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
As we pointed out earlier in the week, vSphere Update 1 now supplies a Windows 7 compatible client, one that works out of the box. However, There are some folks who have not jumped into Update 1 yet, but still need to manage vSphere hosts. Not a problem you might think, and try to hop
-> Continue reading Downloading & Installing the vSphere Update 1 Client For Windows 7
I left this one critical piece off my “Me Too” vSphere 4 Update 1 post, and wasn’t reminded of it again until today. From the PlanetVMware blog: In case you didn’t notice, Update 1 for VMware vCenter Server 4.0 was released last week. This is great news for all of you who wish to run
-> Continue reading vSphere Client Update 1 – Now With Windows 7!
After you’ve spent the time installing VMware Data Recovery (vDR), you may find that some of the defaults do not work well. Some of these, like the retention policies are an easy change. Others, like the behavior of the vDR appliance, however, are a bit more difficult. To that end, you can create a datarecovery.ini
-> Continue reading Advanced vDR Configuration
The last time we touched upon LUN resigning, it was during an odd hour of the night. Looking back now, some interesting VMware KB articles have cropped up around this very topic. First there is KB 9453805, which covers this process for VI3, seemingly from top to bottom, it also greatly expands on my post,
-> Continue reading Revisiting Lun Resigning (Bad things at 2AM)
While I’d love to be able to claim I was clever enough to think of this on my own, that would straight up be lying (I really am not all that clever :). Well, it would be more than lying, I’d not be giving proper credit to his awesomeness Rich Brambley at VM/Etc for coming
-> Continue reading vCenter Client on Linux – Single App RDP and You!
I likely should have started with a post or two about vDR (VMware Data Recovery), what it is, and how to install it. Instead, I’ll point you to some of the docs on those: Info & Installing. The installing guide is especially recommended after I spent a few days unsuccessfully installing vDR (Hint: Use the
-> Continue reading Few, More, Many – vDR Retention Policy Autopilot
I recently got a comment on a post I had done a while back on VMware tools and Time Sync. While the one-liners there may be useful, they don’t particularly explain how they got to the end results. With that in mind, today I hope to explain some of the logic used when you need
-> Continue reading A Quick PowerCLI Lesson – Digging for Info (Who Powered Off that VM)
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”
I just received my copy of Steve Jin’s “VMware VI and vSphere SDK: Managing the VMware Infrastructure and vSphere ”, As I tech edited the book I’ll not post a long review, other than to say that the book is a good resource, and overall a good book. If you are, or will be programming
-> Continue reading vSphere SDK – The Book!
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)
One of the most amazing new features of vSphere is the ability to hot add hardware into a supported guest OS. However, when you need to upgrade your 20 node web farm, all of the right clicks and slider moves can become cumbersome. That is where VMware PowerCLI (PowerShell) comes to the rescue! A few
-> Continue reading vSphere 4 Hot Add Hardware and PowerShell
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
This post comes because I am just as confused as the rest of you when it comes to the options available in some of these new vSphere interfaces. I figure it best to take a look at some of the options, and figure when it is best to move away from defaults and start tuning
-> Continue reading VMDirectPath? Paravirtual SCSI? – vSphere VM Options and You!
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
Today we continue along with the VCP4 Blueprint coverage (other objective 5.3 posts here and here). In this post we’ll wrap up 3.5 with some final coverage on vApps, specifically building and managing vApps in the vSphere 4 client when it is connected to vCenter server. Sound like fun? No? Trust me, it is. With
-> Continue reading Build & Manage a vApp – VCP4 Objective 5.3
First a picture of this in action: (Click the pic for full size) Wow. It’s actually a nice little overview of what is doing what on that particular host, at a given time. You can break it down by VM, and set the time range from real time on up. This is provided by the
-> Continue reading That’s New – vSphere Client Performance Overview
While playing in the “Lab” today I found a section in the vSphere client, under “Configuration” called “IPMI/iLO Settings”: Being an inquisitive fool, I clicked it and then properties: It seems this will let you get/set the IPMI or iLO settings for the server. Unfortunately my home lab does not support either.
I’m lazy. Very lazy, in fact. I’m also fairly sure that you are too. How many times a day do you connect to different vCenter servers? Do you type your password each time? If you do, for shame! Today while playing with vCenter Server for vSphere I found that the following parameters still work with
-> Continue reading Tired of Typing? vSphere Client Pass-through Auth
Another interesting bit from the VCP4 blueprint was in a line item under the “Tools” section under objective 3.5. The tool is “OVF Tool”. New on me. Perhaps new on you too. It seems that there has not been much in the way of publicity about it. A Google search lead me to the this
-> Continue reading OVF Tool – VCP4 Objective 3.5