While searching for some snippets of VMware PowerCLI code earlier in the week I came across some awesome resources, both resources I’ve not seen/used before, as well as those that I’ve used, but have not linked prior. Note, that most of these are just the PowerCLI section of an equally awesome blog. VMware PowerCLI Community
-> Continue reading 11 Awesome PowerCLI Resources
I just received my copy of Steve Jin’s “VMware VI and vSphere SDK: Managing the VMware Infrastructure and vSphere ”, As I tech edited the book I’ll not post a long review, other than to say that the book is a good resource, and overall a good book. If you are, or will be programming
-> Continue reading vSphere SDK – The Book!
Time is critical. In VMs this criticality is even more pronounced. Time slips… CPU instructions go askew, and things get weird. That said, there are situations when you may wish to disable the built in VMware Tools Time sync service… completely. What do I mean by completely? Well, even with the tools time sync set
-> Continue reading Time Is Marching On… Disabling TimeSync, Completely.
I caught wind of VMware Workstation 7 having been released today from VM/Etc. It can be downloaded from here. Amongst the exciting features are a few that caught my eye: AutoProtect This one had me do a double take actually: The AutoProtect interval can be set to half-hourly, hourly, and daily. From there you can
-> Continue reading Workstation 7 RC – With A Side of Awesome
I’ve been following Scott Vessey’s VMware Training Blog for a while now, and have overall been impressed with the content he’s managed to pump out. To that end, Scott has complied some of his content, as well as some new content into a new site called Think Virtually. For anyone training for the VCP, VCDX
-> Continue reading Awesome VMware Training Resource
Amazon just posted my five star review of Edward L. Haletky’s “VMware vSphere and Virtual Infrastructure Security: Securing the Virtual Environment ” Besides the incredibly log title, here is what I had to say: A wise person once said that "Virtualization is not a destination, but a journey". The same has also been said about
-> Continue reading Book Review: VMware vSphere & VI Security
While going over TA1541 – Cool Little Things Marketing Did Not Tell You About vSphere 4.0 from this years VMworld, and came across this gem, a service console tool, that’s been there since ESX 3.5, and will report on all sorts of SCSI statistics. [root@esxServerOfDoom root]# /usr/lib/vmware/bin/vscsiStats -? /usr/lib/vmware/bin/vscsiStats: invalid option — ? VscsiStats
-> Continue reading Best Tools You Didn’t Know You Needed – vscsiStats
Saving one of the best for last. This tool is every bit as awesome as any of the other tools listed this week, and then some. Why? What other tool can you point at your vCenter and with a few clicks, generate a Visio. Yeah, that’s right, virtual infrastructure documentation in a few clicks. It
-> Continue reading The Best Tools You Didn’t Know You Needed – The VESI
I’ve covered this one before, but it is so awesome it needs to be mentioned twice. It really is that good. What does it do? It latches your vCenter, and will check your clusters for HA/vMotion compatibility, and will let you know what is broken if there is something ‘off’. They have several videos and
-> Continue reading The Best Tools You Didn’t Know You Needed – OpsCheck
This one goes without saying. Veeam’s Fast SCP is another file copy tool, but designed specifically to SCP or securely copy files, and do it very fast. Consider pulling this down and giving it a shot the next time you are going to spend most of an evening or two copying a few TB of
-> Continue reading The Best Tools You Didn’t Know You Needed – FastSCP
The next up in the list of tools I’ve found essential to managing a virtual environment is TeraCopy. TeraCopy is not actually strictly a virtualization tool, but it will make your life as an administrator much easier. So what does TeraCopy do? It copies files from one location in windows to another… really REALLY fast.
-> Continue reading The Best Tools You Didn’t Know You Needed – TeraCopy
What is VMware Fault Tolerance (FT)? I’d start with reviewing the overview page. VMware Fault Tolerance, based on vLockstep technology, provides zero downtime, zero data loss continuous availability for your applications, without the cost and complexity of traditional hardware or software clustering solutions. Pretty awesome no? FT has it’s limits (1 vCPU, etc) and it
-> Continue reading Scheduling VMware’s FT (Fault Tolerance)
This begins a few posts on the topic of “Tools You Didn’t Know You Needed”. What qualifies as one of these tools? Well… anything that you’ve found really useful for managing VMs or your virtual infrastructure, and is something every administrator should have in their tool box. Starting things off, is Gparted. Gparted is an
-> Continue reading The Best Tools You Didn’t Know You Needed – Gparted
As LucD points out: When you attend a conference like VMworld you get lots of goodies pushed your way. With some of these you only realise when you are back home what you were given. The vSphere 4.0 Quick Start Guide is a good example of such a little gem that came my way during
-> Continue reading Lot’s of Awesome In A Small Package
This post may not mean much to a lot of my readers, but I figure, due to the larger audience here it is worth posting. Basically, our local vMUG is quarterly, and heavily vendor sponsored. While generally useful, I’d like to continue the techie discussion that only seems to happen afterwards. So what does this
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Ok, So maybe they didn’t save the world, but the sure saved my weekend. Rather than spend a lot of time on the intro, let’s dive right in. These will be in Problem/PowerShell/Output format. The Problem: More spaghetti environments, this time we need to count some resources. The first counts CPU, the second Memory. Yes
-> Continue reading Four PowerCLI One-Liners That Saved The World!
Amongst the most valuable sessions at VMworld 2009 for me this year was the Ask the Experts sessions. Not for any specific question exactly, but for the brain share that was gathered up on stage, and in the quality of the questions being asked. I will do my best to summarize them here based on
-> Continue reading VMworld 2009 Ask the Experts Follow-Up
There was only one session today I wanted into, and into it I got. The day started however with an amazing cup of coffee: PowerCLI with Carter Shanklin This was another of those sessions that made the entire trip worth it, and that was only because of this particular slide: Ok, so the content was
-> Continue reading VMworld 2009 Day 2 Wrap Up
I was going to try live blogging some of this, however that is not quite my style if you will. So I will try to summarize in a few posts where I went and what I did. So without further adieu: Lab 1 – Scripting Virtual Infrastructure with PowerShell & Perl All and all a
-> Continue reading VMworld Day 1 Wrap Up
One of the most amazing new features of vSphere is the ability to hot add hardware into a supported guest OS. However, when you need to upgrade your 20 node web farm, all of the right clicks and slider moves can become cumbersome. That is where VMware PowerCLI (PowerShell) comes to the rescue! A few
-> Continue reading vSphere 4 Hot Add Hardware and PowerShell