Wow… so much going on. So much, that I’ve neglected to post this until now. However, if you are in the DC or Schaumburg (Chicago) area, I will be in town next week to hang out at your VMUG. Details Potomac Regional VMUG User Conference Date: 9/26 Register: http://dcvmug.com/ Chicago VMUG User Conference Date: 9/27
-> Continue reading At a VMUG Near You! – 9/26 & 9/27/12
“In the ghetto, we use one vCenter vApp to migrate another vCenter vApp to Distributed vSwitches” Or something like that. The background, was I needed to move some hosts and VMs in my home lab to vDS to take advantage of their awesomeness along side vCloud Director. However, as my primary vCenter lived on those
-> Continue reading Migrate to Distributed vSwitches with the vCenter vApp
One of the toughest challenges for any weekly podcast is having a steady line-up of guests. We’d like to widen our circle of regular presenters, and would love to have YOU present! The #vBrownBag US podcast airs from 7:30 to 8:30PM Central. Please visit for the #vBrownBag Presenter Guidelines more information. Please complete the form
-> Continue reading #vBrownBag US: Call for presenters
Having stumbled on the new /etc/resolv.conf methods of Ubuntu 12.04 a number of times, I hope this is useful for you as well. The contents of /etc/resolv.conf in Ubuntu are now controlled by “dns-nameservers #.#.#.#” in your /etc/network/interfaces file, like this: # The primary network interfaceauto eth0iface eth0 inet static address 10.0.191.100 netmask 255.255.255.0 network
-> Continue reading Ubuntu 12.04, DNS, and Static IPs
This one is a bit text heavy, and is in advance of some of my upcoming VMUG visits. It should hopefully cover some content that one cannot fit into an hour session, that is demo heavy on Orchestrator. Process is Good Do you have an “operations manual”? One of those big dusty D ring binders,
-> Continue reading #vSensei Say: Automation make shovel *hit Faster
Today was quite the eventful day, what with arriving and having “interesting” travel arrangements. There was some pretty amazing things that happened. More specifically: I found these guys: You can to, we’ll generally be wearing these: and these things: And packed them here for transport. Find us tomorrow in the communities lounge / hang space
-> Continue reading #vBrownBags at VMworld Day 0
Last night, around 8 or 10pm CST, not really sure… I saw a tweet come up from a vExpert and friend Dave Hill: It led to this little bit of text here: I need your help For anyone who follows my blog, or twitter you probably know that I recently had major surgery on my
-> Continue reading #vBrownBags, Dave Hill, PHD Virtual, and VMworld
So, @cxi had said… “Pics or it didn’t happen”. Only pics I have right now are of the USB keys of awesomeness: Excited? Me too!
It’s Alastair here again, one of the many cool things that is going on in the community area of VMworld next week is Randy Keener’s Unsupported sessions. These are a forum to advance the community’s knowledge of how do do things that VMware never thought you’d want to do with their products. The sessions run
-> Continue reading VMworld Tech Talks “UnSupported” and AutoLab
First, before we go into what is in this thing… we need to thank some folks for making this happen. In no particular order, our “premium”, “platinum”, or “company that is really awesome you should check out their booth!” folks: TrainSignal Veeam TinTri Cisco Without their support, there would be no #vBrownBags, let alone swag
-> Continue reading #vBrownBag Swag Bag of Awesomeness
Here is a quick summary of the activities and places you’ll be able to find the #vBrownBag folks at VMworld: Tech Talks Powered by the #vBrownBags All week at the show, the #vBrownBags will be rocking out Tech Talks in the Communities / Bloggers lounge. For an idea of how awesome this will be, take
-> Continue reading #vBrownBags VMworld and You
Just a quick heads up, that the US #vBrownBags are taking a pre-VMworld break to prepare for the show. That said, the APAC show still goes on, at least night his week, with a show tomorrow. More here
Alastair Cooke just released AutoLab v1.0 to production, and I wanted to talk a bit about the automation that went into the vCloud Director portion of the AutoLab. Before I get started, I’d like to point out a quote that’s attributed to Sir Isaac Newton, “If I have seen further, it is by standing on
-> Continue reading AutoLab automation uncovered, vCloud
Hello everyone – my name is Damian Karlson, and I’m pleased to announce that I’ll be blogging a bit on professionalvmware.com as time allows. You may (or may not) know me from the #vBrownBag US podcast, of which I am pleased to be a sometimes-host and a occasional presenter. Perhaps you know me from Twitter
-> Continue reading Introducing Damian
Hi everyone, it’s Alastair again with more AutoLab news. Today we have released version 1.0 of the AutoLab which is a huge leap. As you may have seen on my Demitasse blog the AutoLab has a sponsor, Veeam are helping make the AutoLab better. In AutoLab 1.0 we not only have the complete vSphere lab in a box but now also the ability to add Veeam Backup and Replication and Veeam ONE into the lab. This allows evaluation testing and training on these products without deploying onto your production vSphere.
Had to configure a Cisco firewall for the first time in literally YEARS today and ran into a few small hurdles. Mostly, my MacBook doesn’t have a serial port nor a HyperTerminal like program. Never fear, however, there are USB to Serial adapters out there that have OSX drivers… that’s where we meet challenge the
-> Continue reading Serial Over USB on OSX via Screen!
It’s Alastair here with the latest AutoLab automation post, this one is a little about the PowerShell automation that helps bring the pieces together. The first AutoLab automation post is here, the second here and the third here.
One of my favourite automation tools for vSphere is the PowerCLI snapin to Microsoft PowerShell. If you are a Windows guy working in Virtualization then you should get to know PowerCLI. I consider myself a real beginner with PowerCLI, I use it when I have a task to repeat but it’s not where I work all day. There are some awesome scripters who are more comfortable on a command prompt than with a GUI, these are the guys whose scripts I have hacked to make my script and you can start by doing the same. If you are a skilled scripter you may despair at my scripts, feel free to email me to recommend better ways.
It’s been longer than I’d have liked to put some stress on the OCP box. For some history my home lab, thanks to some kind folks, inherited a G1 Intel OCP Platform. I’ve posted about it a few times: Open Compute and vSphere 5: https://vbrownbag.comm/2012/03/open-compute-platform-vsphere-5/ The lab setup: https://vbrownbag.comm/2012/04/vsphere-on-open-compute-part-1-lab-setup/ In that second post I promised
-> Continue reading vSphere on Open Compute – Part 2, Make it Hurt!
You heard it first tonight on the #vBrownBag with Josh Atwell. The entire #vBrownBag will be on the ground at VMworld San Francisco and we’ll be rocking out some awesome sauce in the communities lounge. How awesome? Well, all week at VMworld we will be having a number of Lightning Tech Talks with folks who
-> Continue reading VMworld Tech Talks powered by #vBrownBags
Links! Lots of them. Here we go again: http://www.rtfm-ed.co.uk/2012/07/17/whats-not-so-new-in-vsphere5-part2-vm-management/ Not Virt specific, but applies to all vendors/products/brands in the virt space: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2012/07/its-easier-to-love-a-brand-when-the-brand-loves-you-back.html Oh NOES you’ve been haxed! – https://shouldichangemypassword.com/ ESXi Builds in AutoLab – https://vbrownbag.comm/2012/07/autolab-automation-uncovered-esxi-builds/ Windows Builds in AutoLab – https://vbrownbag.comm/2012/06/autolab-automation-uncovered-windows-builds/ vCenter Ops Fundamentals Class – http://virtualization.info/en/news/2012/07/vmware-vcenter-operations-manager-fundamentals.html VCAP-DCA5 is now available – http://vmwaretraining.blogspot.com/2012/07/vcap5-dca-registration-is-now-open.html Is CLI
-> Continue reading Link Dump – 7/18/2012