When you build your virtual infrastructure with only ESXi hosts that you also lock down for security reasons, you might be in for a little surprise when you want to get your VI up and running again after major maintenance or a failure. First thing to do after the virtual infrastructure has been down, is to get vCenter up and running again. In a previous post “How to quickly recover from disaster” I already explained the idea of running vCenter always on the first host in your cluster. In case of failure you don’t have to search where DRS left your vCenter VM, you just connect the VI Client to the first host and start the vCenter VM. Don’t forget you need your Active Directory and SQL database before starting vCenter. (more…)
When chatting with Alan Renouf about a PowerShell script, I wanted to run my PowerShell editor (which I run in a VMware View4 VDI session) under administrative rights. So I right clicked the editor, select “Run as Administrator” and then my session locked. (more…)
At VMworld 2009 in San Francisco I received a copy of Scott Lowe’s book “Mastering VMware vSphere 4” and really did have the intention to read it as soon as I got home, but it turned out it took me quite a bit longer before I finally started reading, but today I finally finished it.
Although I do know my stuff around vSphere, I did learn a number of new things by reading Scott’s book. I like the style in which it is written, it varies from a starter level to deep technical level, but never gets too basic that makes you skip pages or too difficult to lose you in the deep technical pieces. (more…)
When reading the summary on the amazon site, you’ll notice only five authors, this is because of a stupid limitation in Amazon that only a max of five authors can be entered. The names that show on amazon: Dave Mishchenko, Duncan Epping, Bernie Baker, Thomas Bryant, Stewart Radnidge and the man missing in action: Alan Renouf.
Alan has written quite a number of PowerShell scripts you will find throughout the vSphere Quickstart Guide and add a lot of value to it.
Product description copied from the Amazon site:
vSphere 4.0 Quick Start Guide continues from an idea started several years ago by a few engineers. The idea was simple, provide an easy to use reference guide for all level administrators, consultants and architects. Recently VMware introduced many new features in vSphere 4.0 and with this handy pocket guide you will learn about each of these new features. With each chapter, the pages in this essential guide will answer common questions while giving you unprecedented insight into: Expert tips & tricks Pitfalls to avoid RemoteCLI & PowerCLI (PowerShell) scripts Configuration how to’s Virtualization best practices
Recently I had the opportunity to review StorMagic’s SvSAN software. Their current release available from their website is only compatible with VMware ESX 3.5, since my home lab is already running VMware vSphere I received the latest beta 4.1.913 which does work with vSphere. In this review I will not write on absolute performance since my home lab will probably hit its limits sooner than the reviewed software does.
What StorMagic does
With StorMagic it is possible to use the local storage (your internal hard disks) of your VMware vSphere hosts as shared iSCSI storage. Other hosts can connect to the targets as if it was a normal iSCSI NAS or SAN. With the free StorMagic version, you can have up to 2Tb of storage managed by StorMagic. Licenses for 4 Tb, 8 Tb and unlimited storage are also available. The advantage of sharing your local storage is that your vSphere environment can now use the extra features like VMware High Availability, VMware DRS and VMware VMotion and you don’t have to spend money on buying a separate iSCSI NAS or SAN. (more…)
