Eric Sloof

According to Stephen Beaver, co-author of two books on virtualization, "Essential VMware ESX Server" and "Scripting VMware Power Tools: Automating Virtual Infrastructure Administration",  Tripwire Virtualization Evangelist, “virtualization is unique in that there can be thousands of unique configuration properties in a virtual infrastructure, and the number quickly goes up when you consider multiple objects.  For example, a moderately small installation with two clusters, six ESX hosts, and 60 VMs will have 38,700 configuration properties for the clusters, hosts, and VMs.  vWire’s configuration automation gives virtual administrators new visibility to effectively monitor and manage configuration, change and performance data across the virtual infrastructure – all from within VMware vCenter™ Server.”

I’m prepping my Virtualization EcoShell presentation which I’ll deliver at the Belgium VMware Usergroup Meeting and discovered a great new feature. It’s adding your own actions as new items. Just click “Add new item” in the actions menu on the right side of the Virtualization EcoShell. This enables you to specify a script performing the Action. When you click an Action, objects currently selected in the grid are piped into the script. I created a little Jing demo showing how to add Carter’s CPU-Ready script. Continue reading "Adding actions to the Virtualization EcoShell" »

On Monday, June 8th Xtravirt will launch a global capacity planning service. This service will combine the knowledge/expertise from Xtravirt and the technology from Lanamark to make it easier for enterprises world-wide to get started with desktop and server virtualization.

“Capacity planning is an essential component for any organisation wishing to adopt virtualisation; whether it be desktop replacement or a server consolidation exercise,” states Paul Davey, CTO of Xtravirt. “We have kept the whole process as simple as possible,” continues Paul. “Collected data, consisting of performance metrics, are securely uploaded to the Xtravirt VReady Portal, where they are analyzed to produce a summary VReady Assessment Report. This can be subsequently extended and we can quickly produce a comprehensive analysis, including full what-if scenarios, solution optimization and licensing calculations. If a client wishes to use a particular brand of server, or server SKU, they can let us know and we can feed it into the design.”

Trilead VM Explorer is a management tool that eases management, backup and disaster recovery tasks in your VMware ESX Server environment. You get maximum flexibility: backups can be stored to ESX, Windows, Linux and FreeBSD based storage platforms or directly to a SAN. Their newest edition even has support for the ESX 3i & ESX 4i server. Continue reading "The newest edition of Trilead VM Explorer even..." »

Kodiak version 0.0.4 release notes:

This version contains the following bug fixes:

SSL/TLS issues when connecting to VirtualCenter servers and using the SSL bypass.
This issue was composed of 3 separate cases: * Servers with self-signed certificates caused Kodiak to terminate the connection. Fixed. * Servers with an CommonName mismatch caused Kodiak to terminate the connection. Fixed. * Servers that would demand a client certficiate would terminate the connection when the TLS/SSL handshake was incomplete (i.e. lacking a certificate).

These 3 issues have been fixed, and their respective overrides may be accessed by using the SSL preferences panel.

Kodiak exits on hitting the "Q" key on linux when attempting to login. The "Cmd+q/Alt+Q" rapid menu handler has been temporarily removed while we troubleshoot this. When connected to more than one server, Kodiak's maps overlap and become cluttered/difficult to manage. This has been fixed...Maps will now automatically move themselves to make space for new connections.

Just tested, anyone else gets an Error #2032?

At July 6th (week 28) I will deliver one of the first VMware vSphere Install, Configure and Manage courses. There are still some seats left, so I’ll be very glad if you can join me at this hands-on training course which explores installation, configuration, and management of VMware vSphere. Upon completion of this course, you can take the examination to become a VCP4. The course is based on ESXi 4.0, ESX 4.0, and vCenter Server 4.0.

You can use this link to register, please refer to action code “esloof” and you’ll get a discount of €100,00.

http://www.globalknowledge.nl/Default.aspx?page=461&coursecode=VSICM

This morning I replayed the June 2009 PowerCLI Webinar. Carters Shanklin’s WebEx session is awesome, he demoed a well written series of PowerShell scripts. With one of his scripts you’re able to collect the %RDY time statistics for all your Virtual Machines. The most common cause of high ready time is trying to get too much work out of too little hardware. Often this condition is observable when ready time is high and total host CPU utilization is also very high. The only fix for this is to back off the load on the system. VMs should be migrated off or processor resources should be increased. I combined Carter’s script with a new feature in PowerShell 2.0, the Out-GridView which displays the ready time  information in a real cool Data Grid.

Get-VM

| Select Name, @{ N="Summation"; E={($_ | Get-Stat -stat cpu.ready.summation -maxsamples 1 -intervalmins 5 | select -first 1).Value} } | Sort -property Summation -Descending | Out-GridView