While this actually requires no special settings, I figure it’s worth noting, if for nothing more than to state that in VMware Fusion 3, ESX 3.5 requires no additional settings to be operational. Basically it works as follows: Download the ESX ISO (vmware.com/download/vi) In VMware Fusion create a new virtual machine, choosing said ISO: The
-> Continue reading Installing ESX 3.5 in VMware Fusion
Perhaps they’re not new, exactly. They are new to me, however. They’re also good enough that you should be reading them as well! With that said, onto the blogs! VMDEV.info – http://www.vmdev.info/ This is put together by Keshav Attrey, a software dev with VMware. The blog concentrates on the vSphere APIs and automation around virtual
-> Continue reading New Blogs You Should be Reading
When was the last time you found yourself configuring VMware tools on Linux? Did having to incessantly press enter accepting the defaults drive you nuts too? I think I might be the last one to the game on this, but today I was stumbling through configuring VMware tools on a few Linux VMs. Stumbling, over
-> Continue reading VMware Tools –default!
Along with the last Fusion related post, this post also takes a slight tangent from our normal ESX/vSphere centric coverage to document something for myself that others may indeed also find useful. Setting the story: Thanks to some awesome folks at work, I recently acquired a MacBook Pro with VMware Fusion installed. While awesome (Both
-> Continue reading VMware Fusion – All About the Bundles
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
Note: This is a brief story where I was forced to sit back and reflect on just how cool this Virtualization stuff really is. Please feel free to disregard however. Normally I don’t write about the VMware Workstation or hosted products. It just doesn’t happen to be where I spend most of my day. Mind,
-> Continue reading Using VMs as Personal DR
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”
Ever have to log into a the console of an ESX VM… over a slow connection? Then you’ll know all about the character repeat that comes along with that. If you haven’t experienced this… consider yourself lucky. It is especially interesting when trying to type passwords. So how do you defeat this? You set the
-> Continue reading PowerCLI Script of the Week – Set-Keydelay.ps1
Time is critical. In VMs this criticality is even more pronounced. Time slips… CPU instructions go askew, and things get weird. That said, there are situations when you may wish to disable the built in VMware Tools Time sync service… completely. What do I mean by completely? Well, even with the tools time sync set
-> Continue reading Time Is Marching On… Disabling TimeSync, Completely.
I caught wind of VMware Workstation 7 having been released today from VM/Etc. It can be downloaded from here. Amongst the exciting features are a few that caught my eye: AutoProtect This one had me do a double take actually: The AutoProtect interval can be set to half-hourly, hourly, and daily. From there you can
-> Continue reading Workstation 7 RC – With A Side of Awesome
While going over TA1541 – Cool Little Things Marketing Did Not Tell You About vSphere 4.0 from this years VMworld, and came across this gem, a service console tool, that’s been there since ESX 3.5, and will report on all sorts of SCSI statistics. [root@esxServerOfDoom root]# /usr/lib/vmware/bin/vscsiStats -? /usr/lib/vmware/bin/vscsiStats: invalid option — ? VscsiStats
-> Continue reading Best Tools You Didn’t Know You Needed – vscsiStats
What is VMware Fault Tolerance (FT)? I’d start with reviewing the overview page. VMware Fault Tolerance, based on vLockstep technology, provides zero downtime, zero data loss continuous availability for your applications, without the cost and complexity of traditional hardware or software clustering solutions. Pretty awesome no? FT has it’s limits (1 vCPU, etc) and it
-> Continue reading Scheduling VMware’s FT (Fault Tolerance)
As LucD points out: When you attend a conference like VMworld you get lots of goodies pushed your way. With some of these you only realise when you are back home what you were given. The vSphere 4.0 Quick Start Guide is a good example of such a little gem that came my way during
-> Continue reading Lot’s of Awesome In A Small Package
Ok, So maybe they didn’t save the world, but the sure saved my weekend. Rather than spend a lot of time on the intro, let’s dive right in. These will be in Problem/PowerShell/Output format. The Problem: More spaghetti environments, this time we need to count some resources. The first counts CPU, the second Memory. Yes
-> Continue reading Four PowerCLI One-Liners That Saved The World!
In doing some background research for a post on FT vs. MSCS, I stumbled upon a wonderful write up by Brian Atkinson aka. “VMRoyale”, on FT’s laundry list of requirements, limits, and other considerations. The original post is here. He does an excellent job of pulling together data from various VMware docs and puts together
-> Continue reading VMware FT (Fault Tolerance) Requirements & Limits
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
Now that I have you at attention, let us take this time to talk of things. Important things. The things your parents never told you about VMFS. First let us start with some definitions, each of these will be taken in the context of VMware Virtualization using ESX/vSphere, and VMFS, but you knew that, didn’t
-> Continue reading Safe and Natural VMFS Enlargement! – Extend or Grow VMFS and Why You Should Care
One of the great things about working in IT, is that software will always need to be updated. If it didn’t, some of us would need to find a new line of work. Just because it needs updating, does not mean we have to like it. In fact, most vendor update processes are needlessly obtuse.
-> Continue reading Spending an Afternoon with the Host Update Utility
This post actually puts together two of my past posts to solve a ‘common’ problem. Common that is, if you often leave snapshots running, and do not have a method for otherwise checking on them. The situation is this: It is 3:45PM on Friday (what good issue doesn’t happen on a Friday?), you are closing
-> Continue reading Help! I Snapshotted My Datastore Into Oblivion
Rather than post several follow-ups to the same post, it is likely best to collect all of my available resources into a single page. In keeping with that, this page will contain everything I have found or have been linked to for the VMware Certified Professional 4 (VCP4) certification. General Exam Info VCP4 Exam Blueprint
-> Continue reading VCP4 Resource Page