Eric Sloof - NTPRO.NL

Getting a bit bored during the Christmas holiday? I’m going to show you how to manually create kernel panic on your vSphere 4 ESXi server using the vsish shell. First a warning, don’t use the following how-to in a production environment! You probably know how to get access to the ESXi busy box and enable SSH, if you don’t just Google for it. After getting access to the ESXi command line type vsish. You just opened an interactive shell which can be very useful for trouble shouting or making trouble. :-) To view a list of available commands, type help. Navigate to reliability and crashMe. Type set /reliability/crashMe/Panic and take a look at your ESXi console screen, pretty isn’t it.

Continue reading "Lets create some Kernel Panic using vsish" »

VMware VirtualCenter Management Webservices fails to start after installing or updating the vCenter server. Error messages similar to the following might be written to the Windows System Event log.

The VMware VirtualCenter Management Webservices service terminated with service-specific error 0 (0x0). After some investigation, I’ve found the following error in the Apache Tomcat log at C:\Program Files\VMware\Infrastructure\tomcat\logs

[2009-12-27 20:57:15] [info] Procrun (2.0.4.0) started
[2009-12-27 20:57:15] [info] Running Service...
[2009-12-27 20:57:15] [info] Starting service...
[2009-12-27 20:57:15] [994  prunsrv.c] [error] Failed creating java
[2009-12-27 20:57:15] [1269 prunsrv.c] [error] ServiceStart returned 1
[2009-12-27 20:57:15] [info] Run service finished.
[2009-12-27 20:57:15] [info] Procrun finished.

When you’re encountering this error, just run "C:\Program Files\VMware\Infrastructure\tomcat\bin\tomcat6w.exe" //ES//vctomcat

If the path to the Java.dll is empty and C:\Program Files\VMware\Infrastructure\jre is empty, download the Java 2 Standard Edition Runtime Environment (JRE),  release JRE 6 Update 17 or later from http://java.sun.com/j2se. Change the install path to C:\Program Files\VMware\Infrastructure\jre\
After that you have to select the option “Use default” in the Java tab at the VMware Virtual Management Webservices Properties and the service will start and function like a charm.

The VMware band Elastic Sky opens for Foreigner at VMworld 2009 in San Francisco. Arisa Amano on lead vocals for this song.

During the Dutch VMUG 2009 event NGN’s Community Master, Melle Gloerich has recorded a conversation between Ruben Spruijt and Gabrie van Zanten. They are talking about VMware View 4 and PCoIP, damaged sectors in a virtual machine, project Virtual Reality Check and the differences between VDI and terminal servers.

I just wanted to send everyone a bit of Christmas Cheer!

Dutch: Vrolijk Kerstfeest en een Gelukkig Nieuwjaar! or Zalig Kerstfeest
English: Merry Christmas
German: Fröhliche Weihnachten
French: Joyeux Noel
Flemish: Zalig Kerstfeest en Gelukkig nieuw jaar
Greek: Kala Christouyenna!
Russian: Pozdrevlyayu s prazdnikom Rozhdestva is Novim Godom
Spanish: Feliz Navidad
Thai: Sawadee Pee Mai or souksan wan Christmas
Turkish: Noeliniz Ve Yeni Yiliniz Kutlu Olsun
Farsi: Cristmas-e-shoma mobarak bashad

In order to meet the December 31st  2009 deadline, many people recently scheduled (and hopefully passed!) the exam with their local testing partner.  In fact, so many of you scheduled exams that some of the VCP3 professionals were unable to find a testing center with available seats prior to the December deadline.

VMware's Melissa Tuite:

In order to accommodate participants that despite best efforts were unable to schedule their exam prior to the deadline, VMware will continue accepting the VCP3 certification as a qualification to take the VCP4 exam without requiring attending the 'What's New" class through January 31st  2010.  We fully expect that the additional four weeks will allow remaining participants ample time to find a testing center with available seating, and will NOT be extending the deadline any further, so please take advantage of this opportunity!

Virtualization EcoShell is a freeware desktop application that enables IT administrators to unlock the full potential of their virtual infrastructure and reduce the daily operating costs of managing multi-platform environments. Virtualization EcoShell contains over 250 pre-built scripts to help administrators identify and resolve configuration and management challenges in their environment while providing daily cost-saving opportunities.

Ready to unlock the full potential of their virtual infrastructure and reduce the daily operating costs of managing multi-platform environments? Join Scott Herold, Lead Architect for Virtualization Solutions at Vizioncore, as he highlights the key best-practices of daily management and highlights the flexibility of Virtualization EcoShell.

VMware invites you to attend a series of focused webinars. Hosted by their expert engineers, these webinars provide an overview of how VMware virtualization can address the business and IT challenges that face every organization today.

VMware nodigt u graag uit voor één of meerdere van haar webinars om u te informeren wat virtualisatie voor uw bedrijf kan betekenen. Deze webinars worden gehost door VMware experts. Meldt u nu aan en laat u informeren hoe virtualisatie u kan helpen bij de hedendaagse bedrijfs- en IT-uitdagingen.

Check the photos of the Dutch VMUG Event 2009: http://bit.ly/gWtQB and http://bit.ly/4uFcOa

Members of this group have gained the in-depth skills and industry-recognized certification on VMware technology. The VMware Certified Professional Program is designed for everyone who wants to demonstrate their expertise in virtual infrastructure and increase his potential for career advancement. If you are a VCP you can join this group.

Alan Renouf has just released version 3 of his Virtualization EcoShell PowerPack and it contains some great new features. In its short existence Alan’s PowerPack has already been downloaded over 2500 times. During the Dutch VMUG last Friday, I’ve presented a session which will give you a good insight into working with the Virtualization EcoShell and Alan’s PowerPack. Just to show you how easy it is to upgrade to the newest version, I’ve created a little Jing movie.

Continue reading "How to upgrade Alan Renouf’s Virtualization..." »

I’ve discovered a real cool German start-up and did a little interview with the director Andreas Wilke about their new automation appliance.
 
The ptecs automation appliance is not a product. It’s a collection of our best practices how we automate the daily needed tasks inside a VMware environment in the form of a VMware appliance. We are using the perl vSphere SDK Toolkit and developed two integrated modules:

• ptecs VMware AutoInstall: Fully automated pxe installation of esx hosts with network and software configuration. 
• ptecs VMware Toolkit: LifeCycle Management, Snapshot Management, Datastore Management and automated Management for Virtual Machines.
• Seamless integration of both modules inside the VMware vSphere Client as Plug-in.

We are able to automate all tasks the VMware SDK API delivers. Our main target is to reduce the daily workload of VMware administrators with automation of these tasks inside a VMware environment. In future we want to migrate the perl tasks to Orchestrator. At this time we want to implement a ESXi automated installation, a Health Check and a chargeback module.

Andreas has also posted some real cool videos at YouTube which gives you an insight at the paap virtual appliance. More information can be found on the ptecs website: http://www.ptecs.de next year.

I’m running a VMware vSphere 4 Install Configure and Manage training course this week and just have deployed the new VMware vCenter CapacityIQ 1.0.1 OVF template onto one of the student's vCenter/ESX Servers.  The installation process is straight forward. Don’t try to log on with the root account, use the ciqadmin account instead.

http://www.vmware.com/products/vcenter-capacityiq/