Posts Tagged ‘VMware’

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Updating VMware Certification to VCP5

19, Jul 2011

One of the additional questions I have had about the introduction of vSphere 5 is how I would update my VMware Certification to the vSphere 5 level, VCP5.  Fortunately, the answer is really simple.  Existing VCP4 holders will be able to take the VCP5 exam and upgrade their certification without any additional course requirements until [...]

Non-standard MSSQL port causes vCenter WebServices problems

16, Jun 2011

After almost a year, I have had problems with the VMware WebServices (the Tomcat web apps packaged into vCenter server) not working properly.  At every upgrade, I have had issues where the apps that were “fixed” by support break again.  I knew I had to be doing something wrong.  I thought that vCenter was just [...]

VMware PowerCLI rocks

23, Mar 2011

Its pretty easy to see where I stand on PowerCLI from the headline on this entry.  Disclaimer, I haven’t used it extensively, but I can already see the why VMware has chosen to embrace PowerCLI for scripting.  These are some of my initial thoughts after some light usage — in short, I think PowerCLI is [...]

Monitoring challenges moving critical systems in virtual infrastructure

3, Jun 2010

Like many shops, we have finally attained buy-in from all our stakeholders for virtualization.  As a result, we’ve pushed more and more into our infrastructure.  And while VMware is the most datacenter ready solution for virtualization, it is not without its shortcomings — monitoring and visibility into the infrastructure being one of the biggest. While we were [...]

Path failures on ESX4 with HP storage

8, Apr 2010

Since we began upgrading our clusters to ESX4, we have been having strange “failed physical path” messages in our vmkernel logs.  I don’t normally post unless I know the solution to a problem, but in this case, I’ll make an exception.  Our deployment has been delayed and plauged by the storage issues that I mentioned [...]

vNetwork Distributed Switch challenges

8, Apr 2010

Among the new technologies introduced with ESX4, I’m particuarly inpressed with the vNetwork Distributed Switch.  We have chosen to slowly introduce the dvSwitches into our environment and transition VM’s over to these switches.  The distributed switch allows us some new capabilities such as centralized management, individual port assignments, retained state after vMotions, port statistics and [...]

Best practices for VMware ESX4 with HP EVA storage

7, Apr 2010

(For PowerCLI commands to accomplish the same best practices, see this post). HP provided us with the best practices document for ESX4 connected to an HP EVA array.  There is a major change in ESX4.  For the first time, ESX is ALUA (Asymmetric Logical Unit Access) aware.  (See this post on Yellow Bricks for more [...]

Neglect…

7, Apr 2010

Well, its a new quarter and I feel a big obligation to post something to the blog.  I cannot believe it has been three months since my last post.  I have several irons in the fire, but on the work front, I am glad to report that the vSphere upgrade has been completed and we [...]

Carefully planning ESX4 and HP Storageworks EVA

6, Jan 2010

As in my post about Lessons Learned on ESX4 rollout, we had a pretty serious hiccup with our storage and the ESX systems in December while trying to bring up our ESX4 environment.  The primary trouble uncovered was what I’ll call “controller ping-pong”. An EVA normally has two (maybe more, I’m not primarily a storage [...]

Lessons learned from initial rollout of ESX4

21, Dec 2009

Following my November upgrade of Flex-10 VirtualConnect on my blade enclosure, I have begun my rollout and upgrades to ESX4 on a new blade cluster as well as one existing cluster.  There are quite a few lessons that I’ve learned on my roll-out. 


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