Everything-Virtual

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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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  • SanDisk Cruzer Fit – Write Protect on ESXi 5.x – Fix

    I recently came across an issue with my home lab that indicated I had an issue with my Cruzer Fit going to a Write Protect mode, doing a search online showed that a number of people were also exhibiting the same kinds of issues but this wasn’t being restricted to SanDisk Fit drives.

    I have been a fan of the Cruzer Fit for a while now, it’s sleek size meant that prying little fingers (I have a two year old who loves to investigate) can’t pull it out and lose it and it looks great on the front of my Shuttle SH63H3 cases so I was a bit alarmed to realise that I may have to replace these with another brand of drive that may not offer me the same flush fit as the Cruzer Fit.

    One thing I have to mention is that my usual method of installing ESXi in to my lab environment usually involves using VMware Workstation to create a VM, attaching a USB drive to the laptop and then attaching that to the VM, hey presto you have a readily available way of installing ESXi on to a system that doesn’t have a CD\DVD drive fitted. The reason I mention this will become clearer later on in the article.

    Now I should mention that the original lab build was done on VMware ESXi 5.1 and I blogged about how to upgrade from 5.1 to 5.5 here, during that time I haven’t really had much need to make changes to my ESXi environment and didn’t take note as to if\when the SanDisk Cruzer Fit drives I was using in my environment went to read-only but I know it has to have been after the 5.5 upgrade.

    Now how did I know that the drives had gone to a write protect mode? well carry on after the break to find out.

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  • DiskPart Commands to Clean and Format a USB or fixed Disk

    I put together this little post to help people clean and format their USB or fixed disk in Windows 8.1, I needed this because some of my USB drives have previously been formatted with ESXi or Linux installed on them and this was the easiest way to bring them back to a useable format.

    Continue after the break to see how to clean your ESXi or Linux formatted drive

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  • 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