Archive for November, 2009
Jump Start Virtualization EcoShell
Nov 30th
I have talked about the Virtualisation EcoShell (VESI) enough on this blog for people to know what its all about but how do you get started ?
One option is to join the FREE live meeting tomorrow (1/12/2009) at 17:00 GMT (11:00 am Central Standard Time) presented by Scott Herold by registering or joining here. Anyone who has seen Scott present before will know how great the presentation will be and you are bound to pick up some expert tips from the man himself. More >
vSphere 4.0 Quick Start Guide is here
Nov 27th
Its here, I’m an author, watch out JK Rowling !
Its been a while coming but the vSphere 4.0 Quick Start Guide is now available to buy on Amazon (US), we are working at getting it on the UK site but I’m just pleased to see it out there and available to buy.
This book is a co-authored publication bought to you from some of the leading names in VMware bloggers and admins, and they also asked me to contribute too 
The book is designed for you to carry around with you, its not a heavy duty full novel but more of a VMware admins help book which can be referred to when you are in the damp dark datacenter at 4am in the morning with no internet connection !
Having said that there is definitely something in there for everyone, whether you are new to VMware or a seasoned Pro.
Throughout the book you will find great tips, real life situations and numerous PowerCLI examples.
If you haven’t yet heard of this book then please read these wonderful comments already left on the Amazon post.
If you have read it then please, leave your comments along with the others.
VMware Converter – VMXNET3 Issue
Nov 26th
How do you move your VMs from one vCenter to another ?
Today whilst moving a few VMs from my test vCenter server to my Non Production vCenter server I hit upon an issue with VMware converter, this is just a warning so you do not have the same issue.
I used VMware Converter (Latest version at this time: 4.0.1 build-161434) to move the VMs, as I have a thousand times before, but the machines in question was actually a Hardware Version 7 VM with a VMXNET3 network adapter, moving from ESX4 U1 to ESX 4U1. I have to say VMware Converter really is a great tool, I use it for many tasks from growing disks to P2Vs and the fact it is free is fantastic.
When going through the wizard Converter clearly found the VM as Hardware Version 7 as seen below… More >
PowerCLI to SQL Databases
Nov 23rd
One of the things I love about PowerShell is how versatile it is, its a wonderful framework which can slot pieces of a puzzle together to create a masterpiece, Now I know it exists I can see every day uses and needs for PowerShell, it fits into every nuck and cranny.
Take for example my SnapReminder script, the fact that you can pull VMware Information from your vCenter, then run the results by Active Directory and finally push it through an SMTP server to complete the final piece of the puzzle astounds me, the only limit to PowerShell is your imagination.
The other day I was watching Twitter when someone asked how to do a particular task, they wanted to pull information from the VMware Infrastructure and update some existing data in an SQL database, I watched as multiple answers were given to this person…. do a database synchronisation…..buy this third party tool…..you cant do that…..extract it as a csv, convert it to xml, import it into here, spin around three times and say alacasam !
My instant answer was of course PowerShell (that seams to be my instant answer for most things of late). The reply was, can you access SQL with PowerShell then ? YES
I don’t think I personally have come across anything you couldn’t do in PowerShell given enough time and resources ! Lets talk through this scenario.
PowerCLI: Bring on the next version
Nov 20th
In the previous version of PowerCLI we had 165 great cmdlets to play with and didn’t we have fun, now in the new version (Download Here) we have a whopping…..
That’s right, an extra 68 cmdlets (4 of the old cmdlets were renamed from the previous version), bring on the fun !
So as well as the increased performance, what do we now have to play with ? here is a quick summary of the new cmdlets and what they do…. More >
PowerShell Gotcha – Export-CSV, Out-GridView and others
Nov 17th
I came across this one a little while back and was hoping it would be fixed in V2, I haven’t seen anyone else mention it so I thought I would add it to my blog as a warning to other PowerShell freaks like me….
I have changed the example to be more universal so you get the point:
I was creating a list of my servers and how big the disks were, to do this I decided to create a collection of custom PS objects so I could add further details to the object later as below:
Onyx – Why Learn PowerCLI ?
Nov 17th
The PowerCLI Team yesterday published with the Onyx Project a great tool with lots of potential. The blogging community received Carter’s announcement enthousiastically (see my previous post The Onyx has landed).
As a casual PowerCLI user you might think, the product has a strange name but it is the answer to all my scripting and automation needs. Why should I bother learning all these PowerCLI cmdlets while this tools produces working code. But think again !
A word of warning by the Surgeon General, or Alan and Luc in this case 
More >
The Onyx has landed
Nov 16th
A couple of months ago Carter Shanklin (Product Manager of Automating the World) teased us all with a wonderful application which creates PowerCLI scripts for you by tracing your actions in the vCenter Client.
The scripts it produces are not PowerCLI perfect but they do produce a raw format of a script which can be used to find the awkward bits of the API that are hidden in the back of the API documentation. The true power in PowerCLI will still be the manipulation of the cmdlets.
VESI & PowerGUI PowerPack V2
Nov 14th
As the official download count for V1 of my PowerPack has now hit over 1000 downaloads (I cant thank you all enough), I have now released V2 of my PowerPack for VESI and PowerGUI, this is more like the version I wanted to release first time around.
In the first PowerPack, I took a fair few snippets of code I had written on my blog and added these to the PowerPack to get people interested, now in Version 2 I have added even more content, more nodes, more actions and a fair bit of user requested features.
As you can see from the image on the left, there are a fair few nodes (so many I had to cut and paste the image together as they wouldn’t all fit in one screen capture).
There are also some new actions (see screenshots below).
If you have ESXi hosts you should find this useful, now you will be able to download the current firmware state to your windows machine with the click of a button, deploy it back and also reset them back to default configuration (seen below).
I was also requested to add the vCheck script into this version so you could run ad-hoc reports on customer sites, you will find this under the General tab.
You will also find many more VM nodes, most of which where inspired by Armin van Lieshout who was a great help during the testing phase and even sent through his own code for me to include. Thanks Armin.
Thanks to the other beta testers who sent me some great feedback (most of which is in here), I couldn’t have done it without you guys ! I also want to thank Kirk Munro who helped me out with a few coding or should I say User errors in V1 of this PowerPack
vCheck Hypervisor style
Nov 10th
The thing I love about adding my work to my site is that some people pick up what I have created and expand on it, I like to think that’s a sign of firstly my scripts being interesting enough to expand and secondly my scripts being so well written that anyone can pick them up and tailor them to their needs.
Following the initial additions that were added to v3 of vCheck, Raphael from http://www.hypervisor.fr/ has expanded my script somewhat further to include even more amazing functionality.
He has added the following areas of reporting:
- Host Ballooning
- Datastore Over Allocation
- Snapshot Oversize
- VCB garbage
- VMkernel warning check for ESX/ESXi (with deduplication)
- invalid or inaccessible VM
- Inapshot add/remove summary
- Time build
- NTP (service only) check
I will certainly make sure these are included in V4 with multiple other entries but in the meantime if you would like to download his excellent version then please check out his site, the posts are in French but he is nice enough to keep the script pure English More >
