Everything-Virtual

Author: Simon

  • Microsoft SCCM 2012 R2 – Installing SCCM 2012 R2 and CU4

    In the first three posts of my SCCM 2012 R2 posts I covered the Active Directory, SQL and Windows requirements to install Microsoft SCCM 2012 R2 in a lab environment.

    SCCM 2012 R2 Pre-requisite installs part 1 Covered Active Directory and Schema Extensions
    SCCM 2012 R2 Pre-requisite installs part 2 Covered SQL 2012 Additional Feature Installs (Reporting Services)
    SCCM 2012 R2 Pre-requisite installs part 3 Covered the Windows 2012R2 Requirements for SCCM 2012 R2, this includes IIS, WSUS and ADK

    In part 4 I cover the installation of SCCM 2012 R2 and the recently released Cumulative Update 4 (CU4).

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  • 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”

  • Microsoft SCCM 2012 R2 – Pre-Requisite Installs Part 3

    In the first two posts on this multi-part blog post about installing Microsoft SCCM 2012 R2 I covered the pre-requisites for Active Directory and SQL Server (Reporting Services). In Part 3 I am covering the requirements for the Windows OS for the SCCM 2012 R2 Site Server.

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  • VMware Certification 2015 Road Map

    With the release of vSphere 6 yesterday VMware have now also released their road map for 2015 on their certification offerings.

    As expected there is the new VCP6 DCV exam but it’s also no surprise that the recently announced VCIX has made further in roads and replaced the VCAP exams across the board.

    We also see a renaming of both the Cloud Certification and Desktop Tracks, these are now known as the CMA (Cloud Management & Automation) and DTM (Desktop & Mobility) Tracks respectively.

     

    Cert_Roadmap_2015Q1_v5_final_WEB

    More information can be found at https://mylearn.vmware.com/mgrReg/plan.cfm?plan=62402&ui=www_cert#key

  • Microsoft SQL 2012 Installation Video for SCCM 2012 R2

    Quick video to show a SQL 2012 Installation to use with SCCM 2012 R2

     

    Microsoft SQL 2012 Installation Video for SCCM 2012 R2 from Everything-Virtual.com on Vimeo.

  • Microsoft SCCM 2012 R2 – Pre-Requisite Installs Part 2

    In Part 1 of this multi-part post I detailed the Active Directory requirements for installing SCCM 2012 R2, in this post is the SQL Installation. In my lab I am going to be running this from an already existing SQL 2012 instance and I just needed to add the Reporting Services component to my installation, however the installation routine for adding the Reporting Services is somewhat similar for a new SQL installation and where it’s different I will let you know.

    I know I said that Part 2 would contain the Windows OS requirements for the SCCM 2012 R2 installation but this has proven to be a bit longer than I expected.

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  • Microsoft SCCM 2012 R2 – Pre-Requisite Installs Part 1

    With an ever expanding Windows estate in my lab (and being a former Microsoft SCCM Engineer) I decided that rather than downloading Microsoft patches to every single server in my lab I would install SCCM 2012 R2 and utilise a single source for my downloads. Now sure I could have just gone down the WSUS route but as I haven’t actually played with SCCM 2012 (or R2) I decided to have a play with that instead.

    The next couple of blog posts are going to detail the installation of the pre-requisites for SCCM 2012 R2 (Active Directory, SQL and the SCCM Host Pre-Reqs) as well as the actual SCCM 2012 Installation.

    For obvious reasons I am going to use a couple of posts as this isn’t a simple double click to install.

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  • vRealize Operations Manager 6 – One or more ports are experiencing network contention

    Having installed vRealize Operations Manager a couple of times recently in my home lab I came across an error that initially caused me to rip out the lab and build it again changing the way my networking was being done. Why? Well the following error was being presented to me when I logged in to the Operations Manager console.

    2015-01-24_21-13-16

    In a home lab environment this confused me because, well it’s a home lab environment and there wasn’t a lot going on (I had 5 VMs running across three hosts at the time).

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  • Installing ESXi to a USB key using VMware Workstation 11

    This is an updated post covering VMware Workstation 11 instead of Workstation 9, it’s been updated to cover installing using the formatwithmbr switch during the initial boot process as well as highlighting an issue with creating multiple USB keys from the same VM template.

    This is still the the quickest and easiest method for me to install ESXi on to a host with no local CD\DVD drive.

    Continue to read after the break for the updated build \ preparation process.

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  • VMware Workstation Multiple USB ESXi Build Issue

    During a rebuild of my home lab recently I stumbled on to problem which means I need to update the VMware Workstation \ Fusion ESXi build instructions I have previously issued. Due to me having to rebuild the hosts one at a time to ensure that the USB drives use the mbr partition instead of GPT I followed my previous instructions of using a VM in VMware Workstation to rebuild all three USB drives, all was good with the first host running but as soon as I added hosts 2 and 3 I started experiencing issues with the hosts not working well with each other. Each host was able to ping components outside of themselves but were unable to ping the other hosts, making things even stranger still was that I couldn’t add the hosts to vCenter either, having done the obvious and made sure I hadn’t made any mistakes with networking (all using the correct IP addressing, subnet masks and DNS servers etc) I put a post out to Twitter asking for some advice, this wasn’t a new build having had been used previously to build out the Shuttle servers so I knew that the ISO image was fine so then someone asked what happened with a single server being on line, powering down two of the hosts I found myself able to ping the remaining host without issue, however as soon as I powered up another host I encountered dropped pings all over the place.

    Thinking perhaps that I had a faulty NIC card (it happens and is the reason I have a spare one sitting around) I started playing with all three hosts to see which one of the three could be causing the issue, as it turns out none of them and all of them. Individually each host performs as expected, it’s 100% pingable, able to join vCenter and works as expected but adding any other host to the environment would cause the entire environment to break down and become un-responsive.

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