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20 Sep 2014
By Yendis

PowerActions for vSphere Web Client

VMware, ,
PowerActions integrates the vSphere Web Client and PowerCLI to provide complex automation solutions from within the standard vSphere management client. PowerActions is deployed as a plugin for the vSphere Web Client and will allow you to execute PowerCLI commands and scripts in a vSphere Web Client integrated Powershell console. Furthermore, administrators will be able to enhance the native WebClient capabilities with actions and reports backed by PowerCLI scripts persisted on the vSphere Web Client. Have you ever wanted to “Right Click” an object in the web client and run a PowerCLI script? Now you can! (more…)
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04 Sep 2014
By Yendis

Exchange Updates

Microsoft, ,
As you may have seen Microsoft released its Exchange Server 2013 Cumulative Update 6 quickly followed by two patches due to issues raised by customers Exchange Server 2013 databases unexpectedly fail over in a co-existence environment with Exchange Server 2007 (KB2997209) Exchange Online mailboxes cannot be managed by using EAC after you deploy Exchange Server 2013 CU6 (KB2997355) To find out what issues were fixed in CU6 click HERE To download CU6 click HERE As the hotfixes are now available I would strongly recommend installing them taking all the necessary precautions i.e. backups etc. Updates also came out for Exchange 2010 and Exchange 2007,…
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02 Sep 2014
By Yendis

VMware Virtual SAN Sizing Tool

VMware,
All Virtual SAN customers and enthusiasts can easy get sizing ideas and estimations on the amount hardware resources necessary to support a particular Virtual SAN design. All you will need  to do is provide a few virtual machine inputs based on capacity, performance, and availability requirements. The purpose of this tool is to help determine the hardware specifications for hosts in a Virtual SAN cluster required to run a set of virtual machines defined by a set of input characteristics. These important assumptions should be understood before using this tool: All hosts in the cluster are assumed to have an…
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01 Sep 2014
By Yendis

VMware Virtual SAN best practices

VMware
Cormac Hogan (VMware Storage Architect) presented at VMworld 2014 some common mistakes/pitfalls in VMware Virtual SAN design. Below are some great pointers. Minimal cluster size is 4 nodes. According to the requirements you can build a Virtual SAN using a 3 node cluster but you should take into account failure or maintenance of 1 node. Upgrading vSphere 5 to vSphere 5.5 Update 1 introduces a known bug. Install the fix mentioned in this VMware KB article. Use enterprise grade SSD. Selecting the SSD with the right performance profile can make a huge difference in VSAN performance easily. Both SSD and PCIe flash…
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30 Aug 2014
By Yendis

Latency Sensitivity Troubleshooting Tool

VMware,
The Latency Sensitivity Troubleshooting Tool provides scripts and examples to troubleshoot configuration and performance problems with the Latency Sensitivity feature in VMware vSphere 5.5. Features Python script that runs on ESXi to check virtual machine and physical NIC (PNIC) configuration to monitor host, virtual machine, and PNIC performance. Python program to process traces from pktcap-uw for a ping workload and print time spent in ESXi on the receive path, time spent in the virtual machine, and time spent in ESXi on the transmit path. A simple C program demonstrating the trace format generated by pktcap-uw. The C program was tested…
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30 Aug 2014
By Yendis

VMware I/O Analyzer

VMware,
VMware I/O Analyzer is an integrated framework designed to measure storage performance in a virtual environment and to help diagnose storage performance concerns. I/O Analyzer, supplied as an easy-to-deploy virtual appliance, automates storage performance analysis through a unified interface that can be used to configure and deploy storage tests and view graphical results for those tests. I/O Analyzer can use Iometer to generate synthetic I/O loads or a trace replay tool to deploy real application workloads. It uses the VMware VI SDK to remotely collect storage performance statistics from VMware ESX/ESXi hosts. Standardizing load generation and statistics collection allows users…
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24 Jul 2014
By Yendis

HP iLO 4 Firmware Issues

Hardware, Microsoft, VMware, , , ,
Recently there has been an issue raised with HP that in rare  instances,  on a ProLiant Gen8 series server with HP Integrated Lights-Out 4 (iLO 4) Firmware Versions 1.30, 1.32, 1.40 or 1.50, intermittent Non-Maskable Interrupt (NMI) events may occur. After rebooting the server, the operating system loads properly and no additional impact to system operation will occur. If this issue occurs, the operating system will indicate that an NMI has happened; however, the specific indication will vary by OS: VMware ESXi operating systems will experience a Purple Screen of Death (PSOD). Linux operating systems will display a message indicating that…
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20 Jul 2014
By Yendis

HP Customised VMware ESXi Images

VMware, , , , ,
The new Proliant Gen8 servers require you to use a customised image for the installation of ESXi to be a success.  The network and storage drivers are combined in the HP customised image and therefore you are unable to install ESXi with a standard download ISO from VMware. There are a number of download options available to you which is summarised below:  1 - HP Customised ESXi Image ESXiandvSphere: vSphere 5.5 U1 June 2014 - Download here vSphere 5.5 June 2014 - Download here vSphere 5.1 U2 June 2014 - Download here vSphere 5.1 U1 Sept 2013 - Download here vSphere…
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19 Jul 2014
By Yendis

VMware vSphere 5.5 Toolkit

VMware, ,
I wanted to create this post because a fellow vExpert has created a great toolkit which I have personally used and found very useful when installing vSphere 5.5 and correctly configuring SSL. Some of the benefits of the SSL powershell script include: Downloads and installs the proper version of OpenSSL (0.9.8.za) if it’s not already installed Creates 2048 bit RSA private keys in the proper format Creates a directory for each service bundle of SSL certificates Generates seven OpenSSL configuration files, one for each certificate, in the appropriate directory Downloads both root and subordinate root public certificates Submits the CSRs to…
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27 May 2014
By Yendis

Static IP address assignment in Windows Azure

Microsoft, ,
Have you ever wondered how to set a Static IP address on a VM in Windows Azure especially when deploying a domain controller?  Well up to recently the only way of possibly achieving this was to  create different virtual subnets for different groups of VMs to try and control the IP address the VM would be given from Windows Azure - I must admit this was a clunky way of doing this but was the only way recommended by Microsoft Support. Now things have just got better with the introduction of Windows Azure PowerShell 0.7.3.1 (or Later) you can now do this. By using PowerShell…
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