Why? Because I said so. Perhaps that is a bit too direct. However, if you are like me, you often find yourself with more to do than time to do it in. Or, like my other side, you’re professionally lazy. If you’re the latter, don’t worry, I wont tell anyone. If you are either, vCO
-> Continue reading vSphere Automation 101 – Use vCenter Orchestrator
Nathan Small, a Senior Escalation Engineer with VMware storage sent along this presentation he has been giving on troubleshooting vStorage Performance. Lots of gold in here… lots and lots: vSphere vStorage: Troubleshooting Performance View more presentations from ProfessionalVMware.
By popular demand (who would have thought) I’m launching another bi-weekly BrownBag series. Topics this time include VMware certification, VCAP-DCA, VCAP-DCD, vSphere Design, and other technical deep dive discussions. Kick-Off To kick off the series, we’ll be having Scott Lowe, one of the authors of the newly released vSphere Design book. Some background on the
-> Continue reading New BrownBag Series! VCAP DCA, DCD, and Technical Deep Dives!
One of the questions I get asked most often is some variant of: “I’m new to vSphere, how do I get up to speed?” or “I’ve been using VMware for ages, but I want to take it to the next level, recommendations?” My most common answer, is read. Read lots, and read often. With that
-> Continue reading 2011 vSphere Reading List – Take 2
Actually, learned this one yesterday, but just got around to writing the post. I was actually clued into this by some friends in the UK. According to these VMware docs: http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1015180 http://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-esx-4-1/wwhelp/wwhimpl/js/html/wwhelp.htm#context=vm_admin&file=c_about_snapshots.html An ESX snapshot contains the VM settings. Thus reverting it, will also revert this settings. Because I was under the opposite impression, I
-> Continue reading TIL – Snapshots Also Revert VM Settings
It’s that time of year again, when all the hard work various folks in the community turn into tangible products. In this round we’ve some second editions of some popular books. Let’s dive right in: VCP4 Exam Cram Elias Khnaser (@ekhnaser) The VCP4 Exam Cram volume looks to be about the only game in town
-> Continue reading Spring Reading Pre-Review
Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends… On this week’s BrowBag we’re giving away yet another VCAP-DCA voucher. As we talked about before, round 2 will be a live lab. What do I mean? The first person who meets these two requirements by Tuesday, February 15, 2011: Has a workable solution to
-> Continue reading VCAP DCA Voucher Give Away – Round 2, Live Lab
Ran into an issue today where my vCenter would not come back up after a reboot. Standard troubleshooting ensued… the DB is up, it is accessible, odbc is Kosher, etc. At that point, Windows helpfully popped up a message balloon: “I pity the fool who runs outta disk space!” So I dug, and a dug…
-> Continue reading vCenter out of Space! – A Lesson on Shadow Copy
This is relevant to my interests! Specifically, TrainSignal has released a vSphere Troubleshooting course that lines up well with some of the objectives in the VCAP-DCA. Some proof-pudding: Demo 1 Demo 2 Demo 3 There is another video here. Disclosure: TrainSignal is a sponsor of this site. :
What is VMTurbo? Well, before we can deploy it, we kinda need to know what it is, right? VMTurbo is a company that provides a suite of products aimed at the management, optimization, and automation of your virtual environment. Basically, they’ve got a set of tools in a vApp, designed to make your life easier.
-> Continue reading Getting Started With VMTurbo
I had a friend ping me the other day with something along the lines of: “OMG VDI with View is hard!” For said friend, IT isn’t his day job, but alas, the business had a need and he needed an answer. Myself, I’m not as familiar with View as I could be, and thus reached
-> Continue reading VMware View for Noobs (A Collection of Resources)
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
Black Friday? Nah… BrownBag Friday! Here’s the video for this weeks BrownBag: ProfessionalVMware VCAP DCA Section 2 BrownBag from ProfessionalVMware on Vimeo. If you like what you see… be sure to check out our other BrownBags here. If you need the full video, you can download it from the Vimeo link above.
The version of Likewise-Open that ships with VMware’s vMA is a bit old, and for one reason or another, it may need to be upgraded outside the normal window for upgrading the vMA bits. So… here goes the update: Checking the Current Install You can check the currently installed version with an rpm -qa: $
-> Continue reading Upgrading Likewise on vMA
Recently I set upon a quest, one of grand scope and sure to bring honor to my family. Well, maybe. This quest you ask? This quest was to attach the VMware vSphere Management Appliance to Active Directory. Like any good quest, this was not without it’s challenges. First, Connect vMA to Active Directory: This is
-> Continue reading Connecting vMA to Active Directory (Troubleshooting)
As much as I loathe love VMware’s PDF documentation, I always get the warm and fuzzies when I happen upon something like this. An online reference for the vSphere CLI (vCLI) commands. Enjoy!
After purging my vCenter database, I seemingly corrupted it (I should have taken a snapshot first). In this case, as the database was small (read: 1 host, 6 VMs) I decided to rebuild it. This is not something you’ll want to do lightly, as well, everything kinda goes away. If you do proceed with this
-> Continue reading Rebuild the vCenter 4.1 Database
My home lab vCenter is a self contained Windows 2008 R2 VM, running vCenter 4.1 on SQL Express. Last night, I ran into an issue where the vCenter service would not start, in fact, it was quite angry. Why? Well it seems after 14(ish) days I had hit the 4GB database limit. Here’s the process
-> Continue reading Pruning vCenter 4.1 Database Using SQL Express
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
OK, so every environment has “That Guy”… if you don’t know what I’m on about, take a look at what floated past on Twitter this evening from @vSeanClark: RT @techmute: Some people really make me wish vSphere had the option "take a snapshot when this guy logs in as an admin" <- startup idea? Well…
-> Continue reading Protecting your Virtual Machines From “That Guy”