Mr. Epping’s High Availability “Deepdive” page is definitely worth a read and a book mark. A VMware HA Cluster consists of nodes, primary and secondary nodes. Primary nodes hold cluster settings and all “node states” which are synced between primaries. Secondary nodes send their state info(resource occupation) to the primary nodes Nodes send a
-> Continue reading HA “Deepdive” Page at Yellow-Bricks
When I fired up my RSS reader today I notices a lot of new/updated KB articles at VMware’s site about timing in virtual machines. I figured it’s worth while to link them here just in case. Determining and changing the rate of timer interrupts a guest operating system requests Time in a Linux virtual machine
-> Continue reading Much To Do About Time
So while ESX 3.5 (not sure about i) may have tcpdump and tcpslice: [root@esx root]# tcp tcpd tcpdump tcpslice They’re of limited use, at least with the way ESX implements networking, vSwitches after all, are good and proper layer 2 devices. Now, that is not to say you couldn’t do something with arp poisoning, but…
-> Continue reading Tapping ESX – Network Sniffing Your VI
This is one of those that you’ll want to print out, laminate, and had to all of your co-workers. Really, it’s that good. It’s the VI3 Quick Reference Card. It’s updated for VI3 update 3, and it makes Chuck Norris want to shave. This is thanks to the awesome work of Forbes Guthrie at vmreference.com
Things break. They always do. Chaos is inevitable. So how do you get insight into some of the chaos that was occurring in your Virtual Center when disaster strikes? Turns out, the VI Client makes this quite easy. After you get your Virtual Center service running again, connect using the VI Client. Once connected… well
-> Continue reading Log Bundles, of the Virtual Center Variety
Well, I’m not sure how “Extreme” it is, but over the weekend VMware’s Developer community site got a face lift. Unlike Joan Rivers, this one actually kinda looks good afterwards:
First let me explain exactly what I’m talking about. In virtual center, when you select a host, you get a “Summary” page. On this page there are some statistics… A picture perhaps will make this easier: Better? I think so. So first for those resources on top: PS C:\> get-vmhost | get-view | %{ $_.Summary.QuickStats
-> Continue reading Getting Virtual Center “Summary” Stats With the VI Toolkit
It’s official, my submission has been accepted for the Virtualization.info Congress 2009 in Vegas, May 4-7. Be sure to register, and come on down and see me in action. I’ll be presenting: “Automating VI3 using PowerShell”. WOO!
Yes, that is what it is! You can get it from here. As listed on the page, it requires the PowerShell 2.0 CTP 3 available from here. You’ll also want to grab the VMware Remote Console from here (It is optional however). Installation: After you pull down the .7z file, extract it anywhere you like.
-> Continue reading psVIC – PowerShell Virtual Infrastructure Client
Came across this useful little gem today, its the executable responsible for running, or at least managing the VMware Virtual Center Service. Where is it located? C:Program FilesVMwareInfrastructureVirtualCenter Server>dir vpxd.exe Volume in drive C is C_DRIVE Volume Serial Number is F463-F653 Directory of C:Program FilesVMwareInfrastructureVirtualCenter Server 07/12/2008 04:07 AM 13,557,760 vpxd.exe 1 File(s) 13,557,760 bytes
-> Continue reading vpxd.exe – The Other White Meat
Microsoft has released CTP (Community Technology Preview) 3 of PowerShell 2.0. You can grab it here. After having tossed it on a VM, I found that it now includes a pretty script editor of it’s own: Cute, no? When you create a “WindowsPowerShell\profile.ps1” containing: “add-PSSnapin VMware.VimAutomation.Core” It’ll include all your VI cmdlets too. Nice!
While great, managing events with the the VI Client can be a pain. No search functionality, old events fall off the list, etc, etc. So what is an admin to do? A resourceful admin will have been playing with the VI Toolkit, and would have found the get-vievent cmdlet. Let’s take a look at how
-> Continue reading Managing Your vCenter Events with PowerShell
I’ve found a few situations in which snapshots get stuck, like glue, to a running VM, and despite your best effort to delete them, they wont go away. Like in-laws, they stick around, a bit longer than is pleasant. If a snapshot has not been removed cleanly on the first try, you may want to
-> Continue reading Removing VMware Snapshots – With a Bat (PowerShell, CLI, rCLI… and Perl)
I forgotted. Really I did. In the midst of getting the PowerShell post out, I missed the Sunday turtle post. To make up for it, here is a video one of the readers linked: Kirby from Lucasberg on Vimeo.
Because there is an answer for everything and for everything that answer is PowerShell. Sometimes in your Virtual Infrastructure, you will have a need to answer a question or two. Normally these questions are put to you by vCenter: “Did you copy or move this VM?”, “Is today your birthday?”, “Who shot Kennedy?”. For Example:
-> Continue reading Answering VM Questions With PowerShell
In case you didn’t notice, or with some of the random 404s did notice. We’ve more or less completely moved over to the Mosso “Cloud Sites” platform. The 404s were a result of my not doing 100% of the steps I had planned on, but should be mostly resolved by now. Drop me a comment
-> Continue reading My Own Little Spot In The Cloud
Some of you may remember the downtime we had back in December. I know that I do. That got me thinking, and talking, and talking and thinking. Apparently, after talking to Pancil a bit, and him then talking to Rob Lagesse at Mosso. We decided that the best long term home for ProfessionalVMware, was over
-> Continue reading Moving to the Cloud. Cloud Sites By Mosso That Is
Today VMware launched it’s vExpert program. Similar to Microsoft’s MVP program, it’s a reward from VMware, to those out in the community, blogging, on the forums, etc. In addition, vInternals today, launched the vIdiot program, designed to be just the opposite. Wonder what list I’ll end up on.
These slides look to have been released after last years VMworld, and provide a great introduction to scripting and automation with the VMware tools. Link! The labs will help you get started with scripting VMware Infrastructure to enable automation, extensibility, and integration with existing tools. When we ran this at VMworld, we had about 600
-> Continue reading VMware – An Introduction To Scripting VI Using Perl or PowerShell
Is there an interest out there, from you my readers, in how-to style videos? Similar to If so, around what sort of topics? Let me know in the comments.