Virtualization

VMware Tools gives you the option to synchronize the time of the guest OS with the ESXi host. Many times this isn’t necessary because the guest itself is using Network Time Protocol (NTP) or used the Active Directory domain time. Why would proper time synchronization be a problem, you might ask? Well, in a virtual environment, the CPU isn’t constantly keeping track of time like it does in a physical machine. For a more detailed explanation look at tick counting in the Timekeeping Guide. ...

I recently made some changes to my home lab and had to create a new Cluster because of my EVC mode when I was faced with migrating my vC Ops vApp to the new cluster. I moved the hosts over, but the vApp wouldn’t go with them like the virtual machines did. vAppMigrate1 My first attempt was to export the vApp to an OVF file and reimport it to the new cluster which failed with an error. ...

vSphere 6.0 is now available and there are some great new enhancements with the new version. Here are some of the many highlights from today’s announcement. Speeds and Feeds As with the new version of anything things are bigger and faster. vSphere 6.0 is no exception. 64 hosts per cluster, up from 32 8000 Virtual Machines per Cluster, up from 4000 480 CPUs, up from 320 CPUs 12 TB RAM, up from 4 TB (if someone has 12 TB of RAM in a box, please let me know how long it takes to do a memory check. vSphere 7 might be out by then. 1000 Virtual Machines per host, up from 512 Virtual Machines Virtual Machine Hardware version 11 allows for: ...

Unfortunately, not all software is perfect and from time to time I’ve run into issues with SRM as well. This post is a list of items I often see during SRM deployments and some information to troubleshoot issues. Log File Locations SRM Logs: c:programDataVMwareVMware vCenter Site Recovery ManagerLogs Installation logs: %USERPROFILE%Application DataVMwareVMware Site Recovery ManagerLogs Storage Replication Adapater Logs: This depends on the SRA Vendor, but try program filesSRANAME to start with ...

SRM version 5.8 now is now extensible with vRealize Orchestrator (formerly vCenter Orchestrator). This new functionality was expected since the vRealize Suite is all about automation and disaster recovery certainly needs to be taken into consideration. One pain point I’ve seen with SRM has been the ongoing administration of protection groups. Every time a virtual machine is deployed to a protected datastore, the VM also has to be configured for protection. This usually only consists of right clicking the virtual machine and choosing “configure protection” but is also another thing that administrators have too keep track of. ...

This is a Site Recovery Manager 5.8 Guide to help understand the design, installation, operation and architecture of setting up VMware SRM 5.8 SRM 5.8 Architecture SRM 5.8 Installation SRM 5.8 Upgrade from SRM 5.5 SRM 5.8 Site Setup SRM 5.8 Array Based Replication SRM 5.8 Protection Groups SRM 5.8 Recovery Plan SRM 5.8 IP Customization SRM 5.8 Customizing your Recovery Plan SRM 5.8 Test Recovery SRM 5.8 Failover Recovery SRM 5.8 with Automation SRM 5.8 Alarms SRM 5.8 Troubleshooting Official Documentation Links Site Recovery Manager 5.8 Documentation Center Site Recovery Manager 5.8 Compatibility Matrix Site Recovery Manager 5.8 Release Notes Site Recovery Manager 5.8 vCO Plug-in Download Site Recovery Manager 5.8 Download Site Recovery Manager 5.8 Storage Replication Adapters Additional Resources If you want some great resources to continue learning VMware Site Recovery Manager, I suggest checking out these resources: ...

During the process of setting up a new vCenter Server in my lab, I ran into an issue adding SSL Certificates to my vCenter services. I followed my own blog posts about how to do this so that I wouldn’t miss anything, but nevertheless ran into an error that took me quite a while to get fixed. After creating all my certificate requests using the VMware SSL Automation Tool, I updated my SSO with my custom certificate without issue. The next step is to make sure the Inventory Service trusts the new SSO Certificate, which also went without a hitch. ...

Upgrades for the vRealize Automation software (formerly vCloud Automation Center) seem to be coming quite often these days. This post gives a quick overview on how to upgrade your current environment to the latest release. Of course for official documentation, please check out VMware’s documentation for details. vRealize Upgrade Instructions Pre-Install Steps Obviously you should ensure that you’ve got backups in the event something catastrophic should occur. Be sure to grab a backup of the IaaS database, and snapshot your vRA appliances, as well as any of the servers running the IaaS components such as the Model Manager, DEM Workers, Orchestrators and Agents. For this guide, we have a vRA appliance, and a single IaaS Server running the rest of the components. A separate SQL Server is housing the database. ...

PowerShell is an amazing tool that has limitless potential for Administrators, Engineers and Architects to automate routine tasks or do reporting on things their system management applications aren’t built for. Whenever there is a task to be done on multiple systems and it might need to be done more than once, I find myself reaching for this valuable tool. The problem with PowerShell, just like a programming language is that it can be intimidating to get started. This post is to give you a basic understanding of what you’ll be getting into before you start running PowerShell cmdlets. ...

I was asked by a coworker, why I blog. He asked, “Why would you spend the time writing, when people have official documentation to use?” His point was that it’s silly to write how-to articles about things that are already officially documented by a vendor. To further his curiosity, he wanted to know why I would post things that could possibly get me into trouble if I’m posting negative things or incorrect information. ...