Tools - 13 - Eric Sloof

Thursday, January 31. 2013

Video - vCert Manager

A massive area of pain for customers in a virtualized environment is managing SSL certificates and keys for components in the VMware stack. Currently under development, with a scheduled release in Q1 2013, the vCert Manager is a solution that provides automated management and operations of SSL Certificates in a VMware environment - a single pane of glass to create, manage, apply, custom SSL certificates for all of the products, including creating the certificate keys, signing request, applying to the Certificate Authority, and when the certificate is issued, to automatically apply it to the particular vSphere component.

vCert manager is available as a plug in install into vCenter, or vCenter Configuration Manager, it integrates at an API level with open SSL or an Enterprise CA such as Microsoft CA in addition to allowing manual import of existing certificates and public CA certificates that can then be applied by the system.

It integrates at an API level with the VMware stack of tools (vCenter Server, Update Manager, vShield Manager, vCenter Configuration Manager, vCenter Operations, vSphere Web Client, Virtual Infrastructure Navigator, vCenter Chargeback, SRM, vCloud Director, vCenter Heartbeat, ESX and ESXi Hosts, VMware View, or a subset of these based on discussions and priorities between VSS, ITS2K and VMware from versions compatible from vSphere 4.x onwards (v5.5 of vCenter Configuration Manager and 5.0 of vCenter Operations Only onwards only)

Has auto discovery of VM components (through vCenter, vCOps, vCloud and Linked Mode)
Upon initial installation of VM components, replaces temporary/ unsecure default certificates supplied with the VMware components with those supplied by the Enterprise CA.
Stores all VMware related certificates and VM account credentials in a secure database.
Keeps track of all expirations and revocations and allows an administrator to view upcoming expirations and automatically go apply for a new certificate
Allows role based access control and separation of duties between security admin and VI admin"

Via Michael Webster over at Long White Clouds - Automating vSphere SSL Cert Management – vCert Manager Beta Demo

Monday, January 28. 2013

Free Plugin for Creating, Managing Support Requests and Uploading Logs - VMware vCenter Support Assistant

VMware vCenter Support Assistant is a free, downloadable plug-in for vCenter Server. It provides an easy-to-use, secure, one-stop shop BOTH for creating and managing service requests AND generating and uploading logs. It also includes a VMware Knowledge Base search capability, which enables customers to resolve common issues more rapidly.

Support Assistant helps gather more of the information up front that VMware Technical Support finds useful. By minimizing further data requests from VMware Technical Support, vCenter Support Assistant can help reduce time to resolution and, in turn, minimize system downtime.

Download VMware vCenter Support Assistant

Wednesday, January 16. 2013

Cool Tool - Video: Storage Explorer (Free Utility)

Storage Explorer assesses storage performance and capacity views across datastores and VMs that helps VM admins to get better visibility of their storage environment. Storage Explorer, a utility within the vOPS Server Explorer freeware suite, displays storage performance and capacity views across datastores and VMs with the following features:

Identify critical VM issues such as low available disk space, high latency and throughput.
Allows user to sort on any metric to find specific issues relevant to them.
Identify critical datastore issues such as overcommitment, low capacity, high latency, VMFS version mismatch.

vOPS Server Explorer

Saturday, December 29. 2012

Cool Tool - ESXi Host Backup & Restore GUI Utility

There are a couple of improvements in 1.2 based on feedback received in the comments Sean Duffy has received about the utility. The main improvement introduces a function in the script which backs the GUI to check that ESX hosts are valid before attempting to backup or restore these.

Anyway, hopefully this proves useful to some! As always, take care using the backup / restore functionality of this utility. The restore functionality works by first putting the ESXi host into Maintenance mode (if it isn’t already in this mode) and then applying a backup bundle to the host (Restore). The Host will reboot immediately following this. The Backup and Restore is implemented using Get-VMHostFirmware and Set-VMHostFirmware cmdlets so you can read the help descriptions for an idea on how exactly these work. The Host Backup Bundles are stored in a path of your choice and when restoring from a path the cmdlet works by looking for a bundle filename that matches the name of your ESXi host selected to restore to. Note that the file browser module I have implemented here (used to select paths) is a modification of the work done by Ravikanth Chaganti on his PowerShell Help Browser GUI. I simply adapted his code to list the contents of local drives in a tree view instead of PowerShell Help cmdlets. The only limitation here is that I have not implemented code to browse further than one level into the root of each drive. If you can provide this modification yourself, please feel free to contribute in the comments! I have just not spent the extra time to do this myself yet.

ESXi Host Backup & Restore GUI Utility

Wednesday, December 5. 2012

Latest Fling from VMware Labs - Lctree

Lctree is a tool designed for the visualization of linked clone VM trees created by VMware vCloud Director. Linked clone is a feature available in vSphere that creates a clone of a VM from a snapshot point. The new VMs disks are not full copies of the source disks, but instead, are delta disks which point back to the snapshots disks. This feature is widely used in vCloud Director.

Features

Tree generation is fast compared to solutions using data fetched from vCenter/ESX server
Hierarchical tree view
Node properties & separate disk chain view
Refresh & Search option
Traditional tree view in separate tabs
Relocate order of virtual machines in a tree

Download the Lctree Fling!

Monday, October 22. 2012

VMware Mirage Available for Download Now

VMware Mirage offers a unique solution for endpoint management and recovery that combines image centralization and local execution. The images of the endpoints are cloned into the datacenter to enable the benefits of centralized management and recovery while leaving cached copies of the image on each endpoint for local (and offline) execution thereby preserving an uncompromised user experience.

Mirage centralizes the full desktop contents at the datacenter for management and protection purposes, distributes the execution of desktop workloads to the endpoints for superior user experience, and optimizes the synchronization in between. Mirage conceptually splits the PC into six layers, divided into two groups: IT centrally managed and user managed. The first group consists of a Base Image Layer, a Driver Library Layer, and a Departmental Application Layer (experimental). The second group consists of User-Application Layer, Machine Identity Layer and User Data Settings Layer.

These layers form an individually managed, centrally stored Centralized Virtual Desktop (CVD). CVDs are hardware-agnostic and can be easily migrated from one desktop (physical or virtual) to another, creating a wide range of use cases. The Mirage Client runs a copy of this CVD directly on the end point, so users can work offline, use processor-intensive applications, and enjoy predictable, native PC performance regardless of network connectivity.

The Mirage architecture includes VMware Mirage Server in the datacenter to centralize desktop management and protection; Mirage Client to create a local cache for optimal user experience at the endpoint, and advanced WAN optimization technology to speed bi-directional synchronization over the WAN.

http://www.vmware.com/products/desktop_virtualization/mirage.html

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