Everything-Virtual

Category: Uncategorised

  • vCSA 5.1u1 Update in 7 Steps

    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.

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  • Upgrading SQL 2008 R2 Editions – Wizard and Command Line

    During a recent Microsoft True-Up piece of work we were doing at work we discovered that 3 of our Microsoft SQL servers had been installed with the Developer edition of Microsoft SQL 2008 R2, this isn’t really an issue because we are licensed for the proper versions but to make life easier for us in the future we decided to upgrade the instances to the correct version now rather than run into this same issue again in the future.

    Now there are a couple of ways of doing this but both methods require the installation media and the PID from the target version to hand.

    In this guide I will be upgrading from SQL 2008 R2 Standard to Enterprise Edition.

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  • vForum London

    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 :-

    • Increase application performance by 50%
    • Reduce latency by 50% for faster file access
    • Eliminate bottlenecks without expensive hardware
    • True "set and forget" management

    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 Smile

    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.

  • vCenter Server 5.1 – Windows 2012 Now Supported

    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.

  • ESXi 5.1u1 Upgrade in 7 Steps

    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

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    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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  • VMware Cloud Credibility

    VMware have just launched the CloudCredibility website that gives you and your team the chance to prove how good you are by awarding points for every challenge\task you complete. It’s a fairly light hearted approach to showing off you and your Teams Cloud abilities from both a technical and non-technical stand point.

    It has tasks covering social media, course attendance as well as hosting podcasts and writing books so there are lots of different things to suit everyone.

    Have a look and join in the fun Smile

  • Slipstreaming SQL Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 2

    As I mentioned in a previous post I have decided to refresh my home lab to running Windows Server 2012, part of the installation requirements was installing SQL Server 2008 R2 into the new 2012 environment, easy you may think however it’s not as simple as that because whilst trying to install SQL 2008 R2 RTM I had the following screen appear.

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  • Installing the vCSA 5.1 Appliance

    In my old lab I ran a lot of Windows 2008 R2 based infrastructure, not only was I running a fully deployed Active Directory Domain but I also had SQL 2008 R2 and SCCM 2007 but I was also running vCenter on 2008R2 as well, the main reason for this was due to the limitations that were in the original vCSA based on ESXi 5.0.

    In Home Lab 2013 I decided to upgrade not just the physical side but also the virtual and that meant looking at some of my existing infrastructure and deciding on whether to keep it or upgrade.

    Gone is the 2008 R2 based Active Directory Domain, in it’s place I am now running a 2012 Active Directory Domain Controller (no in place upgrade, I just deleted and started from scratch), that also meant that my SCCM 2007 infrastructure went (one of the technologies that I seem to get stuck with with every job so glad it’s gone really Smile), also gone is the vCenter server that was running on 2008R2, I had played around with installing it onto 2012 and whilst I managed to get it to work (you have to delete a service dependency) I wanted to ensure that all of my virtual infrastructure was actually properly supported so that meant looking at the vCSA.

    With the release of vSphere 5.1 there was obviously the additional requirements for the SSO and Inventory services to be installed prior to installing vCenter, with the vCSA 5.1 release this comes bundled up as part of the OVF and makes the installation and configuration very simple (those of you who have installed vCenter 5.1 know that SSO can be a little bit ‘temperamental’).

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  • VMware vExpert 2013 – Now extended to the 22nd April

    John Troyer (@jtroyer) just blogged the announcement that the vExpert 2013 applications are open.

    To become a vExpert you have three paths to choose from.

    Evangelist Path

    The Evangelist Path includes book authors, bloggers, tool builders, public speakers, VMTN contributors, 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 also apply via the Evangelist path. A VMware employee reference is recommended if your activities weren’t all in public or were in a language other than English.

    Customer Path

    The Customer Path is for leaders from VMware customer organizations. They have been internal champions in their organizations, or worked with VMware to build success stories, act as customer references, given public interviews, spoken at conferences, or were VMUG leaders. A VMware employee reference is recommended if your activities weren’t all in public.

    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 through accreditations and certifications 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. A VMware employee reference is required for VPN Path candidates.

    To apply to become a vExpert click here

  • Home Lab 2013 – The Next Generation

    For the last couple of years I have been happy using the Lenovo TS200 servers as my basis for my home lab environment, unfortunately with the restriction of 16GB ram per server (32GB if I purchased completely new ram at far too expensive costs) and my ever increasing pool of VMs running on my hosts I decided to upgrade my home servers to something a little more powerful, a lesson I learned from my experience with using the Lenovo’s was that I wanted something with a smaller footprint but capable of running more workloads. The current max ram capacity of my 3 Lenovo hosts was 48GB of ram but with three hosts running I started to find myself not needing radiators in my house Winking smile

    The new 2013 ESXi 5.1 Lab Host:

    Because I already had 3 hosts in my old lab I didn’t want to reduce that number down too much so I decided to go for 2 hosts currently with the option of getting another host in the future should resource start being an issue. Without a second host I wouldn’t be able to play with goodies such as HA/DRS and vMotion?!

    ShuttleShuttle XPC SH67H3 – I have had some really good experiences with Shuttle PC’s in the past and having read a few peoples experiences with the XPC SH67 range I decided to look at the offerings. Like all Shuttle systems its a small compact system that is capable of supporting the newer Ivy Bridge processors and up to 32GB memory **Only newer version 2.0 SH67H3’s support Ivy Bridge cpus so check to see whether your motherboard supports it. You may also be required to update to the newest BIOS to support the newer cpu (of my two shuttles, one supported the new cpu from the outset whilst the the 2nd didn’t and needed the firmware updating, an issue if you don’t have a Sandy Bridge cpu to put into the Shuttle to update it with).

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