Many of you know that I’m taking my VCDX Enterprise Exam at 5pm tomorrow (02/03/2009), so I’ve been going over Forbes Guthrie’s VI3 Reference Card as much as I can to freshen up my knowledge.  If you didn’t know, he has updated it for Update 3, so I suggest you download the latest if you haven’t already.

Created on February 2, 2009 by Rick Scherer

Posted under Certification, ESX 3.5 Tips, ESXi 3.5 Tips.

This blog has 1,736 views and one response.

Tags: reference card, vcdx, vi3

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...

 Print This Post

In a previous article I discuss how an ESX host can halt if LUN metadata updates are done the same time a LUN path fails.  Thankfully VMware has released a patch for this problem, along with a few others.  I strongly suggest you to upgrade if your running VMware ESX 3.5 U3 and block level storage.

Read More…

Created on February 2, 2009 by Rick Scherer

Posted under ESX 3.5 Tips, ESXi 3.5 Tips, Storage.

This blog has 3,420 views and no responses.

Tags: esx, esxi, patch

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...

 Print This Post

In the VTMN Communities, William Lam, created a new HealthCheck script that I will be definietely adding to my HealthCheck Arsenal.  More information on the script and its usage can be found in the VTMN Communities posting.

The script reports on the following:

• vCenter Build/Release
• ESX/ESXi Build/Release
• Cluster(s) Name/Statistics (Hosts,CPU and MEM availabity, HA,DRS and DPM enabled)
• ESX/ESXi Hardware configuration (NICs/HBAs)
• ESX/ESXi State
• ESX/ESXi Config (WIP)
• ESX/ESXi Datastore summary
• Virtual Machines summary
• VM Storage summary
• VM Network summary
• VM w/Snapshots
• VM w/RDMs
• VM w/NPIV enabled
• VM w/connected CD-ROMs
• VM w/connected Floppys

For more details, please take a look at the sample report located at here. The requirements for this script are: vCenter 2.5, ESX(i) 3.5, VI-Perl Toolkit or VIMA.

Just like Duncan states, this script can be compared to the PowerShell HealthCheck scripts and the Service Console script.

Created on February 2, 2009 by Rick Scherer

Posted under ESX 3.5 Tips, ESXi 3.5 Tips.

This blog has 2,104 views and 3 responses.

Tags: healthcheck, perl toolkit, powershell, script, vima

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...

 Print This Post

Eric Sloof recently wrote about FabulaTech, which has a product called USB Over Network. This is a very nice software based client/server application that turns a PC with a USB device connected into a USB host – you can then install the client piece on your Virtual Machine to connect to the hosted USB connection.

Digi also has a product called AnywhereUSB, it pretty much does the same thing but without the need of a host machine, you plug your USB device into the AnywhereUSB appliance (very small 5 port USB hub) and install the client piece on your Virtual Machine, the connection is made over a 10/100 ethernet line.  I’ve used a couple dozen of these for software that requires a USB License Key, never having a problem with any of them.

Created on January 24, 2009 by Rick Scherer

Posted under ESX 3.5 Tips, ESXi 3.5 Tips, Hyper-V.

This blog has 3,933 views and 2 responses.

Tags: anywhereusb, digi, fabulatech, network, usb, virtual machine

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...

 Print This Post

Well, if you haven’t already figured out I’m big on shell scripts and Unix/Linux in general, so when my company informed me that they needed to bring down one of our NetApp FAS clusters for system maintenance, the wheels in my head started turning.  I’m sorry this isn’t in our beloved Powershell scripting language, but I’m old school and needed to write a shell based script to gracefully shutdown all my virtual machines.

Read More…

Created on January 16, 2009 by Rick Scherer

Posted under ESX 3.5 Tips, ESXi 3.5 Tips.

This blog has 11,991 views and 2 responses.

Tags: maintenance, mass shutdown, powershell, script, ssh

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...

 Print This Post

Sometimes you need to script a job that SSH’s into another ESX host, problem is you will be prompted for a password—pretty much taking out all the automation aspect of a script.

There is a way around this.  Simply generate a public SSH key and place it in an authorized_keys file on your 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc. ESX host.

Read More…

Created on January 16, 2009 by Rick Scherer

Posted under ESX 3.5 Tips, ESXi 3.5 Tips, Security.

This blog has 5,803 views and 5 responses.

Tags: dsa, esx, keygen, password, ssh

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...

 Print This Post

Scott Lowe covered this over two years ago but I thought I’d revisit just in case there is someone out there looking to SSH from their ESX hosts directly into the NetApp OnTAP operating system.

By default, ESX only supports AES encryption, OnTAP requires 3DES encryption. This means we’ll need to make a modification to the SSH configuration on ESX to have it support 3DES.  If your asking why would I want this, sometimes it comes in real handy to run OnTAP commands direct from your ESX command-line.  For example, if you want to see how much space an aggregate has left you can simply type; ssh fas1 df -Ag aggr0 — or if you want to grow the size of your LUN; ssh fas1 lun resize /vol/vol#/qtree/lun# 500g — Anyways, the possibilities are endless.

Read More…

Created on January 16, 2009 by Rick Scherer

Posted under ESX 3.5 Tips, ESXi 3.5 Tips, NetApp.

This blog has 4,856 views and 2 responses.

Tags: 3des, aes, cipher, esx, firewall, NetApp, ontap, ssh

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...

 Print This Post

In the twitter queue today I heard a new VMware KB has been released in regards to a potential SAN failure (FibreChannel and iSCSI).  More information and the most recent updates can be found on the VMware KB.  I’ve included a breakdown of the issue and resolution, which can be found below.

Read More…

Created on January 12, 2009 by Rick Scherer

Posted under ESX 3.5 Tips, ESXi 3.5 Tips, Storage.

This blog has 9,193 views and 7 responses.

Tags: esx, esxi, failure, fcp, fibre channel, hung, i/o, iscsi, Storage

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...

 Print This Post

Earlier today Virtual IEF posted a blog about not being able to access an ESX host, not by ssh, not by VIC and not even through vCenter.  Evidently this is caused by the hardware monitoring agents (HP, Dell, etc) auto-detecting the management server and failing authentication.  This causes cimservera to be spawned hundreds if not thousands of times thus causing so much CPU and Network traffic locally that it cannot respond within the thresholds for SSH, or VPX agents.

Read More…

Created on January 6, 2009 by Rick Scherer

Posted under ESX 3.5 Tips, ESXi 3.5 Tips, Monitoring.

This blog has 3,703 views and one response.

Tags: cimservera, esx, pegasus, service console

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...

 Print This Post

I came across a nice flash video doing a side by side comparison of the Microsoft Hyper-V install and the VMware ESXi install.  The Hyper-V install was using the Windows 2008 Core version and the ESXi was a baremetal install.  The results are not that shocking.  You can view the video by clicking here.

Happy New Year!

Created on December 31, 2008 by Rick Scherer

Posted under ESXi 3.5 Tips, Hyper-V.

This blog has 3,648 views and no responses.

Tags: esxi, hyper-v, install

(2 votes, average: 4.50 out of 5)

 Loading ...

 Print This Post