The ESX System Analyzer is a tool designed to help administrators plan a migration from ESX to ESXi. It analyzes the ESX hosts in your environment and, for each host, collects information on factors that pertain to the migration process:
• Hardware compatibility with ESXi
• VMs registered on the ESX host, as well as VMs located on the host’s local disk
• Modifications to the Service Console RPMs which have been added or removed or files which have been added or users and cronjobs which have been added
This tool also provides summary information for the whole existing environment
• Version of VMware Tools and Virtual Hardware for all VMs
• Version of Filesystem for all datastores
By having this information, administrators can determine what tasks need to be done prior to the migration. Examples include:
• Relocate VMs from local datastores to shared datastores
• Replace cronjobs with equivalent remote scripts written with PowerCLI or vCLI
• Make note of what agent software has been added to the host and obtain the equivalent agentless version
Be one of the first one to try, rate and comment - ESX-system-analyzer
Update: Remon Lam over at VirtualVlouds.info has figuered out the username and password, he also has a link to the userguide.
Wednesday, November 30. 2011
VMware Labs presents its latest fling - ESX System Analyzer
Tuesday, November 29. 2011
The Dutch VMUG event 2011 – Impressive Speaker Line-Up
Viktor van den Berg is ramping up. He has presented a great line-up of speakers who are going to deliver the most awesome sessions at the Dutch VMUG event. If you didn’t register yet, there's still a chance. Make sure you mark the 9th of December in your agenda. More information can be found here.
Here’s the list with the celebrities:
• Alan Renouf, Senior Technical Marketing, VMware
• Andre van der Werff, Senior Systems Engineer, VMware
• Bob de Kousemaeker, Principal Product Manager, RES Software
• Bouke Groenescheij, Freelance Consultant, jume.nl
• Cormac Hogan, Technical Marketing Manager for Storage, VMware
• Duncan Epping, Principal Architect, Technical Marketing, VMware
• Eric Sloof, Freelance Trainer/Consultant, Famous Blogger, NTPRO.NL
• Gabrie van Zanten, gabesvirtualworld.com / Consultant - OpenLine
• Henk Arts, Senior System Engineer, Veeam Software
• Jeroen van de Kamp, CTO, Login Consultants
• Luc Dekens, System Engineer, Eurocontrol Maastricht
• Marcel Steenman, Senior Technical Consultant, Platani
• Mattias Sundling, Virtualization Expert, Quest
• Michael Heffernan, Global Chief Technologist Virtualisatie, Hitachi Data Systems
• Raymon Epping, Technical Account Manager, Professional Services, VMware
• Ruben Spruijt, Technology Officer, PQR
• Stefan Willems, Senior Solution Architect, Platani
• Verron Martina, vSpecialist, EMC
• Viktor van den Berg, VMware Consultant, PQR, Dutch VMUG Leader
Sunday, November 27. 2011
Cisco UCS white boarding with Jeffrey Hall
Jeff works as a full-time Independent Instructor/Consultant that focuses on Cisco UCS and IP Telephony technologies as well as VMware virtualization solutions. One of his biggest interests is the implementation of Unified Communications on the Cisco UCS solution using VMware’s vSphere datacenter suite.
http://www.linkedin.com/in/layer8man
He has started a weblog over at cloudinaround.com, in one of his most recent articles he introduces the first in a series of videos that will explore the Cisco UCS architecture and signal flow. In this first video, he starts by identifying the main components and their connectivity. In follow-on videos, he’ll dive deeper into how everything communicates.
Icomasoft has released opvizor 1.5 also available as freeware
Wednesday, November 23. 2011
Video - Using the ESXI 5.0 vCLI Command Set
vSphere supports several command‐line interfaces for managing your virtual infrastructure including the vSphere Command‐Line Interface (vCLI), a set of ESXi Shell commands, and PowerCLI. You can choose the CLI set best suited for your needs, and write scripts to automate your CLI tasks.
The vCLI command set includes vicfg- commands and ESXCLI commands. The ESXCLI commands included in the vCLI package are equivalent to the ESXCLI commands available on the ESXi Shell. The vicfg command set is similar to the deprecated esxcfg- command set in the ESXi Shell.
You can manage many aspects of an ESXi host with the ESXCLI command set. You can run ESXCLI commands as vCLI commands or run them in the ESXi Shell in troubleshooting situations. You can also run ESXCLI commands from the PowerCLI shell by using the Get-EsxCli cmdlet. See the vSphere PowerCLI Administration Guide and the vSphere PowerCLI Reference. The set of ESXCLI commands available on a host depends on the host configuration. The vSphere Command‐Line Interface Reference lists help information for all ESXCLI commands. Run esxcli --server <MyESXi> --help before you run a command on a host to verify that the command is defined on the host you are targeting. You can use this link to get your copy of the VMware ESXi 5.0 Reference Poster
Continue reading "Video - Using the ESXI 5.0 vCLI Command Set " »
Tuesday, November 22. 2011
Getting Started with VMware ThinApp - Reviewer’s Guide
VMware® ThinApp™ is an agentless application virtualization solution that decouples applications from their underlying operating systems to eliminate application conflict and streamline application delivery and management. ThinApp simplifies application virtualization and enables IT administrators to quickly deploy, efficiently manage, and upgrade applications without risk. With ThinApp, an entire Windows application and its settings can be packaged into a single executable and deployed to many different Windows operating systems without imposing additional cost and complexity to the server or client. Application virtualization with ThinApp eliminates conflicts at the application and operating system level and minimizes costly recoding and regression testing to speed application migration to Windows 7.
ThinApp virtualizes applications by encapsulating application files and registry settings into a single ThinApp package. IT administrators can deploy, manage, and update these ThinApp packages independently from the underlying operating system (OS). The virtualized applications do not make any changes to the underlying OS and behave the same across different desktop configurations, which provides a stable, consistent end-user experience, and ease of management.
As a key component of VMware View™, ThinApp adds smooth application management to your virtual desktop deployment. View is VMware’s virtual desktop offering, fully integrated with all of the advanced virtual infrastructure features of vSphere. You can manage and assign ThinApp virtualized applications in the same interface where you deploy and manage virtual desktops: the View Administrator console. Users access their View desktops from a wide variety of devices: from a Windows or Mac computer, from a Linux thin client or zero client, or from an iPad or Android tablet.
With ThinApp 4.7, administrators now have the capability of deploying ThinApp virtualized applications in Horizon Application Manager™. Horizon Application Manager is an enterprise-level, cloud-based application catalog and reporting mechanism that provides secure, managed user access to SaaS applications, federated web applications, and ThinApp virtualized Windows applications, all with a single sign-on using Windows Active Directory credentials. Horizon provides a new management platform for entitling, deploying, and monitoring ThinApp packages.