Everything-Virtual

Category: Virtualisation

  • Upgrading SQL 2008 R2 Editions – Wizard and Command Line

    During a recent Microsoft True-Up piece of work we were doing at work we discovered that 3 of our Microsoft SQL servers had been installed with the Developer edition of Microsoft SQL 2008 R2, this isn’t really an issue because we are licensed for the proper versions but to make life easier for us in the future we decided to upgrade the instances to the correct version now rather than run into this same issue again in the future.

    Now there are a couple of ways of doing this but both methods require the installation media and the PID from the target version to hand.

    In this guide I will be upgrading from SQL 2008 R2 Standard to Enterprise Edition.

    image

    (more…)

  • vForum London

    So I had the pleasure of attending the VMware vForum event at Wembley Stadium yesterday. One of the surprise finds at the event was the Condusiv Technologies stand down in the Solutions Exchange.

    Now I didn’t realise it but Condusiv Technologies are a company I have had experience of before, for those of you familiar with Diskeeper you will remember the name Executive Software, well at some point Executive Software rebranded themselves as Condusiv Technologies.

    For the most part Condusiv were there demonstrating their new V-locity software, the benefits of which are said to be :-

    • Increase application performance by 50%
    • Reduce latency by 50% for faster file access
    • Eliminate bottlenecks without expensive hardware
    • True "set and forget" management

    From what I saw of the demonstration I was very impressed with the potential of V-locity and I have asked Condusiv for an NFR license to do some home testing on my home lab, hopefully a license will be winging it’s way over to me soon so that I can run some tests on my various NAS devices here (both pre and post software install).

    In was good catching up with old friends from various different companies (VMware, EMC\MTI, GlobalKnowledge) as well as catching up with some of my fellow #LonVMUG’ers and I was also glad to see at least one other person wearing his CloudCreds t-shirt with pride Smile

    This was my first vForum event and I must say it was well presented with just the right amount of detail, the solutions exchange area was full of different vendors and the food\drink provided was top notch.

    Over all I was impressed and will be attending next years event as well.

    Thank you VMware.

  • vCenter Server 5.1 – Windows 2012 Now Supported

    With the release last week of vSphere 5.1 Update 1 one of the things that was announced was the ability to install vCenter Server on Windows 2012, as my recent overhaul of the HomeLab included an upgrade to Windows 2012 across the environment I had to use the vCSA instead of 2012 because vCenter used a deprecated Service that was no longer available in Windows 2012.

    Now that 5.1u1 is out and supports Windows 2012 I will be documenting the installation process using Windows 2012 as the base OS.

  • ESXi 5.1u1 Upgrade in 7 Steps

    So with the release of ESXi 5.1 Update 1 last week it meant I needed to upgrade my home lab environment, using the following steps allowed me to do this really quickly and with little fuss.

    1. Place the Host into Maintenance Mode and ensure that there are no running VM’s on the host.

    2. Ensure you have SSH enabled

    image  image  image

    3. Make sure that the Outbound HTTP rule is enabled, either by using the console or via the command line later on (command line is esxcli network firewall ruleset set -e true -r httpClient )

    (more…)

  • VMware Cloud Credibility

    VMware have just launched the CloudCredibility website that gives you and your team the chance to prove how good you are by awarding points for every challenge\task you complete. It’s a fairly light hearted approach to showing off you and your Teams Cloud abilities from both a technical and non-technical stand point.

    It has tasks covering social media, course attendance as well as hosting podcasts and writing books so there are lots of different things to suit everyone.

    Have a look and join in the fun Smile

  • Slipstreaming SQL Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 2

    As I mentioned in a previous post I have decided to refresh my home lab to running Windows Server 2012, part of the installation requirements was installing SQL Server 2008 R2 into the new 2012 environment, easy you may think however it’s not as simple as that because whilst trying to install SQL 2008 R2 RTM I had the following screen appear.

    image

    (more…)

  • Home Lab 2013 – The Next Generation

    For the last couple of years I have been happy using the Lenovo TS200 servers as my basis for my home lab environment, unfortunately with the restriction of 16GB ram per server (32GB if I purchased completely new ram at far too expensive costs) and my ever increasing pool of VMs running on my hosts I decided to upgrade my home servers to something a little more powerful, a lesson I learned from my experience with using the Lenovo’s was that I wanted something with a smaller footprint but capable of running more workloads. The current max ram capacity of my 3 Lenovo hosts was 48GB of ram but with three hosts running I started to find myself not needing radiators in my house Winking smile

    The new 2013 ESXi 5.1 Lab Host:

    Because I already had 3 hosts in my old lab I didn’t want to reduce that number down too much so I decided to go for 2 hosts currently with the option of getting another host in the future should resource start being an issue. Without a second host I wouldn’t be able to play with goodies such as HA/DRS and vMotion?!

    ShuttleShuttle XPC SH67H3 – I have had some really good experiences with Shuttle PC’s in the past and having read a few peoples experiences with the XPC SH67 range I decided to look at the offerings. Like all Shuttle systems its a small compact system that is capable of supporting the newer Ivy Bridge processors and up to 32GB memory **Only newer version 2.0 SH67H3’s support Ivy Bridge cpus so check to see whether your motherboard supports it. You may also be required to update to the newest BIOS to support the newer cpu (of my two shuttles, one supported the new cpu from the outset whilst the the 2nd didn’t and needed the firmware updating, an issue if you don’t have a Sandy Bridge cpu to put into the Shuttle to update it with).

    (more…)

  • VMware Announce the VCAP-DTD Certification Track

    VMware have just announced the availability of the VCAP-DTD exam track. This track is aimed at Desktop Design and focuses on VMware View \ ThinApp and ESXi.

    The pre-requisites are :-

    VMW-VCP5-DT-101

    VMware suggest doing the following courses although they are not a requirement :-

    VMware View- Install, Configure, Manage [V5.0]

    VMware View- Install, Configure, Manage [V5.1]

    Application Virtualization with VMware ThinApp

    VMware View- Design Best Practices [V5.0]]

    More information can be found over on the VMware MyLearn Site

  • VMware vSphere 4.1 HA and DRS – Free Kindle Download

    Duncan and Frank have announced the availability of the Kindle edition of the vSphere 4.1 HA and DRS book for free, if you missed it the first time around please take the time to download it now.

    vSphere 4.1 HA and DRS Kindle Book

  • VMware Announces General Availability of VMware vCloud Suite 5.1

    Recently at VMworld in San Francisco VMware announced the vCloud 5.1 Suite and yesterday brought about its general availability.

    The vCloud 5.1 Suite is a complete integrated cloud infrastructure solution and was definitely one of the primary discussion points at of VMworld among partners and end users.

    From the VMware Press Release some of the highlights of the vCloud 5.1 Suite are:

     

    • VMware vSphere® 5.1 – With more than 100 enhancements and new features, VMware’s virtualization platform is the proven foundation for the software-defined datacentre, delivering the highest service levels for all applications, including business-critical workloads and low-latency, I/O-sensitive applications.
    • VMware vCloud Director® 5.1 – With scalability improvements that support “elastic” virtual datacenters spanning multiple VMware vSphere clusters and up to 30,000 VMs, VMware vCloud Director 5.1 allows customers to provision complete virtual datacenter services in minutes.
    • VMware vCloud Networking and Security 5.1 –Providing a full set of software-defined networking capabilities, the new VMware vCloud Networking and Security enables the dynamic creation of virtual networks and services that are completely decoupled and independent from the physical network hardware.
    • VMware vCenter™ Site Recovery Manager™ 5.1– To enhance the availability and rapid recovery of applications running in the software-defined datacentre, vCenter Site Recovery Manager 5.1 simplifies and automates disaster recovery planning, testing and execution.

    Check out the VMware press release for full details – VMware press release – VMware Announces General Availability of VMware vCloud Suite 5.1