Everything-Virtual

Category: Blogging

  • Creating a CentOS 7.2 VMware Gold Template

    In a post from last year I documented how to create a CentOS 7 VMware Gold Template for all the non-Linux admins out there.

    There were questions at the time on me not leaving this in a fully cleaned state making it not 100% usable outside of my homelab environment. centos7

    Following the instructions below will yield a template ready for future use that ensures you can deploy at speed and in a reliable fashion ensuring that SSH keys are deleted, logs emptied and unique network identifiers are removed from the image.

    All told this should take no longer than 30 minutes to complete.

    Just to point out that for this to succeed you need to be running vCenter 5.5u3 or vCenter 6 as found in the Guest OS Customization Matrix 

    (more…)

  • Condusiv Technologies V-locity 5 Testing

    I have been running the Condusiv Technologies V-locity 5 software on a couple of test machines in my home lab over the last couple of days, alongside those VMs I also ran a couple of VM’s with the older V-locity VM product to see how performance differed.

    Testing on both products still takes a few days but there are a couple of differences in how the performance data is presented at the end of the test.

    In the previous version you ran a Benefit Analysis Report to show you before and after information which generated a nice PDF that you could save, this PDF gave you a page full of information that made for very easy reading.

    (more…)

  • V-locity 5 Install and Configuration

    So I was recently offered the chance to test drive V-locity 5 to see how it compared against the previous V-locity VM product that I tested nearly two years ago, one of the big differences between the two products is that this time I am using the V-locity Management Console (VMC) as my centralised management and deployment tool.

    This post covers the installation and configuration of the VMC and the deployment of agents via it.

    One of the first things I noticed after downloading the installation file from the Condusiv Technologies website was that the new package came in quite a lot smaller in size than the previous version, I mean like about 50% smaller, now considering this includes the VMC as well as the V-locity package you have to hand it to the developers with regards to size reduction.

    Supported Platforms for the VMC and V-locity agents, as you can see you’re not restricted to either physical or virtual for either the VMC or agents.

    (more…)

  • vMetrics 1.2 Plugin for WordPress – Multiple Cluster Edition

    vmetricsI have been a fan of both Nick Weaver’s WP-vSphereStats and Sean Duffy’s fork of that – vMetrics Plugin for WordPress but one of the things missing from vMetrics was additional Clusters.

    I asked on Twitter if anyone knew how to add that functionality in and Sean kindly responded saying it was hard coded to the WordPress plugin’s PHP but if I had the inclination I could have a look and see if I could add the required functionality, now I should add that I am not a coder, so it was with a little hesitation that I started to look at the code.

    I am pleased to say however that it only took me a couple of hours to butcher Sean’s excellent work to make it display a second cluster, it’s not pretty but it does work.

    Browsing the code should make it fairly obvious what I did to allow me to show a second cluster and I don’t see any issues with adding additional clusters to the output, follow the same train of thought (or if you can do it better) and please let me know (after all, who doesn’t want better \ improved code).

    Please note that I had to make changes to both the WordPress plugin as well as the PowerCLI Updater script, again fairly obvious changes but it works.

    With regards to installation, you should be ok to just over write your existing plugin, if you’re starting from scratch do a manual installation using either the zip file or by directly uploading the extracted files to your plugins folder.

    Change log for version 1.2:

    • Added additional metrics section for second cluster information
    • Updated PowerCLI updater script to allow you to gather and upload second cluster information.
    • Completely made a mess of the previously cleaned up PHP in main plugin code, it’s a mess but it works.

    I am making this available to anyone that want’s it, I have given credit to both Nick Weaver and Sean for their earlier work and ask that anyone moving this forward does the same please.

    (more…)

  • How to Update or Patch the vCenter 6 Appliance

    With the release yesterday of vCenter 6.0.0b I decided to do a quick post on how to patch your VCSA appliance.

    Please download VCSA patch from here.

    image

    (more…)

  • Condusiv V-locity 5 Testing

    image

    Nearly two years ago I was given the opportunity to take out the Condusiv Technologies V-locity VM version 4 product for a spin in my home lab, the results were pretty positive and certainly something I would suggest to anyone running a Windows estate to investigate.

    Move forward a couple of years and I was contacted by their technical director after having filled out an online questionnaire, he remembered my blog articles and wondered if I wanted to take the new version of V-locity 5 out for a spin to see how it compared, V-locity 5 now combines both the V-locity VM and V-locity Server products under one product banner.

    V-locity is an I/O reduction software solution that increases application performance in virtual, physical and cloud environments by 50% or more without the cost of additional hardware

  • Dramatically Faster Application Performance
  • Target Applications
  • Performance Validation
  • Seamless Deployment and Management (more…)

  • Voting now open for the 2015 Top VMware & Virtualization Blogs

    It’s that time again, Eric Siebert from vSphere-Land.com runs a vote for the top VMware and Virtualisation blogs every year. As there are now over 450 blogs listed on the nominations page there are a lot of sites to choose from. top-vblog-2015-1-smaller

    The voting is simple and should take no longer than a couple of minutes and allows you to choose your top 10 favourite listed blogs. The scoring is such that a #1 vote gives you 10 points, #2 vote gives you 9 points all the way down to a single point for a 10th place vote.

    The following criteria should be taken into consideration when voting.

    • How long have they been blogging
    • How long are the posts
    • How often do they post
    • How well are the posts written

    Results last year saw me slide up to 177 (an increase of 9 places over the previous year) but I would love to improve that this year and I can only do that with your help.

    If you like the blog\articles and find them useful please take the time to cast a vote for my blog

    I would really appreciate it, the blogging is done because I want to do it but I hope you the reader also get something out of it.

    Thanks for continuing to read the blog and come back soon.

  • VMware vExpert 2015 Awarded

    After much cajoling by @TroyersDog the excellent Corey Romero did a bang up job of releasing the 2015 VMware vExpert awards nice and early on Thursday 5th of February.

    I am humbled, honoured and pleased to announce that I was awarded the much coveted “non-technical” VMware award for the 4th year in a row and all I can say to Corey and the Team there at VMware is “Thank You”

    As always it’s my intention to keep up the work that has allowed me to be in the same group as loads of excellent bloggers, evangelists and keen VMware product users.

    I also wish to send a big shout out to all my fellow VMware vExperts and say to them “Well done and keep up the great work”

  • Yet another year in the life of Everything-Virtual.com

    Here’s how I did in 2014

    “Madison Square Garden can seat 20,000 people for a concert. This blog was viewed about 64,000 times in 2014. If it were a concert at Madison Square Garden, it would take about 3 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

    The busiest day of the year was October 16th with 333 views. The most popular post that day was How to upgrade your Iomega IX4-200D Disks.”

    Compared to last years this is an increase in of 12,000 page views, not bad considering I didn’t manage to post nearly as much as I would have liked to.

    “The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 52,000 times in 2013. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 19 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

    In 2013, there were 42 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 135 posts.

    The busiest day of the year was July 9th with 320 views. The most popular post that day was Condusiv V-locity VM Testing.”

    All I can say is thanks to my readers for continuing to read my site Smile

    Click here to view the entire report

  • Top vBlog 2014 Results

    Congratulations to the Top 25 Bloggers for their effort and dedication to maintaining excellent content.

    image

    With the results in I am pleased to say that I still managed to stay in the list this year (improving my standing by 9 places Smile)

    image

    For further details on this please head over to Eric’s site here