Question

1) List and discuss 4 tools used to configure and manage a Type 1 hypervisor

2) What is remediation?

3) Name 3 considerations when upgrading a virtual environment

4) What are the 2 types of ports on vSwitch? How are they used?

5) Discuss NIC teams

6) Name 2 security policies which are supported by virtual switches

Answer 1

Answer 1:

Tools used to configure and manage a Type 1 hypervisor:

a. Linux KVM:

A KVM (kernel based virtual machine) is a GNU/Linux based project developed for x86 machines. It operates with a loadable kernel module named kvm.ko, which turns the Linux kernel itself into a hypervisor and thus VMs have direct access to the hardware. KVM also contains processor-specific kernel modules such as kvm-intel.ko and kvm-amd.ko. Virt-manager and virsh applications are generally used to manage the virtual machines created using KVM. Virt-manager provides a GUI, whereas virsh is a command line utility. There is a misconception that KVM is a Type2 hypervisor that is hosted by the operating system, and not a bare metal hypervisor. This is a persistent myth, but the truth is that KVM actually does run directly on x86 hardware.

b. VMware free ESXi:

We may think that VMware products are proprietary and not free but thats not always true. VMwares premium hypervisor product, named VMware ESXi, is available for free download[1]. Though its not open source, some of its components source software is available for download. However, a user can choose to work for 60 days with all advanced features enabled if the free versions serial number is not entered.

c. Xen:

The Xen Project is one of the leading open source virtualisation platforms. The Xen hypervisor is licensed under GPLv2. Like many of its competitors, Xen is also available in a commercial form from Citrix. Oracle VM is another commercial implementation of Xen. The Xen Project platform supports many cloud platforms such as Openstack, Cloudstack, etc. The Xen hypervisor provides an efficient and secure feature set for virtualisation of X86, IA64, ARM and other CPU architectures, and has been used to virtualise a wide range of guest operating systems, including Windows, Linux, Solaris and various versions of the BSD operating systems.

d. Microsoft Hyper-V:

Microsoft has introduced Hyper-V as a competitor for many other virtualisation products. Its available for a free download[3] from an evaluation point of view. The free standalone Hyper-V server 2012 has all the features which are integrated in the Hyper-V role in Windows Server 2012 such as shared nothing live migration, failover clustering, etc.

Answer 2:

Remediation is the process in which Update Manager applies patches, extensions, and upgrades to ESX/ESXi hosts, virtual machines, or virtual appliances after a scan is complete.

Remediation makes the selected vSphere objects compliant with patch, extension, and upgrade baselines.

As with scanning, you can remediate single hosts, virtual machines, or virtual appliances, and you can also initiate remediation on the folder, cluster, or data center level, as well as on all objects in your virtual infrastructure.

Answer 3:

3 considerations when upgrading a virtual environment:

a. Record storage system information

b. Record any changes you made to standard VSC roles

c. Record any changes you made to the preferences files

Answer 4:

2 types of ports on vSwitch:

a. Vmkernel Port group: Vmkernel port is used by ESX/ESXi for vmotion, ISCSI & NFS communications. ESXi uses Vmkernel as the management network since it don’t have serviceconsole built with it.

b. Service console port group: Service console port group required to manage the ESX server and it acts as the management network for the ESX. vCenter/vSphere Client uses the service console IP’s to communicate with the ESX server.

Answer 5:

NIC teams:

VMware NIC teaming is a way to group several network interface cards (NICs) to behave as one logical NIC.

Any physical NIC bonded to the NIC team will transmit packets, and packets coming in from a physical NIC to the appropriate logical NIC. The virtual machines assigned to a logical NIC are not aware of the physical NICs supporting the system.

Properly configured NIC teams allow guest virtual machines (VMs) in a VMware ESX environment to failover if one NIC or network switch fails. VMware NIC teaming also helps load balancenetwork traffic. Bonding NICs can also improve fault tolerance by preventing a single point of failure for the physical NICs; this is sometimes called NIC redundancy.

Answer 6:

Security policies which are supported by virtual switches:

a. Promiscuous mode

b. MAC address change

c. Forged transmits

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