
redundant service console both belongs to different subnet.Let's say we can add
the default gateway of SC1 as first value and gateway of SC2 as the additional one
using the below value
1. Right Click your HA cluster
2. Goto to advanced options of HA
3. Add the line "das.isolationaddress1 = 192.168.0.1"
4. Add the line "das.isolationaddress2 = 192.168.1.1" as the additional isolation
address
To know more about the Advanced HA Options
What is HA Admission control?
As per "VMware Availability Guide",
VCenter Server uses admission control to ensure that sufficient resources are
available in a cluster to provide failover protection and to ensure that virtual
machine resource reservations are respected.
What are the 2 types of settings available for admission control?
What are the different types of Admission control policy available with
VMware HA?
There are 3 different types of Admission control policy available.
Select the maximum number of host failures that you can afford for or to
guarantee fail over. Prior vSphere 4.1, Minimum is 1 and the maximum is 4.
In the Host Failures cluster tolerates admission control policy , we can define the
specific number of hosts that can fail in the cluster and also it ensures that the
sufficient resources remain to fail over all the virtual machines from that failed hosts
to the other hosts in cluster. VMware High Availability(HA) uses a mechanism called
slots to calculate both the available and required resources in the cluster for a
failing over virtual machines from a failed host to other hosts in the cluster.
What is SLOT?
As per VMWare's Definition,
"A slot is a logical representation of the memory and CPU resources that satisfy the
requirements for any powered-on virtual machine in the cluster."
If you have configured reservations at VM level, It influence the HA slot calculation.
Highest memory reservation and highest CPU reservation of the VM in your cluster
determines the slot size for the cluster.
How the HA Slots are Calculated?
I have written a post about how the HA slots are calculated.
How to Check the HA Slot information from vSphere Client?
Click on Cluster Summary Tab and Click on "Advanced Runtime Info" to see the the
detailed HA slots information.
Let's take an example, you are performing network maintenance activity on your
switches which connects your one of th ESX host in HA cluster.
what will happen if the switch connected to the ESX host in HA cluster is down?
It will not receive heartbeat and also ping to the isolation address also failed. so,
host will think itself as isolated and HA will initiate the reboot of virtual machines on
the host to other hosts in the cluster. Why do you need this unwanted situation
while performing scheduled maintenance window.
To avoid the above situation when performing scheduled activity which may cause
ESX host to isolate, remove the check box in " Enable Host Monitoring" until you are
done with the network maintenance activity.
1.It calculates the Total resource requirement for all Powered-on Virtual Machines in
the cluster and also calculates the total resource available in host for virtual
machines.
2.It calculates the current CPU and Memory Failover capacity for the capacity.
3.If the current CPU and Memory Failover capacity for the cluster < configured
failover capacity (ex 25 %)
4.Admission control will not allow to power on the virtual machine which violates the
availability constraints.
In the Specify a failover host" admission control policy, We can define a specific host
as a dedicated failover host. When isolation response is detected, HA attempts to
restart the virtual machines on the specified failover host.In this Approach,
dedicated failover hist will be sitting idle without actively involving or not
participating in DRS load balancing.DRS will not migrate or power on placement of
virtual machines on the defined failover host.
monitors for Virtual machine failures also. here the feature called VM monitoring
status as part of HA settings.VM monitoring restarts the virtual machine if the
vmware tools heartbeat didn't received with the specified time using Monitoring
sensitivity.
If you are looking for more VMware interview questions Please click Interview
Questions.
Thanks For Reading!!! All the Best...
Posted in: High Availability, Interview questions
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Another way is to check the summary tab of the ESX/ESXi host, "Host Configured for
FT" yes or NO.
If " Host Configured for FT" is No. It will display the items required for
that particular ESX for FT to work.
GO the ESX host -> Configuration-> Networking -> Properties of Virtual switch with
the VMkernel portgroup configured
Click on VMkernel Port -> click on Edit -> General tab -> select the Fault Tolerance
Logging -> click on OK.
How does the FT enabled virtual machine will be differentiated with non
FT VM's in vSphere client?
FT Enabled Virtual machine will appear in Dark Blue colour as compared to nonprotected virtual machines.
By default, Only Primary virtual machine will appear under the cluster and ESX host.
To take a look at the secondary VM , Go to Virtual Machines tab of the Cluster or
Host.
What happens when you enabled Fault Tolerance for your virtual machine?
When you enable Fault Tolerance for the virtual machine, a secondary virtual
machine (live shadow image of the primary) will be created to work with the
primary virtual machine in which you have enabled FT. The primary and secondary
virtual machine resides on a different ESX hosts in the cluster.
What will happen when the ESX host of primary VM failed?
When a failure is detected on the primary VM's ESX host, the secondary virtual
machine which is running on the another ESX server in the same cluster will takes
the place of the first one with the least possible interruption of service.
If vCenter is down, will the FT work?
ESX is an installed software suite managed by VirtualCenter by a standalone VirtualCenter Client via a
built-in VLI or web service. ESX is licensed per seat and also has to have an agent license for connecting
to the VC server.
ESXi is a free product that can be installed on a server's disk or embedded by a flash device. It can be
managed by a VC Client or you can connect it to a VC Server.
The Major difference is that ESX has a Service Console (SC) for management. ESXi does not have a
service console and is much smaller and more secure.
ESXi management is GUI only where as ESX management can be GUI or CLI based.