I likely should have started with a post or two about vDR (VMware Data Recovery), what it is, and how to install it. Instead, I’ll point you to some of the docs on those: Info & Installing. The installing guide is especially recommended after I spent a few days unsuccessfully installing vDR (Hint: Use the
-> Continue reading Few, More, Many – vDR Retention Policy Autopilot
Amazon just published my 4 star review of “Interconnecting Data Centers Using VPLS (Ensure Business Continuance on Virtualized Networks by Implementing Layer 2 Connectivity Across Layer 3) ” Before we get too deep into it, I need to be up front that while I LOVE Virtualization, I still flirt a bit with networking and the
-> Continue reading Book Review: Interconnecting Datacenters Using VPLS
I recently got a comment on a post I had done a while back on VMware tools and Time Sync. While the one-liners there may be useful, they don’t particularly explain how they got to the end results. With that in mind, today I hope to explain some of the logic used when you need
-> Continue reading A Quick PowerCLI Lesson – Digging for Info (Who Powered Off that VM)
This one came at me from left field recently. The task at hand was to cold migrate one of a Virtual Machine’s disks from it’s old LUN, to a new one with some more breathing room. Simple enough, no? We’ve all done it a million times. What happened however, was that I received a “Error:
-> Continue reading Migrate Storage – “Failed to Connect to Host”
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!
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
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
Note: This is a post written by Pancil. Pancil normally sits quietly in a dark corner of the blog sanity/spell checking my posts. He is also a Sr. Virtualizaiton Engineer at Rackspace, where he and I work side by side, making the "Private Cloud" Awesome. So, while reading another blog Cody suggested that the ideas
-> Continue reading vZen: Real world principles to ‘Virtualization Zen’ designs
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
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
While it is a somewhat known fact that you used to be able to shrink disks using vmkfstools -X in ESX 2.x, the option was removed as of ESX 3.0. The reason for this probably stems from those few customers that were not familiar with using the command properly and ended up cutting off too
-> Continue reading How to Shrink a VMDK file in ESX
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
-> Continue reading San Antonio Mini-vMug
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
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
The ever wonderful Virtu-Al has released an update to his PowerShell Daily report. This script is beyond awesome in usefulness and should be required in any production VI deployment. Really, it is that good. Also! There have been some mods to get it looking nice on the iPhone. What is new in V2? Bug Fixes
-> Continue reading PowerShell Daily Report V2 (and some iPhone love)!
Amazon just posted my 3 star review of OnlineFlashCards for the VCP310. You can read the entire thing here. I’ve quoted some bits of it here: When I received the product, it came in a shrink wrapped box. Odd I thought, considering this is an online product, what is the box for? I shook it
-> Continue reading OnlineFlashCards VCP310 – Review Posted