Everything-Virtual

Category: Uncategorised

  • New VMware Hands-on Labs

    VMware have just announced the availability of some new Hands-On Labs, there are now 16 lab topics available, free to everyone. Labs are listed below along with a direct link to enroll in the lab.

    Labs Currently Available

    · HOL-SDC-1301 – Applied Cloud Operations – Enroll in HOL-SDC-1301

    · HOL-SDC-1302 – vSphere Distributed Switch from A to Z – Enroll in HOL-SDC-1302

    · HOL-SDC-1304 – vSphere Performance Optimization – Enroll in HOL-SDC-1304

    · HOL-SDC-1305 – Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery In Action – Enroll in HOL-SDC-1305

    · HOL-SDC-1307 – vCloud Automation Solutions – Enroll in HOL-SDC-1307

    · HOL-SDC-1308 – Virtual Storage Solutions – Enroll in HOL-SDC-1308

    · HOL-SDC-1309 – vSphere Big Data Extensions – Enroll in HOL-SDC-1309

    · HOL-SDC-1310 – vSphere and vSOM 101 – Enroll in HOL-SDC-1310

    · HOL-SDC-1311 – VMware IT Business Management – Enroll in HOL-SDC-1311

    · HOL-SDC-1313 – vCloud Suite Use Cases – Infrastructure Provisioning (IaaS) – Enroll in HOL-SDC-1313

    · HOL-SDC-1314 – vCloud Suite Use Cases – Application Provisioning (PaaS) – Enroll in HOL-SDC-1314

    · HOL-SDC-1315 – vCloud Suite Use Cases – Control & Compliance – Enroll in HOL-SDC-1315

    · HOL-SDC-1316 – vCloud Suite Use Cases – Quality of Service – Enroll in HOL-SDC-1316

    · HOL-SDC-1317 – vCloud Suite Use Cases – Business Critical Applications – Enroll in HOL-SDC-1317

    · HOL-SDC-1318 – vCloud Suite Use Cases – Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery – Enroll in HOL-SDC-1318

    · HOL-MBL-1301-AZ – Horizon View from A to Z – Enroll in HOL-MBL-1301-AZ

    Labs Coming This Week

    • HOL-SDC-1303 – VMware NSX Network Virtualization Platform
    • HOL-SDC-1319 – VMware NSX for Multiple Hypervisor Environments
    • HOL-MBL-1301 – UC – VMware View Use Cases
    • HOL-MBL-1304 – Horizon Workspace – Explore and Deploy
    • HOL-MBL-1309 – Horizon Mirage – Manage Physical Desktops
    • HOL-MBL-1311 – Applied ThinApp with the Horizon Suite
    • HOL-HBD-1301 – vCloud Hybrid Service – Jump Start for vSphere Admins
    • HOL-HBD-1302 – vCloud Hybrid Service – Networking & Security
    • HOL-HBD-1303 – vCloud Hybrid Service – Manage Your Cloud
    • HOL-PRT-1301 – NetApp Virtual Storage Console
    • HOL-PRT-1302 – IBM Tivoli Storage Manager for Virtual Environments
    • HOL-PRT-1303 – EMC – Using Puppet with vSphere Web Client
    • HOL-PRT-1304 – Infoblox – Automate with vCAC and the vCO IPAM plug-in
    • HOL-PRT-1305 – Cisco Nexus 1000V – Enhanced VXLAN Networking in vCloud Director
    • HOL-PRT-1306 – Catbird-Hytrust-LogRhythm – Partner Security and Compliance
    • HOL-PRT-1307 – Puppet Labs – Automate vSphere Provisioning and Management

    Log into the Online Portal at http://labs.hol.vmware.com.

  • Creating vCenter and VUM 5.5 databases.

    As a precursor to installing vCenter 5.5 in my 2012R2 lab at home I needed to create the vCenter and VUM databases in SQL 2012 and make sure that everything was setup correctly before the vCenter installation.

    To make things easier I used the SQL Scripts below to create two DBs (VC55 and VUMDB) as well as creating the vc_user account and password.

    [code lang=”sql”]USE MASTER;
    GO
    CREATE DATABASE [VC55] ON PRIMARY(
    NAME=’VC55′,
    FILENAME=’D:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL11.MSSQLSERVER\MSSQL\DATA\VC55.mdf’,
    SIZE=5000KB,
    FILEGROWTH=10%)
    LOG ON
    (NAME=’VC55_log’,
    FILENAME=’E:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL11.MSSQLSERVER\MSSQL\DATA\VC55.ldf’,
    SIZE=1000KB,
    FILEGROWTH=10%)
    COLLATE SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS
    GO
    [/code]

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  • ESXi 5.5 Upgrade in 7 Steps

    So with the release of ESXi 5.5 I decided to follow my previous instructions and upgrade my hosts using the esxcli commands.

    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 )

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  • Condusiv V-locity VM Testing – Synology DS1513+

    This is a follow on posting about my Condusiv V-Locity VM testing carried out back in July.

    I have carried out testing on the Synology DS1513+ NAS using both iSCSI and NFS.

    Lab Setup

    Host Hardware

    ESXi HOST: Shuttle XPC SH67H3, 32GB RAM; 1x i7 3770 @ 3.4ghz with ESXi 5.1u1 (5.1.0 build 1021289)

    STORAGE PLATFORM

    Synology: DS1513+ running DSM 4.2

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  • VMware Releases New Desktop Virtualisation Products

    VMware have just released a slew of desktop virtualisation products in the last 24 hours, they have released VMware Workstation 10, VMware Fusion 6, VMware Fusion 6 Pro, VMware Player and VMware Player 6 Plus. 

    Key new features include:

    • The latest operating systems – Support for Windows 8.1, OS X Mavericks (Fusion and Fusion Pro only) as well as new Linux distros. Computers running Windows 8.1 can be converted into virtual machines via VMware Converter.
    • Better performance – These products enable virtual machines to be created with up to 16 vCPUs, 64GB of memory, 8TB disks and adds faster USB connections, a new vSATA controller and twice as many virtual networks.
    • Expiring virtual machines – Restricted virtual machines can be set to expire at a specified date and time. An expired virtual machine automatically suspends and will not restart without administrator intervention.
    • The ability to run a cloud on Your PC – Workstation 10 lets you build a cloud on your PC running popular applications from Pivotal, Puppet Labs and Vagrant.

    Pricing and availability

    All are now available to purchase in full or as an upgrade.

    VMW-BXSHT-FSN6imageimage

    VMW-BXSHT-FSN6-PROimage

    VMW-BXSHT-PLYR6-PLSimage

    VMW-BXSHT-WORK10imageimage

    Please click on the images above to go to the Product, Full product and Upgrade Product pages.

  • vCloud Suite 5.5 Announcement

    VMware have announced updates to their vCloud Suite product.

    VMware have extended the number of products that are included in the vCloud Suite 5.5, this includes vCloud Automation Center (vCAC) availability in all editions rather than just the Enterprise Suite. Prior to this announcement vCloud Automation Center came in a single version, however the announcement let’s us know that we now have Standard, Advanced and Enterprise versions available.

    • vCloud Automation Center – Standard Edition offers the basic self service portal feature of vCAC.
    • vCloud Automation Center – Advanced Edition offers the same functionality as the existing vCAC product.
    • vCloud Automation Center – Enterprise Edition offers full vCAC functionality plus vFabric App Director for Release Automation.

    vCloud Director and vCloud Networking and Security are not sold as standalone products anymore.

    All editions of the vCloud Suite now include automation features (offered by vCAC) and Operations Management (using vCOPS).

    overview-vcloud-suite

  • New VMware Certification Offerings – VMware Certified Associate (VCA)

    One of the things that VMware hadn’t followed up was their Associate certification offerings, when they first announced the VCA4 DT exam a couple of years ago there was a hope that VMware would offer further exams but for the last couple of years they haven’t. That’s just changed Smile

    VMware have just announced the availability of more VMware Certified Associate level certifications (VCA). Like the earlier VMware VCA4 DT certification there are no mandatory training course or pre-reqs for the VCA exams but there are recommended FREE on-line training courses which can be taken for the exam preparation.

    There are currently 3 exams which are available now for registration with the VCA-NV exam coming soon.

    Below are the VMware Certified Associate which are available:

    More information about the new certification can be found on the VMware Certification page and the VMware Certfication Road Map

  • What’s new in vSphere 5.5

    VMware has just announced the vSphere 5.5 product at VMworld 2013. Here are the new features and enhancements.

    vSphere ESXi Hypervisor Enhancements

    • Hot-Pluggable SSD PCI Express (PCIe) Devices
    • Support for Reliable Memory Technology
    • Enhancements for CPU C-States

    Virtual Machine Enhancements

    • Virtual Machine Compatibility with VMware ESXi™ 5.5
    • Expanded vGPU Support
    • Graphic Acceleration for Linux Guests

    VMware vCenter Server Enhancements

    • VMware vCenter Single Sign-On
    • VMware vSphere Web Client
    • VMware vCenter Server Appliance
    • vSphere App HA
    • vSphere HA and VMware vSphere Distributed Resource Scheduler (vSphere DRS)  Virtual Machine–Virtual Machine Affinity Rules Enhancements
    • vSphere Big Data Extensions

    vSphere Storage Enhancements

    • Support for 62TB VMDK
    • MSCS Updates
    • vSphere 5.1 Feature Updates
    • 16GB E2E support
    • PDL AutoRemove
    • vSphere Replication Interoperability
    • vSphere Replication Multi-Point-in-Time Snapshot Retention
    • vSphere Flash Read Cache

    vSphere Networking Enhancements

    • Link Aggregation Control Protocol Enhancements
    • Traffic Filtering
    • Quality of Service Tagging
    • SR-IOV Enhancements
    • Enhanced Host-Level Packet Capture
    • 40GB NIC support

    More details can be found in the What’s New in vSphere 5.5 Platform Guide

  • vCenter 5.1 Logbrowser Error – Unauthorised access fix

    After a recent upgrade to our vCenter 5.1 infrastructure we discovered that we were getting the following error when trying to use the log browser component of the web client.

    image

    Having tried a number fixes from the usual sources (Derek Seamans excellent blog) none of them seemed to resolve the issue, a reboot of the infrastructure, a re-install of the Web Client all resulted in the same error cropping up. In the end it took the eyes of a VMware BCS Engineer to have a look at our ca_certificates.crt file and discover some white space present.

    image

    The strange thing here is that there wasn’t any date change on the file since the initial deployment back last year and we had no issues with the log browser working before the upgrade.

    If you experience any issues with the log browser it may be worth checking the C:\ProgramData\VMware\SSL\ca_certificates(_2).crt file to make sure that there isn’t any white space present in the file first.

  • Home Lab 2013 – Storage

    With the change to my Home Lab environment recently I decided to take a fresh look at my storage capabilities and came to the conclusion that whilst the home brew solution was nice I now wanted something a little more dedicated to my vSphere environment that would allow me to play with the likes of VAAI because although FreeNAS claims to be looking at implementing this in a future release but there are no current dates on the roadmap for this.

    Having looked at the likes of Qnap and Synology I decided to go down the route of Synology for my new home lab storage, there were a couple of deciding factors in this which include the 4x1GB NICs and the nice web interface (so much nicer than the Iomega IX4 interface).

    A couple of days spent looking over various blog\forum posts all seem to indicate that this was a good choice and when I discovered that both of my colleagues had gone down this route it made more sense to do the same.

    It should be mentioned that the Synology is not a cheap unit with prices ranging from £620 – £700 per unit (excluding disks) so you have to make sure that you’re making the right decision before spending that much money.

    In the end I decided to go for a Synology DS1513+ unit, this 5 bay device is expandable to a total of 15 disks with the additional purchase of the DX513 expansion unit so offers a lot of capacity if required.

    Synology DS1513

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