Thanks all who stuck around even after our late start. We still managed to have a productive call, both with the flash cards during the call, as well as the long fireside chat with Jason Boche afterwards. Thanks again Jason! Also thanks to everyone else who hung out on the call. Now onto the meat
-> Continue reading VCAP-DCA BrownBag Follow-Up (Section 3, pt 1)
After purging my vCenter database, I seemingly corrupted it (I should have taken a snapshot first). In this case, as the database was small (read: 1 host, 6 VMs) I decided to rebuild it. This is not something you’ll want to do lightly, as well, everything kinda goes away. If you do proceed with this
-> Continue reading Rebuild the vCenter 4.1 Database
My home lab vCenter is a self contained Windows 2008 R2 VM, running vCenter 4.1 on SQL Express. Last night, I ran into an issue where the vCenter service would not start, in fact, it was quite angry. Why? Well it seems after 14(ish) days I had hit the 4GB database limit. Here’s the process
-> Continue reading Pruning vCenter 4.1 Database Using SQL Express
Welcome back my friends, to the show that never ends…Tonight Sean (@vFail) covered the ins and outs of the VMware vMA. Video: ProfessionalVMware VCAP BrownBag – vMA from ProfessionalVMware on Vimeo. Slides: VCAP DCA – vMA View more presentations from ProfessionalVMware. Notes: VMware vMA – http://vmware.com/go/vma Resoureces: http://vfail.net http://geeksilver.wordpress.com http://vexperienced.co.uk http://communities.vmware.com/community/vmtn/certedu/certification/vcap http://kendrickcoleman.com/index.php?/Tech-Blog/vcap-datacenter-administration-exam-landing-page-vdca410.html http://vmwaretraining.blogspot.com/ VCAP Updates
-> Continue reading vFail BrownBag The Second: vMA
The Problem! Was doing some work with UDA and nested ESX & ESXi installs this weekend and ran into an interesting hiccup: Or on ESXi: What? Can’t format what? But we’re working with nested ESX, it’s a VMDK, format it! I tried any number of things here: Different controller types, disk sizes, partitioning within the
-> Continue reading “Could not Format VMFS” – Nested ESX
As promised, the video is indeed online and embedded below: Video: ProfessionalVMware/vFail VCAP-DCA BrownBag Objective 1 from ProfessionalVMware on Vimeo. Slides! Vcap dca section 1 View more presentations from ProfessionalVMware. Show Notes: Uber Celerra VSA – http://nickapedia.com/2010/09/12/ubertastic-celerra-uber-vsa-v3-unisphere/ Storage Blogs http://virtualgeek.typepad.com/virtual_geek/ http://storagemonkeys.com/ VCAP-DCA Resources http://thesaffageek.wordpress.com/vcap-dca-dcd/ http://communities.vmware.com/community/vmtn/certedu/certification/vcap http://kendrickcoleman.com/index.php?/Tech-Blog/vcap-datacenter-administration-exam-landing-page-vdca410.html http://www.ntpro.nl/blog/archives/1585-Looking-for-VCAP-practice-questions-Here-they-are….html iSCSI Multivendor Post Pluggable Storage Architecture http://geeksilver.wordpress.com/2010/08/17/vmware-vsphere-4-1-psa-pluggable-storage-architecture-understanding/ How
-> Continue reading vFail BrownBag Follow-Up!
OK, so every environment has “That Guy”… if you don’t know what I’m on about, take a look at what floated past on Twitter this evening from @vSeanClark: RT @techmute: Some people really make me wish vSphere had the option "take a snapshot when this guy logs in as an admin" <- startup idea? Well…
-> Continue reading Protecting your Virtual Machines From “That Guy”
As I have the worst luck remembering what this is each and every time I need it, I’m throwing it up here for quick reference. Get-VMHost | Get-VMHostStorage -RescanAllHba Yes, it really is that simple. You can use a few of the other Get-* search functions to narrow the list of hosts, say for all
-> Continue reading PowerCLI One-Liner Rescan All HBA’s
The survey results are in! In summarized form: Most of you prefer Wednesday’s, mostly in the evening. The suggestions were mostly: a) Make sure your lab works and b) Consistency. As far as format, of the options I presented (Lecture, Guest Speaker, Open Discussion, Live Lab) all weighed about equally. Finally, most of y’all are
-> Continue reading VCAP-DCA Brown Bags – Sign up now!
What started as a journey to deploy a few OVF/OVA files into fusion turned into quite the entertaining experience. Why? Well, following the advice here and here, I reinstalled the latest version of Fusion. However, there was still no OVFTool. How’s that? Well, VMware provides two different Fusion installers: There is much more than McAfee
-> Continue reading OVFTool and VMware Fusion, an Odyssey
For those that have been asking, yes we are still doing BrownBags. I have been lapse in putting one together in a while, however. This is not because I am lazy (not entirely anyways), but rather because I care about what I’m delivering and the benefit it brings to y’all. Rather than spend a long
-> Continue reading BrownBags Update!
It seems quite a lot of folks wrote in while I was at VMworld. Normally I try to address these individually, or with a post if it would be beneficial. In this case, a commenter on one of my old VCP4 prep pages wrote to ask: “Why would you use a vApp over a Folder?”
-> Continue reading Reader Email – Why vApps?
There are times when you will need to put a host into, or take a host out of maintenance mode and you wont otherwise have the remote access needed to make PowerCLI or other API methods work. For times like those, vimsh works wonders: This little gem comes from xtravirt: To enter Maintenance Mode, at
-> Continue reading Put ESX Into Maintenance Mode From the CLI
I’m reposting the Vid of our VMworld 2010 session from Chad Sakac’s Virtual Geek. As Tom Howarth could not make VMworld US, Mike Laverick stepped in to drive the panel. On the panel we had: Adam Carter @ HP Eric Schott @ Dell (formerly EqualLogic) Chad Sakac @ EMC Vaughn Stewart @ NetApp Now the
-> Continue reading VMworld 2010 – “Storage Super-Heavyweight Challenge”
This came up in the comments to one of my other posts, so I though I’d share. Note: The Host Update Utility was depreciated with 4.1, so if you came here looking for that… my apologies. The vSphere Host Update Utility, as far as I can tell is not actually offered as a separate download,
-> Continue reading Installing the vSphere 4.0 Host Update Utility
Sean’s vFail.net came to my attention because of some trackbacks on my VCAP-DCA posts. However, in addition to VCAP Study guides (which are quite good), he’s covered PowerCLI (another of my favorite areas) and some other great topics. If you aren’t already, add this series of virtual failures to your RSS reader or bookmarks and
-> Continue reading New Blog You Should be Following: vFail.net
Well, if that wasn’t an SEO title, I’m not sure what is. Basically, I find myself often having to find this in either the VMware KB or via Google each time I need it. Where are the logs? C:\ProgramData\VMware\VMware VirtualCenter The problem you may run into however, is that the “ProgramData” folder is hidden by
-> Continue reading Finding Virtual Center Logs on Windows Server 2008
Today I found myself needing to find all hosts that were in a state other than connected within a datacenter. It’s only a one-liner and I’m sure you can (or have) found it elsewhere, but here it is again for reference: Get-Datacenter -Name "ProfessionalVMware" | Get-VMHost | Where { $_.State -ne "Connected" } | Select
-> Continue reading PowerCLI Tidbit of the Day
Today we had Jim Curry and Jonathan Bryce of the OpenStack project come by to tell us a bit about the project. What it is, does, etc. The best place to see this is the video, just below. I’ve also collected some notes along that way that should be useful. First, the video: ProfessionalVMware VCP
-> Continue reading BrownBag #13 – OpenStack Follow-Up
This week we take a break from the certification track and instead take a tangent into other areas surrounding virtualization. This week we will be talking with Jim Curry of the OpenStack project. As always, bring along your questions. Logistics: When: Tuesday, August 17th, 2010 @ 2PM CST Registration: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/909625585 What is OpenStack? The goal
-> Continue reading BrownBag #13 – OpenStack