With that said, I wanted to do a quick recap of the past couple days.  It would be an understatement to say that I’ve been busy. vSpecialist core meetings, tweet-ups, meeting with customers, VCE parties….it’s all in a days work.

The biggest highlights so far have to be the VCDX Appreciation Party where I received my branded VCDX #21 leather jacket, then some private meetings with VMware CTO Steve Herrod (@herrod) and Acadia CEO Michael Capellas……and then there was a gorilla.

Needless to say I absolutely love the team of vSpecialists I work with, they are the most amazing group of people in the I/T industry.  And as the video says….we get the job done!

With that said, VMworld always fills my notepads with hot new ideas, strategies, products and futures. Definitely keep an eye on the site the next few days as I will be live blogging as much as possible during Keynotes, Sessions and other events.

Keep an eye on my Twitter, TwitPic, YouTube and UStreamaccount for live streaming of information, pictures and videos! Also included below is my schedule at VMworld 2010, be sure to find me and say hello - I always love meeting readers of my blog.

Sunday
11:00am - Arrive SFO
2:00pm - Private vSpecialists Meeting
6:00pm - Extra Mile Reception
6:30pm - vExtravaganza

Monday
9:00am - Private vSpecialists Meeting

12:00pm - Design Consideration for Migrating to Windows 7
(DV7167 - Moscone West Room 2004)

4:00pm - Welcome Reception & EMC Hands on Lab booth duties
6:30pm - VCDX Special Event
8:00pm - EMC/Cisco Special Event

Tuesday
9:00am - General Session (Keynote)
10:00am - EMC Hands on Lab booth duties

2:00pm - Infrastructure Technologies Purpose Built for Private Cloud
(SS1004 - Moscone North Room 134)

4:30pm - Virtual Data Warehousing – Improving Time to Data Mine!
(SP9667 - Moscone West Room 2002)

6:30pm - EMC Customer Appreciation Party

Wednesday
9:00am - Infrastructure Technologies to Long Distance VMotion – What Is “VM Teleportation”?
(TA8051 - Moscone South Room 104)

10:30am - Best Practices to Increase Availability & Throughput for VMware
(TA8133 - Moscone South Room 302)

1:30pm - Shrinking RTO/RPOs of VM Replication w/ WAN Optimization
(BC7950 - Moscone West Room 2022)

3:00pm - Storage Super-Heavyweight Challenge
(TA8623  - Moscone South Room 301)

5:30pm - VMware CTO Special Event
7:00pm - VMworld Party with INXS

Thursday
9:00am - General Session (Keynote)

10:30am - Modern Networking in a Virtualized Environment
(TA7962 - Moscone North Room 133)

1:00pm - Leaving VMworld for Santa Clara
8:00pm - vDodgeball at vGym

*Breakout Sessions are BOLD

• What’s your IT infrastructure look like?
• What do you like about it?
• What frustrates you about it?
• What do you think we should be doing that we’re not (EMC, VMware, or heck, the whole IT industry)?
• What are YOU doing that’s cool?

To complete this survey please click here.

I will be covering a more in-depth review on this latest release really soon but I did want my readers to know that the bits are available for download from the VMware website.

http://downloads.vmware.com/d/info/datacenter_downloads/vmware_vsphere_4/4

The upgrade to ESX(i) 4.1 should be relatively easy by using traditional update methods such as VMware Update Manager (VUM).  However, the upgrade to vCenter Server 4.1 is more of a migration since it will only support a full 64-bit environment. Still don’t fret, a vCenter server migration is pretty simple just make sure you have a FULL backup of your vCenter Server database.

Also a little FYI….rumor has it that this will be the final build containing a full ESX install (Service Console). Today might be a good day to start planning that migration to ESXi.

VMworld 2010 is going to have some great sessions, including some awesome Ask the Experts sessions as well as the opportunity to meet a good majority of the vSpecialist team. You can even pick yourself up a copy of Mastering VMware vSphere and have it signed by Scott Lowe, Chad Sakac and myself! Or even a copy of the VCP-410 study guide from McGraw-Hill.

I hope to see all of you there, be sure to visit the EMC booth to meet up and chat about all things virtualization.

Two weeks ago (June 9th) I took the VCAP4-DCA Beta Exam at the Pearson Vue office in Anaheim, CA. The overall process was the same as taking any other VMware exam, you sign-in and verify your identity then they log you into a workstation where the exam awaits.

What’s immediately different about the DCA exam is that it is 100% lab based, no multiple choice questions on this one. Once the Vue administrator signs you into the exam you accept a few disclosures then a RDP-style connection is made with a system probably located at VMware HQ. You switch between the questions and the desktop session using a button located on the screen, you do use the same session for the entire test.

Without breaking NDA it is difficult to explain what’s covered in the exam, but I can say that you will need as much hands-on experience as you can possibly get. It covers many different areas including Installation, Firewall management, NMP management and even some of the add-ons like vShield Zones.

For the beta you get 4 hours to basically get through as much as you can,  I was able to get through about 40 of the questions. I personally haven’t heard how long the exam will be when it goes GA nor how many questions it will have but the one great thing about this exam and the entire VCAP certification is that it will definitely separate the book cramers and good exam takers from the true experienced administrators.

Thursday, June 24, 2010, 11:00 am ET

Host: Chad Sakac, VP VMware Technology Alliance, EMC

Register Now by Clicking Here

During this discussion, you can learn about vStorage API for Array Integration (VAAI). There are some functions that your storage system can handle more efficiently than your virtual servers and their hosts can. VAAI are a set of APIs that allows VMware vSphere to offload specific operations to the storage system improving VMware performance and freeing up resources on your virtual servers by leveraging more efficient array-based operations as an alternative to VMware host-based operations.

Join EMC Virtual Geek, Chad Sakac on June 24 to get key updates and honest answers to your most demanding questions.

Register Now by Clicking Here

Earlier today VMware became aware of an issue affecting users of VMware View after applying Update 2 to their ESX 4.0 hosts. The problem only effects PCoIP, RDP works normally. There is a discussion of the problem in the VMware Communities here.

While our IT Teams work to resolve the issue, the Knowledge Base Team has responded by creating an up-to-the-minute live document at: http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1022830 and using @vmwarecares and @vmwarekb Twitter accounts to alert customers.

This Knowledge Base article will be updated as new information becomes available. If you have been affected by this, please read the KB.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you. If you know how to spread the word to your friends and colleagues, please do so.

Guest Operating System Customization Improvements: vCenter Server now supports customization of the following guest operating systems:

• Windows XP Professional SP2 (x64) serviced by Windows Server 2003 SP2
• SLES 11 (x32 and x64)
• SLES 10 SP3 (x32 and x64)
• RHEL 5.5 Server Platform (x32 and x64)
• RHEL 5.4 Server Platform (x32 and x64)
• RHEL 4.8 Server Platform (x32 and 64)
• Debian 5.0 (x32 and x64)
• Debian 5.0 R1 (x32 and x64)
• Debian 5.0 R2 (x32 and x64)

Here are some of the key issues that are resolved in this update;

Storage vMotion fails even if the destination datastore has sufficient disk space
Storage vMotion might fail even if the space available on the destination datastore is more than the moving disk space because the calculation considers the shared swap file size of the virtual machine as well. When the failure occurs, an error message similar to the following might be displayed in the Migrate Virtual Machine dialog box in the vSphere Client:  Insufficient disk space on datastore.

Starting with this release, shared swap file space is not considered in calculating the required space in the destination datastore.

—

VirtualCenter stops responding while retrieving historical events
While retrieving historical events from VirtualCenter, the VirtualCenter Server Service might stop responding. An error message similar to the following might be written to the logs:
Panic: Assert Failed: “pos != string::npos” @ d:/build/ob/bora-161137/bora/vim/lib/vmomi/soapVisitor.cpp:731
You can restart VirtualCenter, but it might fail again if you attempt to retrieve historical data.

—

Selecting the Power Management option of a virtual machine that has five or more network adapters results in an error
On the vSphere Client, selecting the Power Management option of a virtual machine that has five or more network adapters might result in the following error message:
Index was out of range. Must be non-negative and less than the size of the collection.
Parameter name: index

—

vCenter Server 4.0 cannot manage a ESX 3.x host if the VirtualCenter 2.5.x license server FQDN has a non-standard suffix
If the fully qualified domain name (FQDN) of the VirtualCenter 2.5.x license server ends with .local or .eng instead of a standard suffix such as .com or .net, access to items such as Advanced Settings in the vCenter Server Settings window might fail with an Enter a valid license server error message.

vCenter Server 4.0 U2 can be configured with a license server even if the FQDN has a non-standard suffix.

—

Virtual machine starts on the host it was registered on, even if it is scheduled to start on another host
On an ESX host, when scheduling to power on a virtual machine, you have the option to select another host on which the virtual machine should be deployed. A virtual machine might start on the host it was registered on, even if it is scheduled to start on another host.

—

You cannot mount an ISO or local CD-ROM device on a virtual machine when default ports in vCenter Server 4.0 are changed
If you change the default HTTP or HTTPS ports (80 and 443) of vCenter Server 4.0, an attempt to mount an ISO or CD-ROM device on a virtual machine might fail with an error message similar to the following: A connection to the host could not be established

This issue is resolved in this release. Starting with this release, you can mount ISO or CD-ROM devices even if you change the vCenter Server default ports.

—

Host CPU and Host Memory statistics might not be displayed for all virtual machines
If the vCenter Server inventory has more than one virtual machine, in the vSphere Client Datastores view, Host CPU and Host Memory statistics are displayed only for the first virtual machine in the list.

—

Ejecting a CD from a virtual machine causes vCenter Server to stop responding
If you use the Lab Manager UI to eject a CD from a virtual machine while a provisioning operation is in progress on the vCenter Server, the VMware VirtualCenter Server Service might stop responding. A Panic: Win32 invalid parameter error message might be written to the vpxd.log.

—

ESX hosts are disconnected from vCenter Server if enumeration of attached datastores takes a long time
When you perform I/O intensive operations such as taking multiple snapshots of virtual machines, hostd takes a long time to respond, and as a result, the ESX host might become disconnected from the vCenter Server. You might observe that the vdf command (or any command for querying the datastores) takes a long time to run. Errors might not be written to the logs as the operation eventually completes. However, the vpxd log marks the host and virtual machines as disconnected.

—

vMotion times out if the virtual machine swap file is located on the local storage
If the vswap file of a virtual machine running memory intensive operations is located on the local storage, a vMotion operation that you perform on the virtual machine might time out. The vCenter Server might display an operation timed out error message for the virtual machine migration operation, even if the migration completes.

This issue might still occur. However, starting with this release, the timeout value is configurable. Earlier the timeout value was hardcoded. Add the following parameters to the vpxa.cfg file on the ESX host:

<config>
..
<vpxa>
..
<vmotion>
<vmIdAcquireTimeout><New timeout value in seconds></vmIdAcquireTimeout>
</vmotion>
..
</vpxa>
..
</config>

—

Unable to set preferred path for a fixed Policy within path management when vSphere Client is connected to the vCenter Server
When you try to change the preferred path of a storage device set to a fixed policy with multiple paths, the vSphere Client might display the following error message: Unable to cast object of type ‘LogicalUnitPolicy’ to type ‘FixedLogicalUnitPolicy’

—

ESX hosts might stop responding if their IP address is changed by applying host profiles
If ESX hosts are added to vCenter Server by using IP addresses, and the IP addresses of these ESX hosts are changed by applying host profiles, the hosts might stop responding. The applying host profile operation might time out and the ESX Server hosts remain in the non responsive mode until the ESX hosts are disconnected and reconnected to the vCenter Server.

There are actually dozens of other resolved issues, I highly recommend reading the release notes for this update and then upgrading as soon as you can fit it into your update schedule. Updating your environment to U2 isn’t that difficult, for vCenter Server simply download the installation files from VMware and install like any previous version.  Please make sure you create a consistent backup of the vCenter database before trying any upgrade procedure. During vCenter Server U2 installation ensure that you choose the option to maintain your existing database, or else it will wipe your vCenter database.

Enablement of Fault Tolerance Functionality for Intel Xeon 56xx Series processors— vSphere 4.0 Update 1 supports the Intel Xeon 56xx Series processors without Fault Tolerance. vSphere 4.0 Update 2 enables Fault Tolerance functionality for the Intel Xeon 56xx Series processors.

Enablement of Fault Tolerance Functionality for Intel i3/i5 Clarkdale Series and Intel Xeon 34xx Clarkdale Series processors— vSphere 4.0 Update 1 supports the Intel i3/i5 Clarkdale Series and Intel Xeon 34xx Clarkdale Series processors without Fault Tolerance. vSphere 4.0 Update 2 enables Fault Tolerance functionality for the Intel i3/i5 Clarkdale Series and Intel Xeon 34xx Clarkdale Series processors.

Enablement of IOMMU Functionality for AMD Opteron 61xx and 41xx Series processors— vSphere 4.0 Update 1 supports the AMD Opteron 61xx and 41xx Series processors without input/output memory management unit (IOMMU). vSphere 4.0 Update 2 enables IOMMU functionality for the AMD Opteron 61xx and 41xx Series processors.

Enhancement of the esxtop/resxtop utility— vSphere 4.0 Update 2 includes an enhancement of the performance monitoring utilities, esxtop and resxtop. The esxtop/resxtop utilities now provide visibility into the performance of NFS datastores in that they display the following statistics for NFS datastores: Reads/s, writes/s, MBreads/s, MBwrtn/s, cmds/s, GAVG/s(guest latency).

Additional Guest Operating System Support— ESX/ESXi 4.0 Update 2 adds support for Ubuntu 10.04. For a complete list of supported guest operating systems with this release, see the VMware Compatibility Guide.

Here are some of the key issues that are resolved in this update;

 Upgrade of VMware Tools breaks Microsoft SQL Server functionality
Some third-party software programs, such as Microsoft SQL Server, don’t share atl71.dll. Therefore, the software doesn’t increase the .dll reference count during installation. As part a major VMware Tools upgrade, while uninstalling ATL71, the shared library atl71.dll is removed if its sharing reference count reaches 0. As a result, Microsoft SQL Server functionality might break. 

—

When using vSphere Client to access the console of a virtual machine that uses a NetXen NX3031 network interface controller (NIC), the system fails, leading to a purple screen
When the NetXen NX3031 NIC resides on a relatively high memory location (possibly above 512GB), the system becomes unresponsive as it tries to access an address that is out of range. For example, this issue might occur if the system has a physical memory of 96GB but the memory map configuration generates addresses beyond the 512GB memory location.

A message similar to the following is logged before the system becomes unresponsive: <3>nommu_map_single: overflow a31407ad5a+54 of device mask 7fffffffff

The following is an example of a backtrace of this issue:
0×4100c00e7338:[0x41801d1984bf]nommu_map_single+0×4e stack: 0×0
0×4100c00e7598:[0x41801d26f745]unm_nic_xmit_frame+0×4d8 stack: 0×4100c00e75c8 0×4100c00e7688:[0x41801d1a1609]process_tx_queue+0×874 stack: 0×41000b884600

—

PAE-enabled SMP Windows 2000 virtual machines stop responding
A Physical Address Extension (PAE) enabled multiprocessor Windows 2000 virtual machine might stop responding on reboot, or fail randomly.

—

Dropped frames can be incorrectly reported by Qlogic drivers for fibre channel host bus adapters (HBAs)
Storage arrays returning less data than expected (an underrun condition) are incorrectly reported by the Qlogic driver as having dropped frames with a SCSI status of Busy instead of an underrun condition with the original SCSI status. This issue is resolved in this release. The Qlogic driver reports SCSI status correctly and does not report dropped frames.

—

Windows guest operating systems earlier than Windows Vista might lose connectivity when used in conjunction with the vmxnet3 virtual network interface card
Network Driver Interface Specification (NDIS) is part of the networking architecture used in Microsoft Windows operating systems. The NDIS transport driver might hold, indefinitely, the buffers received by vmxnet3 drivers, thereby running out of buffers to receive.

—

Virtual machines connected to a vNetwork Distributed Switch (vDS) might be disconnected after a failover
vDS virtual machine port changes persist the port configuration every five minutes. Since virtual machine port changes are not persisted immediately, virtual machines can lose network connectivity after a failover event if they have been configured to link to a vDS less than five minutes before the failover.

—

A virtual machine fails to respond or power on when its network interface card (NIC) is attached to a port group with a name that exceeds 50 characters
This issue is resolved in this release. Port group names now cannot be changed to a name that exceeds 50 characters. Previously assigned port group names that exceed 50 characters are not accessible by virtual machines.

—

An issue in the timer emulation causes timer interrupts to be delivered to the guest operating system at an excessive rate
This issue has been observed after a vMotion migration when a virtual machine has been up for a relatively long time, such as for one hundred days.

—

Installing ESX on a system with more than eight network interface cards (NICs) might cause the system to become unresponsive
When you use the text mode method to install VMware ESX on a system that has more than 8 NICs, the installer might stop responding and display an error similar to the following:
An error has occurred during your ESX installation. ‘NicSetup’ object has no attribute ’scrollDisplay’

—

Speed and duplex settings for a NIC might not be retained after ESX/ESXi host reboots
When the speed and duplex settings for a NIC are manually set and the ESX/ESXi host is rebooted, the values set for the speed and duplex settings might not be retained. After reboot, the network adapter might auto-negotiate its speed and duplex settings.

— 

Virtual machines running 64-bit Windows Server 2003 or 64-bit Windows XP guest operating systems might report an incorrect CPU frequency
The CPU frequency reported by 64-bit Windows 2003 and 64-bit Windows XP guest operating systems when run in a virtual machine might be inaccurate. In the virtual machine, QueryPerformanceCounter might run at a rate that is higher than the frequency reported by QueryPerformanceFrequency.

This is just a small subset of the fixes found in VMware ESX(i) 4.0 Update 2, I strongly urge you to read the full release notes as a problem you’re currently experiencing could be resolved by a simply update. For updating your ESX hosts, simply use Update Manager or download the bits from VMware.com and use the Host Update Utility to perform these upgrades.

What does this mean?  Well, with Fast Clones you are now offloading the great ability to do Linked Clones back to the storage array. You can ultimately have hundreds of copies of a single virtual machine which only using minimal disk space, and now with the plug-in have those automatically provisioned into VMware View.

Fast, Easy and Efficient…just how we like it!

Download the high-rez versions here: WMV and MOV

For those of you that do not know, the VMware vExpert program was created in 2009 to show appreciation for those individuals who have significantly contributed to the community of VMware users over the past year. For more information on the program visit http://www.vmware.com/communities/vexpert/.

On Twitter @maishsk has put together a list of vExpert 2010 recipients, you can find that list here.

Imagine you’re planning a datacenter shutdown due to a power outage or building maintenance, or perhaps that wildfire is making its way to your office location. Now you have the flexibility to be able to avoid major downtime by simply swinging your workloads to an off-site datacenter.

VMware has taken notice and has officially released a KB article detailing out full support for long distance vMotion with the EMC VPLEX product. More information on this KB article can be found at http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1021215. Perhaps you want to know more about VPLEX or even see a demo of it in action? Chad Sakac posted a great breakdown of how it works along with some videos on his website, check it out now.

As many of you already knew there is the VCP certification which requires taking a VMware Approved class as well as passing the VCP exam (currently VCP410). Then early last year they added the VCDX3 program which requires a VCP but also adds in two exams (Enterprise Administration and Design) as well as a submitting a VCDX Application (design document) and then sitting through a defense.

For vSphere4 they’ve added a new certification track, VMware Certified Advanced Professional (VCAP4) with two available specialties, Data Center Administration (DCA) and Data Center Design (DCD). If you haven’t already guessed it they are basically the upgradesto the Enterprise Administration and Design Exam necessary for the VCDX3. The problem was that many people wanted to take that next step in their virtualization education and certification, but unless you’re a pre-sales engineer for a partner or a systems architect the need of obtaining a VCDX is low (unless you’re a vDiva like me).

So what does that mean if you’ve already taken the VCDX3 Enterprise Administration and Design Exam? Not to worry, there is an upgrade path for those of you that have already started your journey (or already have a VCDX3). Simply take the VCAP4-DCD exam when it is made available (around August) and you’ll be qualified to obtain the VCDX4 (or will be upgraded if you’ve already obtained a VCDX3). The chart on the right highlights your certification options and the path you would take depending on where you’re at. The * denotes the exam will be available at a discounted price.

The VCAP4-DCA exam will be available around mid-July and the VCAP4-DCD exam around the August time-frame. VCDX4 defenses will still happen at VMware global events (VMworld, PEX, etc). But now you have almost endless options and certification choices when it comes to VMware.

Happy Reading!

With no surprise to me the majority of the patches are for ESX and relate to security flaws and vulnerabilities found within the Service Console.  Keep in mind these vulnerabilities in no-way mean the virtual machines being hosted are at risk. These patches are typically for underlying services that the Service Console rely on, such as openssl, java, gzip and ntp. Sometimes these patches also resolve issues on how the Service Console communicates with the vmkernel layer as well as system devices.

Two of the patch bundles for ESXi share some common fixes with it’s ESX brother which cover a NTP vulnerability, a shared interrupt issue between the vmkernel and console as well as a patch that properly enables quiescing utilizing the Microsoft Windows VSS components found in Windows 2008 R2 and Windows 7.

More information on these patches can be found by reviewing the individual bundles;

ESX 4.0 - ESX400-201005001
Includes 9 updates, including fixes for NTP, gzip, bind, vmkernel, krb5, webCenter, Expat, sudo and gcc.

ESXi 4.0 - ESXi400-201005001
Includes two updates, ESXi400-201005401-SG for the ESXi firmware and ESXi400-201005402-BG for VMware Tools. 

For updating your ESX(i) hosts, simply use Update Manager or download the patches from the VMware website and use the Host Update Utility to perform these updates.

The past ten years have been the most challenging, painful and yet most rewarding in my entire life. I’ve lost many friends, but I’ve gained many new ones. I’ve lost love, but have found new love that is deeper than ever before. I’ve found a greater respect for family and being together. I’ve also seen the world reach an all time high, then crash lower than it ever has before.

All of the situations, feelings and things that someone would normally endure over a lifetime, I’ve experienced in 10 short years.

Recently I’ve had to make a number of life changing decisions. Decisions that not only affect me, but will also affect my family, friends and a number of other people. Decisions that people typically handle one at a time.

For me, this was all thrown in my face at once.

One of the most stressful things to do in ones life, purchase a home, almost got the best of me. But, with a big sigh of relief we have recently closed escrow on a beautiful new home (two weeks later than we should have, adding additional unwanted stress to the situation). Now we get to choose carpet, paint, appliances and all of the other great things that home-ownership brings.

So, enter the second piece of the puzzle. For the past 8 years I’ve enjoyed a great position as a Solutions Architect in local government. In these past years, I’ve grown as a person as well as a professional. The things I’ve learned and the friends I’ve made will last a lifetime, but, it is time for me to continue to grow as a professional and take the next leap in my career.

Starting on February 1st, I will become an employee of EMC Corporation. I will be joining fellow bloggers such as Scott Lowe and Ed Saipetch, working as a VCE Architect in Southern California.  As Scott mentioned in his blog, this change in employment will not affect the blog in any way. In fact, it’ll let me blog even more as I’ll be reporting on exciting things coming out of the lab and in the industry in general.

It will be extremely hard leaving all that I have with my current employer, but like I said, this will be an enormous leap for my career and family. I want to thank everyone that has coached me along the way and the friendships that were made. I hope we can continue to work together in the future and continue to keep in touch.

As you can see, quite a bit of change all happening at once. Now that it is behind me I feel that a huge weight has been lifted from my shoulders, and I am excited to see what this new decade will bring.

Hello 2010…
Hello New Home…
Hello New Opportunity!

Enter in problem of network flooding from the NetXen based HP branded NC522SFP.  Because all of the 10GbE ports from the (9) new ESXi servers were creating thousands of pause frames on the Cisco Nexus 5020 switches, I thought originally that it was an issue on the switch.  Talks with Cisco revealed nothing.  We attempted to disconnect one of the connected ports (each ESXi host is dual connected into a pair of N5Ks using vPC) to remove a potential spanning tree loop….no dice.

A reboot of the host resolved the problem, things appeared to be running normally and we decided to let it be and wait until Monday.

10 hours goes by, it is now Sunday morning and the problem returns.  First host loses storage (we’re doing NFS over 10GbE here), then two more…until all 9 in this cluster are pretty much toast.  I decide to open a ticket with VMware.  Wouldn’t you know, there is a potential known bug and resolution.

Bug 496013

Description: Some NetXen based 10GbE cards using the unm_nic and nx_nic drivers sometime flood the network with pause frames causing the port to become disabled.

Resolution: NetXen believes upgrading the firmware to version 4.0.516 will resolve the problem.

I’ve gone ahead and patched 4 of the hosts with this new firmware, so far it has been stable (knock on wood).   I’ll let you know if something happens.

Checking which version of the firmware you’re running is simple. From a command-line (ESX or ESXi hidden CLI), type ethtool -i <vmnic#> (replace vmnic# with the alias to the vmnic you’d like to check).  You should see output similar to:

driver: nx_nic

version: 4.0.301

firmware-version: 4.0.406

bus-info: 0000:07:00.0

Update - Utility CD with firmware patch now included…

As you can see above, the firmware is out of date. To update the firmware you will need to boot from a Linux utility CD that has the appropriate driver, you then run a firmware update utility provided by HP.  To make this process easy I have created a bootable SLAX utility CD with the drivers pre-loaded. You can download the ISO from here (file temporarily removed). Once booted run the installer located in the root filesystem (ie: ./CP011471.scexe).

Let me know if you have any questions.

Now the part you’ve all been waiting for.

Our third place winner, taking home some Veeam Backup and Recovery licenses is:

Gil Salazar from Tucson, AZ

Our second place winner, taking home a Veeam Management Suite license is:

Abe Lister from Glen Burnie, MD

(drum roll please)…and, our Grand Prize winner, taking home an IOMEGA IX4-100 is:

Herbert Tucker from Keyport, NJ

Once again, thank you to the sponsors and a very special Thank You to all the participants. Thank you for making VMwareTips.com so successful in 2009.   Happy New Year and here’s to a very prosperous 2010.