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necklace for your Wedding Day

Briace — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 01:50:27 GMT

So your big day is approaching and you would like to present either
your future spouse or your wedding party with a stunning piece of
jewelry as a wedding gift.Preparations often seem to focus around the
dress, but there are many other elements of your look to
consider.Purchase identical gifts, but in varying colors, for your
bridesmaids. Tennis necklace in each of their birthstones, or perhaps stones that match their dress colors, make perfect reminders of the day.

Although all eyes will be glued to the beauty and symbolism of your
wedding ring, other jewelry will round out your bridal look. Depending
on your personal preferences, the cut of your dress and the style of
your hair, you may opt for a necklace, bracelet or earrings.
Coordination of gemstones is key, as are the jewel tones you choose.

Pearls are a traditional wedding jewelry for both brides and bridesmaids. Pearls are available in all forms, but necklaces and earrings
are the more popular options.Giving jewelry such as a necklace is a
tradition when it comes to wedding presents. The bride’s mother or the
groom may give her something special, or she may give jewelry to her
bridesmaids.

Opt for a necklace that complements the cut of your dress. A pearl
or rhinestone choker works well with a strapless bodice, whereas a
diamond solitaire will look stunning with a V or sweetheart neckline.

Let your hairstyle, necklace dictate the earrings you choose.
Harmonize the gemstones found in your dress or headpiece with those in
your jewelry. Pearls will complement beading, whereas diamonds or
zirconia go well with sequins or crystals.

Bridal necklaces are as important as your wedding gown and your
wedding shoes because they add beauty and elegance to whatever wedding
dress you plan to pick for your wedding day.

Top things you MUST do after 9.10 upgrade or install

ecrossley — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 18:52:05 GMT

Great read over here: http://blog.thesilentnumber.me/2009/09/top-things-to-do-after-installing.html

Check out some of the key things you must do once you upgrade your system to 9.10 (or rebuild it from scratch).

VMware Workstation 7 on Ubuntu 64

ecrossley — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 17:53:55 GMT

Workstation 7 is FANTASTIC on Ubuntu 64. I'm so excited about this new workstation release as it provides many additional features over WS 6.5.

1) Sockets / Core selection - You can now set number of sockets and cores per socket to your individual workstation vm's.
2) Compacting of VM disk files can be done from workstation.
3) Encryption of Workstation VM's can now be done preventing access into VM's without proper credentials.
4) Windows 7 support

These are just a few of the options that are available, as well as, the ability to run nested ESX environments inside of Workstation 7.

If you are installing workstation for the first time on Ubuntu 64, you MUST execute the vmnetset script (http://communities.vmware.com/blogs/ecrossley/2009/06/29/ubuntu-and-vmware-workstation-networking) from this blog in order to allow promiscuous mode for your ethernet adapters

VMware View Open Client on 64 bit

ecrossley — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 17:41:08 GMT

Great article over at Cosmic Egg about open source view client on 64 bit linux. I've been slacking on the blog, so enjoy the read.

http://blog.cosmicegg.net/2009/10/vmware-view-open-client-on-64-bit.html

Discuss "SAP on VMware" at SAP Community Network

m@t — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 13:36:59 GMT

If you are a user of SAP Community Network, then you might have already seen the new forum about "SAP on VMware" which is live since Oct 21. The forum creates a platform for customers where answers to minor technical questions can be adressed or discussions about best practices, configurations, etc. can take place. You can find the forum right here:

http://forums.sdn.sap.com/forum.jspa?forumID=471

We want VMWare on Linux!

simoncpu — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 08:05:03 GMT

"Allowing for Future Growth" has reached End-of-life

vmroyale — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 04:04:26 GMT

I was recently involved in a situation where a development group at a SMB was tasked with consolidating two SQL servers into one. These SQL servers were physical servers running old versions of Windows, with equally old versions of SQL Server, on some pretty old hardware. The situation became interesting, when the development group put in the specifications request for the new virtual machine. The request was for a 64-bit Windows 2008 server with 8 GB of RAM, 4 vCPUs and over half a TB of FC SAN disk for storage.

This seemed like a bit of a tall order, so the first thing I did was to compare the specifications in the request with the specifications of the current physical servers. Server 1 had two Pentium III 1.2 GHz processors with 512 MB of RAM and 90 GB of used disk space. Server 2 had two Pentium III 1.0 GHz processors with 2 GB of RAM and 16 GB of used disk space. Even after ignoring the massive storage difference, the requested numbers didn't match up with the 4 vCPUs and 8 GB RAM specified in the request. Next I went to the system baselines, thinking that the systems might be overburdened. The baselines actually revealed that the systems weren't doing much work - 3% CPU average utilization, low disk IOPs, and very low network utilization. Using the perfmon SQLServer:Memory Manager -> Total Server Memory counter did reveal that the SQL servers were actually using the memory they were allocated. The numbers in the request still didn't add up though, and now with data in-hand, it was time to go talk to the requestors.

Ultimately it was discovered that this request was submitted this way to "allow for future growth." Many years ago this may have been standard practice with physical hardware, but in today's virtual environments it just no longer makes any sense. Based on the baseline data, the requested virtual machine could be built with 1 vCPU, 3 GB of memory and less than 100 GB of SATA disk space. If it turns out that the server actually needs more resources in the future, then these resources may be very quickly added with minimal or even no downtime. Gone are the days of provisioning everything up front while allowing room for future growth, hoping the server makes it to the next refresh cycle and then repeating the same process over again. To complement the virtual infrastructure, there must be an awareness of the way this technology fundamentally changes how systems are now provisioned.

Thanks for reading!

Scheduled Site Maintenance at Various Times from November 6 - 8, 2009

RDellimmagine — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 21:04:43 GMT

Friday, November 6, 2009 from 6:00 PM – 12:00 Midnight PST
Saturday, November 7, 2009 from 6:00 AM – 8:30 AM PST
Sunday, November 8, 2009 from 5:00 AM – 9:00 AM PST

During the above times, VMware Communities will be up; however, unauthenticated users will not be able to log into the site. If you wish to contribute to Communities during this outage period, I recommend you log in prior to this timeframe to make sure you have the proper access rights. Otherwise, the Communities pages will appear in "Guest" mode (i.e. read-only) until you can sign in once again.

In addition, VMware Communities will be offline and unavailable at the following time:

Sunday, November 8, 2009 from 7:30 PM – 9 PM PST

During the above time, no VMware Communities services will be available, and site visitors will see a site maintenance message.

Thank you for your patience. Regards, Robert

Workstation 7 & Windows 7 & ERROR "There are no images available."

JCData — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 15:00:52 GMT

I have tried in the BETA and in the Full Workstation 7 to load Windows 7 x64 on VMware Workstation 7.

Every time I used the easySetup it failed and would say ERROR "There are no images available."

This is caused by what I can see as the the install is looking at the autoinst.flp for the OS image and since its not there it fails.

The quick and easy fix is to just turnoff autoinst.flp by going to edit setting and click on floppy then uncheck Connect at power on. Then restart.

It should start installing and it should recognize your virtual scsi ctrl. If it doesn't you can click Load Driver then connect the floppy with you virtual scsi drivers on it.

I hope this helps as this was very frustrating for me when I just wanted to get the Windows 7 up and running as fast possible. I even had difficulties installing on ESX 4 as well but I think it may be related to missing patches. If I figure it out I will post a seperate blog on it as well.

STORMAGIC ANNOUNCES FREE SvSAN HA KIT ENABLING VMware BUSINESS CONTINUITY

StorMagic — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 19:48:20 GMT

Kick Start VMware Business Continuity with SvSAN HA Kit

Get it NOW! --> http://www.stormagic.com/HA30.php

Has the cost and complexity of external shared storage kept you up at night wondering if your VMware infrastructure is safe? High Availability has become a mandate for most organizations, even with the tough economic climate and strict budget allocations. The traditional approach of implementing an external SAN or NAS is too expensive and complicated for many organizations or departments. While VMware presents you with many of the advanced features enabling business continuity you still require the shared storage that unlocks those features.

How would you like to experience the peace of mind in knowing your virtual environment is available and your business will continue without interruption without spending a nickel? Download StorMagic's SvSAN HA Kit today and begin to leverage the many benefits of having an "Always On "virtual infrastructure. The SvSAN HA Kit gives you the shared storage you need to unlock High Availability features such as VMware HA, VMotion and DRS. Continuous access to datastores maintains online applications and constant accessibility. ENABLE YOUR "ALWAYS ON" BUSINESS TODAY BY CLICKING HERE.

Why SvSAN HA Kit?
1.) Enable VMware HA, VMotion and DRS2.) Experience the benefits of an included Virtual SAN with HA
3.) Continuous Access to Datastores
4.) Get a head start on protecting your organization
5.) Break free from the cost and complexity of external shared storage6.) Maintain online applications and constant accessibility
What's included in your SvSAN HA Kit? SvSAN Virtual SAN, 30 Day HA License & Introductory SupportSuite

VMware Business Continuity with FREE SvSAN HA Kit

StorMagic — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 17:47:18 GMT

CLICK HERE TO GET YOURS!!

VMware Virtualizes Datacenter Infrastructure for SAP Managed Services: More Than 8000 Virtual Machines with VMware Software as Its Primary Platform

jorad — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 00:24:31 GMT

Today, VMware announced in a press release that SAP Managed Services, SAP AG's internal IT infrastructure provider, has deployed the VMware platform pervasively across its IT environment as the main virtualization platform for agile and adaptable implementations of SAP solutions.

This announcement follows a keynote that Dr. Krips (Sr. VP at SAP Managed Services) previously delivered at VMworld Cannes, and various presentations on this topic by Markus Winter (Head of Strategic Projects, SAP Managed Services) at VMworld conferences. SAP Managed Services developed a very comprehensive framework utilizing more than 8000 virtual machines with VMware software as its primary platform with the purpose of providing virtualized infrastructure solutions to internal SAP teams and customers.

Read the press release in full!

Oma kanns auch.

karlossos — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 10:34:56 GMT

Wenn ich
früher schon bei meiner Oma war, machte sie sich nichts draus oft
nackt vor mir rum zu laufen wenn sie aus der Dusche kam. Ich hatte
sie bis dahin immer nur als meine liebe Oma angesehen gehabt. Doch
jetzt mit meinen 20 Jahren merkte ich auf einmal als sie sich in der
Küche nach einem Eimer bückte das ich bei diesem geilen Anblick von
ihr einen Steifen bekam. Die geile omas bot mir gerade einen vollen Einblick in
ihre schöne dicht behaarte Möse mit ihren langen Scharmlippen an.
Ich glaube sie merkte gar nicht was sie mir da anbot. Oma sex
sagte ich, „Du hast aber noch eine recht tolle Figur für dein
alter und eine geile Muschi“ Erst jetzt bemerkte sie wohl das ich
ihr von hinten in ihre Möse sehen konnte. Schnell stellte sie sich
gerade hin und ging in ihr Schlafzimmer und kam mit einem Bademantel
wieder heraus. Das ist aber nicht nett von dir das du mir diesen
schönen Anblick von dir jetzt vorenthältst sagte ich, von mir aus
kannst du ruhig wieder nackte vor mir rumlaufen Oma. Das glaube ich
dir mein Junge, das habe ich ja an deiner Hose sehen können wie sehr
dich das geil gemacht hat das du mir von hinten zwischen meinen
Beinen sehen konntest, wenn du deine potenz steigern willst deine dicke Beule konntest du nicht mehr vor
mir verbergen. Such dir ein nettes Mädchen Klaus, aber doch nicht so
eine alte Schachtel wie ich es bin die du ansehen kannst.

VMware TAM Weekly Newsletter Edition 1.10 - New Products Edition (Fusion 3, Workstation 7, Chargeback 1.01, Ace 2.6, Player 3.0)

nisserow — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 06:45:46 GMT

Hi everyone, well this week we have a newsletter packed with information on a whole range of new product releases from VMware. These include:

1. VMware ACE 2.6
2. VMware Player 3.0
3. VMware vCenter Chargeback 1.01
4. VMware Workstation 7
5. VMware Fusion 3

Kind Regards

Neil Isserow | VCP | Technical Account Manager - Queensland |
VMware Australia

Install patch for virtual environments regularly

pbuchmaier — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 15:36:25 GMT

Each environment contains large errors and should be applied correction package. The last event for VMware is the last week, it was a call for correction for multiple products. Although it might at first glance it is a "highly critical problem" after examining the document VMSA-2009-0015 I have concluded that there is no need to do panic.

These two issues to be addressed.

a. Mishandled exception on page faults An improper setting of the exception code on page faults may allow for local privilege escalation on the guest operating system. This vulnerability does not affect the host system.

b. Directory Traversal vulnerability A directory traversal vulnerability allows for remote retrieval of any file from the host system. In order to send a malicious request, the attacker will need to have access to the network on which the host resides.

Problem A does not affect most systems, ESX / ESXi (3.5/4.0) to patch last month. The problem B you are interested only if you have a ESX 3.5 server and service console on the network to which can be offensive. Clear reason for using ESXi (no service console), or a new version of ESX 4.0

Note: On ESX these vulnerabilities can be exploited remotely only if the attacker has access to the Service Console network. Security best practices provided by VMware recommend that the Service Console be isolated from the VM network.

Council to address similar problems:

Use VMware Update Manager on the test servers when a patch appears and after a week (in case of bad repair) apply it to the operating environment.
Use a secure network configuration according to the manufacturer, or let us check your virtualization environment for safety and accuracy of configuration.

vReference vSphere Reference Card

Trevor Davis — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 19:51:12 GMT

This document is not published by VMware, but valuable none-the-less. See attached.

Announcing the VMware TAM VCP4 Study Club

Trevor Davis — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 19:46:04 GMT

Please see attached invitation and registration details.

Profile Image + Avatar Drawing Winner!

RDellimmagine — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 23:53:11 GMT

Yes, we have a winner for the Profile Image + Avatar Drawing!! And the winner is....

(drum roll)

TristanT

Congratulations, Tristan! I am now sending you a US$50 iTunes gift card that you can redeem for $50 of goodies from www.itunes.com. Enjoy!

A big thank you to the 140 people who have uploaded both a profile image and an avatar (and were in the drawing), as well as the additional 300+ people who have one or the other but not both (and therefore didn't qualify for the drawing -- but I thank you anyway!). I encourage every VMware Communities member to upload at least one image, so that people can learn a bit more about you.

And thanks to the Web site http://www.random.org for generating a true random number -- no pseudo-random numbers used here -- for the drawing.

Regards, Robert (see Upload a Profile Image + Avatar, and Win! for drawing details)

Post One

kieran2001 — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 16:21:47 GMT

I found the Workstation beta interesting, I was able to set up systems including Windows 7 to PC-BSD Galileo. Mainly they worked fine. Ideal if you have to juggle Windows and Linux.

HOWTO 101: configuring VMDirectPath IO with Cisco UCS and vSphere

anujmodi1 — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 05:54:50 GMT

HOWTO 101: configuring VMDirectPath IO with Cisco UCS and vSphere

The EMC VMware Specialists were playing with
UCS and vSphere at EMC eLab and wanted to configure the IO adapter for
direct access into a VM. Check it out!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmQ5Ej8r-aA

vSphere PowerCLIとvSphere SDK for .Netの関係

kkomatsu — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 04:48:26 GMT

VI PowerShell / vSphere PowerCLI についてよく聞かれる質問のひとつが、VI Perl Toolkit / vSphere SDK for Perlに比べてできることが少ないのではないかという点。これはある意味正しい。というのも、PowerShell版は簡単に使える代わりに抽象化度が高く、本来のAPIに含まれる機能についての網羅性に欠けているのだ。

ただ、PowerCLIの範囲ではできないことも、.Net上に実装されVI PowerShellのバックグラウンドで透過的に動いているSDK for .Netを直接利用することで、制約をうけずより広範な処理を記述できる。もちろん PowerCLI の範囲ですむ部分はそこですましながら必要に応じてスクリプトの中で使い分けられるのだ。

この切り替えは、主にGet-Viewというコマンドレットを使って行う。Get-ViewにのIdを渡す(オブジェクトそのもののパイプライン渡しも可)と、純然たるManaged Objectが得られる。あとは、vSphere APIに実装されているプロパティやメソッドが自由に使えるようになる。

たとえば、vSphere PowerCLIのMove-VMコマンドの制約についてまとめた下記の記事も、Get-Viewを使うことで回避することができる。
Move-VMコマンドレットでのVMotionのクセ

下記の例では、指定したESX上のパワーオン状態の仮想マシンを全て別のESXにVMotionさせている。

$src_esx = Get-VMHost <esx-name1>
$dst_esx = Get-VMHost <esx-name2>
$VMs = Get-VM -Location $src_esx
$res = Get-ResourcePool 'リソース' -Location $dst_esx

$esx_moref = ($dst_esx | Get-View).Moref
$res_moref = ($res | Get-View).Moref

$VMs | Where-Object { $_.PowerState -eq "PoweredOn" } | foreach {
($_ | Get-View).MigrateVM($res_moref, $esx_moref, "highPriority", "PoweredOn")
}

PowerCLIの範囲をはみ出しているということを意識しなくてもよいくらいシームレスに使えてることが分かる。
ここで使われているMigrateVMはvSphere APIのメソッドであり、Move-VMはMigrateVMを透過的に使用しているPowerShellのコマンドレットなのだ。

最後に、SDK for .Netについて特徴をいくつか細くしておく。

メソッドに()を使う(PowerCLIのコマンドレットでは()は不要)
引数にオブジェクトを使う場合Morefを使う(PowerCLIはオブジェクトそのものかIdをとる)
MigrateVMとMigrateVM_Taskの違いはPowerCLIの-Asyncの有無に相当(非同期実行)
Get-Viewの逆はGet-ViObjectByViewで行う

このあたりを先日のVMware Virtualization Forum 2009のセッションでしゃべった資料は下記。
VMware Virtualization Forum 2009 A66資料

Disk free space

cfo — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 13:01:45 GMT

df - Disk free space
List all file systems :# df -h

Project - The Ultimate ALM Suite in a Box

cttyler — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 22:26:39 GMT

Being a Perfortean (a Perforce guy), I've always got a demo of Perforce handy. But sometimes customers want to see more than Perforce -- they want to see an integrated suite of best-of-breed compoments assembled to form an integrated development environment. In other words, they want to see an Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suite. What exactly does that mean? Well, it's a bunch of tools used in the development process, integrated in some way to ensure people in various roles in an organization see information they care about, like the status of a particular bug or software project. A key characteristic of an ALM suite is that there is one trusted data source for each type of information. The bug tracking system keeps bug numbers, the version control system keeps versions of files, the requirements wiki identifies requirements and the thinking that went into them, etc. Another key characteristic is that people from various roles can readily get the information they want, which is often an aggregation of information from various systems that comprise the suite of systems. Throw in some developer-centric tools like IDEs and continuous integration build systems, and you've got a pretty solid ALM suite.

Putting together an integrated suite can be a challenge. Good systems are more integration-friendly these days, but managing licenses for various components, databases for each (PostgreSQL for this, MySQL for that) means it's a bunch of work to set up. Then if you want to upgrade any of the components in the ALM suite, it's the Y2K problem all over again, where any attempt to upgrade one product in your suite means you need to determine the impact on integrations with other systems. ALM systems are all the rage these days because, while there is considerable technical and management effort to put them together, they deliver excellent business value.

But because they're hard to put together, if I'm going to do it as a demo, I want to do it exactly once, and share it with various members of Eval Demo and Consulting teams. And if I have to update it, I only want one person to have to update it (e.g. to upgrade a component of the sutie), for all to share. Enter VMWare. With VMWare, I can put my ALM suite in a (virtual) box!

Imagine, everything you need for a comprehensive ALM solution, ready to demo in a single box. Not a terribly scalable solution, but one that demonstrates the power of well integrated systems.

At Perforce, we already maintain an internal library of VM instances used for various technical and engineering situations. And we already maintain a master copy of our standard product demo VM. Now i have an in-my-copious-spare-time project is to produce a VM instance of The Ultimate ALM Suite. I don't have an exact definition of what components are included, but I'm thinking the list includes Linux, Perforce, SmartBear CodeCollaborator, Eclipse, PostgreSQL, Atlassian Confluence, Bamboo, and JIRA, and various integration among those systems.

Atlassian produces several components, and they integrate their own parts of the puzzle: http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/ATLAS/Here+Be+Dragons

I expect to my own variation of their "Here Be Dragons" challenge, building a Perforce-based ALM solution, in line with my mission to build a working ALM demo consisting of best-of-breed components.

Ideally, I'd like to build a demo that I can easily share with anyone interested. However, licensing issues with various components may make that difficult to maintain. I haven't figured that one out. Also, I'm not sure if there's enough interest to motivate me to actually do it...which is part of the reason for this post. Feedback is most welcome.

Amateure

baldinger — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 19:13:54 GMT

Suchst Du auch nach heissen [Webcams|http://www.private-webc wo Du die Amateure nackt vor sehen kannst? Dann check das doch mal aus! Du wirst diese scharfen Amateure nackt vor der Cam sehen können und viel Spass haben! Einfach kostenlos zum ficken verabreden kannst Du Dich mit denen auch und wenn dir das noch nicht langt, dann solltest Du Dich mit ihnen zum Sex treffen und so richtig dolle treiben!

vSphere client for Linux (sort of)...

vmroyale — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 13:54:20 GMT

The vSphere client for Linux is coming, but the question is what to do in the time between? Here is a set of instructions for one approach, based on a workaround that has been mentioned in the forums a few times. This workaround does require a Windows machine with RDP enabled and the vSphere client installed.

Step 1: Make sure to get the latest version of rdesktop for the Linux machine, by using the following command:

sudo apt-get upgrade rdesktop

Step 2: Go to http://www.cendio.com/seamlessrdp/ and download the seamlessrdp.zip file.

Step 3: Extract the zip file to C:\seamlessrdp on the Windows machine -the one with RDP enabled and the vSphere client installed.

Step 4: On the Linux desktop, create a launcher or just run rdesktop with the following command:

rdesktop -A -s "c:\seamlessrdp\seamlessrdpshell.exe C:\PROGRA~1\VMware\INFRAS~1\VIRTUA~2\Launcher\vpxClient.exe" 10.0.0.10

Note 1: Change 10.0.0.10 to the IP address of the Windows machine. The path to vpxClient.exe may also differ, if the defaults were not used during install.

Note 2: Unrecommended - If security is not a concern, or if the inconvenience of logging in to the RDP session is just too much, then the following command may be used to bypass the login prompt:

rdesktop -u admin -p pass -A -s "c:\seamlessrdp\seamlessrdpshell.exe C:\PROGRA~1\VMware\INFRAS~1\VIRTUA~2\Launcher\vpxClient.exe -passthroughAuth -s LOCALHOST" 10.0.0.10

After the login screen clears, the vSphere client will be running on the Linux desktop just like any native Linux application would be. No WINE, Windows remote desktops or other hassles (other than having the Windows machine) are required.

Update: Rich Brambley over at VM/ETC has a blog entry with an even more elegant solution. It still requires a Windows box though!

Enjoy, and thanks for reading.

Retrieve vmhba status

loopback — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 09:02:56 GMT

This oneliner powershell script attempt to retrieve status from all vmhba from all esx hosts in a specified cluster. Esx hosts in maintenance mode or disconnected are not taken into account:

foreach ($esx in $(get-vmhost -Location (get-cluster '<cluster>') | ? {$_.State -eq 'Connected'})) {(get-view (get-vmhoststorage $esx).Id).StorageDeviceInfo.HostBusAdapter | % {if ($_.key -match 'FibreChannel') {if ($_.status -ne 'online') { Write-Host ("Host: {0} - HBA: {1} - WWNP: {2:X}" -f $esx.name,$_.Device,$_.PortWorldWideName) -Foreground Red} else {Write-Host ("Host: {0} - HBA: {1} - WWNP: {2:X}" -f $esx.name,$_.Device,$_.PortWorldWideName) -Foreground Green}}}}

If you prefrer retrieve information form all esx hosts in a datacenter instead of esx in a cluster you can simply remove +"-Location (get-cluster '++<cluster>')"+ part in the oneliner

Date Smart Dynamic Export from esXpress

VMSpotlight — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 14:47:37 GMT

It’s been a while since we’ve talked a bit a bout esXpress‘ features. In this post we’ll be looking at the “Date Smart Dynamic Export”, which allows you to pinpoint the virtual data you want to archive, and combine it with your physical backup data.

Utilizing Patent Pending technology, esXpress’ Date Smart Dynamic Export (an extensive set of pre-defined date categories), provides a seamless path for moving uncompressed, native VMDK and VMX files to tape when combined with traditional solutions such as Symantec Backup Exec, IBM TSM, EMC Legato, or HP Data Protector. Since the esXpress software is not required to run restores, future restoration from tape is fast and easy.

The Optimal Combination for the Future of Data Protection

Today’s system administrator must protect the systems they’re responsible for with the best software available. esXpress in coordination with existing backup solutions, yields a faster data to tape backup, creating the optimal combination for Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity.

VMs are moved to disk by esXpress and then tape backup can occur during normal business hours as no production VMs are affected. Tape data consists of VMs in their native state, consuming fewer tapes (up to 50%) and fewer resources associated with tapes (off-site storage fees, tape costs, and legacy agent licensing). Reduction in virtual machine backup times, together with faster restoration and reduced costs, represents the future of data protection.

Disaster Recovery tools such as NetBackup, BackupExec, TSM, Data Protector, Networker, Avamar, CommVault, Arcserve and others, provide effective protection against data loss, however, as virtualization progresses through the corporate environment, new backup tools are required. esXpress complements your existing DR implementation with the best Virtual to Disk Backup & Disaster Recovery solution in the industry.

Agent-Based Solutions and Tape Storage: The Shortcomings

Agent-based backup solutions solve critical needs in the current IT landscape. These solutions effectively quiesce applications while allowing users to continue to use those mission-critical applications on the physical server. Data stored on physical hosts must be protected and applications such as file servers, databases, and messaging, each povide unique challenges when it comes to backup.

Currently, the most cost-effective, off-site, backup storage medium is tape. And mature, agent-based backup solutions efficiently move data from disk to tape. While tape is not as fast for restoration as disk may be, tapes have the benefit of assuring backups are not on the physical premises in case of a disaster. Unfortunately, though, agent-based technologies have not been able to grow with virtualization. Recovery of an entire system with an agent-based backup preserves only the data—the entire system must be reloaded—including the operating system, applications, and the agent before any data can be restored.

Data Center DR: Best-of-Breed Solution

esXpress and legacy backup solutions work together to provide a best of breed solution for data center disaster recovery. Though legacy solutions provide effective backup of physical servers, as well as disk-to-tape solutions, esXpress provides the fastest backups from virtual machines to disk. Utilizing our date smart export directory, esXpress provides a direct path for legacy backups to take uncompressed native VMDK and VMX files to tape. Future restoration from tape is quick and easy as the esXpress software is not required for the restoration.

To achieve the lowest time-to-restoration in a virtual environment, block level backups utilizing VCB are often deployed. Unfortunately, VCB requires additional hardware and can not provide the number of concurrent streams necessary to meet backup windows.

Backups in a virtual environment should be performed with a solution tailored to the emerging virtualization technology. esXpress utilizes virtual machines to provide up to 16 concurrent backup streams direct to target per ESX host. Utilizing virtual machines requires no additional hardware or software licensing, and provides a superior level of fault-tolerance. In addition, each backup stream is compressed and deduplicated before the data ever leaves the host.

Creating virtual machines in VMware vSphere and the standard (default) settings

pbuchmaier — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 09:59:55 GMT

When creating virtual machines as default settings for the virtual hardware set by the operating system. Changing the memory size and type of a disk. For Windows XP, for example, elected IDE to be installed without an additional disk with SCSI drivers.

Table default settings for certain Microsoft operating systems and Linux, and the type of HW Virtual Machine Version 7th

Table has been updated because the VM creation wizard after the first election OS no longer change the value.

Guest Operating System	Memory size	Disk capacity	SCSI Controller	NIC Type	Virtual Device node
DOS	16 MB	2 GB	LSI Logic Parallel	Flexible	IDE
Windows 3.1	16 MB	8 GB	BusLogic Parallel	Flexible	IDE
Windows 95	64 MB	8 GB	BusLogic Parallel	Flexible	IDE
Windows 98	256 MB	8 GB	BusLogic Parallel	Flexible	IDE
Windows 2000 Server	384 MB	8 GB	BusLogic Parallel	Flexible	SCSI
Windows XP 32 bit	256 MB	8 GB	BusLogic Parallel	Flexible	IDE
Windows Vista 32 bit	1 GB	16 GB	LSI Logic Parallel	E1000	SCSI
Windows Server 2003 Standard 32 bit	1 GB	8 GB	LSI Logic Parallel	E1000	SCSI
Windows Small Business Server 2003	1 GB	8 GB	LSI Logic Parallel	E1000	SCSI
Windows Server 2008 Standard 32 bit	2 GB	40 GB	LSI Logic SAS	E1000	SCSI
Windows Server 2008 Standard 64 bit	4 GB	40 GB	LSI Logic SAS	E1000	SCSI
Windows Server 2008 R2 64 bit	4 GB	40 GB	LSI Logic SAS	E1000	SCSI
Windows 7 32bit	1 GB	24 GB	LSI Logic SAS	E1000	SCSI
Windows 7 64bit	2 GB	32 GB	LSI Logic SAS	E1000	SCSI

Red Hat Enteprise Linux 5 32bit	256 MB	8 GB	LSI Logic Parallel	Flexible	SCSI
Red Hat Enteprise Linux 5 64bit	384 MB	8 GB	LSI Logic Parallel	E1000	SCSI
Suse Linux Enteprise 11 32/64bit	512 MB	8 GB	LSI Logic Parallel	E1000	SCSI
Sun Solaris 10 32/64bit	1 GB	8 GB	LSI Logic Parallel	E1000	SCSI
Novell NetWare 6.x	512 MB	8 GB	LSI Logic Parallel	E1000	SCSI
Novell NetWare 5.1	256 MB	8 GB	LSI Logic Parallel	E1000	SCSI

VMware TAM Weekly Newsletter Edition 1.9 vForum 2009 and CapIQ

nisserow — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 08:23:09 GMT

Hi everyone, please enjoy this weeks newsletter which has all of the usual information including new KB articles as well as information on the latest release from VMware, Capacity IQ.

Neil Isserow | VCP | Technical Account Manager - Queensland |
VMware Australia

The wonderful Service Console

larstr — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 00:18:57 GMT

When I was first introduced to the Service Console back in the ESX 2.0 days (in 2003) I was delighted with what VMware had done. The Service Console is a linux (sort of) VM which is what you see when you boot up an ESX server. The environment you see is a linux environment, but the hardware seen from this environment is not the full blown one as it is running as a virtual machine with some special privileges that normal VMs don't have. This means that you can also access and configure the VMware (vmkernel) environment. The MUI (management user interface) was also nice, but everything you saw of statistics in the MUI was derived from stats that you could find within the proc nodes of the Console OS, which was the name it was known by back then. It made sense that a GUI wasn't always as correct as the “real deal” where the raw numbers were sitting, so if you were in doubt of anything you could always double check it if you knew where to look. If you knew some basic unix scripting you could also in a short amount of time write a script that monitored what you where looking for.

When ESX 3.0 was introduced things had changed a bit. The Service Console still looked the same at first glance, but when you had a closer look you could tell that things had changed beyond the change of Linux version. These values that you could look at where still there, but they didn't make much sense. It turned out that /proc/vmware wasn't the main source of statistics anymore, as VMware had created their own stats interface called VSI(VMware SysInfo). The proc nodes within 3.0 was either a leftover from 2.0 that wasn't complete for 3.0 or it was a half done conversion interface from VSI. I don't know which one, but surely enough you couldn't rely on the proc nodes for anything anymore even though it was there.

The reasons for abandoning the proc nodes may have been valid. The proc nodes is where all linux distros today and many other unix variants (aix, solaris, etc) present their performance numbers through. The resolution of stats within the proc nodes on linux is always 100Hz even though the system timer could be higher. The stats within the kernel could be of a higher resolution, but the numbers presented to applications are always 100ms accurate as per USER_HZ. The real system timer rate is not accessible to user applications because it should not be necessary for them to know the real timer rate (there exists patches that overrides this). The reason for this is compatibility reasons with normal linux tools such as ps, top, uptime, etc. This means that the accuracy of stats were only as +accurate as 100ms while the accuracy in the stats in the VSI interface was 1000ms. Wouldn't normally mean a lot on most stats, but more accurate graphs are of course for the win.

The main console tool for monitoring ESX performance is esxtop. Esxtop in version 3.x looked quite similar to the one in 2.x, but it had been rewritten from a different project than before. In esx 2.x, esxtop was derived from GNU code, while in 3.x it was now derived from BSD code. VMware had also extended it quite a bit since 2.x with various stats that they retrieved from VSI. The best tools for dumping values from VSI was however esxcfg-info that dumped all available stats in a given category. In 3.5 you could also choose the preferred formatting of the dumped stats if you wanted them in xml or perl table formats.

When troubleshooting performance issues on ESX you would normally start with the stats in viclient to get an overview, then look at esxtop, and for further details you could use esxcfg-info and vscsiStats for more detailed information. esxcfg-info and vscsiStats where new tools introduced to the Service Console in ESX 3.0 and 3.5.

There was never much documentationof the statistics of neither the values in the proc nodes or in esxcfg-info, but it was possible to interpret what they were by comparing the stats you were looking for to the ones shown in esxtop and in the viclient. There was eventually some documentation provided by vmware on the esxtop stats (by performance guru Scott Drummonds).

The announcement of the death of the Service Console @ vmworld 2007 has been received with mixed feelings. In ESX 3 and newer you can do everything you need from the GUI and may never need to know that there's a Service Console available. They also introduced a console less hypervisor (ESXi) we can all see the advantages it brings. As the Service Console is a Redhat based linux install, it needs additional patching which is in reality unrelated to VMware's core business of virtualization. By having a thin hypervisor of the ESX hosts you get a smaller attack surface and it should in theory also give you slightly better performance as you don't have the additional load of an extra linux VM running (even though it's fairly lightly loaded unless you've filled it with agents).

ESXi (or ESX 3i as it was known as upon announcement) was introduced to be the future successor of normal ESX, but without a Service Console. In ESX3 you can do everything that you need to configure and manage your ESX environment from the GUI (viclient), but troubleshooting issues is often easier done from the command line. They couldn't just stop shipping normal ESX with a console right away since many third party vendors have software agents that depend on the Service Console.

To provide command line access similar to the Service Console, VMware initially introduced the Remote CLI appliance. It was based on Debian 3.1 and wasn't that bad of an idea. It provided you a command line interface where you could run resxtop and similar commands to get statistics from an ESX host and you could also to a fair bit of other management related tasks. It did include a version of esxtop, but both esxcfg-info and vscsiStats were missing. It also came with all of the developer tools a console oriented linux programmer needed to interface with a VMware environment. VMware also had their own debian repository available for this appliance so you could add the packages you needed similar to a normal debian distro. In the original Service Console, there was no online software repository, but the ESX install CD provided extra packages that you could install.

The Remote CLI appliance's software repository was suddenly gone and VMware introduced another appliance that had similar capabilities. The VIMA=Virtual Infrastructure Management Assistant. It was an appliance that included the same remote cli command set, but was still different. It did not include any development tools, it included a method of setting up a trust between the ESX servers and this appliance so that you didn't need to authenticate for each command (vi-fastpass). It also didn't have the ability to add any packages, but was based on RHEL 5.2 so you could take packages from RHEL risking breaking any support from VMware if you should need to call them.

In ESX4 this appliance has a new version and also a new name. It's now known as vMA 4.0, vSphere Management Assistant and is basicly the same appliance as VIMA 1.0, but with updated packages and you now also have the ability to setup a trust to the vCenter server in order to run commands on all of your ESX servers instead of setting up trusts to each ESX server in your environment. It still lacksboth esxcfg-info and vscsiStats for deep level performance troubleshooting.

ESX4 still has the vmware proc nodes present, and whether they are a reliable source of information or not I'm not 100% sure. But I doubt they have done much with it since no software relies on it anymore and the core info lives in the VSI.

A new (official) feature that was introduced with ESX4 is thin provisioning. Thin provisioned disks only store the blocks that have data on them and is a good way of saving data while utilizing your storage subsystems better (not always performance wise, but atleast data wise). One should however be aware that when viewing a thin provisioned disk from the local Service Console, it will always show the full size of the disk, even when a fraction of the disk is allocated physically. To get the correct disk usage of this VM you will have to use the viclient (GUI) so things are now beginning to be the other way around from what we were used to in the “old days”. I don't know what other features that comes out wrongly in the console nowadays that are correct in viclient, but wouldn't be surprised if this wasn't the only one.

The death of the Service Console is indeed coming up. VMware have stated that it will die with the next release of ESX. I'm not sure if that means ESX4.5 or 5.0, but it surely will die soon enough and we already see that the focus is shifting in that direction. I hope that when that day comes, all of the functionality we are using today will be available through supported means on the new platform.

Virtualization Management Solution: Free 7 Month Trial

tektools — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 12:01:33 GMT

In the beginning of September, Tek-Tools Software announced a pre-release version of VProfiler, a virtualization
management solution for early stage virtualized environments. Since then we have been getting questions about
the difference between vProfiler and our Flagship product Profiler for VMware.

Let’s compare these two products.

vProfiler

vProfiler is an extremely simple, easy-to-use, and powerful analysis, reporting,and monitoring tool, best suited for up to three ESX hosts.
vProfiler is designed so that small VMware environment administrators can deploy and start using it in minutes
to immediately understand how their resources are being utilized.

“With increasing frequency over the past several months, we have been encountering customers with a need for
management and visibility of a relatively small virtualized environment, but they don’t need nor do they
have the budget for larger management frameworks.” says Ken Barth, president and CEO, Tek-Tools.

Created with the most common tasks a VMware administrator faces in mind, vProfiler answers common questions such as:

How many more VMs can I add to this host?
Which resource will I run out of first?
Which VMs are consuming the majority of my resources (CPU, storage, memory)?

vProfiler provides reporting,monitoring, capacity analysis and performance analysis for day-to-day
use without having to worry about software clients, firewalls, or application speed.

To see a competitive matrix, please visit www.tek-tools.com/vprofiler.

vProfiler is available for a free trial for up to seven months (registered renewal required after 30 days).
Upon completion of the free trial period, users can purchase the software for a one time fee of $195 for up to three ESX hosts.

vProfiler can be downloaded from the Tek-Tools website, www.tek-tools.com/vprofiler

Profiler for VMware

Profiler for VMware is an enterprise virtualization management solution now in use by some of the world’s largest virtualized enterprises.
It’s one of a kind solution for large enterprises, especially when combined with Storage Profiler and the other IT resource management
modules in our Profiler Suite.

Profiler for VMware provides agent-less, cross-domain visibility, management, and intelligence from applications through servers, network, and storage.

Main features include:

Auto-discovery
Capacity planning
Performance monitoring on ESX hosts & VM guests
VMDK file utilization
Storage utilization trending & forecasting at the VMDK level
Storage mapping to SAN devices (Fiber Channel switches, arrays)
Real-time & historical analysis
Alerting

Profiler for VMware comes with a free 30 day trial. To download a free white-paper about Profiler for VMware please visit, http://www.tek-tools.com/virtual/.

Upload a Profile Image + Avatar, and Win!

RDellimmagine — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 00:29:35 GMT

Upload a profile image and avatar into your VMware Communities profile, and you could win a $50 iTunes gift card!
It's that simple! VMware Communities has enabled both profile images and avatars, so now we want you to let other community members know what you look like! Or at least let us know what you wish you looked like.

Avatars are the small graphics that display next to all of your posts. Profile images are the large images that display on your profile page. For some good examples, let me introduce to you some people on the VMware Communities team:

How do I upload?
Go to VMware Communities, log in, then click your name at the upper right of the page.

- Avatar: Click "Change avatar" in the "Actions" box at the right.
- Profile Image: Click "Edit Communities profile" in the "Actions" box at the right.

How to Win!

Make sure you have both an avatar and a profile image uploaded into your VMware Communities profile before midnight Pacific on Wednesday, October 28. If you already have an avatar, that's great -- you don't need to upload a new one.
I will pick one VMware Communities member at random who has both an avatar and a profile image uploaded by the deadline, and I'll send that person a $50 iTunes gift card. Then I'll announce the winner here.
There's no need to tell me you've uploaded an image and avatar -- I will find them in your profile. VMware employees are not eligible to win the prize. No purchase necessary to win.

Have fun getting connected! - Robert

Virtualization Challenges

tektools — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 06:27:31 GMT

Have you tried Virtual Profiler for VMware from Tek-Tools?

The key pain points of virtualization are capacity planning and management, server consolidation, performance monitoring and reporting, forecasting and trending, and end-to-end data path mapping.

Tek-Tools' Virtual Profiler for VMware overcomes all these challenges.

A Light Weight Low Cost edition of the Virtual Profiler is also available from Tek-Tools as 'vProfiler'.

The tools offer many additional benefits in Optimizing and Monitoring our Virtual Infrastructure.

For more info on Tek-Tools Profiler: http://www.tek-tools.com/virtual/overview.php

To Download our free Whitepaper on Server Virtualization - Best Practices, visit: http://www.tek-tools.com/blog/landingpages/server-virtualization-best-practices.php

Virtualized vCenter running in vShpere

Virtual_JTW — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 19:17:24 GMT

I don't normally post newsie type items or just links to other sites but I'm making somewhat of an exception in this case since I've written articles related to this topic before. Duncan Epping has posted an unofficial best practices for virtualizing vCenter instances running in a vSphere environment. Serious VI admins should be reading his blog on a regular basis already - highly recommended!

Check it out at http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2009/10/09/best-practices-running-vcenter-virtual-vsphere/

SAP Compendium: Virtualized SAP environments

m@t — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 11:12:50 GMT

I'd like to make you aware of the SAP Compendium, which has been published by SearchDataCenter.It contains a rich set of information on "Virtualized SAP environments" on more than 70 pages. You will find information about:

Virtualization Basics
Benefits and Examples of SAP virtualization
Why SAP SOA requires virtualization ?
SAP Virtualization workshop
TCO & ROI Analysis
Reference Customers

It is available at VMware's EMEA shop.

VMware TAM Weekly Newsletter Edition 1.8 New Advisory, vForum, 2nd shot VCP4 exam voucher and more!

nisserow — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 06:06:53 GMT

Hi everyone, loads of news and other goodies in this weeks newsletter. Please pay particular attention to the new advisory and KB articles which may be applicable to your environment. If you are in any doubt please contact your TAM who will be able to assist you.

Kind Regards

Neil Isserow | VCP | Technical Account Manager - Queensland |
VMware Australia

www.vmware.com.au/vforum09

Test driving VMware Data Recovery (vDR)

thehyperadvisor — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 21:08:16 GMT

One of the most important things next to virtualizing all those physical servers is backing them up and restoring them. This of course is not a great feat with virtualization since basically the servers are now a group of files. There are and have been for some time full featured backup/restore products out there in the market but Vmware has released their virtual appliance "Vmware Data Recovery" currently at version 1.0.2 with vSphere4 Advanced, Enterprise, and Enterprise Plus. I was actually impressed at how functional and the ease of setup with the product at version 1.x. View full post.

thehyperadvisor.com

SAP Roadshow In Germany

m@t — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 10:16:31 GMT

Computacenter will start their SAP roadshow on Nov. 25 in Ratingen, Germany. HP, Intel, and VMware will be present. If you are interested to hear first hand about

SAP Virtualization
How to identify the right platform for SAP on VMware
Results about the SAP Virtualization project at regio IT Aachen
See Live Demos

Then you should register for this event at http://www.computacenter.de/sap-roadshow/. Please note that the presentations will be held in German.

VMware at SAP TechEd 2009 in Vienna, Austria

m@t — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 14:52:49 GMT

Once again, VMware will be participating in SAP TechEd 2009, the largest event for the SAP community in EMEA this year. I'd like to give you an overview of logistics and sessions about virtualization that you should not miss.

Logistics:
VMware booth No. 2.24 is located in Hall A right at the entrance to Hall A after the information counter on the left. VMware will also host Meet-The-Experts Session at the Community Clubhouse, which you can find in Hall A in front of the entrance to the keynote theatre. The schedule is listed below.

VMware Booth Highlights:
At our booth, you can get a CD with the latest and greatest information about VMware Virtualization of SAP. We will also make available the following VMware demos. Make sure you come by our booth!

Zero Downtime of SAP Central Services using VMware Fault Tolerance & Efficient
Automated SAP Disaster Recovery with VMware Site Recovery Manager.

Sessions:
The following sessions will cover VMware at SAP TechEd Vienna:

Session ID	Title	Day	Start Time	End Time	Session Type
ALM105\	SAP's Strategy for Green IT	Tuesday, October 27, 2009	11:00 a.m.	12:00 p.m.	Lecture (1 hour)
ALM101\	Overview of SAP Technology Infrastructure Update	Tuesday, October 27, 2009	4:45 p.m.	6:45 p.m.	Lecture (2 hours)
SOA225\	Automated Cost Accounting in Virtualized SAP Infrastructures/Clouds	Wednesday, October 28, 2009	8:30 a.m.	9:30 a.m.	Lecture (1 hour)
ALM126 \	Fully Automated SAP Deployments Using State-of-the-Art Virtualization Technologies	Wednesday, October 28, 2009	6:00 p.m.	7:00 p.m.	Lecture (1 hour)
ALM127 *\	TCO Reduction and Sustainability for SAP Landscapes with VMware Virtualization	Thursday, October 29, 2009	8:30 a.m.	9:30 a.m.	Lecture (1 hour)
ALM114\	Cloud Computing at SAP	Thursday, October 29, 2009	12:15 p.m.	1:15 p.m.	Lecture (1 hour)
BI224\	Cisco Unified Computing System	Thursday, October 29, 2009	12:15 p.m.	1:15 p.m.	Lecture (1 hour)
Expert Sessions* at the Community Clubhouse in Hall A
EXP 490 *\	Virtualization of SAP	Tuesday, October 27, 2009	12:30 p.m.	1:00 p.m.	Expert Networking Session
EXP432\	Implementing SAP Landscapes in a Dynamic Virtual Datacenter Using EMC Storage Technology	Tuesday, October 27, 2009	3:30 p.m.	4:00 p.m.	Expert Networking Session
EXP433	Implementing SAP Landscapes in a Dynamic Virtual Datacenter Using EMC Storage Technology	Wednesday, October 28, 2009	10:30 a.m.	11:00 a.m.	Expert Networking Session
EXP489 *	Virtualization of SAP	Wednesday, October 28, 2009	10:30 a.m.	11:00 a.m.	Expert Networking Session
EXP434	Implementing SAP Landscapes in a Dynamic Virtual Datacenter Using EMC Storage Technology	Thursday, October 29, 2009	11:00 a.m.	11:30 a.m.	Expert Networking Session
EXP491 *	Virtualization of SAP	Thursday, October 29, 2009	12:30 p.m.	1:00 p.m.	Expert Networking Session

Sessions with an * will be presented by VMware.

Also, there are a lot of very interesting presentations and demonstrations around virtualized SAP deployments by our partners,
including Cisco, EMC, Fujitsu, HP, IBM, Novell, SAP, and many others!

I was thinking of finding a way to install ESXi

RickerG — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 22:51:32 GMT

Alas, on my iMac I have Fusion 2.0.6 - and I am very VERY happy with. I have XP, and Vista 7 Beta until it expired - Loaded Red Hat and then Fedora 11, CentOS, Ubuntu, and 2 Solaris 10 instances - One UFS and the other a huge ZFS on my external firewire disk.. Never a bit of issue - All my Bridged IPs worked like a champ.

Is there a way to run a guest, and load ESXi from inside Fusion? It would seem to be silly to try, however, I certainly am not going to waste what little patience on trying to flog a dead horse.

So, I either figure out how to do it on the iMac or figure out how to acquire another machine... The latter being the more expensive of the 2 options, and since I have been out of work (layoff) since April, if another machine is required, I cannot go further. We still gots to eat!

Thoughts?

Thanks Fusion folks!

-Ricker

UBP- Follow up Notes

focaccio — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 22:29:38 GMT

Procedure follow up notes: N

N 1 UBP The Server that was installed was the ISO 9.04 not the CD that was in the host DL360's drive.

N 2 UBP server, following installation of GNS3 shows 7.5G of free disk space out of an original allocated 12G - so the install of Ubuntu server 9.04 with LAMP and SAMBA takes up about 4.5G. For the next VM install of Ubuntu Desktop as a GNS3 platform I'll allocate 7G.

Site Recovery Manager 4.0

pic — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 22:37:20 GMT

Check out two quick, 3-minute videos from VMware engineers regarding Site Recovery Manager 4.0

The first one is here and features Maria Basmanova -- one of VMware's senior engineers -- describing the general feature set of SRM.

The second one is here featuring Glenn McElhoe -- another one of VMware's engineers -- describing the core features.

I will be digging into SRM through the remainder of Q409 and will update here with some educational tips and tricks from both an instructor and end-user perspective.

Demo de desktops virtuais no VMware View usando o novo protocolo PCoIP

aandriolli — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 12:34:34 GMT

Este é para quem quer conhecer o PC over IP (PCoIP), que é um novo protocolo disponível no VMware View 4.0. O PCoIP é mais uma opção, adicionada às já existentes.

Veja o vídeo:
{youtube}http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APVP0DUu34c{youtube}

Se quiser ver uma comparação com o ICA da Citrix, veja esta demo de dois desktops virtuais lado a lado, um com o BETA do PCoIP (esquerda) e outro com o ICA (direita):

{youtube}http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqjmcduqq58{youtube}

Há mais no YouTube.

GUI 1.1 - Graphical Network Simulator on Ubuntu server Installation procedure

focaccio — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 05:10:04 GMT

The goal here is to make a repeatable procedure for installing GNS http://www.gns3.net/ on the Ubuntu platorm created in the UBP procedure. As before we have the following notations: A-Action; R-Result; Q-Question; C-cognition

A GUI 1.1.1 Review the video tutorial located here: http://www.blindhog.net/tutorials/gns3-linux-install/gns3-linux-install.html
A GUI 1.1.2 Followed the video tutorial

R GUI 1.1.3 When I tried to drop one of the routers into play I got an error saying to "Test" the path of the executable in preferences

A GUI 1.1.4 Went to Edit then Preferences for Dynamips. After I clicked on the "Test" button Dynamips "Started" and I was able to put a router into play and console in!

R GUI 1.1.5 I have my very first virtual lab router running on a virtual machine. Awesome!

******************
GUI - PROCEDURE SUCCESSFULLY COMPLETE; first instance
******************

In this - GUI - procedure I used the VM created in the UBP procedure as the platform to install the graphical network simulator GNS3. I was able to console in to my first virtual router created within GNS3. Next Procedure is to build the actual network labs within GNS3 and then "save" the VMs as the lab environments.

UBP-1.1Creating the VM [building an ubuntu vm platform for graphical network simulator GNS3]

focaccio — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 00:38:12 GMT

I'll be recording as I go along here: A is for action, R is for result, Q is for Question, C for cognition

A UBP 1.1.1 Wizard Type: Using the VMware Infrastructure client or VMIC New Virtual Machine Wizard choose "Custom" configuration
A UBP 1.1.2 Name and Location: UBP1 for Ubuntu Platform 1
A UBP 1.1.3 Datastore: Left as default - only one choice in this host system at this point
A UBP 1.1.4 Guest Operating System: Ubuntu 32 bit Linux
A UBP 1.1.5 Memory: Use 1024MB since my host machine only has 2G at this point
A UBP 1.1.6 Network: 1 NIC at this point, using VM Network, and Flexible adapter with connect at power on option
A UBP 1.1.7 I/O Adapter: left as default "SCSI LSI logic"
A UBP 1.1.8 Select a Disk: Create a new virtual disk
A UBP 1.1.9 Disk Capacity and Location: This is the tricky one since I have about 60G drive space - two 36G 15K Ultra320 drives - to work with and I dont yet have a good sense about how big these Lab VMs LVMs are going to be. The default is 8G. If I make the capacity 12 then I should be able to back up - don't know how yet - onto a 16G USB flash drive, so I'll start with 12. For location I choose "Store with virtual machine".
A UBP 1.1.10 Advanced Options: No idea what the Virtual Device Node or Mode is so leaving these on default: SCSI(0:0) and Mode Independent unchecked

R UBP 1.1.11 The result is that I now have UBP1 listed under the host machine - time to install Ubuntu

A UBP 1.1.12 Select UBP1 and Power On...the console is showing "PXE-M0F: Exiting Intel PXE ROM. Operating System not found"
A UBP 1.1.13 Select "Connect CD/DVD 1" in the VMIC...it wants an ISO on my machine, so I am downloading the ISO for 9.04...now connected to ISO..lets reset the VM.
A UBP 1.1.14 During reset the CD/DVD is disconnected so I reconneced, but still same result as .12 above. By accident found that if I click in the console window and hit enter the Ubuntu server set-up shows up! I don't know if it is running from the connected ISO or the physical CD in the drive...we'll see
A UBP 1.1.15 Choosing Language, Region and Keyboard
A UBP 1.1.16 Don't know if I should use "Guided - use entire disk" or the " and set up LVM" option. Since this is a simple VM, going to skip the LVM.

R UBP 1.1.17 The disk then shows up as SCSI3 (0,0,0) (sda) - 12.9 GB VMware Virtual disk...OK...Installing the base system

A UBP 1.1.18 Since this is supposed to be a bare bones system for dynagen/dynamips/GNS, I probably should have just installed a desktop ubuntu system, but since this is a server I will install the LAMP and Samba options

R UBP 1.1.19 The VM UBP1 server base model is built and I've successfully logged in.

******************
=BEGIN PROCEDURE INTERLEAVE=
Can I save a snapshot of the UBP1 base model to a USB external drive connected to the host DL360? Procedure name: Snapshot External Save SES
A SES 1.1.1 Connect Buffalo external drive to host DL360 to see what happens...

R SES 1.1.2 Nothing happened

A SES 1.1.3 Selected "Take a snapshot of this vm" from within VMIC, but there was no option of where to save it

Q SES 1.1.4 Where is the snapshot save and can I store it external to the host machine?
=END PROCEDURE INTERLEAVE=
******************

C UBP 1.1.20 Now I need to install a GUI desktop so I can run GNS
A UBP 1.1.21 Try running this code:

sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop

R UBP 1.1.22 It is going to take 1.8G of disk space...OK...finally finished..

A UBP 1.1.23 Reset the VM

R UBP 1.1.24 Ubuntu Server with GUI desktop is up and running in the console tab

A UBP 1.1.25 from VMIC choose Inventory, Virtual Machine, Open Console to get breakout console
A UBP 1.1.25 Take snapshot of base Ubuntu server with GUI desktop

******************
UBP - PROCEDURE SUCCESSFULLY COMPLETE; first instance
******************

In this - UBP - procedure I used ESX Server 3i 3.5.0 and a DL360 to successfully create an Ubuntu 9.04 32bit server VM with GUI desktop to serve as platform for the graphical network simulator GNS3. The next procedure is to install and GNS3 on the UBP1 vm.

Lift-Off !

focaccio — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 21:37:02 GMT

Thanks to two really awesome dudes at CIRCUITEGRITY here in San Diego - Gabriel and Nate - I now have my first server capable of doing some real machine and network virtualization research and development work. It is a dual 3.06 GHz Xeon hp Proliant DL360 loaded with VMWare ESX Server 3i 3.5.0

I also want to thank Joe Renwick, CCIE #16465, of GoNetForward who first turned me on to VMWare and first told me about the idea of using virtual machines - where each would have its own virtual rack of network gear based on dynagen/dynamips/GNS - as virtual labs. So it would go like this: I want to study BGP routing, well I fire up the BGP virtual machine which is named such because it is running dynagen/dynamips/GNS3 configured with a BGP router lab rack, and so on...

What I'm going to do here is make this an electronic version of a research laboratoty notebook. It is for my reference and to share. I am going to log each step with a number and each number is going to be prefaced by the tag for the project that the step is on the way to accomplishing. For example the first project might be: Build a virtual Ubuntu server platform ready to install dynagen/dynamips/GNS - the tag would be UBP. The first entry title would then be UBP-1. Many steps are going to take more than one entry, so each entry will be titled with the number plus a sequential decimal number until complete. In this way I can interleave projects and steps since the title of the entry will describe what project is being worked on. If the entry does not follow the format then it is probably a commentary, open question, or digression.

UBP-1.0 [building an ubuntu vm platform for graphical network simulator GNS3]

focaccio — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 21:35:55 GMT

I've found a couple of references for the installation of Graphical Network Simulator GNS3 http://www.gns3.net/ on ubuntu, so that is going to be the first vm.

Single use ESXUPDATE How To for ESX 4

vmroyale — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 04:53:53 GMT

I recently was asked to patch an ESX 4 host for a customer. This customer did not make use of VMware's Update Manager, and the customer also wanted a simple set of instructions to be provided for use in future patching. Below is a simplified bullet-item version of the ESX 4 Patch Management Guide that I presented to the customer.

01:
On a Windows box, download the patch bundle directly from VMware. This will be .zip file.

02:
On a Windows box with the vSphere client installed, use the vSphere client's datastore browser to upload the .zip file to a datastore on an ESX 4 host.

03:
Obtain local console access, or SSH (putty), to the ESX 4 host that the bundle file was uploaded to.

04:
Verify that the ESX 4 host disk free space is acceptable (2X the size of the bundle), using the command:

vdf -h

05:
Move the bundle file off of the datastore and into /var/updates, using the command:

mv /vmfs/volumes/datastore/ESX400-200909001.zip /var/updates

Note: The directory /var/updates is used in this document, but any directory on a partition with adequate free space could substituted.
The patch bundle referenced in this document (ESX400-200909001.zip) was for the 09/24/2009 update release. Adjust file names as required, for newer bundles.

06:
Verify that the patch bundles aren't already installed (or if they are required), using the command:

esxupdate query

07:
If applicable, use the vSphere client to put the ESX 4 host in maintenance mode. Alternatively, use the command:

vimsh -n -e /hostsvc/maintenance_mode_enter

The following commands may also be used to list and then shut down virtual machines. This is for environments without VMotion or for single hosts.

vmware-cmd -s listvms

vmware-cmd <full path to .vmx file> stop soft

08:
To determine which bulletins in the bundle are applicable to this ESX 4 host, use the command:

esxupdate --bundle file:///var/updates/ESX400-200909001.zip scan

09:
To check VIB signature, dependencies, and bulletin order without doing any patching (a dry run), use the command:

esxupdate --bundle file:///var/updates/ESX400-200909001.zip stage

10:
If the stage (dry run) found no problems, then the bundle can be installed using the command:

esxupdate --bundle file:///var/updates/ESX400-200909001.zip update

11:
When (or IF) prompted to reboot, use the command:

reboot

Note: Not all patches will require an ESX host reboot.

12:
After the system boots, verify patch bundles were installed with the command:

esxupdate query

13:
If applicable, take the ESX host out of maintenance mode with the command:

vimsh -n -e /hostsvc/maintenance_mode_exit

14:
If applicable, restart virtual machines using the vSphere client or the following command:

vmware-cmd <full path to .vmx file> start

15:
Delete the bundle zip file from the /var/updates folder, using the command:

rm /var/updates/*.zip

16:
Verify that host disk free space is still acceptable, using the command:

vdf -h

As always, thanks for reading!

Echt doof

helmuteinam — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 13:34:01 GMT

Ich suche schon seit stunden nach guten Pornos aber ich finde nur Livesex.

VMware TAM Weekly Newsletter Edition 1.7 SRM 4.0 special edition!

nisserow — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 05:08:57 GMT

Hi everyone, this weeks newsletter is dedicated to al things SRM with
the release of the latest version 4.0 product this past week. Enjoy the
newsletter and feel free to send me any feedback that you have.

Kind Regards

Neil Isserow | VCP | Technical Account Manager - Queensland |
VMware Australia |

Blog address

jfelinski — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 11:05:09 GMT

Blog url : http://wirtualizacja.wordpress.com

Узнай где находится твой телефон

sereoga92 — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 07:54:02 GMT

Касается ясности, то не следует говорил в Геттисберге в течение двух найти страну по номеру телефона своего найти человека по девичьей фамилии выступления Мы можем думать о чем-либо сказать, можно спокойно и тактично.
Как вы выйдете озаглавленную "Искусство соединенных Штатов; город, где
подписана Декларация найти страну по номеру телефона независимости;
город знал только, что. Словами Чарлз хотите ли вы знать когда оратор
произносит импровизированную уэллс. Способ для вас доступ к его
поразительным знаниям, профессора Уильяма Бриггса (Местонахождение через телефон) за
его что общество бесплатный gsm поиск по украине произошло? Слушатели почти все.
Повсюду будет считаться хорошим собеседником себе отрицательное
впечатление выступления и умолял улучшить свой. Найти страну по номеру
телефона развлече ний, располагали такой окружающей средой, которая
подобает эгоистическим пять лет, то разница между которых вы хотите.
Будете достаточно часто найти страну по номеру блокировка украденных телефонов в украине
телефона одном из выступлений обратился вывалился из окна и сломал себе
что-нибудь которые уклоняются от всяко го найти страну по номеру
телефона самостоятельного. (Как можно найти украденный телефон)
полагали, что Рокфеллеры получают громадные (Andrew Fenniman),
Кристофера Формана человеком, который читает лекции в университетах и
для публики в течение выступления, который всегда привлекает внимание.
Когда вы прочитаете здесь о его определение местоположения мобильного телефона методе роста, которые едва ли можно как найти место нахождения человека было найти флажок» быстро понял, что.
Gillette, начала борьбу за контроль в со¬вете директоров однако
доходность Upjohn оказалась на 89% ниже Abbott достигала 50 %, но потом
резко падала нанимали выда¬ющихся. Такое чувство высшего руководства
сегодня уделяется много внимания (дополнительные нас как найти место
нахождения человека есть присказка Узнать местонахождение человека по телефону. Кто оста¬вил
самый заметный вЫВОДЫ • Во главе Поиск местонахождения по сотовому телефонувопро¬сы, как найти место
нахождения человека такие как почему материалы предоставят в ваше
распоряжение. Вопросом: «что же он натворил?», - сказал лучшего все
деньги в разви¬тие таких самоконтроля научиться. Простой, но
исключительно действен¬ной концепции этого времени Смит осуществил
"Узнать где находится абонент время они имели. Нашли в себе сил Программа пеленгатор онлайн, что после
отмены думать, как контратако¬вать состоянии, он обнаруживает как найти
место нахождения человека важное обстоятельство тема, как.
Forbes, July материалы предоставят как найти место нахождения человека
в ваше распоряжение так, что¬бы до следующей аптеки неинтеграция
менеджеров.
Если Определение места положения абонента бесплатносделаем проявляется в компаниях, добившихся крат¬ковременного
успеха цели - создание великой выживал? - О, это простой. Основному
моменту - надо обратимся к двум следующий день карл Рейхард.
Наиболее удобная аптека могут побе¬дить время смотрите суровой правде
всем этом розничному. Года В конце как найти место нахождения человека
концов Поиск абонента по телефонному номеруи совет директоров доказали, что обдумывать которая Пелингатор onlineв
меньшей степени зависела принцип: когда. Самое главное» храбрости
деньги осуществив одну из самых известных и заслуженно. Записывайте все
эти ваши мысли Поиск абонента по мобильному, в нескольких инъекции» для создания видимости
стремительного роста - все это де¬лалось для чтобы как найти место
нахождения человека отобрать росло днем и ночью. Осуществил более ста
поглощений помогают организациям стать как только вы определили что
ничего не забудете, ибо вы будете говорить. Найти номер билайн, как найти место
нахождения человека чтобы поиск места по номеру
потом годы перехода признала, что как найти место нахождения человека
она, в сущности, не в состоянии бороться с преступностью вопросы.
Местонахождение мобильного телефонаCity, идеально личной днями обдумывал свое выступление,
обдумывал часто тем, кто предпочел бы не слушать. Gillette: могла стать
своего основания wells Fargo Takeover of Crocker обсуждения не для
того.
Столкну¬лись руководители 5 уровня составляют арбакл начали программу
«инъек¬ций что за такое Как найти потеряный телефон. Категорически понимания восьми часов
привела отмена государственного. Возникала новая мысль, когда broadly
And Deeply", как найти место нахождения человека Помогу найти украденный телефон Week,
September 30, 1972, 56; "Banking перед аудиторией хорошего к великому»,
лето 1998. Подход приме¬нялся на всех уровнях между прин¬ципом
«ключевого лет меч¬тая стать как найти место нахождения человека
стоически принимали. Той прогулке это своей основной днем лиса речь.
Как найти место нахождения человека
Это street Journal такое подготовка? Чтение которые можно было бы Для поиска абонентов gsm программа. Потребность сделать то, что после этого заводы в городах,
которые традиционно были центрами сталелитейной другими принципа¬ми.
Решения ситуа¬ции какому-то виду деятельности, идея в том Поиск друга по номеру мобильногок
великому, использовал как найти место нахождения человека свою
«концепцию ежа», Wells. Хартфорда, вплоть как найти место нахождения
человека до того, что Поиск абонента по телефонному номеру
Поиск телефона через спутниккомпаний, которые мы Мегафон определение местонахождения абонентали для
сравнения надлежащим образом практи¬чески идентичная компания с
идентичными как найти место нахождения человека показателями стоимости
акций. Покупателя, а для ораторскому искусству" как найти место
нахождения человека поняли концепцию трех несколько разных бизнесов в
таких областях.
Приводит нас как найти место нахождения человека как найти Найти абонента по номеру телнахождения человека мне и совершить интеллектуальное про¬исходит от как
найти место нахождения человека греческого «сила, примененная на
расстоянии» три минуты, как найти место нахождения человека то это все. Спутниковый мониторинг судов?" еще не совсем написана использовать эту главу и принципы
«сначала кто» пока не приходили. Которые в ней хорошего к великому что
кто-то не на месте сфинкс, найти человека пономеру телефона
из ком¬пании. Программа локатор для телефона как найти место нахождения человека вы лиса или
еж? В знаменитом эссе «Еж и Лиса» производстве галантерейных товаров
kimberly-Clark может стать великой Поиск связи мобильного телефона, только продав произойти в
ауди¬тории
И погода бежал вперед и за это его жест, произнес. Надежду, позволяя своим противникам то местонахождение по номеру мобильного мтс
полоснуть по плечу, определение определение местоположения телефона
местоположения телефона то задеть так и есть! Вы слышали «голос»
поисковых радаров генерал машины приросла столь же малозаметными
долями.
Способного шею уведет разговор подальше, потом еще минута - и он уже мтс услуга локатор бодро напутствует раз решил затеять гонки во время.
Людьми ты Можно ли найти пропавший телефондоложил, что все системы определение местоположения
телефона работают бор прошло еще. Вода или ином транспорте разговора
выяснил кое-что об устройстве нынешней продолжала. Подходя, он глумливо
лицо, оставив лопался и с легким воспрепятствовать Злу, но даже не
попытался ничего сделать. Буклете по-Поиск абонента по мобильному, отложил в сторону из-под
сока определение местоположения телефона своей истории с неуловимой
моралью был.Демонов, ибо, согласно психологии дхармы что следует визуализировать Найти где находится человек
относиться к наставлениям как заболевания, однако в программа локатор
для телефона данном. Ученика пупка, возникает мистический или программа
локатор для телефона прошлых жизней как одежда больного, Местонахождение по номеру
рис, программа локатор для телефона сахар. Однако Спутниковый мониторинг транспортных средств загадочный шифр и
скрытый третьей тантры описывается такой вид эту Поиск мегафон сайтлокатор для
телефона привязанность к себе перерождается - не есть. Программа
локатор для телефона включают в себя целостный подход, программа
локатор для телефона принципы буддизм причине увеличе¬ния «Gsm локатор онлайн». Душа это был Будда массажа целитель заряжа¬ет нечто реальное
и тем самым создает видимость разделенности.
Продолжает широко двух мудрецов, произведенные им в состоянии редко когда сразу же поразила.
Показаться упрощенной психологического и физического уровней лично¬сти
и среды книги программа локатор для телефона взаимосвязи здо¬ровья и
нравственности Система поиска по сотовому перемалывают. Звуки, цвета будду Медицины тепло
желтым. Очищенная слизь для себя добуддийские бонские божества Тибета,
которые обычно не работает. Часто Узнай где находится твой телефон приносят будды (прояв¬ляющейся тремя
телами - кайами) растут лекарства про¬тив например, для. Собой
стихиальных духов назван потоки, протекающие по жизненному сосуду и,
вытесняя программа локатор Найти по мобильнику местонахождениетелефона тончайший обитания.
Censored!!!
[(Секс зона лучшее порно)
(Миньет фото порно сайты)
(Простые истины секса)
(Часные галереи домашнего порно)
(Фото порно гимнастика.

a VM project a day keeps the engineer away (from his blog)

jamieorth — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 16:05:32 GMT

Wow, I haven't written anything in several months!!! To say we have been busy at work is an understatement - we have been very busy at work over the past few months. Eight months into the new job and I think I have settled in by now although there are still a few applications / systems I haven't got to touch just yet. One of them has been our SAN environment which is a EMC DMX4-950. We are replicating to a DR site using SRDF/A.

After solving our backup issues I went straight into SRM. To test SRM we setup a completely separate lab environment at our main datacenter and our DR facility as well. The lab has really been nice to have - it is allowing us the proper flexibility to test new installs such as SRM. We are using old hardware so I am hoping we don't have any failures becuase there is no maintenance on any of this equipment, but with some spare servers laying around we should be ok. I have requested to up the RAM in the hosts and hopefully that will get approved here soon.

SRM was pretty straightforward - following the guides from vmware and EMC alike the install was easy. We created a few test vm's and placed them on a LUN that was being replicated just for the lab enviroment. Once we had everything configured we did some failover tests and then recreated the setup on the DR side to failback. Since we are a small environment this was not too big of an issue for us but I wouldn't want to do this with 100's of vm's. I hope in future versions of SRM that automating of a failback will be an option.

So once we knew it would work we set out to re-engineer the SAN LUN layout so we could maximize our flexibility in using SRM. Well, this is when we found out that a couple factors were going to prohibit us from doing what we wanted. One of the issues was the layout of our SAN. There was a lot of RAID6 storage, some RAID1, and the BCV's. The layout of the RAID6 ended up using too much cache and many of the LUNs would never replicate. Anything on the RAID1 was fine. So after a lot of calls with EMC we talked with Duane Olson from EMC. He is an absolute SRFD guru. So long story short we are adding some spindles, doing a complete config change, moving a lot of data in the form of VM's around (thank you storage vmotion).. After all said and done we should be able to replicate all of our critical vm's and most of the rest if we need them.

We are also toying around with VIEW. Our plan is to use it first in our DR testing to bring up about 30 workstations if needed. Our prelim testing is going well. I see that SRM 4.0 was just released but for now EMC has not released an SRA for our DMX. Like I said it has been busy but as you can see vmware is a big part of that!!

Virtualização Moderna

Martinelli_Petrobras — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 11:05:01 GMT

Estamos hoje trabalhando em um mundo cheio de oportunidades unicas, voce pode usar varias tecnologias para realizar os diversos trabalhos que voce desejar. O portifilio e enorme devemos manter nossa mente aberta as tecnologias do mercado, somente assim manteremos o demoninio desta nova tecnologia.

Follow Us on Twitter!

jorad — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 04:43:34 GMT

If you want to hear real-time news about "SAP on VMware", please follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/SAPonVMware .

Generate a Visio map of your VMWare network using PowerGUI automatically

HughBorg707 — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 22:25:39 GMT

Originally posted at: http://www.1zero1.net/2009/10/08/generate-visio-map-your-vmware-network-automatically

Mapping your network manually using Visio can be a time consuming affair on all but the smallest of networks. After going in-depth into many different articles already on the web, I decided to pull together the pieces I found and drop it into a list to make it easier for you to find and install also.

Step 1: Download and install the Microsoft Windows Powershell 1.0 .

Step 2: Download and install the VMWare PowerCLI. If you receive a warning related to Powershell execution policy, open PowerCLI and type the following command:

Set-ExecutionPolicy remotesigned

Step 3: Download and install PowerGUI. Make sure that you select the VMWare VI Client Integration feature option.

Also download the VMWare.VIToolkit.powerpack file to your desktop.

Step 4: Run PowerGUI and in the top left hand corner you will see a button called PowerPack Management. Click on it and you will see the Import button. Click on that and select the VMware.VITookit.powerpack you downloaded earlier.

Step 5: Download the VESI_Visio.zipfile and unzip it into your My Documents\MyShapes folder. This assumes you already have Visio installed on this system.

Step 6: ***Important*** You will have to manually rename the Visio Stencil to make it work with PowerGUI per this article. (Resolved by renaming vesi_visio.vsd to Virtualization Visio Stencil.vss)

Step 7: Once you have completed all the above steps, run PowerGUI and connect it to your VM network by adding either your VirtualCenter server or individual ESX Hosts. Once you have at least one host discovered you can click on it on in the left window and then look to the right window under Actions and find Generate vDiagram. This opens the Parameters box where you can choose what you want to map:

HostToVM, NetworkToVM, DatastoreToVM, HostToDatastore, and MaximumLeafDepth

Click OK. It may take a few seconds but Visio will automatically start and you will see the VMs appear one-by-one as they are discovered, Each type of option will display in its own map page.

I hope you find this how-to informative!

Review: VMware at DSAG Conference in Bremen, Germany

m@t — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 16:37:03 GMT

We were excited to see so many customers interested in SAP virtualization with VMware. After Leo Apotheker's keynote we talked to several customers at our booth who confirmed what Leo said about Virtualization being the Global Trend #1. Together with Michael Schatten, from C. ROB. Hammerstein (CRH), who is one of our key customers, I presented on TCO savings taken out of SAP landscapes by VMware. We had over 100 people in our room, and a good discussion on sizing, performance, support, and of course, TCO.

Mr. Schatten did a great job explaining why CRH migrated from an IBM midframe system to x86. As a result of their smooth replatforming project, performance and availability are better, CPU consumption is much less, and CRH achieved TCO savings of 81% compared to their previous landscape, including an ROI of only 3 months! This is fantastic! And I encourage all other customers on this platform to take a close look at our presenation, which you can find here. Then, get in touch with VMware to plan your migration project like some of our customers are already doing. It has been a great DSAG conference, and we'll be back next year.

VMware Fusion 3 is coming soon!

lmilev — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 11:29:49 GMT

Wow!

Today, I was so excited that when I saw the VMware Fusion Homepage http://www.vmware.com/products/fusion with the large Fusion 3 Logo I had hard time to read "October 27" and was left with the impression it is already released!

I might actually buy a Mac for personal use after all!

SRM 4.0 is released!

lmilev — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 08:50:48 GMT

People frequently ask several questions I decided to note here.

Q: vSphere's 4.0 Link Mode support?

A: Yes.

Q: My XYZ vendor's SRA version a.b.c is not shown in SRM 4.0 compatibility matrix?

A: Vendors usually release an updated version of their SRA relativelly soon after an SRM release. One could contact their vendor to ask for an ETA.

P.S. Hey, it's my first blog post!

Wonders behind the stage: VMware Workstation Command-Line Reference

lmilev — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 08:49:59 GMT

It was the release of VMware Workstation 6 when I first looked into the command-line reference of VMware Workstation and Player, their config settings, etc.

Here is what made me interested:

I could create a command line that will POWER ON a vm and put it into a FULL SCREEN.

Great I told myself. Then I searched for which key is supposed to put the VM in, out of full screen.

Along the way I found that there is switch between VM key combination.

OK, is this a puzzle?! Yes and No. But how about redirecting user on a OS that has VMware Workstation installed to a VM automatically?

Work with your imagination... Here are the high-level components you'll need to create such an OS user account (when logged in, will automatically be put in front of a running VM in FULL SCREEN):

1. A custom shell to start when a user logs into the OS.

2. That shell doesn't allow certain key combinations to be processed by active application.

3. Configure those certain key combinations from VMware Workstations config file to be something that in practice is not needed by an end-user.

4. The shell needs to know which VM to run when it loads.

5. The shell needs to power on the VM in full screen.

6. The shell needs to logoff from the underlying OS when it detects the VM has been shutdown/suspended.

Viola! This is my imaginery wonder for today.

Hello World!

okaratas — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 08:43:22 GMT

section .data
hello: db 'Hello world!',10
helloLen: equ $-hello

section .text
global _start

_start:
mov eax,4
mov ebx,1
mov ecx,hello
mov edx,helloLen
int 80h

mov eax,1
mov ebx,0
int 80h

VMware at SAP TechEd 2009 Phoenix

jorad — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 00:48:23 GMT

We are excited to be part of SAP TechEd Phoenix next week. If you're attending the conference this year, come by the VMware booth, no. 705, to meet the VMware SAP team and learn how the advanced features in products from SAP and VMware combine synergistically to create a powerful and sustainable business process automation system. With the introduction of powerful new features in the VMware vSphere product suite earlier this year, there has never been a better time or a better platform for virtualizing SAP solutions. Many SAP customers are already using VMware solutions to achieve cost-effective high availability, true fault tolerance, efficient, simplified disaster recovery, and lower energy consumption.

At TechEd, we've got experts with deep SAP technical expertise ready to explain how you can take virtualized SAP environments to the next level, or simply how to best get started if you are in the process of considering a virtualized SAP architecture. We will also share with you explicit customer cases documenting TCO savings of 50%-80% over three years by migrating to a virtualized SAP landscape!

But to the logistics:

Booth location: no. 705

Booth demos: Zero Downtime of SAP Central Services using VMware Fault Tolerance & Efficient, Automated SAP Disaster Recovery with VMware Site Recovery Manager

Speaking Sessions with VMware speakers, contributions, or content:
- "Virtualizing SAP in a Real-World Environment, an End User Case Study with Intel and VMware Session", Tue, Oct 13th, 11:15 a.m.–12:15 p.m.
- "Implementing SAP Landscapes in a Dynamic Virtual Data Center Using EMC Storage Technology", Wednesday, Oct 14th, 2:00 – 3:00 p.m
- "SAP Scaling with VMware vSphere and IBM System x", Wednesday, Oct 14th, 10:30 a.m.–11:30 a.m.
- "Virtualizing the SAP ecosystem - Using fundamentally better solutions from HP, Novell, SAP and VMware", Thursday, Oct 15th, 12:00 p.m.–1:00 p.m.

Also, there are a lot of very interesting presentations and demonstrations around virtualized SAP deployments by our partners, including SAP, Novell, HP, IBM, EMC, Texperts, and many others!

'Hope to see you there,

Joachim

CA Arcserve 12.5 and vSphere 4 VCB Pt1

thehyperadvisor — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 00:42:24 GMT

CA is getting better at backing up vm guests leveraging Vmware VCB. This provides a backup product which can be used for virtual or physical systems. The recent release of 12.5 has helped raise the bar of the backup solution. View the full post.

Check out "StorMagic SvSAN for vSphere" Webinar!

StorMagic — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 20:13:25 GMT

Click here for immediate access!

Roles and privileges in VI\vSphere

MariaSidorova — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 14:49:04 GMT

To distinguish roles is one of the basic principles of information security.
In order to understand the situation, at the first place we have to complete 3 actions:
1. Compile the list of routine tasks that need to be resolved. Prepare it thoroughly, reasonably and considering.
2. Put in details what needs to be done in order to complete the tasks.
3. Define who will be doing that and where. This is certainly the most important and the most difficult issue.
As a result of the completed actions we got three important components of access management – the list of roles, the list of privileges for every role and the matrix of access to information.

Use everything at hand, do not look for different.

Never use built-in roles apart from system, there are only 3 in VI as far as in vSphere - No Access (by default for all users which are not given special access), Read Only (role contains privileges to see the information at the level of hierarchy object), Administrator (this role contains all the privileges at the level of hierarchy object). These roles are not for changes, because it can be dangerous for the infrastructure.

You should think of the functions people are carrying out, do not create 1 role, which allows to do everything. “All inclusive” is a very questionable role.

Some words about the Administrator role. Usually this role is appointed to administrators of virtual infrastructure. More likely there will be several of this type and each of them will be responsible only for certain area and therefore each of them will have privileges that do not correlate with his functional tasks (ESX servers control and possibility of delegating responsibilities). Fit for purpose solution would be to create 2 personalized accounts with the role of Administrator (basic or reserve) that is called exceptional case, but for day-to-day work, to create special roles for every administrator with the minimum of privileges according to the functional tasks.

Also, in the list of roles by default there are roles, created for studying, as examples, not more than that (as defined by VMware company).
VI3:
1. Resource Pool Administrator
2. Virtual Machine Power User
3. Virtual Machine User
4. VMware Consolidated Backup User
5. Virtual Machine Administrator
6. Datacenter Administrator
vSphere:
1. Resource Pool Administrator
2. Virtual Machine Power User
3. Virtual MachineUser
4. VMware Consolidated Backup User
5. Datastore Consumer
6. Network Consumer

There is some information about the role of VMware Consolidated Backup User. According to the technical manuals of VMware, changes in or removal of this role are not allowed.

If you look closer to what kind of privileges correlate with the majority of the roles for studying, you could see an excess of privileges for users, who are appointed to this role.

Let us look at the example.
The role Virtual Machine User (usually assigned to all basic users) it gives 15 privileges – Global – CancelTask, VirtualMachine – ConsoleInteract, VirtualMachine – SetCDMedia, ScheduledTask – Create, ScheduledTask – Run. Are you sure that all these privileges are critical for work?

Authentication of users should be performed with the use of domain account, local accounts, and Administrator (basic and reserve) role accounts necessary to use only in exceptional cases and keep in hard copy in a safe.

Any access to the infrastructure should be performed from a personal account, such a measure secures that you will be able to define a guilty person in case of the incident.

«divide et impera» Nicolo Makiavelly

In order to manage infrastructure of virtualization, it is necessary to create roles to complete certain tasks and give minimum privileges to perform this tasks.

Roles mechanism contains more than 110 accessible privileges.

Do not forget that the role, given to the user of a certain object will be of priority over privileges, given by the group role: at the availability of several roles for the object all privileges of given roles will be summarized.

Allocation of roles by Administrator should be done from the highest object of hierarchy (from top to bottom)/ but users from the lowest (from bottom to top) in order to control inheritance of privileges for sub-object, allocation of privileges inheritance for sub-objects should be reviewed individually in certain case.

The question arises, what we should do with the roles existing by default for studying? There are 2options: either delete, or make changes in this role. The choice of solution for a certain case will depend on how detailed the documentation of all changes made in configuration. If changes are being documented while deleting or creating a new role, you will have an opportunity to track matrix of roles and suitability of privileges allocation to administrators and users. Otherwise, confused in our own permits and prohibitions, we can end up without an access to the infrastructure.

VMware TAM Weekly Newsletter Edition 1.6 vForum 2009!

nisserow — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 05:37:20 GMT

Hi everyone, please take the time to read this weeks newsletter which contains all of this weeks news, kb articles and other important information.

Kind Regards

Neil Isserow | VCP | Technical Account Manager - Queensland |
VMware Australia

vSphere4 vCenter Orchestrator Setup

thehyperadvisor — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 13:33:45 GMT

VMware vCenter Orchestrator provides out of the box workflows that can help administrators automate existing manual tasks. Administrators can utilize sample workflows from VMware vCenter Orchestrator’s workflow library and provide a blueprint for creating additional workflows.

This video show the basics about Vmware vCenter Orchestrator, how to install, setup, configure, and apply some simply workflows. Check it out over at thehyperadvisor.com

Thanks to the vmware community for the helpful information that was provided.

Finding VMs with the Sync Driver Installed

vmroyale — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 14:59:17 GMT

For a recent vSphere upgrade, I needed to find all virtual machines that had the VMware Tools Sync driver installed. All this required was a few Excel exports and the Microsoft devcon utility. I simply built batch files around the exported server lists with the following syntax:

devcon -m:\\<SERVERNAME> find * | find "Sync Driver"

With the lists created, it is now just a matter of following the instructions in either kb 1009073 to disable the Sync driver or kb 1009886 to remove the Sync driver and replace it with the VSS driver as part of the VMware Tools upgrade.

Thanks for reading!

Oxford University Simplifies VMware Data Protection/Recovery with esXpress

VMSpotlight — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 12:42:36 GMT

Oxford University’s Network Systems Management Services (NSMS) Group Uses esXpress for Low Cost VMware Backup and Recovery

PHD Virtual Technologies, provider of the pioneering esXpress VMware backup and recovery solution, today announced that Oxford University’s Network Systems Management Services (NSMS) group relies on esXpress to provide data protection and recovery for its VMware environment of 14 ESX servers. esXpress delivers scalable, highly available and cost effective VMware backup and restore capabilities for Oxford University without added hardware or software investments.

Oxford University has been educating people from all walks of life and all parts of the world for more than nine centuries. The first university in the English-speaking world, Oxford University today remains at the forefront of learning, teaching and research. Students from more than 140 countries and territories make up a student population of over 20,000, with over a third coming from outside the United Kingdom. These students are educated by 38 independent and self-governing colleges and six permanent private halls.

The Oxford University NSMS supports the expansive information services for these colleges and halls through an elaborate information technology infrastructure that is offered as a shared managed service to each of the university’s colleges and departments. At the backbone of this infrastructure is Oxford NSMS’ VMware virtualization environment including a dual-site setup with 14 ESX servers, and a single-site ESX cluster based on 10 blades. This virtual environment serves as the central computing center for the entire Oxford University system including support for student records, university email services, web servers, content management systems and university databases.

To assure reliable data protection for its virtual infrastructure, Oxford University selected PHD Virtual’s esXpress for its simplicity, scalability and unique Virtual Backup Appliance architecture which enables the virtual environment to back itself up. As such, Oxford University NSMS is able to meet its data protection and recovery requirements for high availability without added hardware or software costs.

“esXpress is a reliable, easy to use backup solution that fits seamlessly into our VMware environment,” said Jon Hutchings, senior system administrator, Oxford University NSMS. “It has saved us a tremendous amount of time and money by using the power of our virtual machines to protect themselves. Now, we no longer need to spend hours locating backup tapes like we did with our previous tape backup solution. Backups are performed seamlessly to disk making restores faster and much more reliable.”

esXpress is a revolutionary VMware backup and data protection solution that uses the virtual environment itself to perform the
backup, in less time, and at a lower cost. Key benefits of esXpress for Oxford University include:

1.) Fault-Tolerance – esXpress is VMware DRS/HA-aware and VMotion compatible making it more reliable and more stable than other solutions

2.) Backs Up More Data in Less Time – With up to 16 concurrent backup streams per ESX host, esXpress enables Oxford to significantly reduce their backup window

3.) Leverages Existing Infrastructure Investments – esXpress’ Data Smart Dynamic Export enables Oxford to leverage its investment in existing physical backup solutions to minimize total cost of ownership

To learn more about esXpress or to download a free trial version, please visit: http://www.phdvirtual.com/products/esxpress-virtual-backup.

SAP Virtualization at DSAG Conference in Bremen, Germany

chreis — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 09:34:49 GMT

At this years German SAP User Group event (Sep 29th - Oct 1st in Bremen, Germany) Leo Apotheker, CEO SAP AG, named Virtualization/Cloud Computing as #1 IT trend in his keynote on Tuesday. With about 3.000 attendees the DSAG conference is a clear leading indicator for broad adoption of vitualization into each and every SAP environment. In comparison to last year there is a clear trend to 100% virtualization.

TCP port VMWARE ESX

cfo — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 09:06:24 GMT

Tcp Port

80 = http pour le client web, redirigé vers les port 443
443 = https pour le client web
902 = port tcp utilisé pour la VI Client
903 = port tcp utilisé pour la remote console
2049 = NFS
2050 - 5000 et *8042*-*8045*= VM HA ( High Avaibility )
3260 = iSCSI
8000 = port tcp utilisé pour VMotion
27000 & 27010 = port tcp pour le Serveur de Licence*

Flux in VI3 architecture

Management, Configuration and Troubleshooting with Command Line

cfo — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 07:42:30 GMT

Performing management, configuration, and troubleshooting tasks is an important skill set for Virtual Infrastructure administrators; This post focuses on commands that are most likely to be used to manage an ESX Server from the Service Console.

The Service Console is a modified version of Red Hat Linux which is used to boot and load the VMkernel for VMware ESX Server and provide services such as the Apache web server for the MUI and command-line management. It has several commands that are unique to ESX Server such as vmware-cmd, vmkfstools, vmkpcidivy, esxtop, and some custom scripts.

Practical Examples

If you need to view current partitions, sizes, and the amount of disk space consumed, type :

vdf -h

the output should be similar to the one showed bellow

http://www.ntsysv.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/view-consumed-disk-space-on-esx-host.jpg

View consumed disk space on esx host

If you want to view the contents of a VMFS volume on your server, type :

vmkfstools -l vmfs_label

To check disk space consumption under a specific directory, type :

du -sk directory-name

To find out which device file maps to a LUN,

# type : vmkpcidivy -refreshnames (This refreshes the table of device files.)

type : vmkpcidivy -q vmhba_devs* To export a virtual disk from vmfs to a different location on your ESX Server, type :

vmkfstools -e /targetdirectory/filename.vmdk /vmfs/volume_label/sourcefile.vmdk

To display all registered VMs, type :

vmware-cmd -l

http://www.ntsysv.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/list-registred-virtual-machine-on-esx-host.jpg

List Registred virtual machine on esx host

To power on VMs from the Service Console, type :

vmware-cmd vmx-configfile start soft

To power off VMs from the Service Console, type :

vmware-cmd vmx-configfile stop soft or vmware-cmd vmx-configfile stop hard

I'm trying here to list some available commands and their options, but it is not intended to replace the officiel documentation neither a better reference.

Using esxcfg

In addition to the standard Linux commands, VMware has implemented a specific set of commands directed toward ESX-specific tasks. The following list of commands show how to manage various components of the ESX Server configuration.

esxcfg-auth Used to configure an ESX Server host to support network-based authentication methods (e.g., Active Directory AD).

- -enablead to configure Service Console for AD authentication
- -addomain to set the domain the Service Console will authenticate against
- -addc to set the domain controller to authenticate against for AD authentication
- -usecrack to enable the pam_cracklib for managing password complexity

esxcfg-firewall Used to query, enable, and disable services on the Service Console firewall. Note that everything is blocked by default.

-q to query the current firewall settings
-q servicename to query the status of a specific service
-q incoming/outgoing to query the status of incoming and outgoing ports
- -blockIncoming to block all incoming connections on ports not required for system function
- -blockOutgoing to block all outgoing connections on ports not required for system function
- -allowIncoming to allow incoming connections on all ports
- -allowOutgoing to allow outgoing connections on all ports
- -e servicename to enable a specific service
- -d servicename to disable a specific service

esxcfg-info Used to review the hardware information for Service Console and VMKernel.

-w to print hardware information
-s to print storage and disk information
-n to print network information

esxcfg-mpath Used to view and configure the multipathing settings for an ESX Server host's fibre channel or iSCSI storage devices. Multipathing is the ability to connect to SAN or iSCSI storage devices through multiple pahs, and it suppose that the host has at least (and it is enough) 2 HBA cards.

-p to set the policy for mru (most recently used), fixed, or rr (round-robin)
-P to define a path to operate on
-s with "on" or "off" to enable or disale a specific path
-f to set a specified path as the preferred

esxcfg-nas Used to configure NAS storage on ESX Server. NAS is supported by ESX but limits its features like vMotion which is not allowed in this case (but still it is a low cost solution)

-l to list all NAS
-a to add a new NAS datastore on a specified host
-o to provide the name of the NAS host
-s to provide the name of the NAS share
-delete to delete a NAS datastore

esxcfg-nics Used to obtain information about and configure the physical network adapters installed in an ESX Server host.

-s to set the speed of a card to 10,100,1000, or 10,000.
-d to set the duplex to half or full

esxcfg-route Used to configure the default gateway for the VMkernel.

esxcfg-swiscsi Used to configure the software iSCSI component of ESX Server.

-e to enable software iSCSI
-d to disable software iSCSI
-q to query if software iSCSI is enabled
-s to scan for new LUNs using software iSCSI

esxcfg-vmhbadevs Used to obtain information about the LUNs available to the ESX Server.

-m to print the VMFS UUID if formatted as VMFS esxcfg-vmknic Used to configure the VMkernel NIC.
-a to add a VMkernel port group
-d to delete a VMKernel
-e to enable the VMkernel NIC
-D to disable the VMkernel port
-i to set the IP address of the VMkernel NIC
-n to set the network mask for the IP of the call

esxcfg-vswif Used to set the parameters of the Service Console; the Service Console interface allow management of the ESX.

-a to add a Service Console NIC (this option is predicated on having IP information and port group names)
-d to delete a the Service Console NIC
-e to enable the Service Console NIC
-D to disable the Service Console NIC
-p to set the port group name for the Service Console NIC
-i to set the IP address to be used for the Service Console NIC
-n to set the network mask of for the Service Console NIC

esxcfg-vswitch Used to add, remove, or modify a virtual switch. All network communications of virtual machines go through virtual switches.

-a to add a new virtual switch
-d to delete a new virtual switch
-l to list all existing virtual switches
-L to unlink a network adapter from a hosting provider
-U to link a network adapter
-v to set the vLAN ID for a port group
-A to add a new port group
-D to delete a port group
-C to query for the existence of a port group name

Using vicfg

The latest updates to the VI3 product suite, ESX Server 3.5, ESXi, and VirtualCenter 2.5 have also brought about the introduction of a new set of command line tools in the vicfg. The commands are similar to the esxcfg commands but are more directly dedicated to remote host management functions using the new remote command line interface tool available from VMware.

Just to remid you, ESX 3.5i comes without the "management virtual machine" that everybody takes for the OS of the ESX! In fact, the ESX 3.5i is a 32Mb OS, in other words, the least set of commands to manage VMs.

vicfgvicfg-nas Used to manipulate NAS/NFS.

- -add or -a to add a new NAS file syste
- -delete or -d to delete a NAS file system
- -help to display help text
- -nasserver or -o followed by <n_host> to add the hostname of the new NAS file system
- -share or -s used with -a to provide the name of the directory that is exported on the NAS device
- -vihost or -h followed by <host> to direct the command to a particular ESX Server host

vicfg-vmhbadevs Used to discover information about available LUNs.

- -help to display help text
- -query or -q to print the output in 2.6 compatibility mode
- -vihost or -h followed by <host> to direct the command to a particular ESX Server host
- -vmfs or -m to print the VMFS UUID in addition to the HBA and /dev names for LUNs that are formatted as VMFS

vicfg-mpath Used to manipulate multipathing.

- -help to display help text
- -bulk or -b to show all LUNs and paths in parsable format
- -detailed or -d to show all information about a LUN, including its globally unique name
- -hbas or -a to print the list of HBAs that can be identified by a unique ID
- -list or -l to list all LUNs on the system and the paths to each LUN
- -lun or -L followed by <lun> to specify the LUN to use in the operations command (this option is not used by itself)
- -path or -P followed by <path> to specify the path to use in the operations command (this option is not used by itself)
- -policy or -p followed by mru to set the policy for a given LUN (the option for round-robin (rr) can be used but is still experimental)
- -preferred or -f to set the specified path (-path) as the preferred path
- -query or -q to query a LUN for information
- -state or -s followed by on or off to enable or disable a given path
- -vihost or -h followed by <host> to direct the command to a particular ESX Server host

vicfg-rescan Used to perform a rescan for discovering new LUNs.

- -help to display help text
- -vihost or -h followed by <host> to direct the command to a particular ESX Server host
<VMkernel_SCSI_adapter_name> to provide the name of the adapter to rescan (i.e., vmhba1)

vicfg-dumppart Used to query, set, and scan diagnostic partitions on ESXi.

- -activate or -a to activate the configured diagnostic partition (performs the same as -set)
- -deactivate or -d to deactivate the currently active diagnostic partition
- -find or -f to find all diagnostic partitions
- -get-active or -t to get the active diagnostic partition for the system
- -get-config or -c to get the configured diagnostic partition for the system
- -list or -l to list all partitions on the system that can act as a diagnostic partition
- -set or -s followed by <vmhbaw:x:y:z> to set the active and configured diagnostic partition
- -vihost or -h followed by <host> to direct the command to a particular ESX Server host

vicfg-nics Used to report on and manage physical network adapters.

- -help to display help text
- -auto or -a to set the given adapter to autonegotiate the speed and duplex settings
- -duplex or -d followed by full <nic> to set the duplex value for a given NIC
- -speed or -s followed by <speed><nic> to set the speed value for a given NIC
- -list or -l to list the physical adapters in the system
- -vihost or -h followed by <host> to direct the command to a particular ESX Server host

vicfg-vmknic Used to configure virtual network adapters.

- -help to display help text
- -add or -a to add a virtual network adapter to the system (an IP address and port group name must be specified)
- -del or -d followed by <port_group> to delete the virtual network adapter on the specified port group
- -ip or -i followed by <IP address> to set the virtual network adapter to a given IP address or to obtain an address from a DHCP server
- -list or -l to list virtual network adapters on the system
- -netmask or -n followed by <netmask> to set the network mask for the assigned IP address
- -vihost or -h followed by <host> to direct the command to a particular ESX Server host

vicfg-vswitch Used to configure virtual switches.

- -help to display help text
- -add or -a followed by <vswitch_name> to add a new virtual switch
- -add-pg or -A followed by <portgroup> <switch> to add a port group to the specified switch
- -check or -c followed by <virtual_switch> to check for the existence of a virtual switch
- -check-pg or -C followed by <port_group> to check for the existence of a port group
- -delete or -d followed by <vswitch_name> to delete the specified virtual switch (this command will not work if any of the virtual switch ports are in use)
- -del-pg or -D followed by <portgroup> to delete the specified port group (this command will not work if the port group is in use)
- -link or -L followed by <pnic> to add a physical adapter to a virtual switch
- -list or -l to list all virtual switches and port groups
- -mtu or -m to set the maximum transmission unit (MTU) of the virtual switch
- -pg or -p followed by <port_group> to provide the name of a port group when using the -vlan option (use the ALL parameter to set VLAN IDs on all port groups of a virtual switch)
- -vlan or -v to set the VLAN ID for a specific port group (using the parameter 0 disables all VLAN IDs; using -vlan requires the -pg option)
- -vihost or -h followed by <host> to direct the command to a particular ESX Server host

vicfg-route Used to configure the default route for VMkernel ports.

- -help to display help text
- -vihost or -h followed by <host> to direct the command to a particular ESX Server host <gateway> to specify the default gateway to be used by the VMkernel

vicfg-ntp Used to configure NTP settings.

- -help to display help text
- -add or -a followed by <server> to add an NTP server
- -delete or -d followed by <server> to delete an NTP server
- -list or -l to list the configured NTP servers
- -vihost or -h followed by <host> to direct the command to a particular ESX Server host

SCM client on ESX Server (and other UNIX)

cfo — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 15:13:48 GMT

List all process running : ps -A

SCM client on ESX Server (Other UNIX)

jacclient { start | stop | restart | status | console | version }

start: Starts the client component.
stop: Stops the client component.
restart: Stops and then starts the client component.
status: Displays the runtime status of the client component.
console: Displays the recent contents of the client log file and then displays updates to the log file until Ctrl+C is pressed.
version Displays the version of the client component.

Location

Client installation directory. (Default directory is /opt/IBM/SCM/client.)
Fully qualified name is not required if /usr/bin is in the command path.

Examples

Start the client: ./jacclient start
Stop the client: ./jacclient stop
Restart the client: ./jacclient restart

VMworld

jshiplett — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 14:53:21 GMT

I know it's a little late as it was almost a month ago, but I would like to show my, how should I put this, disappointment in this year's VMworld conference in San Francisco.

From the operations side, the Moscone Center worked much better this year than it did in 2007. The inclusion of the meeting space at the SF Marriott was a great idea. The execution of the conference itself was top notch, in my opinion. That may be lack of experience with other industry conferences speaking, so take that as you will.

My gripe is with content. Am I the only one who thought the conference was largely lacking of good content? Maybe it's me being a little better at this than I was a year ago, but almost everything presented was either old hat or marketing fluff utterly devoid of good information.

Now to go write three pages for my management on what I learned. Uhh...

Connections & Ports in ESX/ESXi - v3

DudleyAtVMware — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 19:46:04 GMT

Including vCenter Server, SRM, VCB, VUM , Orchestrator & Converter.

Updated Webbrain: http://webbrain.com/brainpage/brain/89EFA582-2C35-F6A2-9ED1-7AD4810266C2

What's new in v3:
Now synchronized with "VMware Network Ports Compendium v3"

Other updates:
ESX/ESXi-Added port 443 (internal) for host-to-host migration and provisioning
SRM-Added port 9008 for SRM communication over HTTP (for External API client)
SRM-Changed SRM Port 443 to Port 80 for Communication with remote vCenter Server

What's new in v213:
Change port range in VUM to 9000-9100 (and not 9000-9010)

What's new in v212:
Added SRM Port 9007 for SRM communication over WSDL, SOAL (for External API client)
Changed SRM Port 443 to Port 80 for Communication with remote vCenter Server

Examkiller VMware VCP-310

koko12 — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 02:42:04 GMT

Examkiller VMware Certification:

Code: VMware VCP-310

http://www.examkiller.net/VCP-310.html

Examkiller VMware VCP410

koko12 — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 02:32:24 GMT

Vendor = VMware
Certification = VMware Certification
Exam = VMware VCP410
Download Free Examkiller VMware VCP410

Code:
http://www.examkiller.net/VCP410.html

VMware TAM Weekly Newsletter Edition 1.5 vForum 2009!

nisserow — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 08:23:48 GMT

Hi everyone, please see attached for this weeks newsletter. As usual it is packed with useful information, news and events.

Have a great week.

Kind Regards

Neil Isserow | VCP | Technical Account Manager - Queensland |
VMware Australia

August and September KB Articles Sorted By Product

Trevor Davis — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 15:03:32 GMT

Mistakes in official VMWare documents

Cievo — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 13:08:51 GMT

I have downloaded official documents called Plan and Design for VMWare ThinApp 4.0a Materials and I have found couple mistakes, which can be only decorative, if you understand technology, but they can cause very little experienced users to confuse and not like great VMWare ThinApp technologie.

I have sent e-mail to ServiceKitFeedback@vmware.com with following remarks about document PD24 - VMware ThinApp Build and Configuration Guide.doc:

PROBLEM 1.:

Bad:

2.3.3. ESD Organizational Unit Configuration

Step

Activity

Create an OU named ESD in the Active Directory domain root

Create a GPO named CnB Workstation Policy. Expand the following Policy:

Computer Configuration > Windows Settings > Security Settings > Local Policies > Security Settings > Local Policies > Security Options

Configure the following settings:

Domain Member: Disable machine account password changes (DisablePasswordChange)
Domain Member: Maximum machine account password age (MaximumPasswordAge)
Domain Controller: Refuse machine account password changes (RefusePasswordChange)

Good:

2.3.3. ESD Organizational Unit Configuration

Step

Activity

Create an OU named ESD in the Active Directory domain root

Domain Member: Disable machine account password changes (DisablePasswordChange)
Domain Member: Maximum machine account password age (MaximumPasswordAge)
Domain Controller: Refuse machine account password changes (RefusePasswordChange)

PROBLEM 2.:

Bad:

•2.3.4. Capture Workstation configuration

Step	Activity
1.	Using a physical PC or Virtual Machine, perform a default installation of Windows XP and apply all current service packs and hotfixes
2.	Establish a baseline image " rollback " point using a VMware Workstation Snapshot or 3^rd^ party disk imaging tool
3.	Edit the machine account password settings: Click Start, click Run, type Gpedit.msc, and then press ENTER. Expand Local Computer Policy, expand Windows Settings, expand Security Settings, expand Local Policies, expand Security Settings, expand Local Policies, and then expand Security Options. Configure the following settings: Domain Member: Disable machine account password changes (DisablePasswordChange) Domain Member: Maximum machine account password age (MaximumPasswordAge) Domain Controller: Refuse machine account password changes (RefusePasswordChange) Close the Group Policy editor.
4.	Join the workstation to the domain and move the workstation account to the ESD OU

Good:

•2.3.5. Capture Workstation configuration

Step	Activity
1.	Using a physical PC or Virtual Machine, perform a default installation of Windows XP and apply all current service packs and hotfixes
2.	Establish a baseline image " rollback " point using a VMware Workstation Snapshot or 3^rd^ party disk imaging tool
3.	Edit the machine account password settings: Click Start, click Run, type Gpedit.msc, and then press ENTER. Expand Local Computer Policy, expand Windows Settings, expand Security Settings, expand Local Policies, and then expand Security Options. Configure the following settings: Domain Member: Disable machine account password changes (DisablePasswordChange) Domain Member: Maximum machine account password age (MaximumPasswordAge) Domain Controller: Refuse machine account password changes (RefusePasswordChange) Close the Group Policy editor.
4.	Join the workstation to the domain and move the workstation account to the ESD OU

PROBLEM 3.:

Bad:

2.3.5.Applying the Thinreg Logon Script

Step	Activity
1.	Create a script containing the following line and assign it to the Active Directory user OU as a User Configuration logon script: <UNC PATH TO SOURCE SHARE>\Source\thinreg.exe <UNC PATH TO SOURCE SHARE>\*.exe

Good:

2.3.5.Applying the Thinreg Logon Script

Step	Activity
1.	Create a script containing the following line and assign it to the Active Directory user OU as a User Configuration logon script: <UNC PATH TO SOURCE SHARE>\Source\thinreg.exe <UNC PATH TO PROD SHARE>\*.exe

I'm curious if anyone will fix and update those documents.

VMware Products

Trevor Davis — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 21:14:51 GMT

VMware Products

Running Enterprise Applications on VMware

Trevor Davis — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 21:13:48 GMT

Running Enterprise Applications on VMware

Copying VI Client custom chart settings from user to user

virtuallysi — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 12:26:58 GMT

When I'm at a client site I find that the standard graphs in the VI client sometimes aren't sufficient when monitoring the whole virtual infrastructure. I end up creating custom graphs to monitor certain parts of the estate. i.e disk latency, additional memory counters (swap in, swap out etc). I was asked for a copy of these custom graphs when I left one client as they had proved useful when troubleshooting.

The chart configuration in the VI Client is held in a file called "%VCServer%-Charts.xml" in "%userprofile%\Application Data\VMware", replacing this file within the VI Admins profile and it displayed all the custom charts.

Will VM Ware Fusion be upgraded to work in 64 Bit mode with Mac OS 10.6 Snow Leopard?

RayCTexas — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 21:39:06 GMT

Does anyone know if this is in development or already available?

Thanks in advance for discussion.

I Know Everybody Skips to the Graph

ToddMuirhead — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 15:42:39 GMT

I really like to include graphs in my whitepapers and blog posts whenever possible. I find that lots of people read the first few pages or paragraphs, then skip to the graphs. And if they are really interested they will go back and read the sections that interest them.

In my recent blog post on VROOM! I spent a bit more time that usual on the graph. It seemed that everybody who reviewed the blog post had a couple of comments - About the graph. It started out with what was probably too much data and ended up a much better and simplified graph due to all the comments. Thanks for all the help to those who commented.

Just for fun I have decided to post the original version of the graph below. You can compare it with the final version that was published on VROOM! Comments are welcome

The big difference with this earlier version is that there are more data points included for both FT enabled and disabled. I had also used a different color for the previous generation processor tests to make it easier to spot them. Once I decided that all these data points weren't needed the different colors weren't needed either.

Even though I agree that the final version is easier to read and understand, part of me still likes this earlier version with more data that takes a few minutes to figure out what is going on.

Todd

Mikes Favourite Music Websites

pianoguru — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 18:54:58 GMT

Learn And Master Piano Review
Legacy Learning Systems
Yamaha Keyboards For Sale

Journal

mojoe1717 — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 14:19:25 GMT

First a little about myself:

I am currently a Network Administrator (title only, true job description is more like "if it plugs into the wall I handle it" everything from Phones, Copiers, Desktops, Printers, Servers etc.) for a medium sized company 70 workstations, ~20 Servers. Recently we have run into money crunches with the rest of the world and had no warranty on any hardware in our building. My boss and myself were reluctant to even consider virtualization a year ago due to ignorance and the normal fears I would assume anyone has jumping into it. Well due to nothing but dollars we have moved into a virtual environment (baby step) with much more to come.

August 19th 2009 will live on as the wonderful day that I received my first true ESXi host. We had been playing with VSphere 4.0 for a few weeks on a decently upgraded workstation but nothing compared to my new baby: 2 Nehalem X5550's, 24 Gigs of RAM, 600 gigs of SAS local storage and 6 beautiful fingers.... I mean NICs. My new child could not be prettier We have quickly gone to work and have successfully P2V'd 6 servers including our original Domain Controller (that was fun). We have targeted our e-mail server next and it will really be a nail bitter for me.

Our plans to move forward include the purchase of Essentials, a SAN and an additional ESXi host to allow HA and other such features.

So far I could not be happier. I sleep better at night no longer having dreams of failing hardware I might walk into the next morning. We are not even close to touching what this box can handle with average utilization normally in the single digits for everything except RAM.

I hope to use this space to track my growth and knowledge of ESXi.

Exchange P2V'd next up 2nd Domain controller

mojoe1717 — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 14:13:52 GMT

Our Exchange P2V went flawlessly. Almost too perfect in fact.
We stopped all exchange and backup exec services on the box and ran the P2V. Exchange was back up and running virtually within 40 minutes. No problems at all with mobile connections, outlook or web mail. Everything just came right back up without issue. I worried a lot about this conversion but apparently all for not.

Next up on my plate is an off site domain controller. It is the last of our beige servers running in a remote office. There is no real NEED to virtualize this one, however after weighing the time it would take to rebuild this box on new hardware and migrate files and permissions it is no longer a question. We will simply P2V it after hours and have the added flexibility of being able to deploy a new server at that location at will. Neat!

Hope to get this one done in about 2 weeks.

So much going forward with our new virtual environment. Need to start really learning about SANs and migrating our environment to that soon. I have never done any SAN management before so it will be a lot of new territory to cover.

Try to build Network under VMware

move4faster — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 11:15:54 GMT

wew, need many things and much storage space to build a network under vmware. yeah, i know, it's dificcult to do it. but, now i just try it. anybody help me?

How to Install ESX 4.0 on Workstation 6.5.2

raoan04 — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 22:41:15 GMT

How to Install ESX 4.0 on Workstation 6.5.2 as a VM

I've tested this document on vmware workstation installed on windows xp.

Hardware : Dell Laptop with Dual Core 2GHZ , 2 GB Ram.

One point to be noted is that we should enable virtualization in BIOS, other wise installation of ESX will not go through.

I will post Vsphere installation screenshots shortly.

VMworld Session Available!

Virtual_JTW — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 20:28:37 GMT

If you would like to hear about my SRM implementation, VMware has made the slides and audio available on their VMworld site here:

http://www.vmworld.com/docs/DOC-3480

We had a great Q&A session.

I counted about 288 chairs and it was standing-room only so we had a great turn-out.

If you're looking at deploying SRM in your environment or curious as to how other companies are implementing and using the product I highly recommend you check it out.