Planet vSphere-land

New Release of Paragon Hard Disk Manager Pro 2011. Paragon has recently updated Hard Disk manager and I had the opportunity to give it a try. First of all, the product runs on desktop OS only, if you want to use it on Server Systems, you can try Hard Disk Manager Server Edition. Since I was going to move an OS one of my PCs to a small SSD drive, I did a test of the Migrate OS to SSD function t...

Hey there you Linux (or Mac) Users! vmware Labs has released another fling, with RVC you can now manage your vSphere environment using your Linux or Mac CLI! RVC is built on Ruby (RbVmomi bindings to the vSphere API) and will require at least Ruby 1.8.7+ to run, the preferred version of Ruby is 1.9.2. The RVC is extremely simple to install and start using. You can download the code right now f...

vmware has recently released a patch for their vSphere 4.0 product line, which affects both ESX and ESXi. Details from vmware; We are pleased to inform you that a new VMware ESX 4.0 Patch is available as of April 28, 2011. Improvements included in this patch: An update for the Certificate Revocation List (CRL) to revoke an RSA key that HP uses for code signing certain software components Remed...

This is third post in as many days, regarding the ESXi scratch partition – here is the first and the second. Aaron Delp posed the question – what should be a “best practice” regarding this? Should we all run around making changes?  Personally, I think that at the very least you should go out and run a discovery of your environment.  It’s up to you to know what you...

ESXi 4.1 does not store log files locally. It’s recommended to configure syslog and get the log files persistent. You have to configure ESXi to send the logs somewhere, because they are not stored locally. Because if you need to reboot your ESXi host, the logs are just lost. I’ll show you that by using vMA (VMware Management Assistant) has a built in syslog server which helps you t...

I just launched my new vBookshelf section of vSphere-land which can be found under the vInfo drop-down menu. I’ve gathered together over 30 books related to VMware and virtualization and have links and information on them. I think I’ve put together a pretty complete selection of good books that are available but if I’ve missed any please let me know. I’d also like to high...

When you’re using ThinApp to package your software packages you are bound to end up with a huge repository after some time. Of course you have documented each ThinApp package you made, but sometimes you will need to produce a quick-and-dirty report. Then it’s handy to fire up a PowerShell script, instead of reading through all the packaging documentation. With the help of the ThinApp...

The next London VMUG has been arranged and will take place on Thursday, 12 May 2011. There will be a change to the normal routine as it now looks like there will be multiple tracks, multiple sponsors and labs. There is also a theme for this VMUG… “Your Journey to the Cloud”. The start time has also changed to 10am. This event will be sponsored by COLT, EMC and Quest. To book your place ...

This question has come up several times over the last couple of weeks so I figured it was time to dedicate an article to it. People have always been used to monitoring memory usage in a specific way. This always worked fine until ESX(i) 3.5 introduced the aggressive usage of Large Pages. In the 3.5 timeframe that only worked for AMD processors that supported RVI and with vSphere 4.0 support for ...

We technophiles easily forget that partnerships are more about relationships than interconnecting parts. In Asia the importance of relationships is even more important. It is often the primary criterion for making business decisions. On numerous occasions I know of Asian businesses choosing to stay with their trusted advisor as he moves between fierce competitors. The message is clear: its m...

In my last post, I looked at how the ESXi installer may not create a scratch partition if it identifies the local disks as remote during the install.  I had stated that the following was good check to see if you had a scratch partition setup: cat /etc/vmware/locker.conf However after a bit more testing down the rabbit hole, it appears this isn’t a good definitive test.  Before I explain ...

In May I’ll be releasing my vSphere Performance Monitoring video training course from Train Signal. I’ve spent 3 months creating this course that will have about 40 video lessons. I’ll cover everything in the VCAP-DCA blueprint, section 3 that covers DRS and vSphere Performance. BUT, this isn’t just a certification course. I tried to keep this course real-world focused an...

I just happened across 20 free recorded webinars from Veeam. They include well known virtualization experts like Rick Vanover, Doug Hazelman, Sean Clark, Eric Siebert, Greg Sheilds, and Cameron Fuller. I’ve included an example of one of these webinars below, from Rick Vanover (@RickVanover), entitled 5 Key Ways to Protect Multiple vSphere VMs. You can watch all 20 of these webinars over at...

Backing up the configuration of ESXi host. One of those questions you might be asking yourself is the one on How to backup ESXi configuration files. You might be saying why backup if the re-installation of an ESXi takes just few minutes, but wait. There is not only the installation of ESXi, but there are all the configuration files concerning virtual switches and their configuration, shared st...

This one is long overdue, I had a section created on my website a year ago that correlated to a link in my book, Maximum vSphere that listed all the many free tools that would be useful to a VMware administrator. But I had forgotten about it until recently so I scoured the internet for free tools and put together a big list of them. The table currently has over 80 tools and is sortable by catego...

As I have been posting more regularly on the ESXi Chronicles blog I figured it made sense to make people aware of the series of articles I produced like I did last time. These are the articles I recently published, check them out as I feel they are worth reading. Also note that many of the “Ops Changes” articles will be rolled up in to an official whitepaper that will be published on...

Operations Management disciplines are converging in the cloud. Performance, capacity and configuration management are becoming inseparable due to the dynamic nature of converged infrastructure. Traditional tools and processes designed for silo-ed, static physical infrastructures don’t provide the automation and control needed to effectively manage highly virtualized and private cloud envi...

Stephane Lalonde has been a Senior SE at VMware for 4 years. In previous roles he has worked for Citrix for over 4 years and have done extensive work on their SSL VPN solution. Stephane has also worked at one of Cisco's largest VARs where he implemented various solutions. Stephane has created a presentation called "Networking From Physical to Virtual", the goal of this presentation is to c...

Windows PowerShell is Microsoft’s command line shell and scripting language. PowerShell is built on the Microsoft .NET Framework and helps in system administration. By providing full access to COM (Component Object Model) and WMI (Windows Management Instrumentation), PowerShell enables administrators to perform administrative tasks on both local and remote Windows systems. Administrators ...

A little over a month ago, I was installing VMware ESXi on a Cisco UCS blade and noticed something odd during the installation. I posted a tweet about the incident. Here’s the text of the tweet in case the link above stops working: Interesting…this #UCS blade has local disks but all disks are showing as remote during #ESXi install. Odd… Several people responded, indicating they...

Often I receive the question why a virtual machine is not receiving resources while the ESXi host is lightly utilized and is accumulating idle time. This behavior is observed while reviewing the DRS distribution chart or the Host summary tab in the vSphere Client. A common misconception is that low utilization (Low MHz) equals schedule opportunities. Before focusing on the complexities of schedu...

Free ESXi Training for VMware Partners and as a bonus Free e-book (during limited time) from Dave Mischenko. This 3 hours online course is available for FREE from VMware education services and all VMware partners has access. You can familiarize yourself (if you haven’t already) with the changes which needs to be done while you transition to the ESXi, which is the only version of VMware H...

Start your Cinco de Mayo 2011 celebration with one of the largest VMUGs in the Southeast US! The 2011 Carolina Summit is at the Charlotte Convention Center (in Charlotte, NC) on Thursday May 5 from 7:30 am until 4:30 pm. If you are a VMware admin or architect within driving distance be sure to plan to attend. You can register here. I’m particularly excited about the 2:30 pm Panel Discussion ...

This is just a gentle reminder – I recently recieved an email for the London VMUG to say that the registration process had opened up for our “Cloudy Day”. It’s been a long time since London had a pea-souper fog, but we still get clouds occasionally! When I last wrote about this the agenda such as it was still being fleshed out – but there’s now much more detai...

Yesterday Anne Jan linked me to an article on the VMware website which contained information on a free online training course. The title is Transition to ESXi Essentials. The course is dedicated to ESXi and depending on your learning style it takes about 3 hours to complete. It’s broken up in several chapters so you don’t have [...] by Sander Martijn