Using the vSphere 4.0 Client to Manage ESXi 4.0

Getting Started with the vSphere Client

You may have downloaded the vSphere Client installer when you downloaded the ESXi ISO from the VMware website, in which case run that to install the vSphere Client on your system. Otherwise open Internet Explorer and enter the IP address of your ESXi server in the address bar, then click the link on the page which opens to download and install the client. Considering the small size of the installer package it can take a surprising amount of time to extract the files and install so be prepared to be patient. Once it has completed you will find a new shortcut on your desktop and in your Programs list for the "vSphere Client", so double-click it and you will be presented with a logon prompt:

Enter the IP address of your ESXi host, the username "root" and the password you selected when you did the initial configuration, then click "Login". Provided you got the details corrected the client will logon to the ESXi host and display the intial welcome screen, for those of you familiar with the previous "VI Client" this will be rather different to what you expect, but click the "Inventory" icon and you will see something much more recognisable:

As you can see the left pane lists the ESXi host you are managing, you can add as many hosts as you like in here and easily switch between them with one click. Select the "Summary" tab on the righthand pane and you will see an overview of your server's hardware and other vSphere related information.

Creating a Datastore

The first thing you need to do is setup some storage for your Virtual Machines, which vSphere refers to as a "datastore". VMware have their own proprietary file system called VMFS, which is specifically designed and optimized for virtualization - key features include advanced snapshot support and concurrent host access allowing multiple ESXi hosts to share a datastore. No need to worry about that at the moment, just select the "Configuration" tab and then click the "Create New Datastore" link to start the "Add Storage" wizard:

Leave the default "Disk/LUN" option selected and then if you have more than one disk in your server select which one you wish to use. Assuming you only have one disk, or have selected the boot disk you installed ESXi on, you will see there are already a number of partitions taking up about 1GB of space. This is the ESXi installation so you don't want to overwrite it! Select the "Use Free Space" option and click "Next".

Enter a suitable name for your datastore then click Next, on the next screen you have to choose the block size for your VM.

Note that the block size you choose limits the maximum file size for the datastore, which effectively means the maximum size of virtual disk you can create. Anecdotal evidence suggests there is a slight performance hit with larger block sizes, certainly disk space utilization is less efficient so unless you know you will definitely need to mount larger disks (say if you are intending to convert a physical server with a large data disk volume) choose the smallest block size. Click "Next", check your settings one more time, and then complete the wizard to create your datastore. In the bottom pane of the vSphere Client window you will see the "Create Datastore" task appear and its progress indicator increase until completion, then the datastore will appear in the host summary.

Networking

By default when it is first installed ESX only configures the first available NIC as both the management interface and vSwitch0 for use by virtual machines. Assuming your host server has more than one NIC installed you can either add these to vSwitch0 for redundancy and load balancing, or create additional vSwitches. On each vSwitch you may also create multiple VMnetworks, with different vLAN Ids if necessary, which can be mapped to your virtual machines. Depending on your requirements you may prefer to create seperate vSwitches for each NIC, for physical separation of networks, or use VMnetworks and vLANing for virtual separation. If you do not have experience of vLANs and need to ensure some of your VMs are separated from others on the same host, e.g. in a DMZ/LAN setup, then I suggest you stick to multiple vSwitches and cable your NICs appropriately.

For the time being the default setup is all you need to get your first VM up and running so just leave it on the default settings for now:

Creating Your First Virtual Machine

Click the Summary tab to return to the overview of your host server and you will now see the new datastore and the default "VM Network" listed in the Resources section:

Now you are ready to begin setup of your first VM so click "New Virtual Machine" in the Commands section to start the wizard.

For the purposes of this demonstration we will assume you are deploying a Windows 7 system so you can do some testing, so select the "Typical" option. There is rarely any need to select the "Custom" option unless you have specific requirements, in particular the need to retain compatibility with older versions of ESX. On the next page enter a suitable name for your new VM and click Next, then on the next page your datastore should already be selected as the only one available so click Next again. Now you should choose the OS version you are intending to install, choose the type from the list and then the specific version from the dropdown menu.

All the major current OS distributions should be listed in their respective categories, and the major older alternatives are also under the "Other" option, however should you have something which isn't listed then select Other – Other (32bit) or Other(64bit) as appropriate. The main effect your choice here has is in defining the virtual hardware that the ESX host emulates for the OS, e.g. for older OS' it will emulate a basic 10/100Mb NE2000 compatible network adaptor, whereas for the more modern ones a 1Gb AMD NIC will be emulated. You can change these options later but it involves editing config files by hand so it is a good idea to choose a supported OS for your first VM.

Click next and you now have to select the settings for the system drive for your new VM (you can add more disks later):

Define an appropriate size for your disk, here the same principles apply as if you were setting up logical drives on a physical server so you probably want to keep it fairly small and allocate a large volume for data later on. The "thin provisioning" option is a newish (it was in VMware Server but not ESX3) addition which allows for more efficient use of disk space – your VM OS sees the disk as the size you define, but it only takes up the space it is actually using on the datastore. There is a small performance hit, and the risk of halting VMs if all the free space in the datastore is used up, so you may wish to avoid it for production VMs, however it can be useful for development and non-critical VMs. There is no harm in selecting the "Support Clustering features ...." option although bear in mind that Fault Tolerance is only available in the Advanced and Enterprise versions of vSphere so you may never get to use it, also Thin Provisioning is not available if you select it.

The final section of the wizard summarizes your selections and clicking "Finish" now will create your VM, however you can check the "Edit the VM settings..." box if you want to examine other settings such as memory allocation:

Most of the options are self-explanatory, you can allocate more memory and CPUs as you require (you can over-allocate host machine resources but try to avoid that for now), and you may want to remove the Floppy device if you are unlikely to use it. VMware do not recommend specifying more than one CPU for a VM unless you know that the application it will be running has been particularly optimized for multiple CPUs, the way that the hypervisor works means more virtual CPUs can actually reduce performance. All the settings can be changed at any point in the VM's lifetime although most changes will only take effect after a reboot of the VM. Ignore the Options and Resources tabs for the time being as they deal with advanced settings which are beyond the scope of this article. Once you are done editing click Finish and your VM will be created – you will see the task appear in the bottom pane of the vSphere Client and when it is complete the VM will be listed in the lefthand pane.

Installing the OS

Note that your VM doesn't really exist yet, you can click to select it and see all the settings in the Summary pane, however if you Start it not much will happen as you haven't installed the OS yet. Comparing your new VM to a physical server setup you are now at the point where you have assembled all the components of your server and created your RAID array ready to start the OS installation. To do this you would insert CD 1 of the installation media into the drive and start the server, which would then boot off the CD and start the install. The process with your new VM is pretty similar, it has a virtual CD/DVD drive mapped so you just need to provide the media for it to boot off. Here you have several choices, the easiest being if you have an ISO image of your CD (if you just have the physical CD there are several utilities that will create an ISO for you available on the web). By default vSphere maps the virtual CDROM in "Client Device" mode, which allows you to connect a CD or ISO from the vSphere client computer, however getting the VM to boot from this is tricky. Instead the best option is to first copy the ISO image to the ESX datastore, to do this return to the Summary tab, right-click on the datastore name and select "Browse Datastore". This will open a new window with a basic file explorer showing the datastore contents, at present you should just see a folder named for your Virtual Machine. Click the appropriate icon to create a new folder called "ISOs" then open that folder and click the "Upload files" button to copy your ISOs to the datastore:

When it has completed uploading close the browser and return to the VM Summary page, then under the "Commands" section click "Edit Settings" (make sure your VM is shutdown). Select the CD/DVD drive in the hardware list and under "Device Type" on the right change it to "Datastore ISO File" and Browse to the ISO you just uploaded. Make sure the "Connected" and "Connect at Power ON" options are both checked then click OK to close the window and you will see another task run to update the VM settings.

Now to start your VM click on the "Console" tab and then click the green "Start" icon on the toolbar above to turn the virtual power on. Your VM should see your ISO as a CD in its drive and boot off it into the OS installation routine, then you can follow the standard setup procedure. Click anywhere in the console screen to activate control, to release control back to your desktop press Ctrl-Alt. To "eject" the CD when you no longer need it you can return to the VM Settings page and uncheck the "Connected" and "Connect at Power On" boxes.

One problem that may occur is your VM will not attempt to boot off the CD - if this occurs you may need to change the Boot sequence in the VM BIOS (just like you would on a physical server). It can be tricky to press the F2 key in time before the POST screen disappears so instead you can force it to open the BIOS on the next boot. To do this go back to the VM Settings window and select the "Options" tab, down under the Advanced section click "Boot Options" then on the right you will see a check box for "Force BIOS setup". Check that and then next time you boot your VM you will find yourself in the BIOS settings screen, use the cursor keys to change to the "Boot" menu and move the CDROM to the top of the boot order.

An Intro to Virtualization with VMware vSphere 4

Background

VMware officially released vSphere 4 on the 21st of April, with all the fanfare you would expect to accompany a major product launch, however much of the focus was on how it would enable enterprises to move to "cloud computing". Whilst this all sounds great it is of little relevance to the SMB IT Admin, whose "datacentre" might run from a couple of servers to a couple of racks of servers with a constrained budget to match it.

Since our focus is on IT for those "Small to Medium Businesses" I have been evaluating vSphere 4 from that angle - looking at the features which are most relevant for those considering whether it is right for their network. This is the first of a series of articles to help you with your evaluation, which will discuss the key features of vSphere 4, subsequent articles will cover the actual process of installing and configuring the various components so you can test it yourself.

Virtualization Terminology

When discussing virtualization there are several key terms which can often cause confusion, in particular that of "server" which can be interchangeable between physical and virtual systems. Thus to avoid any confusion it is important to define the various terms employed by VMware and in this article:

Datacenters, clusters and hosts - The "host" is the basic building block of vSphere and refers to a physical server running the ESX hypervisor, whilst a cluster consists of two or more hosts with their associated resource pools, virtual machines and datastores. The datacenter is the largest unit of management in vSphere and contains one or more clusters.

Virtual Machine - the VM is the virtual equivalent of a physical server and as such has all the resources defined that you would usually expect when specifying physical hardware - CPU, memory, hard disks and networking. The operating system is then installed on the virtual machine in the usual way, the hardware is completely emulated by the hypervisor so that to all intents and purposes there is no significant difference between a virtual and a physical machine.

Virtual Appliance - Many vendors now supply pre-built virtual machines ready to deploy as a "virtual appliance", which may provide an easy way to test a server based product or increasingly as an alternative to a dedicated hardware appliance. A good example of this is Clearswift, who previously only supplied their web and email filtering systems as a hardware device but now offer a virtual appliance as an alternative. With vSphere Vmware have also introduced the "vApp", which extends the idea of the virtual appliance to enterprise level by allowing for the creation of multi-VM vApps with linked service and resource policies.

Hypervisor - the hypervisor is the software which provides the sharing and translation layer between the server hardware and the virtual machines running on top of it. The latest generation of Intel and AMD CPUs incorporate virtualization extensions which enhance this functionality by allowing more efficient sharing of resources whilst improving the isolation of individual VMs, so that one VM cannot cause another to crash.

Datastore - ESX storage is divided into datastores which are formatted with its proprietary VMFS file system, one of the key features of which is its ability to handle concurrent access by multiple hosts. Datastores can be created from any type of storage visible to the hypervisor but to enable most of the advanced vSphere features shared storage which is accessible to all the hosts in a cluster is required, i.e. a Storage Area Network. Datastore space is then provisioned into virtual disks which are attached to virtual machines to provide the storage for the operating systems installed on them.

Resource Pool - Many of the advanced features of vSphere revolve around the concept of a cluster of virtual hosts whose key resources (CPU MHz and memory) are concentrated into a central pool. This pool can be subdivided into more resource pools which can then be used to automatically manage the allocation of resources to virtual machines and enable prioritization of key VMs over less important ones.

Virtualization - Fundamental Concepts

vSphere 4 is VMware's name for the suite of applications that make up the latest major release of their virtualization solution and replaces their previous "Virtual Infrastructure" product suite. It is built around their ESX 4.0 hypervisor, and vCenter Server which manages the ESX hosts to provide the advanced functionality. VMware's direct competitors are Citrix, with their "Essentials" suite based on the XENserver hypervisor, and Microsoft with their Hyper-V hypervisor and System Center Virtual Machine Manager. Such is the competitiveness of the virtualization market, and the obvious value of gaining market share, that all three vendors are now giving away their core hypervisors for free. Although migrating from one solution to another is not impossible it is a major undertaking, which underlines the importance of choosing the right vendor from the start.

The fundamental concepts of virtualization are the same irrespective of vendor and require a significant change of mindset for the IT Manager used to the concept of a "server" being a package of hardware and software together. Turning the software "server" into a "virtual machine" makes it hardware independent as it just requires a hypervisor providing the necessary resources, and turning the hardware "server" into a "virtual host" by installing the hypervisor on it allows it to run as many virtual machines as it has resources for. Separating the software from the hardware in this way opens up a whole new spectrum of possibilities and also brings features that were previously "enterprise only" well within the reach of the smaller IT infrastructure.

ESXi - Virtualization for Free

Thanks to the competition between the major vendors you can make the initial move to virtualization without any financial outlay, except for the time required to deploy it. You can register with VMware to obtain a free ESXi 4.0 license key for as many hosts as you like, and you can manage those hosts effectively using the incorporated vSphere client. This will enable you to take advantage of a fundamental benefit of virtualization, the ability to maximize hardware resource usage by installing multiple VMs on a single physical host. Even in a single server setup its worth considering, once you have virtualized your server into a VM upgrading to new server hardware in future becomes a one hour job; (i) buy new server, (ii) install ESXi, (iii) copy your VM from the old server to the new one - no need to worry about updating device drivers etc. The same also applies for disaster recovery scenarios, restoring to new hardware is much quicker and more reliable when you no longer have to worry about changing hardware specifications.

vSphere 4 - Advanced Virtualization Functionality

So if you can do virtualization for free with ESXi why should you be thinking about spending money on vSphere 4? Basically if you are just running a single host setup then there is little reason to consider upgrading, virtually all the key features require at least a two host cluster in order to work. There is also one other key requirement which shouldn't be omitted when considering the costs of implementation, you will require a SAN to provide shared storage to all your hosts. The factors to consider when specifying a suitable SAN are complex, including performance, fault tolerance and connectivity; suffice to say that they will be covered in a separate article.

Once your infrastructure meets the basic requirements these are the main features vSphere has to offer:

VM Migration

Even with shared storage moving a VM from one host to another with ESXi isn't just a one-click process, but vSphere makes it that easy. With vMotion you can even move VMs whilst they are online, with only a brief pause in operation and no need to reboot. Another feature, "Storage vMotion", allows you to move a live VM from one datastore to another without taking it offline. These features help to minimize the disruption of hardware maintenance; should you need to shutdown a host server in order to upgrade or replace it you can move your VMs to other hosts in advance so there is no interruption in service.

High Availability

One of the key vSphere features for the SME IT manager, High Availability allows you to promise service uptime levels that were previously only attainable with enterprise clustering solutions. Each VM and host is monitored continuously and should it go offline then vSphere will try to recover it, either by forcing a reset of the VM (e.g. if a BSOD occurred), or migrating the VMs to a new host and starting them on there in the event of the original host failing.

Fault Tolerance

Fault Tolerance is a new feature introduced in vSphere4 which takes advantage of new functions in the latest Intel CPU architectures to go one step beyond High Availability. Although HA can greatly reduce downtime it does not eliminate it as the VM still has to be restarted, during which period it is effectively unavailable. Fault Tolerance uses "lockstep" to maintain a second clone VM on another host, which is kept continuously up to date as the complete VM state is mirrored. Should the primary host fail for whatever reason the secondary VM image activates immediately, retaining user session states and allowing work to continue with no time or data loss.

Data Recovery

Sometimes even Fault Tolerance isn't enough and you may want to restore an older version of a VM, or have to recover from a backup, so a good Disaster Recovery solution is essential. You should continue to use your existing backup application for file level backups, running within the VM, but often there are DR situations where the fastest solution will be to recover an entire VM image. VMware Consolidated Backup is still available as part of vSphere, which enables you to integrate your backup system with your virtual infrastructure for efficient VM backups. New with vSphere4 is "Data Recovery", which provides a complete VM backup solution supporting scheduling and data de-duplication. Since this is a significant addition to vSphere's capabilities it is fully covered in a separate article.

Dynamic Resource and Power Management

Although less of an issue for smaller businesses one of the key virtues often touted for virtualization is the ability to dramatically reduce IT system's power consumption, and collaterally cooling, with the associated reduction in electricity bills. vSphere's Dynamic Power Management allows to you to specify how aggressively you want it to reduce power consumption, and will take advantage of the latest CPU functions such as core throttling. It uses vMotion to move VMs between hosts in order to minimize power requirements whilst still providing the necessary resources, and is even able to put hosts into standby and then re-awaken them when required. Dynamic Resource Scheduling is a similar feature but works instead to ensure that all VMs get the resources they require, again it will use vMotion to move VMs between hosts in order to achieve the most efficient balance. DRS and DPM are reactive processes that will respond to changing patterns of usage, so if one particular VM comes under sustained load it may be moved to another host with more resources available.

Planning for vSphere: Key Considerations for a Successful Deployment

The fundamental assumption in all my vSphere4 articles is obviously that you are intending to carry out all the work yourself, rather than bring in outside experts to do it for you. I believe that none of the procedures involved should be beyond the skill level of the average IT Manager, provided they put in the necessary preparation and practice. However evaluating systems in a lab is a major step away from deploying them in a live business environment, with both the immediate cost of hardware/software and the potential cost of disrupting business productivity to take into account. Therefore please consider carefully whether you are ready to take this on yourself, or if it would be more prudent to seek assistance. At the very least this article should help you to gain a much better understanding of what is involved, and so ensure that you are getting value for money if you do outsource the work.

Assess Your Requirements

To begin, when considering a vSphere deployment, there are two basic areas where you need to assess your requirements; virtual machine resource capacity and vSphere features such as high availability. As well as the immediate needs you also need to consider what they will be in the future too, as a small additional outlay now could save you having to spend a much bigger sum a year down the line. One of the key benefits of virtualization is that you can separate your software upgrade cycle from your hardware upgrades, so you don't have to worry about whether you should update your server OS's when you virtualize them. All the same you do need to consider what the resource requirements will be if you undertake a software upgrade cycle 18 months later, as new software almost invariably requires more resources than its predecessor.

The IT industry used to be locked into a 2/3 year upgrade cycle and although this has become less of a definite rule in recent years many companies still expect the IT budget to be planned around such a cycle. When planning your virtualization project you may seek to increase your available budget in return for extending the upgrade cycle - four or even five years may be plausible nowadays. All the more so then you need to have a good idea of what your business' IT requirements are likely to be over that period so you can anticipate them in your planning now.

Resource Capacity

It should not be difficult to assess what your vSphere Infrastructure resource requirement will be as all the information is already available to you. Once you have established which servers you intend to virtualize you can use tools such as Windows' Perfmon to monitor resource usage and establish average and peak benchmarks. The key figures you need to collect are:

CPU Utilization - one of VMware's favorite marketing statistics is that most servers only average 10% CPU utilization. Smaller networks tend to make better use of their servers but you should still find it is well below 50%. Work out the figure in MHz - if you have a dual core 2GHz CPU with both cores averaging 25% usage then that server's CPU resource requirement will {25% x 2,000 x 2} = 1,000MHz.

Memory Usage - Both Windows and Linux are pretty good at managing memory so there's not so much point in looking for a utilization figure, instead work on the server's existing memory allocation but consider adjusting it if usage is either particularly high or low. For example, if your server has 1GB of physical memory but the PerfMon figures show frequent swap file usage then you would probably want to allocate it 2GB when virtualized.

Storage Requirements - this divides into two categories, the first being simply how much storage the server requires - i.e. how much it is being used now with a sensible allowance for future growth. The second category is one that virtualization amateurs frequently omit to consider, the server's disk IO requirements. In PerfMon this figure can be viewed under the "Disk Transfers per second" category and can vary from an average of around 10 for a Domain Controller to over 150 for an Exchange or SQL Server. Recording the overall average transfer figure is not so useful here due to the "bursty" nature of disk access, instead you need to look at the average during periods of heavy activity, which may be much higher.

Network Utilization - with Gigabit networking it is rare to find a server which averages over 10% utilization but like disk transfer rates you need to look at the average during busy periods.

Using PerfMon to identify resource usage

vSphere Feature Requirements

This can make a significant difference to the cost of your vSphere licenses so you need to carefully consider whether the business benefits are justifed. For the smaller network features like Dynamic Power Management are unlikely to have much relevance, and neither will Storage vMotion or vShield zones. The key decider is High Availability, and what level of HA is required - standard, which will restart a VM within a few minutes of failure, or the instantaneous failover offered by Fault Tolerance.

When you take into account that even standard High Availability requires SAN storage and a vSphere Essentials Plus license it can at least double the cost of a small vSphere Infrastructure, so there has to be a solid business case for it. However many SME's seriously underestimate the cost implications of IT downtime for their business so it may well be worthwhile conducting a proper impact assessment at this point in your planning. The options for licensing vSphere4 and the relative costs of various features are covered in much more detail later in the article.

Part 2 - Determining Hardware Requirements

You should now have a good idea of what you will require from your vSphere4 Infrastructure and so now are ready to look at what hardware you will need for your project. An initial issue to decide is whether you will be looking to purchase new hardware or whether you can reuse existing servers as hosts. There are two important factors to consider here, first of all vSphere licensing makes it desirable to use high power quad core CPUs, and the High Availability feature requires the hosts to be as identical as possible. Should you want to keep your initial expenditure down then it is not a major task to replace your host servers at a latest date, in fact one of the benefits of virtualization is the ease of changing host hardware.

Minimum Hardware Requirements

For all but the most basic of setups you should be planning on a minimum of two host servers, obviously this is essential for High Availability but even if this is not required multiple hosts will give you much more flexibility. You will also need a separate system to act as your Virtual Center server, which manages and controls the ESX host servers. For small vSphere deployments of less than five hosts a normal desktop PC can suffice for this function, as long as it runs at least Windows XP Pro and 2GB RAM is recommended.

Example of a basic two host vSphere topology with SAN

Choosing Server Hardware

Whatever hardware you are intending to use as part of your vSphere Infrastructure you should always ensure it is on the Hardware Compatibility List, otherwise you will be taking a major risk and will not be eligible for support. Bear in mind as well that the latest server chipsets and CPUs (e.g. Intel Nehalem) incorporate several new features specifically designed to improve virtualization support. The author is somewhat partial to Hewlett Packard servers, their latest "G6" range of rackmount servers are particularly optimized for vSphere, for example their motherboard mounted SD card and USB slots allow ESXi to be embedded for a "diskless" server.

Whichever manufacturer you opt for do not neglect the reliability upgrades available, in my experience features such as redundant PSUs and hot swappable components are well worth their cost. Consider that each host will be running several virtual servers so any problem which takes it offline could potentially cripple your network until resolved. Care should also be taken to ensure that ancillary equipment like network switches are also up to the job, they should certainly be Gigabit and advanced features like vLANing may be useful too. A good UPS to protect all the equipment against power interruption is also important.

Adding up your resource usage figures from before will enable you to establish what sort of server specification you are going to require, although there are a couple of modifying factors to be taken into account. First of all you need to make an allowance for growth in resource usage over the expected lifespan, both for the existing virtual machines and any new VMs you may wish to deploy. The other factor is High Availability, if you intend to provide failover resilience then you have to allow enough resource capacity to cope with the loss of a single host.  vSphere can cope with resource over-allocation, for instance if a host server has 8GB of RAM the VMs running on it could have 10GB of RAM allocated, but there is a performance impact so the situation is best avoided except for emergencies.

Although your resource requirement assessment may indicate that a single Gigabit network connection will provide plenty of capacity for all of the VMs you plan to run on a host server it is still a good idea to specify at least dual NICs. There are several good reasons for this, not least being that vSphere supports failover on network connections so additional NICs will provide redundancy. In addition to the VM requirements several vSphere features also require substantial network bandwidth, an iSCSI SAN should have at least one dedicated Gigabit NIC on a host server, whilst vMotion and Fault Tolerance should ideally also have their own Gb NICs as well. Considering the relatively low cost of dual or quad port Network Interface Cards if you are intending to use any of these features you should include them with your host servers. Again when specifying additional components for your host servers make sure that you check they are listed on the HCL, otherwise you could well find that ESX will not recognise them.

Storage Requirements

When it comes to specifying the storage for your vSphere Infrastructure the first decision is whether you will require a Storage Area Network or not. It is essential if you wish to implement High Availability as that requires the VMs to be stored on shared storage available to all the hosts. As well as simple capacity your storage needs to be capable of meeting the IO requirements of the VMs, it has already been mentioned this is the main area many people neglect when specifying their vSphere Infrastructure, which can severely affect performance. The whole area of storage and SANs in vSphere is complicated enough to warrant a separate article, which will be published soon. As an indication of the costs involved, the cheapest hardware SAN currently certified by VMware is Dell's MD3000i, a configuration suitable for a basic two host Infrastructure currently retails at around $12,000.

You should now be ready to get started with deploying your vSphere4 Infrastructure, once you have your hardware in place you can install vSphere4 in Evaluation mode and start using all of its features. However although VMware allow a generous 60 days free evaluation, which should be plenty of time to get to grips with it, you will need to purchase a license before you can go live.

Part 3 - vSphere Licensing

In the first two parts of this article, we looked at how to go about establishing your virtualization requirements and deciding on which hardware you will need. In order to complete your vSphere planning the final decision is what licenses you need to purchase to enable the features you require. At first glance VMware's licensing options may seem complex, and expensive, but for most implementations you will in fact find it is quite simple.

The vSphere4 Platform

vSphere Licensing - Editions, Bundles & Acceleration Kits

The best value when purchasing vSphere licenses comes from choosing one of VMware's "bundles", packaged to offer various levels of features to suit different target markets. VMware divide their bundles between "Small Business" and "Mid-Size & Enterprise Business", with two options in the former; "Essentials" and "Essentials Plus",  and four in the latter; "Standard" through to "Enterprise Plus" all called "Acceleration Kits". All of these bundles include ESX/i host licenses and a vCenter Server license, with compulsory "SnS" (support and service, i.e. product updates) subscription.

Host licenses comprise ESX or ESXi (you can choose at installation) in one of the four available feature sets (Standard, Advanced, Enterprise and Enterprise Plus) and are licensed per CPU rather than per physical server,  Standard and Enterprise allow six cores per CPU whilst Advanced and Enterprise Plus allow twelve cores. This obviously makes it advisable to go for as many cores per CPU as you can get when specifying your server hardware, whilst all the versions except Enterprise Plus have a memory limit of 256GB per physical server. The "Acceleration Kits" all include licenses for 6 CPUs, which could therefore cover six physical servers although the most likely configuration will be three dual CPU servers.

The small business "Essentials" and "Essentials Plus" bundles are licensed slightly differently, in that they are specifically for a maximum of three hosts with up to two six core CPUs per host. They also include "vCenter Server for Essentials" which lacks the "enterprise" features of vCenter Server Standard. Although the Essentials bundles come at a significant discount the cost saving is offset by the additional cost of the upgrade path to the full editions, so this should be taken into account if you are likely to need more host capacity or features in future.

The full version feature comparison table is available here, but here we shall concentrate on the two Essentials bundles as they will likely be of most interest to readers. The cheapest option for each is with the one year "Gold" (12x5) support, which is currently listed as $1,179 for Essentials and $3,624 for Essentials Plus. As the table below shows, the key difference once more is High Availability, although you do also get the potentially useful "Data Recovery" feature:

There is a good argument for not bothering with the Essentials bundle if you do not need High Availability, after all you will save yourself $1,100 and the cost of a system to run the vCenter Server, all you need are the free ESXi licenses. This is certainly true if you are only planning on one host server, as you can manage that perfectly well using the vSphere Client by itself, and in fact you can happily manage multiple hosts with it as well. Provided server downtime is not a major issue (and much of it will be planned so can be scheduled) you can achieve much of the same functionality through manual management.

At the same time there is plenty to justify an "Essentials Plus" based vSphere Infrastructure for companies in the 4-12 server range, especially if there is a potential business benefit from High Availability. The modern working environment increasingly expects IT services to be available 24/7, but most SMEs cannot justify having IT staff working 24/7 so vSphere can help to cover that gap.

In comparison, to take your vSphere Infrastructure to the next level and gain the benefit of "maximum uptime" features like vMotion and Fault Tolerance, you need to be considering the  vSphere Advanced Acceleration Kit - only $12,699. At first glance when you add in the cost of the server and SAN hardware this looks like a lot of money to spend, but then consider it should be capable of running 15-20 production servers. In the typical server room this would represent turning a couple of racks of servers, (with all their ancillary equipment, power, UPS and cooling) into a half rack or even a small blade centre. Additional VM capacity can quickly be added by simply purchasing another host server and the required number of vSphere CPU licenses. Add in all the other benefits of virtualization like reduced downtime and dynamic resource provisioning, then it can present a compelling case for vSphere4.

Adding Bluetooth Devices in Windows 7

Bluetooth devices 101

Today, everyone is familiar with Bluetooth thanks to Bluetooth headsets that are very popular on cellular phones. Bluetooth is wireless networking but it is short distance. Technically, when you use Bluetooth networking you are creating a Personal Area Network, or PAN. Other than those Bluetooth headsets that make peoples' ears look like they are on Star Trek, there are a wide variety of Bluetooth devices. All you have to do is to look in the Bluetooth product directory and you will find that there are thousands of Bluetooth devices out there.

Besides the cellular phone headset, I would think that the second most common device is the Bluetooth mouse that many people use on a laptop. Adding one should be easy, right? Well, there may be more to it than you might think.

Flashback to Windows Vista Bluetooth

Back in the "old" Windows Vista (Vista must be old now as Windows 7 is out, right?), to add a Bluetooth device you would simply go to Control Panel and click on Bluetooth Devices, as you see in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Windows Vista Bluetooth Devices

From there you could click on either Add Wireless Device or Bluetooth Settings. What could be easier, right?

In Windows 7 that simple process has been changed in the name of progress. Let me show you how...

Adding a Bluetooth Mouse to Windows 7, step by step

To add a Bluetooth device in Windows 7, you do go to Control Panel but, from there, the water gets a little murky. The first time I went there to add my Bluetooth device, I was not sure what to do so I had to use the Search function and search for the word Bluetooth in order to find the option to add a Bluetooth device. Still, you should not have to do that.

Instead, what you need to do is to click on View Devices and Printers under Hardware and Sound, as you see in Figure 1.

Figure 2: Control Panel in Windows 7

From there, you will be taken to Devices and Printers, which (with the word printers in there), seems like a strange place to go to add a Bluetooth mouse.

Figure 3: Adding a new Bluetooth device in Windows 7

Next, before you click Add a device (shown in Figure 2) you should first do a few things:

1. Make sure that, if you have a laptop, wireless is enabled on the laptop (my Sony has a switch on the side). Bluetooth is wireless and, typically, when you disable all wireless that includes not only 802.11a/b/g/n but also Bluetooth.
2. Make sure that any proprietary software you have that controls power or wireless has Bluetooth enabled (I will cover this more in the "gotchas").
3. Turn on the power on the mouse and press the Connect button.

Now, you can click Add a Device and you should see something like the graphic in Figure 3.

Figure 4: Locating the device to add

Select the device you want to add and click Next.

The device drivers will be loaded and you should see the window in Figure 5.

Figure 5: Bluetooth mouse has been added

At this point, your mouse should be working. You can use it to click Close and you will be taken back to the Devices and Printers window where you can see your device.

Ideally, adding Bluetooth devices should be that easy but there are some "gotchas" to look out for.

"Gotchas" to Watch Out For When Adding Bluetooth Devices

To make sure that it goes as easily as I demonstrated above, look out for these potential pitfalls:

1. Make sure that your laptop or PC actually has Bluetooth. You can not assume that it has it.
2. Make sure that your Bluetooth is ON. Your laptop might have a switch that enables or disables wireless.
3. Make sure that any proprietary software you have that controls power or wireless has Bluetooth enabled. On my Sony Vaio, I have a proprietary software application installed (from Sony) called Smart Wi Connection Utility that enables and disables various types of wireless connections, including Bluetooth. I ran into an issue where Bluetooth was disabled here and I had to track down this utility to enable it.

Figure 6: SmartWi Connection Utility

4. Make sure that your Bluetooth device is powered on and make sure that it has some kind of LED indicating that it has power. While it may be obvious, that also means that your device has batteries that have a charge (fresh batteries are preferred).
5. You may have to press the Connect button on the Bluetooth device to get it talking to the Bluetooth adaptor on the PC or laptop.
6. Make sure that the drive for your Bluetooth device is successfully installed, as you see in Figure 7 and Figure 8.

Figure 7: Bluetooth Device Driver being Installed

Figure 8: Bluetooth Device Driver Installed

Using GUI to script PowerShell with PowerGUI

Why do I need PowerShell?

If you are new to PowerShell you may still be asking what it is and why you need it. These are easy questions to answer and I am confident that you will see the obvious usefulness of PowerShell once it's explained.

According to WikiPedia, PowerShell is an "extensible automation engine from Microsoft, made up of a command-line shell and associated scripting language". It's built on top of .NET and it is used to perform administrative tasks on local and remote Windows systems. Those administrative tasks could be related to Windows network management, Active Directory, Hyper-V, or even 3rd party programs like VMware (if those programs support it). These administrative tasks can be automated to run at specific times or be initiated from other applications to perform some task.

To me, the cool thing about PowerShell is that it can be used across so many different Windows OS features and supported 3rd party applications - allowing you to control and manage your entire Windows server (both OS and apps).

If you are running Windows 7, PowerShell 2.0 is already included and installed. Prior to that OS, you will need to install it from the Microsoft Script Center homepage.

In Windows 7, just go to the Start menu, Administrative Tools, then to Windows Powershell Modules. You will see your PowerShell command line that looks like this:

Figure 1: PowerShell CLI

While that is "nice" and the way that most admins use PowerShell this command-line interface can be daunting for those new to PowerShell or even new to any kind of command line interface.

The answer is PowerGUI.

What is PowerGUI and how can it help me?

Before you think that I am trying to sell you some kind of commercial tool here, let me first tell you that PowerGUI is completely free, as are their PowerGUI libraries and community forums.

PowerGUI can help you by:

1. Allowing you to run PowerShell scripts with NO scripting knowledge
2. Allowing you to see the scripts that PowerGUI creates for you so that you can understand PowerShell and by allowing you to export those scripts (which you could modify and turn into your own scripts)
3. Provides a way to add "PowerPack Libraries" so that you can extend this functionality to 100's of other applications and/or Windows features (see Figure 2)
4. Offering an intelligent PowerShell script editor to make script editing easier (see Figure 3)

Figure 2: Extend PowerGUI with PowerPacks from the Library

Figure 3: PowerShell Script Editor

So where do you get it and how do you install it?

Downloading and Installing PowerGUI

The 8MB PowerGUI can be found at the PowerGUI download page. As you can imagine with an application that size, the download and installation are very fast.

Other than all the standard installation questions, there is just one point in the GUI that you need to take note of - the Features Install. During this point in the install (before in Figure 4), you have the chance to specify what PowerGUI features you want installed.

Figure 4: PowerGUI Features Selection

This includes PowerPacks like Exchange 2007, Active Directory, and Network. While Local System and Network are checked by default, the other two I mentioned are not.

Just before the installation completes, you can say that you want PowerGUI to start automatically when the install finishes. Here is what PowerGUI looks like when it is first started:

Figure 5: PowerGUI Initial Startup

That's much less intimidating that the command prompt I showed you above, isn't it?

Honestly, thus far in my PowerShell education, I am just getting started but with just a little clicking-around, I was able to browse to the user list on my local computer and see what users are currently added. By going up to View, then down to PowerShell script, a new tab was opened that showed me the PS that is executed for anything that I did. It is in this window that I could take the PS for the common tasks that I perform and easily create automated scripts, even without really knowing much of anything about how to use PS. Here is what it looks like in Figure 6:

Figure 6: Viewing PowerShell scripts that are being run

Creating, Attaching, and Mounting VHD Files in Windows 7 and Windows 2008 R2

New features in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 allow Windows Admins to create, mount, and attach virtual hard disks (VHD). This feature will get a lot of use from Windows admins and it saves us from having to use 3rd party tools to do this. In fact, Microsoft is even offering test drives of their popular enterprise applications (such as Window 7 and Exchange 2010).

Microsoft Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) files have been increasing in popularity along with the popularity of the Microsoft Virtual PC and Server virtualization software solutions. However, with the release of Microsoft Hyper-V and (which uses VHD) files, the use of VHD files really skyrocketed. Windows Admins need to mount VHD files to access files in these virtual disk images. Admins also have the option to create their own VHD images.

Why do you need to mount VHD files?

Like me, most Windows Admins have mounted an ISO file and a ZIP file this month (or even today). You did it because perhaps you needed a driver file from an archive or to install an application.

Unlike ZIP files or ISO files, most Windows Admins use VHD files for their intended purpose - serving as the virtual hard drive for a virtual machine (VM). However, you could use a VHD file for whatever you like when it comes to file storage.

Where do you download VHD files from the Internet?

While the VMware VMDK format is still more popular than the Microsoft VHD format for distributing virtual appliances (see the VMware virtual appliance marketplace to download VMDK files), the VHD format is starting to get a foothold. This is due to Microsoft distributing evaluation / demo virtual machines from their website using the VHD format. Here are some links to site from Microsoft and others where you can download VHD files:

• Run IT on a Virtual Hard Disk – Test Drive Program - offers Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows 7 Enterprise, Exchange Server 2010 and a ton more VHDs available for free download (note that these are all evaluation versions that expire after 180 days)
• Windows 7 90-day eval - while you will likely find this inside the test drive program, I think that this is likely the most useful of all the VHD downloads
• SharePoint Add-ons in VHD Format

How do you create, attach, and mount VHD files in Windows 7?

The great new feature in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 is that you can now mount (attach, as they call it) and create Microsoft VHD files. Thus, you do not need any third-party software to do this, as you did in the past.

Attaching and Creating VHD files is done inside the Windows Disk Management console. Most people access this by going into the Computer Management. You access this by right-clicking on My Computer, then click Manage. This brings up the Computer Management MMC console where you can do many different things (task scheduler, event viewer, shared folders, users and groups, performance, device manager, manage services, and, finally, disk management).

To attach or create a VHD, you click on the Action menu.

In Figure 1 you can see how Computer Management was used to access the VHD attaching and creating options.

Figure 1:  Creating and Attaching a VHD file in Windows 7 Computer Management

However, the absolute fastest way to get to the VHD attaching and mounting menu is to run the Disk Management MMC directly by just going to the start menu, typing is diskmgmt.msc, and pressing enter (as you see in Figure 2, below).

Figure 2: Running diskmgmt.msc

Of course, you can always attach a VHD that you created in Microsoft Virtual PC or Virtual Server but you can also create your own VHDs inside Windows 7 or Win 2008 R2.

To do this, click in the Create option on the Action menu. You will need to choose as to whether you want to create a fixed or a dynamic VHD file, specify a path, and specify the size of the new virtual disk (as you see in Figure 3).

Figure 3: Creating a new Virtual Disk

When you create the new VHD for the first time, you will see that the Microsoft VHD HBA device driver is being loaded (in Figure 4).

Figure 4: Microsoft VHD HBA driver loaded

This will enable Disk Management to see the new drive but you still need to initialize it, create a new volume, and format it like any other drive. Right-click on the new disk and click to Initialize Disk.

Figure 5: Initializing the VHD Disk

You will be asked if you want to initialize the disk (click OK).

Figure 6: Initializing the Disk

Now, Right-click on the disk again and click New Simple Volume. This will bring up the New Simple Volume Wizard.

Figure 7: Running the new simple volume wizard

In this wizard, you will select the volume size, drive letter, format, and disk block size before you click Finish to complete the wizard.

Figure 8: New Simple Volume Wizard

When done, you will have a new disk volume that looks just like any other physical disk partition.

Figure 9: New VHD Volume created

In fact, I do not see any way to tell that the new volume is a VHD file except for when I right-click on the Disk and see the option to Detach VHD.

Figure 10: Detach VHD File

Attaching a VHD is much easier. Let us say that I detached the VHD file above. To attach it, just go to Action then Attach VHD.

You will be prompted to browse for the VHD file, specify if you want it mounted as read-only, and then you can mount it.

Figure 11: Attach a Virtual Hard Disk (VHD)

New Netsh Commands in Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2

The Network Shell (Netsh) tool was first introduced with Windows 2000. It allows you to configure, troubleshoot, and administer many different network components of Windows via the command line both locally and remotely. More contexts and commands have been added with Windows releases to support new and existing network functions.

Wireless LAN (WLAN) Commands

One new feature of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 is Wireless Hosted Networks. It lets you create a virtual wireless access point (AP) with your wireless adapter, even when connected to a wireless network. Once you enable Internet Connection Sharing (ICS), others can connect to your virtual AP with the encryption key and access the Internet.

You can create and manage Wireless Hosted Networks with Netsh:

• netsh wlan set hostednetwork:  Define the settings for the Wireless Hosted Network, using the following optional parameters:
  - mode = { allow | disallow }
  - ssid = WirelessNetworkName
  - key = YourDesiredPassword
  - keyUsage = { persistent | temporary }
• netsh wlan refresh hostednetwork: Set a new WPA2-PSK encryption key. Enter the command followed by the new key.
• netsh wlan start hostednetwork: Enable and start broadcasting the Wireless Hosted Network.
• netsh wlan stop hostednetwork: Disable and stop broadcasting the Wireless Hosted Network.
• netsh wlan show hostednetwork: Print the settings of the Wireless Hosted Network, including a list of connected users.
• netsh wlan export hostednetworkprofile: Save the Wireless Hosted Network profile as an XML file, using the following parameters:
  - Folder = PathandFileName
  - Name = WirelessProfileName (as shown when using the netsh wlan show profiles command)

Figure 1: Setting up and starting a Wireless Hosted Network.

Here are some new WLAN commands to show or print the value of other settings:

• netsh wlan show allowexplicitcreds: Shows if the computer is allowed to use stored user credentials for 802.1X authentication when a user isn't logged on to the computer.
• netsh wlan show createalluserprofile: Shows if users can create wireless profiles for all users, rather than just for their own Windows account.
• netsh wlan show onlyusegpprofilesforallowednetworks: Displays if only the wireless profiles of Group Policy are allowed when Group Policy is implemented.

Here are a couple more new miscellaneous Netsh WLAN commands:

• netsh wlan set allowexplicitcreds: Specify if the computer is allowed to use any stored user credentials for wireless 802.1X authentication when a user isn't logged in, using the following parameter:
  - allow = { yes | no }
• netsh wlan set profiletype: Specify whether only the current user or all users can use the given wireless network profile, using the following parameter:
  - name = ProfileName
  - profiletype = { all | current }
• netsh wlan set blockperiod: Specify the number of minutes (0 – 60) a user must wait to retry after unsuccessfully connecting to a wireless network.
• netsh wlan reportissues: Create a report in the C:\Windows\Tracing directory for troubleshooting wireless networking issues.

Local Area Network (LAN) Commands

There are only two new Netsh LAN commands, which are the wired version of the two new Netsh WLAN commands:

• netsh lan set allowexplicitcreds: Specify if the computer is allowed to use any stored user credentials for wired 802.1X authentication when a user isn't logged in, using the following parameter:
  - allow = { yes | no }
• netsh lan set blockperiod: Specify the number of minutes (0 – 60) a user must wait to retry after unsuccessfully connecting to a wired network.

Windows Filtering Platform (WFP) Commands

The Windows Filtering Platform (WFP) is a new architecture that debuted in Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008. It gives software developers much more access and control over the TCP/IP stack.

Microsoft added a diagnostic tool for the WFP in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. It can help you troubleshoot issues with Windows Firewall and IPsec. It runs diagnostic tests and creates a report in XML format. Here are the diagnostic capture commands:

• netsh wfp capture start: Begins the capturing, and continues until you enter the stop command, with the following optional parameters:
  - cab = { on | off }: Specify if the two output files should be  compressed into a .cab file. When not specified, it is set to on.
  - traceonly = { on | off }: State if only event tracing data should be captured, reducing the output file size. When not specified, it is set to off.
  - keywords = { none | bcast | mcast | bcast+mcast }: Set the type of network traffic to capture. Unicast network traffic is always included, even when set to none. bcast means broadcast traffic and mcast is multicast traffic.
  - file = PathAndFilename: Specify the path and filename (without extension) to write the output files.
• netsh wfp capture status: Shows if a capture session is currently active.
• netsh wfp capture stop: Stops the capturing session.

Figure 2: Starting and stopping the capturing.

Two persistent options for the diagnostic capturing can be set with the netsh wfp set options command, using the following parameters:

• netevents = { on | off }: Specify if network events should be included in the diagnostics output. The default value is on.
• keywords = { none | bcast | mcast | bcast+mcast }: Set the type of network traffic to capture. Unicast network traffic is always included, even when set to none. bcast means broadcast traffic and mcast is multicast traffic.
• Information about the current WFP and firewall configuration, filters, and network events that's set when Windows first starts can be displayed with netsh wfp show, using the following commands:
• netsh wfp show appid: Show the device-based application path for a file, using the following parameter:
  - file = PathAndFilename: Define the file path using the standard, i.e. C:\folder\subfolder.
• ·         netsh wfp show boottimepolicy: Displays the WFP policy and filters that's set when Windows first starts, before the Windows Firewall with Advanced Security service is loaded, using the following optionally parameter:
  - file = PathAndFilename: Specify where to write the output. If not specified, the filename is btpol.xml. If you enter a dash (-) for the file value, it is written only to the console.
• netsh wfp show filters: Shows the currently active WFP filters. You can specify the output file (or print to the console) and limit results with the following parameters:
  - file = PathAndFilename
  - protocol = IPProtocolNumber
  - localaddr = IPv4orIPv6Address
  - remoteaddr = IPv4orIPv6Address
  - localport = PortNumber
  - remoteport = PortNumber
  - appid = PathAndFileName
  - userid = { SID | UserName }
  - dir = { in | out }
  - verbose = { on | off }
• netsh wfp show netevents: Displays the list of network traffic events. You can specify the output file (or print to the console) and limit results with the following parameters:
  - file = PathAndFilename
  - protocol = IPProtocolNumber
  - localaddr = IPv4orIPv6Address
  - remoteaddr = IPv4orIPv6Address
  - localport = PortNumber
  - remoteport = PortNumber
  - appid = PathAndFileName
  - userid = { SID | UserName }
  - timewindow = secondsprevious
• netsh wfp show options: Shows the value of the netevents or keywords settings, with the following parameter:
  - optionsfor = { netevents | keywords }
• netsh wfp show security: Displays the security descriptor of a selected item, using the following parameters:
  - type = { callout | engine | filter | kesadb | ipsecsadb | layer | netevents | provider | providercontext | sublayer }
  - guid = GUID
• netsh wfp show state: Shows the current functioning state of the WFP and IPsec, using the following optionally parameter:
  - file = PathAndFilename: Specify where to write the output. If not specified, the filename is wfpstate.xml. If you enter a dash (-) for the file value, it is written only to the console.
• netsh wfp show sysports:  Displays the TCP and UDP ports currently used by the TCP/IP protocol stack, and the remote procedure call (RPC) subsystem, using the following optionally parameter:
  - file = PathAndFilename: Specify where to write the output. If not specified, the filename is sysports.xml. If you enter a dash (-) for the file value, it is written only to the console.

Network Trace Commands

Netsh in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 features trace commands to help you diagnose and trace network-related issues. Here are three commands you need to know to use the diagnosis tool:

• netsh trace show scenarios: Lists the network components you can perform traces and diagnosis on.
• netsh trace show scenario: Shows the information for the specified scenario, including the attribute(s) for the you can use to perform the diagnosis, using the required parameter:
  - name = ScenarioName: Specify the name of the desired scenario.
• netsh trace diagnose: Starts a diagnostic session that tries to detect the root cause and repair the issue, using the following parameters:
  - scenario = ScenarioName (Required)
  - namedAttribute = AttributeValue (Required)
  - saveSessionTrace = { yes | no }
  - report = { yes | no }
  - capture = { yes | no }

Figure 3: Running a FileSharing diagnosis to see why the LAPTOP computer isn't accessible.

Here are the commands to perform network traces:

• netsh trace start: Begins a trace session, using the following optional parameters:
  - scenario = Scenario1,Scenario2
  - globalKeywords = keywords
  - globalLevel = level
  - capture = { yes | no }
  - report = { yes | no }
  - persistent = { yes | no }
  - traceFile = Path\Filename
  - maxSize = MaxFileSizeInMB
  - fileMode = { single | circular | append }
  - overwrite = { yes | no }
  - correlation = { yes | no | disabled }
  - provider = ProviderIdOrName
  - keywords = KeywordMaskOrSet
  - level = level
  - provider = Provider2IdOrName
  - keywords = Keyword2MaskOrSet
• netsh trace Stop: Stops the trace session.

Figure 4: Starting and stopping a trace on the WLAN.

The trace convert and trace correlate commands can help you manipulate the trace files. Plus you might look into the following that can display more information related to tracing and diagnosis:

• netsh trace show CaptureFilterHelp
• netsh trace show globalKeywordsAndLevels
• netsh trace show helperclass
• netsh trace show interfaces
• netsh trace show provider
• netsh trace show providers
• netsh trace show status