This came up in the comments to one of my other posts, so I though I’d share. Note: The Host Update Utility was depreciated with 4.1, so if you came here looking for that… my apologies. The vSphere Host Update Utility, as far as I can tell is not actually offered as a separate download,
-> Continue reading Installing the vSphere 4.0 Host Update Utility
Instead of writing a 4.1 post, which seems to be all the rage, I’ll instead link you to a few of them that I have been reading (which are in turn links out to more documentation). Eric Siebert – http://vsphere-land.com/news/vsphere-41-the-links.html vChat (about 4.1) – http://www.techhead.co.uk/vchat-a-regular-virtualization-related-webcast VMware 4.1 KB articles – http://blogs.vmware.com/kb/2010/07/useful-vsphere-41-knowledgebase-articles.html ESXi “touchfree” installs –
-> Continue reading Yo Dawg… (Obligatory vSphere 4.1 Post)
Thanks again to Ed Haletky (@Texiwill) for coming along and presenting this week. Here is the video from the session: BrownBag #10 – Security Deep Dive from ProfessionalVMware on Vimeo. Links: Virtualization Practice – Ed’s Blog http://www.virtualizationpractice.com/blog/?file_id=41 – Resources! Virtualization Security Roundtable
With vSphere comes the ability for third parties to add hardware to the HCL without having to wait for an update to ESX for their drivers to be included. An excellent move on VMware’s part as this opened up the door hugely for 3rd parties to supply certified & updated drivers as well as provide
-> Continue reading Installing 3rd Party Drivers in ESX
@vRobM and I were discussing an unrelated topic when DRS and the mysterious stars came up. (**)? Our first instinct was this was the “special sauce” between the two all beef patties. However after some creative KB searching we came across a formula that describes it quite well: DRS Recommendations To understand the stars, you
-> Continue reading The Math Behind the DRS Stars
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)
No really, it is seriously awesome. Eric Sloof from NTPRO.nl has published a video that runs you through a little utility he wrote called “vmFilemanager”, then further shows you how to create such a utility using the free edition of Visual Basic 2008. Online Training – Automating vSphere with the VIX API from Eric Sloof
-> Continue reading Awesome VMware VIX Training
Got a comment on my share and share alike post that covered setting up shared VMDK files on VI3 / ESX 3.x. Seemingly it didn’t work any longer. Work or not, I figure it’s time to revisit this in a new way, using vCLI(rCLI)! This will require the following steps: Download & install the vCLI
-> Continue reading Shared VMDKs on vSphere ESX and ESXi
Growing up in VI3 I became accustomed to using the default inventory view. While effective for most tasks, you miss out on quite a bit of what the interface has to offer. What so i mean? Take this question for example: “What is my storage capacity, and how much of that do I have provisioned?”
-> Continue reading Finding Capacity vs.. Provisioned Storage
This came up on Twitter Sunday, and having happened upon it in the past, I thought I’d share the solution that Ed Haletky (Blue Gears) and I came to. Basically it boils down to the service start order for the vCenter and related services. Specifically the order should be: SQL (MS SQL, Oracle, etc) ADAM
-> Continue reading vCenter Will Not Start! – vCenter Services Startup Order
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
Today I was reviewing my post on ESX Crash Dumps and found that well, for vSphere, it is quite broken. How? Well… No /usr/sbin/vmkdump in ESX 4 As referenced in this KB article, vmkdump has been replaced with some additional flags on esxcfg-dumppart: In ESX 4.X, esxcfg-dumppart is now used to extract the logs files.
-> Continue reading vSphere 4 and Core Dumps (vmkdump)
Today’s post is brought to us by Chris, a member of the VMware community who wields some powerful Louisianan VooDoo magic (and PowerCLI). Chris uses this to show us how to take a csv file in, and use it to attach a VM to a dVS switch as well as adding the VMXNET3 nic to
-> Continue reading PowerCLI – Nexus1000v and VMXNET3
Moving along with our series of esxcfg & VCDX related series of posts, we come to esxcfg-vswitch. The example we’ll work with here has us setting up a new virtual switch, adding an uplink NIC, adding a port group with VLAN 393, and changing the MTU. Ready? Here we go: Add the vSwitch: [root@ProfessionalVMware root]#
-> Continue reading ESX 3.5 Virtual Switches From the CLI (esxcfg-vswitch) – VCDX Prep
This came up recently on the VMware Virtualization group on LinkedIn. The question was essentially: “In the event of a host hardware issue, can I VMotion my VMs off the host and send a notification?” The answer is: “Most Certainly!” This can be done by setting up a vSphere vCenter Alarm and corresponding action. Let’s
-> Continue reading vSphere Host Died Abandon Ship! – vSphere vCenter Alarms & Actions
As promised, here is the follow-up post from yesterdays VCP4 Brown Bag. First, thanks Y’all for coming, as otherwise a single person conference call is no fun. Honestly, thanks for your participation! Now for the notes: Simon Long’s invaluable VCP4 study notes & practice exams: http://www.simonlong.co.uk/blog/vcp-vsphere-upgrade-study-notes/ NFS Datastores (this came up discussing exclusivity for NFS):
-> Continue reading VCP4 Brown Bag Follow-up
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
I have slacked on this post quite a bit, but alas an exam report is due. Exam: VCP-410 Status: Passed I was/am a present holder of a VCP3, and before 12/31 was allowed to upgrade without having to take an additional course. That said, there are now several valuable courses from VMware that qualify. Basically,
-> Continue reading Pass The VCP4! I Did, You Can Too!