There are a large number of ways you can go down the path of getting OpenStack and it’s components installed. For my lab I chose to get familiar with a few new technologies along the way, as well as have some of these steps be something that can be extracted back into a production environment.
-> Continue reading Homelab Rebuild – Part 2 “Process”
Spent last few weeks neck deep in Razor, and actually made my first pull request. Here are some other handy things for working with Razor daily. Most of these are handy for working with a larger number of nodes/policies/active models… as well, things get unwieldy past the first 10-15 nodes. Some of these will likely
-> Continue reading Living with Razor Part 2
First, some background on Razor: http://nickapedia.com/2012/05/21/lex-parsimoniae-cloud-provisioning-with-a-razor/ http://purevirtual.eu/2012/07/02/how-to-get-started-with-razor-and-puppet-part-1/ http://www.virtuallyghetto.com/2012/05/how-to-deploy-esxi-5-using-razor-puppet.html Take the time to read those over, install it, work with it a bit in VMs or so, as this takes off with the assumption that you already have a working Razor installation. 1) Rebuilding the razor.ipxe file:razor config ipxe > /var/lib/tftpboot/razor.ipxe 2) Alternative DNSMASQ for chain
-> Continue reading Working With Razor
Design in quotes, because, like all good plans, it’s only good until I start laying the bits down. So far: Gear My old VMware lab comprised a number of things: 3x “Baby Dragon” compute nodes 1x Open Compute Gen1 Intel (dual hexcore, 48GB) 1x Iomega ix4-200d 1x “FrankenStor” Nexenta box After the transition, I hope
-> Continue reading Homelab Rebuild – Part 1 “Design”
As part of my transition at work from VMware related technologies into the wonderful OpenSource world of OpenStack, over the next few days and weeks I’ll be tearing down quite the extensive VMware lab, and rebuilding with OpenStack. I’ll keep you posted on the progress.
Talk about a breakneck week. The sessions are not just packed with people, but also with information. Rather than give you a long bullet list of the keynotes, the folks on the OpenStack blog did a pretty good job summarizing that here. Also, you really need to watch the Troy Toman keynote: I also managed
-> Continue reading OpenStack Summit – Day 3
In short, I didn’t get to much other than the Keynote(s) today. Was doing some last minute prep for a 4:30p session today (Wednesday). Keynote Summary: Live streaming is available on openstack.org This is the largest summit yet, 1400 folks in attendance. Quite a few last minute, so, logistics on day 1 were a bit
-> Continue reading OpenStack Summit – Day 2
Quick Summary of Monday at the OpenStack Summit. First, the important things: The conference bag was quite nice, and quite thoughtful. A carry on sized duffel bag. Mostly, this will be filled with t-shirts and non computer things for the trip back home. I got in late, so didn’t get to as many sessions as
-> Continue reading OpenStack Summit – Day 1
Just prior to shutting down my laptop for the final bit of pre-flight packing, I thought I’d point out a few of the sessions I plan to be at in the coming week at the OpenStack summit: Monday: Real-time Node Monitoring Hybrid Clouds w/ Cloud Foundry Quantum API Improvements Incremental Imaging / Database in the
-> Continue reading OpenStack Summit – Day 0
Having not used the ESXi command line as often as I should, I logged in and found myself in an unfamiliar place. My objective was to enter maintenance mode, reboot the host, and exit maintenance mode. ESXi CLI Enter Maintenance Mode vim-cmd hostsvc/maintenance_mode_enter ESXi CLI Exit Maintenance Mode vim-cmd hostsvc/maintenance_mode_exit ESXi CLI Reboot the host
-> Continue reading Some ESXi CLI Commands
It took a while, but the recordings are now available. As Nick says on his site, we had some localized audio/video issues there were uncorrectable (part of why it took so long). Below is the list of these sessions: I did collate the video’s into “days” for easier consumption:VMworld 2012 – Day 1 – Day
-> Continue reading #vBrownBags at VMworld US Follow-Up
Having too many browser tabs open sucks, so here is a list of things that I have found interesting or useful, OpenStack related in the last week or so: Live Migration: http://blogs.citrix.com/2012/09/11/demo-live-migration-without-shared-storage-using-xenserver-and-openstack/ From IBM on Quantum: https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/mydeveloperworks/blogs/e93514d3-c4f0-4aa0-8844-497f370090f5/entry/quantum_folsom12?lang=en OpenFlow, OpenSwitch, OpenStack: http://my1.fr/blog/running-an-openflow-network-with-openstack-quantum-floodlight/ What’s new in Folsom: http://my1.fr/blog/whats-new-in-openstack-folsom/ Quantum Plug-ins: http://www.sebastien-han.fr/blog/2012/09/28/quantum-plugin-comparison/ Swift in Folsom: http://swiftstack.com/blog/2012/09/27/top-three-swift-features-in-openstack-folsom/ Folsom Architecture:
-> Continue reading Link Dump 10/5/12
vBrownBags with Edward Haletky (virtualizationpractice / @texiwill) are always delighting, also a bit frightening. Last night we talked theory, design, and practicalities for end-to-end security when designing or selecting a Cloud deployment. Video Slides I don’t have the slides specifically, however, they can be found here.
The BIOS for VMs in VMware Fusion 5 does not seem to let you boot a USB disk, which say, is handy for configuring ESXi after you have installed it to a USB key, but before dropping said key into your homelab. Inconvenient at best… to get around this: Download Plop Boot Manager from here
-> Continue reading Boot USB Drive in Fusion 5
Due to the VCP-IAAS being a relatively new exam with very few presenters available, we may move it to another time. In it’s stead, we’ve lined up a number of really good presenters around VMware and Cloud Security. Our schedule: Presenter Date Edward Haletky (@texiwill) 10/3/2012 “GS” Gurusimran Khalsa (@gurusimran) 10/17/2012 Maqsood Siddiqui 10/24/2012 Rob
-> Continue reading #vBrownBag Security Month!
First, if you haven’t installed Sublime Text, I would suggest you go here and do that now. It’s a great text editor, with all manner of excellent features. However, it does not ship with PowerShell syntax highlighting by default. To add it, do the following: Download the ZIP from here: https://github.com/SublimeText/PowerShell Extract the zip into
-> Continue reading Editing PowerShell in Sublime Text
Having spent some time on the road last week at both the DC and Chicago VMUGs, I collected a number of USB keys from the various booths. Not wanting them to go to waste (most were >2GB) I threw them together in a small Nexenta Powered SAN. GhettoSAN Setup Installed Nexenta in a VM under
-> Continue reading Ghetto SAN (USB Keys of Doom)
First, thank you to the VMUG organization and the respective VMUGs for making this happen. I hope the content was good and useful to y’all. Please drop a line if you have questions, need to know more, or need help getting started. Below are the slides and links from the session: Links: vCO Links https://vbrownbag.comm/vcenter-orchestrator/
-> Continue reading VMUG Follow-Up: DC & Chicago (Automate the Planet!)
This one is also going to be a bit text heavy. The tl;dr version – Choose the right automation tool for the job. In preparation for a few upcoming VMUGs on automation, and the vScience conference in November (you really should sign up, here) I’m putting out a few posts on Automation / Orchestration to
-> Continue reading #vSensei – Automation Weapons Selection
Whoops. It’s been a while since I’ve posted the Follow-Ups for these. Here is the Video for our VCP-IAAS intro and the slide decks for both the intro & Section 1.1. #vBrownBag VCP-IAAS Intro Video Slides #vBrownBag VCP-IAAS Objective 1.1 Slides Video The video for this one is undergoing editing… will post when it’s done.