Eric Siebert over at vsphere-land.com has finished counting all the votes and put together the Top Blog 2012 results and I am really pleased to say that Everything-Virtual.com finished in a respectable 88th (out of a total of 187 entries) in the âTop VMware Bloggers 2012â category.
I just want to say a big thanks to all the people who voted for me and congratulations go out to all the other bloggers.
Itâs that time of the year where applications for the vExpert 2012 designation are open.
The annual VMware vExpert title is given to individuals who have significantly contributed to the community of VMware users over the past calendar year. The title is awarded to individuals (not employers of VMware) for their commitment to sharing their knowledge and passion for VMware technology above and beyond their job requirements. The program invited the most active VMware users \ bloggers to become vExperts and help spread knowledge and expertise about VMware technology.
This year however there is a change to how you become a vExpert, VMware have now provided three paths to gaining the vExpert although there is still only a single vExpert designation (so no vExpert EP, CP or VPN).
Evangelist Path – The Evangelist Path includes book authors, bloggers, tool builders, public speakers, and other IT professionals who share their knowledge and passion with others with the leverage of a personal public platform to reach many people. Employees of VMware can now also apply via the Evangelist path.
Customer Path – The Customer Path is for internal evangelists and community leaders from VMware customer organizations. They have contributed to success stories, customer references, or public interviews and talks, or were active community contributors, such as VMUG leaders.
VPN (VMware Partner Network) Path – The VPN Path is for employees of our partner companies who lead with passion and by example, who are committed to continuous learning and to making their technical knowledge and expertise available to many. This can take shape of event participation, video, IP generation, as well as public speaking engagements
VMware vExpert Benefits include:
Public recognition of the vExpert award with a certificate, gift, permission to display a logo, and inclusion in any public vExpert listing
Access to a private vExpert community of your peers
Free subscription to conference session materials on VMworld.com
Access to exclusive events, beta programs, software licenses, and other exclusive opportunities to participate in activities with VMware. vExperts do not represent VMware and are not required to participate in any activities
Use the vExpert 2012 form to submit your application, and the invitation form to encourage your peers to apply.
In this post I am going to document the installation process for VMware vCenter Server 5.0. Keeping inline with the rest of my lab environment I am using Windows 2008 R2 64bit as the OS for my installation.
Ensure you meet the following hardware and software requirements. The vCenter Server 5.0 installation can be either a physical or a virtual server.
Minimum Hardware Requirements
Recommended Hardware Requirements
Depending on the amount of hosts and powered on VMâs you also have the following recommended configurations.
For up to 50 hosts and up to 500 powered on VMâs
For up to 300 hosts and up to 3000 powered on VMâs
For up to 1000 hosts and up to 10000 powered on VMâs
vCenter Server 5.0 requires a 64-bit operating system and cannot be installed on a 32-bit operating system, that means you either need to upgrade your existing infrastructure to a 64bit OSâs or youâre going to have to look at the vCenter Server Appliance (vCSA) instead, word of warning where the Appliance is concerned is that it doesnât support Microsoft SQL as a db. solution so youâre either going to need to be running Oracle or using the embedded DB2 db..
Supported Operating Systems are :-
Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Standard, Enterprise or Datacenter SP2 64bit
Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Standard, Enterprise or Datacenter R2 SP2 64bit
Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Standard, Enterprise or Datacenter SP2 64bit
Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Standard, Enterprise or Datacenter R2 SP2 64bit
Supported Databases are:-
IBM DB2 Express C 9.7.2 -64-bit
IBM DB2 Express 9.7.2 -64-bit
IBM DB2 Workgroup 9.7.2 -64-bit
IBM DB2 Enterprise 9.7.2 -64-bit
IBM DB2 Express C 9.7.2 – 32-bit
IBM DB2 Workgroup 9.7.2 -32-bit
IBM DB2 Enterpirse 9.7.2 -32-bit
IBM DB2 Express C 9.5 – 32-bit
IBM DB2 Express 9.5 – 32-bit
IBM DB2 Workgroup 9.5 -32-bit
IBM DB2 Enterprise 9.5 -32-bit
IBM DB2 Enterprise 9
Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Enterprise (R2) – 64-bit
Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Enterprise (R2) – 32-bit
Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Standard (R2) – 64-bit
Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Standard (R2) – 32-bit
Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Express (R2) – 64-bit
Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Datacenter Edition (SP2) -64-bit
Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Datacenter Edition (SP2) -32-bit
Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Enterprise Edition (SP2) -64-bit
Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Enterprise Edition (SP2) -32-bit
Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Standard Edition (SP2) -64-bit
Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Standard Edition (SP2) -32-bit
Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Datacenter Edition (SP4) -64-bit
Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Datacenter Edition (SP4) -32-bit
Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition (SP4) -64-bit
Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition (SP4) -32-bit
Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Standard Edition (SP4) -64-bit
Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Standard Edition (SP4) -32-bit
Oracle 11g Enterprise Edition, Release 2 [11.2.0.1] – 64 bit
Oracle 11g Enterprise Edition, Release 2 [11.2.0.1] – 32 bit
Oracle 11g Standard Edition, Release 2 [11.2.0.1] – 64 bit
Oracle 11g Standard Edition, Release 2 [11.2.0.1] – 32 bit
Oracle 11g Standard ONE Edition, Release 2 [11.2.0.1] – 64 bit
Oracle 11g Standard ONE Edition, Release 2 [11.2.0.1] – 32 bit
Oracle 11g Enterprise Edition, Release 1 [11.1.0.7.0] 64-bit
Oracle 11g Enterprise Edition, Release 1 [11.1.0.7.0] – 32-bit
Oracle 11g Standard Edition , Release 1 [11.1.0.7.0] 64-bit
Oracle 11g Standard Edition , Release 1 [11.1.0.7.0] – 32-bit
Oracle 10g Enterprise Edition, Release 2 [10.2.0.4] – 64 bit
Oracle 10g Enterprise Edition, Release 2 [10.2.0.4] – 32 bit
Oracle 10g Standard Edition, Release 2 [10.2.0.4] – 64 bit
Oracle 10g Standard Edition, Release 2 [10.2.0.4] – 32 bit
Oracle 10g Standard ONE Edition, Release 2 [10.2.0.4] – 64 bit
Oracle 10g Standard ONE Edition, Release 2 [10.2.0.4] – 32 bit
Setting up the vCenter 5.0 database
During the installation of vCenter 5.0 you have the choice of installing a new installation of SQL Server 2008 R2 Express or using an existing db. in my case I am connecting to an existing SQL Server 2008 R2 installation, because of that we need to create the DB and ODBC connection. (more…)
Itâs only a couple of days before the first #LonVMUG of 2012 and I thought I would post up the agenda for it.
The #LonVMUG is being held on Thursday 26th of January from 10:00 – 17:15 at The London Chamber of Commerce and Industry, 33 Queen Street, London, EC4R 1AP
If you havenât managed to attend any VMUGâs I would definitely recommend that you do because itâs a great way to network with like minded peers and attend some very well delivered presentations.
If youâre coming to the #LonVMUG on Thursday pop over and say hello
Every year Eric Siebert from vSphere-Land.com runs a vote for the top 25 VMware and Virtualisation blogs. As there now are over 180 blogs listed on the nominations list the vote has been increased to the top 50 blogs for the year.
The voting is simple, should take no more than a couple of minutes of your time 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.
If you like the content that I provide here and would like 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 reading the blog and come back soon.
Last year I built up a Windows XP VM to allow me to do some performance testing in my vSphere 4.1 lab, the VM used the Flexible type Network card (as thatâs the default card type) and worked without issue over a number of ESXi demo installations.
Since passing my VCP on vSphere 4 I have been slowly migrating my lab environment across to ESXi 5.0 and yesterday it was the turn on my XP machine, I still keep an XP machine around for various testing purposes (used for my Iometer testing last year). Upgrading the Virtual Machine Hardware version went smoothly when I imported the VM into my ESXi environment, starting the VM I managed to get an IP address and started the Windows Update process (itâs been a couple of months since this box was online). After the updates were installed and the machine rebooted I started the upgrade process for VMware Tools, itâs at this point that I started having problems.
When the VM rebooted I tried to hit Windows Update again (you know how it goes, update after update, but when I tried to access that or any other site I wasnât getting any kind of response.
Pulling up a command prompt I was getting the initial DHCP allocated IP address but when trying to ping anything it wouldnât find anything. Doing an ipconfig /renew timed out as well.
I then carried out the following to see if there was anything not working in my environment.
Whilst Device Manager has an option to show hidden devices it doesnât show disconnected devices, thatâs where the set command above comes into play. As you can see in the screen shots above we see the original Device Manager and then the Device Manager with the Show NonPresent Devices setting enabled.
After going through the above steps I was able to start browsing the network and Windows Updates started working again.
I can tell you that I havenât been able to replicate this behaviour in my lab (I have tried a couple of XP builds and they all upgraded VMware Tools successfully using the Flexible vNIC) but in case you experience the same type of issue you have some things to try.
As I have stated in the past I have been studying for my VCP for a while, I managed to take the ICM course last year and probably spent a good four months afterwards studying to make sure I passed with ease. Disaster struck when work suddenly went crazy and my study opportunities disappeared. It was only in December that I remembered that I had received a discount voucher from VMware for a 70% discount on the cost of the exam (which for anyone who has sat the exam knows, itâs not cheap at ÂŁ145).
The reason for this post is that whilst I was lucky and received this email through the post the other day
It was actually very close to being a âSorry You Failed, please try harder next timeâ message, why you ask?
I booked the exam on the 21st of December, I was scheduled to sit it on the 23rd of December, I hadnât studied for the exam in over two months and I hadnât been playing with my lab at home because of time constraints (I spend 14+ hours of the day out of the house either at work or travelling to work, I have a wife and son who also want to see me and spend time with me so really, there wasnât a lot of time to spare) but I knew that if I wanted to get my VCP instead of procrastinating about it I would have to give myself a reason to actually do it and thatâs why I booked it when I did for when I did, I stood to lose the cost of the exam (in this case ÂŁ52.20 which is what I paid for the exam after the 70% discount 
). I then spent 2.5 days travelling to and from work (6 hours a day) as well as my lunch hour, studying for the VCP exam. Now luckily for me I have an Apple iPad 2 with the Kindle App installed, I also have a large number of VMware based books purchased from the Amazon store as well as the PDFâs mentioned in my previous post (VMware VCP 4 â Additional Study Material) so I knew I could go over the material I wasnât sure about.
This is where I learnt my lesson, 2.5 days is not enough time to cram for an exam, not after a hiatus of 2 months from study. My advice is definitely take more time to study but also make sure you give yourself a deadline to have the exam booked by.
Back in May of last year I wrote a post about how I thought that FreeNAS 8.0.0 Release wasn’t actually ready or reliable, it had failed on me a couple of times and performance as far as NFS was concerned was dire. Testing of the NAS couldn’t continue because of the difficulties I was experiencing with FreeNAS, so much so that I didn’t finish testing.
Move forward two releases (with a 3rd just around the corner) and I can say that FreeNAS is now at a point where it does what itâs says on the tin. Let me give you an example.
I recently built up a new NAS device instead of purchasing the ever so slightly over priced Iomega PX6, the idea being that I thought (correctly in this instance) that I could build up a server offering the same kind of functionality thatâs on offer from the impressive PX6. My final solution was actually based on FreeNAS 8.0.2 after testing various products and I had been running my home lab from it for a couple of weeks.
Because I had been experiencing some issues with my servers (three Lenovo TS200âs) I decided to run some memory tests on those boxes for a couple of days (as it stands the ram in all the servers ran fine for 48 hours so it mush have been issues with the installation of Windows 2008 R2 that I had been testing due to work). Once I had finished with my Hyper-V environment I decided to upgrade to vSphere 5 and start studying for my VCP 5 exam. This is where my change of heart for FreeNAS really came through.
Having stacked my storage devices into Ghetto Rack I decided to install the latest release of FreeNAS onto my HP Microserver, I plugged in my SanDisk Cruzer and proceeded to âupgradeâ FreeNAS onto it, I say âupgradeâ because I had thought that the drive I was using had been used for something else but at the time I didnât really think about it. With the Microserver now having FreeNAS on it I decided to boot up my GhettoPX but was alarmed when I discovered that it didnât actually boot into FreeNAS but instead into OpenDSS (which is what I had thought was on the drive in the Microserver), it was then that I realised that I had used the wrong USB key, the concern now was that the GhettoPX had all my VMâs on it (around 20 different machines used for different projects).
Disconnecting the 6 internal SATA drives I proceeded to install FreeNAS and tried to configure it to see if I could restore the environment back to how it was (no, at this stage I didnât have a copy of the latest config which is silly because I always did so when I was using OpenFiler).
I managed to import the disk set, which to be honest was a start but when I did that I couldnât see anything on the disks, so going through the same configuration steps used when I originally created the iSCSI extents and targets I re-created them.
Lo and Behold, by ensuring I created the targets and extents with the same names and sizes I was able to recover my iSCSI volumes, now all I needed to do was discover them in my last ESXi 4 server so that I could migrate them from the datastore to allow me to upgrade my entire lab (servers as well as datastores) to the vSphere 5 infrastructure. Using the vCenter console I was able to mount the datastore and migrate the data across to my NFS datastore on my IX4.
What could have been a total disaster for me as far as lab build goes actually went very well, FreeNAS didnât baulk at my lack of config files, didnât stop at me recovering my existing iSCSI volumes and actually worked on the browser I wanted to use (actually I have tested it on both Firefox and IE9 successfully, something that the original 8.0.0 release wouldnât have done).
FreeNAS team, I know I was hard on you back in May of last year but the progress you are making on FreeNAS 8 is definitely moving in the right direction, itâs also nice to see that unlike OpenFiler you are keeping the releases flowing at a decent rate. I would like to see an improvement in NFS performance but as the current usage for the NAS is for my new ESXi 5 environment I will be playing with VMFS for the moment so NFS isnât such a great issue⌠for now.
Reminding myself of the goals I had set for 2011 I discovered that I have accomplished the majority of my goals for 2011.
To recap my goals for 2011 were.
* Sit and pass my VCP vSphere 4 Exam Sat and passed my exam on the 23rd of December
* Improve my VMware product knowledge (VMware View in particular) Having installed VMware View in my homelab and played with ThinApp my knowledge of both has greatly improved.
* Produce more technical content for this site (as well as my-homelab.com) I had produced more content including a couple of videos but those were done for my-techvideos.com instead.
* Move more into the VMware Virtualisation platform market and less of the Microsoft one. I took a position with a major online gambling company in their Windows Team 
* Become a recognised VMware blogger (I want my vExpert). Obviously not in the same league as other bloggers but with 22k unique visitors to my blog in 2011 I am happy with that.
* Continue to improve my home lab environment. Yes on this one, I have continued to play with various technologies including various SAN\NAS providers as well as other technologies
As you can see the goals I set in 2011 were pretty wellWhat thatâs meant for me is that my goals for 2011 were both realistic and in the main, achievable. It also means that I have to improve my goals for 2012 which could be difficult.
My goals for 2012 are.
* Sit and pass my VCP vSphere 5 Exam
* Sit and pass my VCA-DT 4 Exam
* Continue to produce technical content for both this site and my-techvideos.com
* Continue to grow my VMware blogger status (I still want my vExpert), this includes attending more VMUGâs as well as VMworld 2012 this year.
* Continue to build up my home lab environment and experiment with various technologies.
After the earlier success of the VMware View Bootcamp back in July this year, VMware are releasing a new Bootcamp based on VMware ThinApp, this Bootcamp will be covering the use, deployment, and optimisation of VMware ThinApp.
Topics covered over the 6 days are :-
Day 1 â ThinApp Design Best Practices
Day 2 â ThinApp Implementation Best Practices
Day 3 â ThinApp Performance Enhancing Techniques
Day 4 â Scripting within ThinApp
Day 5 â Isolation Modes Explained
Day 6 â AppLink Fundamentals