This is a revisit of an older post on running ESX4.x in Fusion 3.x. This time updated for ESXi 5.x and Fusion 4.x. The steps this time around are nearly identical to the ones last time: Pull down the ISO New VM Point the installer at the ESXi ISO: Confirm the OS Type: Wait a
-> Continue reading vSphere ESXi 5.x in VMware Fusion 4.x
Was surprised this wasn’t here by default, but alas, out of the box vCO does not ship with a workflow to manage an NFS datastore. Thanks to the VMware communities for a bit of scripting, I was able to put one together. First we’ll break out the components, then show you how it runs. Finally
-> Continue reading vCenter Orchestrator – Add NFS Datastore
So this happened. VMware has pulled the ESX Classic binaries from being available as a direct download: While they do provide a download link for ESX classic, it sends a pretty clear message… If you haven’t made migration plans, NOW is the time to do so. Thankfully, they’ve not left folks completely out to dry
-> Continue reading ESX is Dead. Long Live the King.
Amazon posted my 4 star review of Ed Haletky’s (@Texiwill) updated VMware ESX and ESXi in the Enterprise. Let me start with saying I’ve read the first edition of this book and Ed’s Security book and found both to be excellent. As this book was a second edition, I focused my reading on those updated
-> Continue reading Book Reviews – ESXi in the Enterprise
The TSM in ESXi is a Posix like environment and much of it resembles and behaves much as you would expect the old RHEL based service console to. That said, some of it is very different too. Today, I figured out that while it may not have all of the features I’m used to (screen),
-> Continue reading TIL – ESXi TSM Has Jobs Support
Following up on some of my other TIL posts and a really really bad “vMotion on a stick” experiment, I had to get down and dirty with the ESXi CLI. Without further adieu heres how to List, Start, and Stop VMs from the ESXi CLI (aka TSM): Note: You’ll need to have TSM (ssh) enabled
-> Continue reading TIL – Some ESXi CLI-Fu (Start/Stop/List VMs)
Perhaps it’s just been a while since I’ve needed said floppy image, but I recall a time when you had to search the VMware KB to get the XP LSI driver. Well, today while changing some of my lab VMs over to PVSCSI, I found that the needed floppy images are in “/vmimages/floppies/” (at least
-> Continue reading TIL – VMware Driver Floppy Images Already Included
Maybe not in the fall out bunker sense ready, this isn’t Y2K all over again… not yet anyways. Before the hysteria engine cranks up to full speed, I figured it was time to give you some tips to make sure you are ready. Note, I’m only going to cover making sure your ESX hosts are
-> Continue reading The IPocalypse Cometh – Are You Ready?
While this isn’t as big a problem as it used to be, Context Switches in applications can still bring a VM to it’s knees. In this post I’m going to link you to some resources as to what context switching is, how to look for it, and why excessive context switches hurts performance. What Is
-> Continue reading Context Switching, Some Resources
The Problem! Was doing some work with UDA and nested ESX & ESXi installs this weekend and ran into an interesting hiccup: Or on ESXi: What? Can’t format what? But we’re working with nested ESX, it’s a VMDK, format it! I tried any number of things here: Different controller types, disk sizes, partitioning within the
-> Continue reading “Could not Format VMFS” – Nested ESX
I mean it. Really. One of my pet peeves is the fellow who installs VMware server on his workstation to run his work provided Windows XP image (or some variant of Linux). The logic behind this usually goes something like: “I needed to be able to create virtual machines and VMware Server is the only
-> Continue reading Stop Using VMware Server! (For Your Workstation Workloads)
This came up on #VMware on Freenode this weekend. Basically the concern was “How do I Backup my ESXi USB Key?” Other than ripping the USB key out of a production machine… how was the user to do this? Well, vMA and the vCLI provide a method for this: Backing up your ESXi Configuration: To
-> Continue reading How To Backup ESXi Configuration – The Missing Piece
Lacking a service console, ESXi needs to be approached differently when performing common troubleshooting tasks. One of these, like the title states, is to find the CPU Ready values for a particular VM. There are more than a few ways to skin this particular cat, but in this case I’ll show you two: The vSphere
-> Continue reading Finding CPU Ready Values on ESXi
In trying to get used to ESXi and it’s console-less nature I’ve been forcing myself to use the vCLI or PowerCLI to do things. Along the way I’ve learned that the vCLI is generally really well though out, if different. Here is an example of this: Setting up a vNetwork Standard Switch (vSwitch) using PowerCLI
-> Continue reading Add a vSwitch, PowerCLI vs. vCLI
Having just pulled down and installed ESXi, I figured that now is a good time to see what all of the noise around VMware Go was about. Well, perhaps not what it is about, there is plenty of marketing literature for that. Rather, how it works. Time to dig in: What is VMware Go? While
-> Continue reading Using ESXi & VMware Go – Part 1 Download & Install
Thanks to the generosity of some really cool folks at work I am now a MacBook Pro believer. That said, one of my tasks over the holidays was to get things migrated from my old Ubuntu install and into OSX. The first place to start was with my Virtual Machines. The first one over was
-> Continue reading Installing ESXi 4 in VMware Fusion
Now that we’ve upgraded our client and installed it on Windows 7, let’s upgrade our ESX or ESXi host: 1. Fire up Host Update Utility & Download new Patches from VMware: 2. Scan for updates: 3. OMG Patches! Lets Patch the host (Make sure the host is in maint mode first!): 4. Install FTW!
-> Continue reading Upgrading ESXi 4 to Update 1 – Host Update Utility
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 particular topic comes up from time to time in discussions. Yes it is OK to run Exchange on VMware, and Exchange 2007 on VMware is a supported configuration… for more info, follow the links below: The Podcast – Wednesday, Jan 14, for another round of the VMware Communities Roundtable podcast The Webinar – Jan
-> Continue reading Exchange on VMware – Podcast, Webinar, and White Papers, Oh My
VMware release KB 1008130 yesterday, describing just this: Symptoms include: VMware ESX or ESXi host might get disconnected form VirtualCenter. All paths to the LUNs are in standby state. esxcfg-rescan might take a long time to complete or never completes (hung). The KB goes on to say, that right now the only fix is a
-> Continue reading Running Update 3? San Gone Funny?