Whilst doing some work on one of our Windows 2008 R2 templates (AV Upgrade) I discovered that we had an issue with the network being un plugged and not connecting, it turns out that the template had recently been Storage vMotion to a different data store and since then wouldn’t allow the vNIC to connect to the network.
In a recent post I showed you how to update your hosts from 5.1 to 5.1u1, whilst it was a nice and simple exercise you mustn’t forget that you also need to update your vCenter server (or in this case appliance).
Following the steps below you will now update your vCSA appliance from 5.1 to 5.1u1.
1. Take a snapshot of your vCSA VM, you want to do this in case you need to roll back the update for any reason.
2. Point your browser to https://<vcsa-ip-address>:5480 This will give you access to the vCSA administrator console.
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 :-
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 
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.
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.
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
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 )
Please fine a list of all vSphere client download urls. the urls all refer back to the original VMware website rather than being hosted by me.
I will update the URLs when more clients are made available.
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 :-
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
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.
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:
Check out the VMware press release for full details – VMware press release – VMware Announces General Availability of VMware vCloud Suite 5.1
Earlier this week I asked what it would mean for the mobile app publishers now that VMware had introduced a decent Web Client for vSphere 5, the reason for the post was because it looked like the web client would be all that was needed for the mobile user to manage their vSphere infrastructure, it turns out that I was a tad hasty in my view of the mobile app’s imminent demise.
Why I hear you ask? Well, the new vSphere Web Client is Flash driven and as such won’t work on a number of mobile platforms (especially now that Adobe have also removed it from the Google Marketplace as well). Now don’t panic too much because for all intents and purposes it appears that VMware have implemented this well, yes it sucks that this is on Flash and not something like Java but as most Enterprise desktops already have a flavour of Flash installed so it does mean one less application being installed on the desktop (and let’s be fair, the vSphere client does have a large-ish footprint).
I can’t comment personally on the usability of the new Web Client but come back soon for an updated view on it.