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.
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
View Full Album First, Meet our newest “Staff” member at ProfessionalVMware. Not sure what to call him yet, but he’s the smallest of the bunch, as you can see from the pictures. Second, and likely just as important. ProfessionalVMware expanded recently and welcomes “ThePowerShellTalk.com” to our family of sites. ThePowerShellTalk, is the official site for
-> Continue reading Sunday Turtle Blogging & The PowerShell Talk
At some point this evening we’ll become unavailable for about 20 minutes. It seems the server is just as tired as we are after Vegas, and needs a quick break. Rest assured after this 20 minutes, we’ll be well refreshed and ready to go! Picture by: DCvision2006
It was a success, at least I think so, having survived it. We had about 26-28 folks in the room. Low numbers I’m sure because they bumped us from 4p to 3p, and not all of the materials got updated accordingly. Speaking with the door monitor, she confirmed this, and there was at least another
-> Continue reading Virtualization Congress 2009 – Thanks for Coming to My Party
That there is a pic from last nights room check. It doesn’t do the size of the room justice. We’re now polishing up the last few details around the presentation, and cleaning it up a bit. For those that are going to be here we’ll be getting into the nitty gritty of the three major
-> Continue reading Managing VI with PowerShell – Virtualization Congress 2009, It’s Now Real
Sitting at the 2009 Virtualization Congress, I noticed this in my inbox, here is some from the press release: Mountain View, CA (May 5, 2009) – HyTrust, Inc. today took the first major step toward building a vibrant new community, united by a common goal: Virtualization Under Control. Key to delivering on that vision, HyTrust
-> Continue reading HyTrust Releases Community Edition!
it’s here… or almost. We’ll (Pancil and I) will be presenting at the Virtualization Congress on Wednesday at 3pm, at the MGM Grand. Posts will either be plentiful or rather sparse, depending on how much time we get. With the lineup that’s been put together, I’m sure there will be loads and loads of super
-> Continue reading Sunday Turtle Blogging – From the SA Airport
UUIDs are wonderful! Really. They’re just not all that easy to get to, at least not when you need more than a few of them at a time. That is where this script comes in: # get-uuid.ps1 # # Takes either a VMHost or VM object from the pipeline, returns the corresponding UUID. Begin {
-> Continue reading New Script – Get VM or ESX Host UUIDs (get-uuid.ps1)
So one of the things that did happen whilst I was away, and that does bear repeating (as it’s not marketing fluff) is the Virtualization Eco Shell Initiative and their beta release landing (Thanks Virtua-al). The goal of the Vizioncore Virtualization EcoShell is to provide a freeware desktop application for novice and expert IT administrators
-> Continue reading The Turtles Are Upon Us – The VESI
Ok, so it was over this weekend, but that is when On-Call started, so getting back on track has been a bit off. Sorry! There has been quite a lot that happened over that week too, vSphere (Cloud OS) and yet another pissing match between Microsoft and VMware. We’ll not get into that however, it’s
-> Continue reading Vacation Is Over, Back To Our Regular Schedule
Photo by michelphoto53 I Calm across the “Must-have VMware infrastructure plug-ins” post earlier today and got to thinking what plug-ins I’d recommend. Turns out, that my recommendations would not differ too much, I consider these Must Haves: – Update Manager (included) – Storage VMotion. From Andrew at H9Labs – PowerGUI. This may not be for
-> Continue reading Plug It In, Plug It In! – vCenter Client Plug-ins You Should Be Using