This was announced on twitter, very likely while I was sleeping: jtroyer OK, it didn’t launch today, and I just found a problem with the form. Sigh. I don’t want to leave you empty-handed, so: VMware vExpert about 3 hours ago from web It’s also been announced: VVP -> VMware vExpert » Yellow Bricks Musings
-> Continue reading Late To The Game – VMware VVP Is Now VMware vExpert
Time for a new series! Are you as excited and motivated as I am? In this series we’ll cover the Tops and Bottoms of VMware disk types. What are they, how do you make them, what are the benefits and drawbacks, and when would you use them. A lot to cover? Sure IS, but that
-> Continue reading A Practical Guide to Virtual Disks as Used by VMware – Part 1 Intro
As of today, ProfessionalVMware.com (or at least me, on behalf of ProfessionalVMware.com) is a member of the VI Toolkit (for Windows) VIP Community! What does this mean? It means: As a selected member of our VIP Community you will receive several benefits: 1. Early access to the VI Toolkit. 2. Insight into our product roadmap.
-> Continue reading Now a Member of: VI Toolkit (for Windows) VIP Community Wewt!
Why? Because it’s awesome, that’s why. Below is an example, complete with syntax and screenshots on how to defragment a windows guest using VMware’s VIX. Here is what it looked like before: Here is the command used from the host where VIX is installed: C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware VIX>vmrun -T esx -h https://vCenter.server.com/sdk – u domain\user -p
-> Continue reading Using VIX to Defrag Windows Guests
This is almost as good as a Peanut butter sandwich with Marshmallow cream. Or at least as good as the four shot “Venti’” mocha I just finished. It seems there is now some third part goodness from the VIX community, that will enable you to use it (VIX That is) with PowerShell. WOOT! The original
-> Continue reading VMware VIX, now with PowerShell
Not sure where I got the link to this document, but have found it insanely useful, and should very well be committed to memory! (Yes, it’s that good). Table of Contents Section 1. Introduction Section 2. CPU Section 2.1 Worlds and Groups Section 2.2 Global Statistics Section 2.3 World Statistics Section 3. Memory Section 3.1
-> Continue reading Interpreting esxtop Stats
I’ll set the scene a little… I’m working late, I’ve just installed Update Manager and I‘m going to run my first updates. Like all new systems, I’m not always confident so I decided “Out of hours” would be the best time to try. I hit “Remediate” on my first Host then sat back, cup
-> Continue reading Increase Simultaneous VMotions as well as Increase Performance
Came across this in a few other blog posts. The VMware Uptime blog is pretty cool so far, and has been added to my RSS reader.
Mr. Brambley at VM/ETC has a great post on SRM, with links to all sorts of really, really useful information. This post is a collection of VMware Site Recovery Manager (SRM) links that have been building up as various notes, to dos, and draft posts collecting dust for VM /ETC. I’m including links to popular
-> Continue reading A Boat Load of SRM – Site Recovery Manager Links, Lessons, Labs, etc.
It seems my Automating VMware With Powershell presentation made the first cut. Click on through and vote for me!
VMware has recently added a searchable tool for their HCL (Hardware Compatibility List). This tool makes it much easier to search for any hardware in question. Also, you can export the results into a spreadsheet if needed: http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/search.php The PDF version of the compatibility guides are still available (for now?) under the “Other Documents”. I
-> Continue reading New Web based HCL
After such great luck with the Windows version, I found a few things. First was that resxtop was not included in the Windows bundle. Which lead me to the second: /tmp/vmware-rcli-distrib$ ./vmware-install.pl This version of "VMware VI Remote Command Line Tools" is incompatible with this operating system. Please install the "x86_64" version of this program
-> Continue reading VMware RCLI – Where Is resxtop For Windows? x64 Linux?
Since my first few posts on this got a bit of attention, I thought I’d add some more to this. In today’s post we’ll cover adding or deleting a route, and setting a default route. I’ve got requests for others that will keep the next few weeks worth of VIX posts busy. We’ll cover this
-> Continue reading VIXated with VMware’s VIX
Wait, what? Used to be you could only get these as iso’s embedded with what ever release/version of VMware you were working with. Now, their available for download from the VMware site! On this site, you will be able to search, browse and download VMware Tools software packaged in the native package format (e.g. rpm,
-> Continue reading Downloadable VMware Tools?
get-datacenter MyVC | get-vm | Get-NetworkAdapter | Where-Object { $_.Name -like "*1"} | Set-NetworkAdapter -NetworkName NotThatNetwork -Confirm:$false So, say you provision all of your VM’s on one host, with one set of networks, that is completely removed from the remainder of your infrastructure. You then Cold-Migrate the new VM’s to their new homes. You now
-> Continue reading 1 Day Left – The Most Awesome PowerShell One-Liner in the History of PowerShell One-Liners!
Like… this is almost as cool as the RC Battle Bots my son and I got for Christmas. It’s the VMware Reference Architecture. This reference architecture kit is comprised of four distinct papers written by VMware and our supporting partners to serve as a guide to assist in the early phases of planning, design and
-> Continue reading Now This Is Cool – VMware Reference Architecture
This comes again from the Fusion team, but applies to ESX as well. Go Fusion Team Go! The main way is via VMware Toolbox. You’ll need Tools installed, of course, and the way you get to it depends on the guest OS you’re running. In Windows, right-click the VMware-three-boxes logo in the system tray and
-> Continue reading You Tool! – More on VMware Tools
My new best friend? You can’t tell me who my friends are! That is not allowed! Who is this rCLI fellow and how dare you make such a claim! Well, the rCLI, better known as “VMware Infrastructure Remote CLI” The VMware Infrastructure Remote CLI provides a command-line interface for datacenter management from a remote server.
-> Continue reading Your New Best Friend – The rCLI
Well now. We’ve come a long way since parts 1 & 2 haven’t we? That is all well and good considering, and makes for some light background reading. However, the game changes with ESXi, as there is no “Supported” Service Console on it’s platform.
In reality, the vmkernel runs a busybox executable. (Busybox is a linux in an executable binary sort of thing), and you can enable DropBear SSH, and the like on it. Doing this however, will likely void your warranty or support agreement, or prevent you from getting your per incident support taken care of, so I strongly recommend against it.
With that said then. How does ESXi handle all of the communication we talked about before, how do you make it redundant, and how do you interact with ESXi in a meaningful way? Let’s take a look at the first two, the last will be covered in a future post.
Found this on Roger Lund’s site It seems that Edward L. Haletky has put together a wiki site with essential books and references for VMware Professionals. It’s pretty light so far, but he’s got an area for suggestions. VMware * Edward L. Haletky. VMware ESX Server in the Enterprise: Planning and Securing Virtualization Servers. Prentice
-> Continue reading Virtualization Bookshelf – The Books Every VMware Admin Needs