Apr 27, 2010 0
As you probably all know, at the start of the month I was invited over to Boston to take part in the 2nd ever GestaltIT TechFieldDay. For those of you who didn’t know, or who aren’t sure what the TechFieldDays are about, first read my earlier blog and then read below to find out how I got on.
Apr 22, 2010 0
Definition of vBeers
vBeers is an informal get together of virtualisation enthusiasts and professionals to meet and discuss all things IT. It's a great opportunity to network, learn and meet like minded people.
When? Where?
So now you know what it is, it’s time for me to let you know the when and the where.The first vBeers evening will be held on:
May 6th – 6pm till late at The Pavillion End, Watling Street – MAP
This is straight after the London VMUG. For those of you who regularly attend the VMUG, vBeers will be help at the same pub as the usual after-VMUG beers.
The next vBeers evening
June 3rd – 6pm till late at The Cittie Of Yorke, Holborn – MAP
Please feel free to copy this post and post it on your own Blogs, The more places it's posted, the more people will know about it.
Apr 21, 2010 0
The Steering Committee are pleased to announce the next UK London VMware User Group meeting, kindly sponsored by RES Software, to be held on Thursday 6th May 2010. We hope to see you at the meeting, and afterwards for a drink or two, courtesy of VMware.
Our meeting will be held at the Thames Suite, London Chamber of Commerce and Industry, 33 Queen Street, London EC4R 1AP, +44 (0)20 7248 4444. The nearest tube station is Mansion House, location information is available here. Reception is from 1230 for a prompt 1pm start, to finish around 5pm. Our agenda is not final at the moment, but looks something like this:
Apr 20, 2010 0
You may or many not have read my Post back in January about the VMware vSphere 4.0 Security Hardening Guide Draft. Well the guide has now been released fully for you to download and review against your Virtual Infrastructure
Overall, there are more than 100 guidelines, with the following major sections:
The Guide can be downloaded here: http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-12306
Source
Apr 19, 2010 6
During GestalIT TechFieldDay, myself and the other bloggers were introduced to the new Data Robotic’s product called the Drobo FS.
About the Drobo FS
The revolutionary Drobo FS was designed with one purpose in mind: to deliver the best file sharing experience ever. From the moment you plug it in and see it instantly appear on your desktop, you’ll know there’s nothing like it. The all-in-one Drobo FS is perfect any connected home, home office, or small office environment needing a simple, safe device for sharing and backing up files over the network.
Apr 19, 2010 2
I came across this free eBook today on the Hitachi website. If you're like me and work with Virtualization products but would like to learn more about Storage Virtualization then is a great freebie to download.
Just click on the following link and fill out the form to get your copy. HDS: eBook – Storage Virtualization for Dummies by Hitachi Data Systems
Mar 24, 2010 2
Problem
When trying to Power On an old VM I was greeted with this message:
I checked the Datastore and everything seemed to be present and correct. I tried to migrate the VM to a different Host, but again I was shown this error. A quick Google didn't show up anything useful so I decided to check the logs.
running the command tail /var/log/vmware/hostd.log -f whist trying to Power On the VM flagged these error messages:
Solution
Mar 24, 2010 1
Just a quick post about using ESXTOP with VMware ESXi. Obviously in ESXi there is no Service Console so we have to use the vMA (vSphere Management Assistant) to help us. If you haven't installed the vMA on your infrastructure yet, you can download it here: http://www.vmware.com/support/developer/vima/
Once install and configured, login and run the following command: resxtop –server <server name>
You will be prompted to login, use the root user/pass of the Host you want to run ESXTOP on (Note: Logging in as root will not work if the Host is in "Lockdown Mode".). You should then be presented with ESXTOP, I believe it has all of the same function as it did in the Service Console
Here you can see all avaliable options when connecting to a Host using RESXTOP
usage: resxtop [-h] [-v] [-b] [-s] [-a] [-c config file] [-d delay] [-n iterations]
[--server server-name [--vihost host-name]] [--portnumber socket-port] [--username user-name]
-h prints this help menu.
-v prints version.
-b enables batch mode.
-s enables secure mode.
-a show all statistics.
-c sets the esxtop configuration file, which by default is .esxtop4rc
-d sets the delay between updates in seconds.
-n runs resxtop for only n iterations.
--server remote server name.
--vihost esx host name, if --server specifies vc server.
--portnumber socket port, default is 443.
--username user name on the remote server.
for more information on interactive and batch modes
please see man page for resxtop.
Mar 9, 2010 4
Just lately I’ve been creating a lot of PowerCLI scripts to help configure various aspects of out ESX environment. We’ve just implemented a new NTP Server to our network. So I was given the job to update all of our ESX Hosts. I didn’t fancy spending all morning manually changing them, so I set to work in creating a PowerCLI script to do the business. Here is the result.
$Cluster = "<cluster name>"
$Hosts = Get-Cluster $Cluster | Get-VMHost
ForEach ($Host in $Hosts)
{
Remove-VmHostNtpServer -NtpServer "<old ntp server>" -VMHost $Host | Out-Null
Add-VmHostNtpServer -NtpServer "<new ntp server>" -VMHost $Host | Out-Null
Get-VmHostService -VMHost $Host | Where-Object {$_.key -eq "ntpd"} | Restart-VMHostService -Confirm:$false | Out-Null
write "NTP Server was changed on $Host"
}
Mar 2, 2010 2
Why, oh why, oh why, has every man and his dog started calling everything Cloud? Cloud Hosting, Cloud Apps, Cloud Services? Is it me, or was it only 6 months ago that these were called Virtual Hosting, Web Apps, Web Services? What's changed? In my eyes, nothing! I hadn't really noticed this until the other day when I was attending a "Cloud" seminar.
Cloud Hosting: What makes it Cloud? It's just Hosting on a Virtualization platform. Cloud Apps: Why are they Cloud Apps? They are just applications hosted over the Web, no? If we follow this trend we'll soon be calling WebMail, CloudMail!
