VMware vSphere 4 Administration Instant Reference, written by Scott Lowe, Jase McCarty and Matthew Johnson is now available for pre-order on Amazon.com. I was fortunate enough to work on this book as a technical editor, and must say that it is the perfect vSphere quick reference book for both the beginner vSphere admin as well as the seasoned veteran. Be one of the first to get your own copy, and order it now for under $20, it makes the perfect holiday gift!

Posted under Good Reading, Training, vSphere

This last weekend I was reminded of a RCLI command that creates a backup of your ESXi Host configuration.  A client had an ESXi host where the USB drive failed.  The system didn’t entirely crash, it pinged so HA didn’t kick-in however hostd and vpxa weren’t responding so management from vCenter was impossible. Performing a reboot of the host proved it was a USB failure when it failed to boot.

So, HA kicked in finally when the host was powered off - however the remaining hosts in their cluster did not have adequate resources to power everything back on.  We needed to get this failed ESX host back online and quick!

Brought in new USB stick with fresh ESXi 4.0 installed, plugged in and powered up.  In the TUI configured the Management Port IP address/gateway/DNS, etc.    But now what, all of the (NFS) Datastores, vSwitch configuration and advanced settings were toast…and they didn’t have Enterprise Plus.

Say Hello to vicfg-cfgbackup.pl — a RCLI command which could be found in the vMA.  This utility will allow you to create a backup and restore a full ESXi configuration.  Luckily we had this (backup) command running on a nightly basis so we knew the configuration was complete.  A simply command and the host was online.

Seeing that ESX is going to be phased out, this RCLI command is a valid alternative for those ESXi users that do not have Enterprise Plus licensing.

The commands vicfg-cfgbackup.pl (esxcfg-cfgbackup.pl) allow you to backup and restore the configuration of your ESXi host.

To backup the host you would run the command.

vicfg-cfgbackup.pl –server <server_name> -s <backup_file_name>

To restore your backup configuration to your host you would run. This will cause the host to reboot once the process is complete. NOTE: The host must be in Maintenance Mode for this to work. The backup configuration must also match the patch level of the ESXi install. You can add a -f to force if needed.

vicfg-cfgbackup.pl –server <server_name> -l <backup_file_name>

Posted under Backup & Recovery, ESXi 3.5 Tips, vSphere

I’m proud to announce the release of the latest series of video based training from Train Signal… VMware vSphere! This video series will include over 18 hours of vSphere training, jam packed on to 3 DVDs. You also get the videos in multiple file formats such as iPod Video, Mp3 Audio, WMV and high quality AVI. Finally, you get the instructors notes in PDF format to help you follow along with the videos and take more organized notes!

Instructor and fellow vExpert David Davis takes you through the entire course, covering over 36 different topics. On a side note, I know that you’ll really enjoy this video series….why do you ask? Because I was the Technical Editor on this video series, so I know you’re getting quality. This video training series gets the VMnut Stamp of Approval!

Not only do you get over 18 hours of vSphere training, with every paid purchase you also get FREE Downloadable updates to the vSphere Series!  What this means is that any time a new video (or update) is added to the vSphere series, you will get the chance to download it absolutely free!

Don’t just take my word for it, check it out for yourself with the video sample below. When you are ready to purchase visit the Train Signal website and use discount code VSPHERE25 to take $25 off your purchase. Think of this as our little way of saying Thanks. You better do it fast though, the offer ends 09/07/09.

For those of you attending VMworld 2009, here are some events that Train Signal is helping - be sure to check them out!

• Train Signal is sponsoring the VMworld 2009 Sunday night extravaganza
  http://www.vmunderground.com/vmworld-2009-sunday-night-extravaganza
• Train Signal is sponsoring the VMworld 2009 Run
  http://www.active.com/page/Event_Details.htm?event_id=1786485
• David Davis will be doing a Video Signing on Wednesday (9/2) at the VMworld Book store from 12 to 1

Posted under Good Reading, Training

I’m a couple days behind on this, been extremely busy at work getting ready to go live with our SAP Deployment on July 2nd.  Anyways, enough crying to you about my busy schedule.   Nava Davuluri wanted me to help get the word out about the new VMware Sample Code website (titled Code Central).

This will be a site dedicated to the developer community, sample codes related to products such as the new vSphere CLI, vCLI, Perl Toolkit, Java Webservices SDK and much much more. Check out the site today for great code from other bloggers such as Eric Sloof and Alan Renouf!

Also be sure to check out the Code Central Blog!

Posted under vSphere

A big issue for companies making the upgrade to vSphere 4 Enterprise Plus from their existing VI3 Enterprise License wasn’t the low $295 price per CPU (VMware Part VS4-ENT-ENT-PL-UG-PROMO), it was the hassle of having to renew their SnS Entitlement! What if your company just renewed their 1 Year Enterprise SnS? You’d basically need to purchase another 1 Year Enterprise Plus SnS. Even though it would push out your support another year, this additional cost could be quite high for some companies, especially if you have dozens or even hundreds of hosts!

Customers complained and VMware Listened…

VMware will be releasing a 2 Month Enterprise Plus SnS package for customers in this exact boat.  The price will be reasonably priced at $140 per CPU for Platinum and $120 per CPU for Gold (both estimated retail). Well thank you VMware!  IMHO the best thing you could have done was just given all your Enterprise customers a free upgrade to Enterprise Plus, but I suppose this is the 2nd best thing I could ask for….seeing that I’m upgrading about 20 licenses in the next week.

For more information on the Enterprise to Enterprise Plus upgrade promotion, please contact your local VMware Retailer!  There is also an upgrade promotion that includes the Nexus 1000V Virtual Switch (VMware Part VS4-N1K-UG-C), this is priced at $795 per CPU.

Posted under vSphere

During an upgrade of vCenter 2.5 to 4.0 at a customer site I decided it would be a good idea to record the steps required.  In this video you will see how to upgrade VMware vCenter 2.5 to vCenter 4.0 that uses a Microsoft SQL database.  The steps are trivial and I have done more than a handful of these on customers production servers.

The most important thing is to follow the best practices, give your ODBC user db_owner privledge on the MSDB and vCenter database prior to any install or upgrade - then remove the privledge after the installer is complete.  Also make sure that IIS or any other webserver is disabled.

Posted under vCenter, vSphere

I know I’m a little late in the game today to announce this, but I was busy with meetings and whatnot. But, the day we’ve all been waiting for has come (some of us have been waiting almost two years!), VMware vSphere 4 has been officially released to the public.  The VMware Download Site now includes links to Download, Evaluate and Buy VMware vSphere 4.

Some of the things I noticed were that the licensing page is different, you can now quickly and easily view your vSphere 4 licenses keys;

Support Contract Management is also a lot easier, if you are the Primary License Administrator (PLA) you can assign Secondary License Administrators and also Support Administrators;

One final thing I wanted to touch on was the fact that the VMware Download Site now has a built-in Download Manager that you can use, which in my opinion, is extremely helpful as some of these vSphere files can be close to 2GB.

Well, that’s it for now.  Need to get back to upgrading vCenter !  If you haven’t already, I strongly suggest you go download vSphere for yourself and try it.

Posted under vSphere

Scott Lowe’s forthcoming book, Mastering VMware vSphere 4, is now available for pre-order via Amazon! Click here to see all the details. The book is available with a fairly significant discount (37%), but I don’t know how long that price will last. Get it now!

More information on my involvement with Mastering VMware vSphere 4 can be found here.

Posted under Good Reading, vSphere

VMware is pleased to announce the general availability for VMware vSphere 4 is May 21, 2009. VMware vSphere 4 extends the previous generation VMware platform – VMware Infrastructure 3 – along three dimensions: it delivers the efficiency and performance required to run business critical applications in large scale environments, it provides uncompromised control over application service levels, and it preserves customer choice of hardware, OS, application architecture and on-premise vs. off-premise application hosting.

There you have it, General Availability this Thursday!

Posted under vSphere

I was asked to speak at the San Diego VMUG meeting this morning, the event had a really good turn out with close to 200 VMware fans!  My session had two major parts, first I discussed vSphere and all the new enchancements, features and names (oh the names) :)   I then talked a little on best practices for deploying mission/business critical applications on VMware, mostly covering on how a solid design is the most important piece of a Virtual Infrastructure, then on how you need to understand how CPU Co-Scheduling and Memory Sharing works - along with some examples on how to look for contention issues.

I’ve included my presentation for everyone to enjoy, I also suggest checking out the San Diego VMUG page on LinkedIn if you are in the Southern California area.  The PowerPoint version of this presentation can also be downloaded HERE.

You can expand the Flickr Show to full screen by clicking the “Full Screen” icon on the bottom right.

Posted under Conferences