Eric Sloof

I’ve recorded a great interview with Vblock guru Jim Wentworth and UCS specialist Ron Heheman.  In this interview they will explain how FAST (Fully Automarted Strorage Tiering) performs data movement based on IOPS. We also touch some other topics like unified storage and the upcoming management software.

If you want to create great looking diagrams with data from the vCenter database look at this demo I’ve recorded with MS SQL Code Factory. It’s a premier Microsoft SQL GUI tool aimed at the SQL queries and scripts development. It is a good choice for everyone who need build SQL statements and edit SQL scripts with a convenient easy-to-use interface. The software provides you with a convenient easy-to-use interface, so it really does not require a deep knowledge of Microsoft SQL from its users.

It also has a Powerful BLOB Viewer/Editor: with MS SQL Code Factory you can view or edit BLOB data in the following ways: hexadecimal dump, plain text, graphical image or HTML page. A graphical representation of BLOB data supports five image formats: BMP, Windows metafile, JPEG, GIF and PNG.

http://www.screencast.com/users/esloof/folders/Online-Training

NFS is a great storage solution within a VMware vSphere environment but when the connection to the NFS server is lost, you’re in big trouble. In most circumstances some virtual machines are still connected to the NFS Datastore and since it’s in use, you cannot delete and recreate it. I’ve tried this by using the vSphere Client and trough the command line but didn’t succeed. In the end there’s no other alternative than rebooting the ESX host, or is there… If you want to find out how to remount an NFS Datastore you better watch this online training.

http://www.screencast.com/users/esloof/folders/Online-Training

You also have the ability to embed or link to it at Vimeo.

It's really a rough unprepared video but in the end you'll get the picture :-)

Some of the feedback I’ve received after the initial launch of the vmClient 4.0 a few weeks ago had to do with creating a list of frequently used virtual machines. A lot of people are using the vmClient as a helpdesk app and don’t want to give out the full blown viClient for accessing the virtual machine desktop by their helpdesk staff. The new favourites menu item enables you to create a list with virtual machines. After creating a list through the registry or by adding and removing virtual machines from within the vmClient it’s possible to customize the user interface and hide the obsolete menus. I recorded a demo session with my newly bought Camtasia software.

Here’s the download link for vmClient 4.1 Beta: http://vmClient.nl

Here’s the online demo: http://www.screencast.com/users/esloof/folders/Online-Training

My former colleague and virtualization friend Harold Schoofs has send me a real cool PowerShell script for automating the reporting part of the vSphere VUM baseline compliancy. The Baseline-Compliancy.Ps1 PowerShell script can be used to check the compliancy of all ESX Hosts registered on a VMware vCenter server and match up to any baseline. It will generate 3 kinds of output Files:

1) One file with all hosts and their compliancy state
2) One file with all attached baselines found
3) One file for every attached baseline found with its content

You can get you copy of Harold’s script here: Baseline-Compliancy.ps1 If you have any questions or suggestions for improvements just send your Tweets to @Hharold.

There are a lot of automation tools available which are able to deploy and configure an ESX host but if you want to use PowerCLI for the finishing configuration part there was always a manual step involved. I’ve found a way to start a PowerShell script from the service console trough SSH. The only thing you have to do is install WinSSHD on one of your Windows servers, just execute the distributable that you downloaded from the Bitvise website and follow the process. As soon as the installer completes, you will have a working WinSSHD installation on your machine. No changes to the default configuration are necessary; you only need to start it. However, you might want restrict your users' access to those features that they actually need, which will improve security. If you are new to WinSSHD, it’s highly recommended that you first make sure that you can establish a working SSH connection before you change any settings on the server. If you cannot connect to WinSSHD using its default configuration, this is most likely due to a network or firewall problem that you will need to resolve before you are able to connect. In its default configuration, WinSSHD accepts connections on the well-known port number for SSH servers, 22.

I’ve recorded a Jing video (with audio) which demos the CPU-Ready PowerCLI script running on my vCenter server launched from one of my ESX host’s service console.

Continue reading "How to access PowerCLI trough SSH" »

It’s possible to configure the ESX host's virtual switches so the Cisco Discovery Protocol on a standard or distributed switch is issuing broadcasts containing some of your ESX host's information. After enabling the CDP on your ESX server, the Cisco administrator is able to listen for information broadcasted by your ESX host but what can he actually see? To find out I’ve installed the Tallsoft’s Cisco CDP Monitor on my vCenter server.

With Cisco CDP Monitor, you can display the information of the connecting Cisco devices, such as device names, device models, connecting port , administrative ip address, IOS version, VTP Domain Name, and so on. With this information, one could easily learn the total topology of the complete network and do troubleshooting. Once the Cisco Discovery Protocol information changes (such as the link or device failed, or the setup of Cisco device changed), Cisco CDP Monitor will detect it and will display the related info. It also shows information broadcasted by you ESX servers.

Virtual switches can be configured for four different CDP modes of operation:

Down – CDP information is neither sent nor received
Listen – CDP information is received from the physical switches
Advertise – CDP information is sent to the physical switches
Both – CDP information is sent to and received from the physical switches

For enabling CDP on standard switches you have to use command-line interface. CDP can be enabled on distributed switches using the vSphere Client. Here’s the info I was able to retrieve from an ESX host after running  “esxcfg-vswitch -B both vSwitch0” in the service console.

Neigbour1:
device id: esx4-l.ntpro.local
ipaddress: 0.0.0.0
port: vmnic0
capabilities: Switch  
ios_version: Releasebuild-208167
platform: VMware ESX
prefix: 
vtp_domain: 
native_vlan: 
duplex: full

This is a song by Varrowinc told in first person from the perspective of a physical server that has been virtualized by vSphere. This was done on an iPhone with I am T-pain App.

Arne Fokkema over at ict-freak.nl just tweeted about the availability of Workstation 7.1 beta. You can get your copy here: http://communities.vmware.com/community/beta/ws?view=overview

The VMware Workstation 7.1 Beta includes several new features and hundreds of minor improvements. Some release highlights include:

•OpenGL 2.1 support for Windows 7 and Vista guests: The addition of hardware accelerated OpenGL 2.1 support to the WDDM driver enables many more graphics applications to run inside of your virtual machines.
•Improved graphics performance: Significant enhancements have been made to the VMware WDDM driver that have produced benchmark results that are up to 80% faster. The updated driver also produces smoother video playback and addresses many reported rendering issues. Of course games run better as well!
•8-way SMP support plus virtual disks up to 2TB in size: The virtual hardware continues to become more powerful to meet the needs of Workstation customers who are running server class applications.
•OVF 1.0 support: Including the OVF Tool with this release enables users to easily import or export virtual machines and vApps and move them to vSphere or up into the cloud.•Direct Launch: Blur the distinction between running native and virtual applications by launching an application installed in a virtual machine directly from the start menu or taskbar of the host system.
•Automatic software updates: These VMware applications can now detect when a new version is released and are able to update at the click of a button.
•Fedora 12 virtual machines: We are excited about finally offering support for running one of the most popular Linux distributions on the planet!

I’ve deployed the recently released SimDK Virtual Appliance onto one of my ESX servers and it actually works. Andrew Kutz has created this appliance to demo his most recent invention.

SimDK is able to simulate a vSphere4 environment by replacing the vSphere API/SDK web service with the SimDK web service. The SimDK web service handles requests from vSphere4 clients and instead of communicating with a vCenter database or an ESX server, the requests are handled by the SimDK simulator. The data is persisted in SimDK’s own database tables and the responses are serialized and sent back to the clients.

 

Here’s an example of the Virtualization EchoShell logging onto the SimDK and getting a list of all the virtual machines. The other screen dump shows the PowerCLI Console logged into the SimDK.