The deadline to upgrade from VCP3 to VCP4 is fast approaching. While there are plenty of good resources out there for studying, nothing beats playing 20 questions with a group of your peers. As such, ProfessionalVMware will be hosting a 1 hour WebEx study group so we call all help one another pass. Important information:
-> Continue reading VCP-410 Online Study Group
I have slacked on this post quite a bit, but alas an exam report is due. Exam: VCP-410 Status: Passed I was/am a present holder of a VCP3, and before 12/31 was allowed to upgrade without having to take an additional course. That said, there are now several valuable courses from VMware that qualify. Basically,
-> Continue reading Pass The VCP4! I Did, You Can Too!
It’s HERE! What is? The vSphere 4.0 Quick Start Guide, that’s what. Oh, and it’s all of $15.99 US. This book is all of the distilled virtualization knowledge from some of the heavy hitters in the virtualization realm: Thomas Bryant III Stu Radnidge Dave Mishchenko Alan Renouf Duncan Epping The book has evolved from the
-> Continue reading Lot’s of Awesome in a Small Package pt. 2
Now that we’ve upgraded our client and installed it on Windows 7, let’s upgrade our ESX or ESXi host: 1. Fire up Host Update Utility & Download new Patches from VMware: 2. Scan for updates: 3. OMG Patches! Lets Patch the host (Make sure the host is in maint mode first!): 4. Install FTW!
-> Continue reading Upgrading ESXi 4 to Update 1 – Host Update Utility
As we pointed out earlier in the week, vSphere Update 1 now supplies a Windows 7 compatible client, one that works out of the box. However, There are some folks who have not jumped into Update 1 yet, but still need to manage vSphere hosts. Not a problem you might think, and try to hop
-> Continue reading Downloading & Installing the vSphere Update 1 Client For Windows 7
Actually, this happened on the 2nd of this month, but alas. It has been an exciting, whirlwind year for ProfessionalVMware, and I hope y’all enjoyed it too! But a single blog post is no way to celebrate, is it? So I propose this: T-Shirt/Logo contest. Basically, I’m as artistically inclined as a goat. So while
-> Continue reading Happy 1st to ProfessionalVMware.com
I left this one critical piece off my “Me Too” vSphere 4 Update 1 post, and wasn’t reminded of it again until today. From the PlanetVMware blog: In case you didn’t notice, Update 1 for VMware vCenter Server 4.0 was released last week. This is great news for all of you who wish to run
-> Continue reading vSphere Client Update 1 – Now With Windows 7!
While I generally don’t like doing a “Me Too” sort of post, I think the U1 release of vSphere is important enough to recap what some of the other blogs are saying on this. Rather than ramble off what has changed, and what is improved, etc. I will instead point you to some blogs who
-> Continue reading “Me Too!” – vSphere 4.0 Update 1 Released
While all of PowerCLI is remarkable in both it’s power and ease of use, there are some cmdlets that do not get as much airtime as they deserve. One of those, is Invoke-VMScript. From Get-Help InvokeVMScript NAME Invoke-VMScript SYNOPSIS Executes the specified PowerShell script in the guest OS of each of the specified
-> Continue reading The Most Awesome PowerCLI Cmdlet You Aren’t Using
Today I needed to disable the VMware tools/console copy & paste functionality… on a lot of VMs (well… more than one is a lot). In doing this, I came across these directions from vmzare: How To disable copy and paste operations between the guest operating system and remote console ? 1. Log on to the
-> Continue reading Disabling Copy Paste – The PowerCLI way
After you’ve spent the time installing VMware Data Recovery (vDR), you may find that some of the defaults do not work well. Some of these, like the retention policies are an easy change. Others, like the behavior of the vDR appliance, however, are a bit more difficult. To that end, you can create a datarecovery.ini
-> Continue reading Advanced vDR Configuration
If that title won’t have my mother calling me… Well, at least it someone’s attention. Prior to VMware Player 3.0 I never gave it much time of day. Sure it worked, and sure there was a way to work around the create VM limitation and the like, but it just wasn’t… well, you got what
-> Continue reading I’m Having An Affair – With VMware Player 3.0
The last time we touched upon LUN resigning, it was during an odd hour of the night. Looking back now, some interesting VMware KB articles have cropped up around this very topic. First there is KB 9453805, which covers this process for VI3, seemingly from top to bottom, it also greatly expands on my post,
-> Continue reading Revisiting Lun Resigning (Bad things at 2AM)
Note: This is a brief story where I was forced to sit back and reflect on just how cool this Virtualization stuff really is. Please feel free to disregard however. Normally I don’t write about the VMware Workstation or hosted products. It just doesn’t happen to be where I spend most of my day. Mind,
-> Continue reading Using VMs as Personal DR
While I’d love to be able to claim I was clever enough to think of this on my own, that would straight up be lying (I really am not all that clever :). Well, it would be more than lying, I’d not be giving proper credit to his awesomeness Rich Brambley at VM/Etc for coming
-> Continue reading vCenter Client on Linux – Single App RDP and You!
I likely should have started with a post or two about vDR (VMware Data Recovery), what it is, and how to install it. Instead, I’ll point you to some of the docs on those: Info & Installing. The installing guide is especially recommended after I spent a few days unsuccessfully installing vDR (Hint: Use the
-> Continue reading Few, More, Many – vDR Retention Policy Autopilot
Amazon just published my 4 star review of “Interconnecting Data Centers Using VPLS (Ensure Business Continuance on Virtualized Networks by Implementing Layer 2 Connectivity Across Layer 3) ” Before we get too deep into it, I need to be up front that while I LOVE Virtualization, I still flirt a bit with networking and the
-> Continue reading Book Review: Interconnecting Datacenters Using VPLS
I recently got a comment on a post I had done a while back on VMware tools and Time Sync. While the one-liners there may be useful, they don’t particularly explain how they got to the end results. With that in mind, today I hope to explain some of the logic used when you need
-> Continue reading A Quick PowerCLI Lesson – Digging for Info (Who Powered Off that VM)
This one came at me from left field recently. The task at hand was to cold migrate one of a Virtual Machine’s disks from it’s old LUN, to a new one with some more breathing room. Simple enough, no? We’ve all done it a million times. What happened however, was that I received a “Error:
-> Continue reading Migrate Storage – “Failed to Connect to Host”
Ever have to log into a the console of an ESX VM… over a slow connection? Then you’ll know all about the character repeat that comes along with that. If you haven’t experienced this… consider yourself lucky. It is especially interesting when trying to type passwords. So how do you defeat this? You set the
-> Continue reading PowerCLI Script of the Week – Set-Keydelay.ps1