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You’ve got to be a serious geek to want to install your own SSL Certificates on your home NAS. I mean come on, who really has their own certificate authority sitting around at home and is so annoyed with a little warning page when they access the GUI? Well, since you’ve landed on this page, I assume that I’m in some similar company :) Login to your Synology NAS and open the control panel. Click Security and then the “Certificates” tab at the top. You’ll notice the subtle “Self-signed certificate” status blazoned in red lettering. Don’t worry, thats what we’re going to fix. ...

Amazing news that the latest version of vSphere has been announced. vSphere 6 is now just around the corner from being generally available, but one can assume that the VCP 6 exam is still several weeks away from being available. If you’re like me, your VCP 5 is scheduled to expire in March. AHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Quick, study for an exam that you’ve already taken and passed in the past so that you can keep your certification and then take the VCP 6 which is likely just around the corner. ...

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 ...

I got a chance to take a quick peak at the vCloud Air beta during the Early Access Program and wanted to share some of the experience. I found the solution very simple to use and straight forward, even without needing to look at any install guides or user manuals. The interfaces were very intuitive. Right off the bat, you get to select your virtual Private Cloud region and then create some virtual machines from pre-defined templates. The templates are based on bare bones operating systems templates such as CentOS, Windows 2012 etc and depending on the type of template you choose, a different pricing methodology will be applied. Let’s face it, open source OS’s are free and Windows isn’t. Gotta pay the bills right? ...

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. ...

If you’ve got SRM 5.5 installed and you want to get the new SRM 5.8 code into your environment, don’t worry. The upgrade process is pretty easy to manage. The important thing to note is the upgrade order and of course your compatibility matrix. Remember that you need vCenter 5.5 U2 or higher to get SRM 5.8 working. Upgrade Order Ensure your vCenter Server and Web Client are on 5.5 U2 or higher in the protected site. If not, upgrade them! Upgrade vSphere Replication on the protected site to 5.8 if you’re using one. Upgrade SRM on the protected site to 5.8 Upgrade your SRA on the protected site if you’re using one. Ensure your vCenter Server and Web Client are on 5.5 U2 or higher in the recovery site. If not, upgrade them! Upgrade vSphere Replication on the recovery site to 5.8 if you’re using one. Upgrade SRM on the recovery site. Upgrade your SRA on the recovery site if you’re using one. Verify the conneciton between your sites is valid, protection groups still exist and recovery plans are in tact. Upgrade ESXi servers on the recovery site Upgrade ESXi servers on the protected site Upgrade VMware Tools. Install Run the installer on the SRM servers. The installer should detect that SRM is already installed an that an upgrade will be performed. ...

I had one of those serious first world problems where I was intermittently getting poor wireless connectivity from my upstairs bedroom at night. My wireless router is downstairs in my office on the opposite side of the house, and my neighbors’ wireless was also causing some interference. So I was about to get out my chainsaw to start taking out a wall and part of my upstairs floor, when I thought “Maybe a wireless extender would work for me?” ...

A customized recovery plan means the difference between hoursdays of reconfiguration of your environment in the event of a failure. VMware SRM allows for lots of opportunity to customize your recovery plans with scripts and modifications along the way to ease the management of your disaster recovery plans. Run Scripts from SRM Server If we open any given recovery plan we can click on a step we’d like to modify and then right-click to “Add Step…” ...

Setting up some alerting is a good idea once you’ve setup your disaster recovery solution. Let’s face it once you’ve tested your DR solution, you might not look at it again until your next test, which in some cases is yearly! To setup alarms for SRM in version 5.8 navigate to the vCenter object and click the Manage tab. From there click the Alarm Definitions sub-tab. Click the add (green plus sign) to add a new alarm. ...