First: Thanks everyone for coming. I think the call went pretty well, and hopefully raised everyone’s comfort level with their upcoming exam. Second: There is apparently more than one spot you need to hit in order to get things to record. During the ‘setup’ of the conference, there is a check box to enable. Then,
-> Continue reading vSphere VCP4 Beta Follow Up
If you missed my twitter updates… well shame on you. I’ve been selected, with some others, to participate in the VCP4 beta program. I’ve scheduled my exam for the 15th. However, I’m not entirely sure what I need to cover whilst studying… That is where the study group comes in. I’m looking to host a
-> Continue reading VCP4 Beta Study Group?
Remember this? No? Well, go back and read it. I can wait. … Done? Good. The gist of the last post, was that if you cloned, or copied a Ubuntu VM from one host to another, the UUID changes. That UUID is the basis for part of the generated MAC address, which then changes, causing
-> Continue reading More MAC Address Mayhem – SLES Edition
I thought I had covered failed sVmotion in a past post, or at least some of the symptoms. Alas, I can not find the post (either I fail at Google, or they fail at indexing my content… likely the first). During a recent sVmotion fail I came across a wonderful cleanup KB from vmware.com. From
-> Continue reading Holy sVmotion Fail Batman!
Rather than post the content on both sites, I encourage you to take a gander at our sister PowerShell site for this one. On ThePowerShellTalk.com I’ve published a new script to find snapshots using PrimalForms to generate a UI. While this may not be Earth shattering news for some of you, PrimalForms makes making a
-> Continue reading OMG PrimalForms
With all of my recent ftPerl love, I’ve found that the quickest way to at least start troubleshooting it is to reconfigure the offending host for HA. This is fine if working in a small environment, or on a small number of hosts, but there are a metric ton of these hosts gone sideways all
-> Continue reading Reconfigure for HA the PowerShell Way!
Clones and Snapshots, two of the many modern day miracles to come from virtualization. No? So they’re not as cool as VMware’s vMotion, Distributed Resource Scheduling, High Availability, Fault Tolerance are they, but the are the foundation on which that magic is built. What happens to the machine in your corporate domain when you need
-> Continue reading Active Directory Machine Accounts and VMware Clones and Snapshots
Mr. Siebert of vSphere-land is updating his top 20 VMware Blog list, and is looking for some help deciding what his Top 5 should be. You can see the current list on his vLaunchPad, and then vote here. From the original post: I have a hard time picking the top blogs from the many great
-> Continue reading Vote for the Top VMware Blogs! (And for Me!)
Walking through the full vSphere ESX install today (Not ESXi like I had been using) I came across what seems to be one of the most awesome new features of vSphere ESX: Custom Drivers! I just don’t have any custom drivers to install right now, but it is gloriously awesome none the less.
The last one of these got quite a bit of mileage, so it may be worthwhile to repeat them on occasion. This week, while sitting in VMwares DSA (Deploy, Secure, Analyze) Class posting will be ‘interesting’ at best. So here it goes: Virtu-al’s first Online VMUG was a success, with about 30-45 viewers. It’s been
-> Continue reading Cleaning out the RSS Reader
Disclaimer: Just because you can do a thing, does not mean it is smart. What is described here is a “Bad Idea” for any number of reasons, the least of which is running non supported 3rd party code on your service console. Further, as you’ll see below, the kernel version ntfs-3g expects, is not the
-> Continue reading vSphere4 & NTFS – How To, and Why It’s A Bad Idea
This blog, thus far has been all about VI. How and what to automate, how to get yourself out of some sticky spots, and perhaps some turtles thrown in for good measure. However, it’s missing something. What is that? YOU! What is going on in your VI? Having trouble? Stuck on something? Some DBA on
-> Continue reading What Is Ailing Your VI – Call For Topics
Today was like Christmas morning. All the waiting was over, and I downloaded the eval of vSphere 4. I can still recall the smell of the warm plastic DVD that came out of the writer, and the joy I felt holding it in my hands. I popped the disk into an unsuspecting box, and began
-> Continue reading vSphere 4 Web UI Fail – Auto Starting The vSphere 4 Web Service
We’ll I’m not entirely sure that it “Hates” me. Perhaps that is too strong a word. Trolling around my VI today, I found a host that had it something spinning out of control: [root@hyp1 root]# top 10:50:35 up 12 days, 1:08, 1 user, load average: 2.00, 1.98, 1.92 306 processes: 297 sleeping, 9 running, 0
-> Continue reading ftPerl Hates Me
This will likely not generate as much fanfare as it did for the 3.5 release of ESXi, however I can confirm that it does indeed still work in vSphere ESXi 4. This is the procedure I used to get it up and running on my “Lab” box. alt-f1 (Note: As pointed out below, you will
-> Continue reading Unsupported Console and SSH on ESXi 4
This week has been abnormally busy. That said, there were a few items of note in my RSS reader worth posting here for you: vSphere 4 Launch (I’ll not cover the launch (or even link it) here. Why? Redundant coverage is redundant. Virtual-Al Online vMUG – It’s unofficial, but looks like it could turn into
-> Continue reading Left Overs – Cleaning out the RSS Reader
I told you it was the big feature didn’t I” While I’m a PowerShell man at heart, there is something to be said, for having a cross platform, potentially hypervisor agnostic scripting engine, that is tied not just into your virtual infrastructure, but also into your management platform. Take a look at a few of
-> Continue reading Kodiak LUA Scripting
They’ve a new release, and I have more invites! Highlight? Lua Scripting. While it’s not quite PowerShell, the power it will have considering their hypervisor agnostic (soon!) nature, will be amazing. I’ve got it installed, and will be pointing it at a VI3 setup soon to capture y’all some good screen shots. The maps feature
-> Continue reading Kodiak 0.0.3 Released, I Has Moar Invites
What is a “Step Ticker” You know, it’s one of those little pedometer things you strap onto your hip and tracks how far you’ve walked. Ok, so it’s not that. At least not within the context of servers & virtualization. So what IS it? It’s a horribly named NTP (network time protocol) concept. Yup. That’s
-> Continue reading WTF Is A Step Ticker? – Step Tickers. and Why They Matter
I have to honest. I haven’t given the Tripwire tools the time of day prior. Wether it was because I didn’t have any time, or I felt my own skill at scripting was good enough, I don’t know. After a run in with a v-motion issue while at Citrix Synergy/Virtualization Congress 2009, and having Mr
-> Continue reading Oh My God! Tripwire Ops Check.