Hello and thanks for tuning in to govirtual.tv. The topic of discussion for this instructional video is VMkernal configuration.
Now, as you may know, there are two distinct flavor of ESX on the market today. ESX standard which includes a Linux-based console operating system, also referred to as the service console and the most recent generation of what are referred to as thin hyper visors which are light weight small foot print 32 megabytes in size hyper visors which are either shipped from the OEM in the form of a memory module that goes on to the blader motherboard or as an installable edition that gets installed on to a local hard drive.
Going back to ESX, ESX is actually a dual kernel architecture. Meaning, that at any given time, we have not one but two separate kernels running on the host. We have the initial service console kernel which is used to boot strap the machine and to get it up and running which at installed time, we provide IP address information for the service console followed by subsequent configuration of the VMkernel with a separate TCP/IP stash that is configured after the host has been booted up and we’ve logged in using the VI client.
Now, what the VMkernel is used for is for IP storage so access to any type of iSCSI software or NFS data storage. It’s a requirement that we have the VMkernel configured properly. In addition, the VMkernel facilitates live migration via Vmotion and is responsible for substantiating this communications by between ESX hosts for the process of Vmotion live migration. It should be noted that based upon the fact that there is no general purpose service console or console operating system on ESXi, the management network information that you give an ESXi host is also used for that Vmotion process as well as the access IP storage.
Now, getting started off with the configuration process, if we go up here and click on the configuration tab, we could see some of the signs and symptoms that we have not configured the VMkernel properly. By going here into our storage adapters, and selecting the iSCSI software initiator and attempting to enable that iSCSI software initiator with the corresponding area message that Vmomtion and IP storage is not been enabled. And that so encrypted message doesn’t really tell you which you have to do in terms of getting the VMkernel configured.
Another place we would see that error is if we try to go up here to storage and to enable an NFS network attached storage error. And if we’re to plug in all of the configuration information, for an NFS share out there on the network somewhere. Here’s the following error we’ll get. Error during configuration of the host, please make sure you have configured networking for VMkernel.
Now, here’s how we configure the VMkernel. All we have to do is this. We click on the networking button and we take a look at the fact that we only have our service console currently configured. And it should be noted that wee would always want to make sure that our VMkernel traffic is separate and isolated from any of our production traffic for purposes of this video for the simplicity of demonstration we’re just going to add it to the same network as the service console network.
The way that we configure the VMkernel is by clicking on the ‘add networking’ button and selecting the second option. Next to continue and we’re going to plug this in to vSwitch0. The first thing you would see here that would need to be corrected eventually is a nick team. We don’t have any form of redundancy for VMkernel traffic or a service console for that matter. See, we always want to make sure that VMkernel is always our service console. Both have some form of redundancy by a way of a nick team which has been built. Next to continue.
Now, here’s where the IP address information is plugged in for the VMkernel and you always make sure that the VMkernel if you plan on using Vmotion then we lit up this flag right here. Use this port here for Vmotion so that this VMkernel can also be used for the process of live migration by and between ESX host that have their VMkernel properly configured and are on the same sub-net/ broadcast domain. Next to continue.
That’s pretty much it. We click on finish. It’s not going to prompt us fro default gateway for VMkernel traffic. Once again, you would always want to make sure that your VMkernel traffic as well as hopefully your service console is on isolated network segments that are completely separated from your production network traffic which is used by the virtual machines that you create and host on the ESX host itself. And for here we’ll go ahead and just plug in the default route for our current network. ‘OK’ to continue.
Now, here’s where you’ll see that the VMkernel port has been up and configured 10.100.0.9 and if we’re to go back in here to our storage adapters and select the iSCSI software initiator again. We would now see that clicking on the properties button no longer gives us that error message because we now have the VMkernel properly configured.
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