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vBrownBag VMware Site Recovery Manager (SRM) Demo

January 26, 2013 in vHersey, VMware

I presented a VMware Site Recovery Manager (SRM) demo for the US vBrownBag on January 16, 2013 and here is the recording.

2013-01-16 20.31 ProfessionalVMware vBrownBag US with Hersey Cartwright (@herseyc) from ProfessionalVMware on Vimeo.

and here is the slide deck.

The presentation wraps up my earlier posts on configuring SRM with array replication in the my lab – Part 1, Environment Setup, is here and Part 2, SRM Configuration, is here.

Working on the next vBrownBag presentation on SRM using vSphere Replication scheduled for Wednesday, January 30, 2013 at 8:30 PM Eastern. Hope to see you there.

The US vBrownBag happens every Wednesday night at 8:30 Eastern. Sign up to participate here: http://professionalvmware.com/brownbags/

Got a topic you would like to present? Volunteer to present here: http://professionalvmware.com/brownbags/vbrownbag-presenter-sign-up/

Enjoy!

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Home Lab SRM – Part 2 – Configuring SRM

December 31, 2012 in Storage, vHersey, VMware

In my Home Lab SRM Part 1 post I set up the lab environment to appear as two separate “sites” with all the components necessary for SRM with Array replication. Now to configure SRM to protect VMs at both of my sites. I am using the VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager Evaluation Guide as a reference to configure SRM.

First a connection that pairs the vCenter servers and their associated SRM servers between the two sites.
SRM-Pairing SRM-CompletedConnection

Once the connection between the two sites has been set up you have to configure Resource Mappings, Folder Mappings, Network Mappings, and Placeholder Datastores for both sites. Theses mappings just tell SRM what resource pools to place VMs in and where to connect their NICs if they are failed to the remote site.

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VCAP-DCD Pass!

November 30, 2012 in vHersey, VMware

On Monday, November 26, 2012, I sat and PASSED the VCAP-DCD for vSphere 5!!!

The exam was tough, VERY tough. I have always been an administrator and I think I have the technology down cold. Need a host configured, a host profile applied, or multipathing set up – no problem just give me a minute. Need me to identify a set of functional requirements from a business case and then create a design based on it – hmmmmm, not something I have a whole bunch of experience with. I spent a good deal of time preparing for the DCD exam and it required me to recall nearly every minute of that preparation to pull off the pass, and even then I only just squeaked by.

The format of the exam changed sometime in mid-October and the blue print was updated to reflect the change. So what was the change? You are no longer allowed to mark a question for review and then return to it. Once you submit an answer it is you final answer for that question. I think this change significantly increases the difficulty of the exam (or at least contributes to a good level of anxiety while taking it). Several folks have posted an exam strategy of marking design questions for review and returning to them to be able to budget time for them, this strategy no longer works.

As the blue print states you have 225 minutes to complete the exam and there are 100 questions that are a mix of multiple choice, drag-n-drop, and “visio” like design tool. When I submitted my answer to question 100 I still had 53 minutes left. This remaining time is where the mark for review would have come in handy. There were a few of the drag-n-drop and at least on of “visio” design tool questions that I think a go back and review would have been useful for.

My Study Resources
I learned a lot about the design process while preparing for this exam (kind of the point, right?). Lot of great resources out there and here are a few that I used to prepare.

If you are preparing for the exam make sure you check out the design tool demo so you are familiar with how the “visio” like questions work. As with any VMware Certification exam one of the best resources is the exam blue print. Make sure you have the latest copy of the blue print which is available on then VMware VCAP5-DCD Certification page.

Scott Lowe’s Designing VMware Infrastructure TrainSignal course was extremely helpful for me. The course helps lay a good foundation, and I think I found it so beneficial since the instruction does seem to target VMware administrators that are looking to transition into an architect role.

ProfessionalVMware.com APAC DCD vBrownBag Series – http://professionalvmware.com/brownbags/ These are AWESOME resources. I spent my commute listening to the APAC vBrownBags and they are a must listen if you are preparing for the exam.

coolsport00‘s VCAP-DCD Study Notes – http://professionalvmware.com/2012/11/vcap5-dcd-study-outline-pdf/ Shane sent me these the Friday before I took the exam. Wish I had got them sooner. Nice notes organized against the exam blue print.

Jason’s VCAP-DCD Document Package – http://www.virtuallanger.com/2012/09/30/vcap-dcd-5-document-package/ The VMware PDFs and other documents referenced in the blue print in one convenient package.

VirtualHyper.com VCAP-DCD Study Guide – http://virtuallyhyper.com/2012/08/vcap5-dcd/
Some links to some other DCD resources and very good notes for each section of the blue print.

Everyone knows about Scott Lowe’s books and of course the vSphere HA Deepdive by Duncan Epping and Frank Denneman. These are fantastic books and will definitely help in your preparation efforts but there a a few new books out there from VMware Press that I found to be very excellent resources.

Managing and Optimizing VMware vSphere Deployments by Harley Stagner and Sean Crookston is an excellent book on designing and implementing a vSphere infrastructure.

VMware vSphere 5 Building a Virtual Datacenter Eric Maille and René-Francois Mennecier is another great book that will help you learn to match VMware Datacenter products and solutions with business needs.

I will continue to hone my skills as both a vSphere Administrator and a vSphere Architect. One thing is for sure I am glad that exam is behind me (until the next version anyway)!

Good luck!

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Autolab Home Lab Build

October 1, 2012 in DCA, vHersey, VMware

Recently I have been doing a lot of upgrading from 5.0 to 5.1 testing in my home lab. There were also quite a few (beta) things I had started and just never got around to finishing. My lab was pretty much a mess, a functional mess, but a mess all the same. So this weekend I decided to nuke it from orbit and rebuild.

I run my home lab inside VMware Workstation 8 on a ASUS desktop running Windows 7 Home Professional 64bit, with 16 GB RAM, and a few 60 GB SSDs. The lab actually runs pretty well on this setup. In the past the lab has been two ESXi servers, the vCenter virtual appliance, and an OpenFiler VM for IP storage. No DNS, AD, or other extra services, because of this some of my lab projects are somewhat limited. For this rebuild I decided to use Autolab 1.0 – http://www.labguides.com/autolab/.

Autolab is a set VM shells and pre-configure open source VMs that provides a complete VMware lab environment including two ESXi hosts, a Windows vCenter Server, IP Storage (both NFS and SCSI), Active Directory, DNS, TFTP services, and more. Most of the software installations have been automated making it very easy to deploy (or redeploy) your lab environment as needed. This lab environment is very well suited for VCAP5-DCA study.

Since much of the software used cannot be distributed with Autolab (all the VMware and Microsoft stuff) it does take awhile to locate and download all the software necessary. Once you have software and have it placed in build share on the AutoLab FreeNAS VM deploying the lab environment is fairly quick and painless.

Autolab does a really nice job of deploying and then configuring the Windows machines necessary for the lab. The DC VM installation took about 35 minutes in my environment. During this time AD and DNS are set up, a PXE boot server is installed and configures, SQL Express is installed, and the databases for vCenter, VUM, and View are created.

There is a nice validation script that can be run once the DC build is finished to make sure things look good and that all the required software for future automation scripts/builds is in the right places.

Once the DC VM has been deployed the next step is to deploy the vCenter VM. Again this has been nicely automated. Once Windows Server 2008 R2 has been installed vCenter is installed along with VUM, PowerCLI, vCLI, and the vSphere Client. This process took about 35-40 minutes in my environment.

The VC VM has a menu script that contains another Validation, just to check that the environment is good for you to move forward.

The Windows server builds (for both the DC and vCenter) are tedious tasks. This is one of the reasons I did not have them in set up in my lab previously. The Autolab does a very nice job automating the Windows installs. Just kick off the installation and go do something else for a bit, when you come back run the validation script and all should be well. For some more information on the Windows Builds in Autolab check out this post – http://professionalvmware.com/2012/06/autolab-automation-uncovered-windows-builds/

The Autolab 1.0 Deployment Guide is a great reference with all the networking, usernames, and passwords well documented. All the automation scripts are also easy to find. So when automation does go wrong it is easy to figure out what happened, how to fix it, or how to work around it.

I had some trouble with the PowerCLI scripts used to create datacenter, the cluster, and add the new hosts to it but I was able to walk through the scripts and configure this stuff manually. I think this might be due to the fact that I am using PowerCLI 5.1 and vSphere vCLI 5.1. Would be nice to get the automation working but I will mess around with that later.

After just a couple hours my home lab was rebuilt and ready to rock.

Waiting for CentOS and vCloud Director to install now. Fun stuff! :)

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vSphere 5.1 Announced!

August 28, 2012 in vHersey, VMware

Lot of great announcements this morning during the VMworld keynote. One of these being the official announcement of vSphere 5.1 and there are already a number of blogs out there posting information on many of the new features and enhancements. Here are just a few of the new features and enhancements I am looking forward to:

  • Enhanced Web Client
  • Enhanced vMotion (Shared storage no longer necessary < face melting stuff!)
  • Lots of virtual Distributed Switch enhancements (LACP, vDS backup and restore)
  • Virtual Data Protection (VDR replacement based on EMC AVAMAR technology)
  • Reboots no longer necessary after guest VMware Tool upgrades (makes this VM admin very much happy!)
  • Licensed by physical CPU socket – No vRAM licensing!
  • and more…

You can find a good overview of the new features of vSPhere 5.1 here http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/products/vsphere/vmware-what-is-new-vsphere51.pdf and vCenter Server 5.1 here http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/techpaper/Whats-New-VMware-vCenter-Server-51-Technical-Whitepaper.pdf

I have had the vSphere 5.1 beta installed in my Home Lab for some time now but have not had a lot of time mess with it much. The new Web Client is pretty slick and it seems to have all the functionality of the Windows vSphere Client. The vDS backup and restore is also a great feature. Going to have to make some time to work with it a bit more.

Of course once the NDA curtain was lifted the blog post started flying. Here are a few post that dive a bit deeper into the 5.1 release.

There will be many more post in the near future so keep an eye out for them!

Some really exciting stuff! What’s your favorite new 5.1 feature?

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Can’t Attend VMworld? Watch Keynotes LIVE!

August 17, 2012 in VMware

VMworld kicks off in just over a week and I am more than just a little bummed that I am not going to be able to attend. Sounds like there is going to be a lot of great stuff going on. If, like me, you are unable to attend there are a lot of great ways to be part of the action. Hate to be missing out on the parties and hanging out with some great people but I am looking forward to the blogs and tweets from the folks there.

The VMware NOW Online Event is one way to hear the latest announcements from the VMworld Keynotes and to be able to participate in some of the new product demos. The VMwold NOW Online Event is LIVE on August 27 and you need to register for it here: http://bit.ly/VMwareNOW.

Another great resource for those of us that wish we could be there is the VMworld Social Media and Community Guide. The guide has the #hashtags to watch for, links to videos and live media streams, twitter feeds to follow, event blogs, and more.

Of course the vBrownBag folks will also be there streaming live and the schedule can be found here.

Yeah not quite as cool as attending in person but I am still looking forward to the post, online events, videos, and tweets from VMworld 2012.

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Really, you are using…

June 19, 2012 in VMware

…DPM, PVLANs, Datastore Clusters, Storage DRS, in your production VMware environment? When talking to folks I often get asked about these different VMware technologies and for some reason the fact that we are using these in a production environment seems to really amaze people. Even talked to a VMware sales person the other day that was like “Wow, you are really using that?”

The real question that needs to be answered here is…
How come you are not leveraging these technologies in your production environments?

I realize there may be operational policies, specific needs, or technical reasons you may not need (or want) to implement something and I don’t think you should implement a technology just for the sake of implementing it. Not every environment has a need to use PVLANs but if the technology provides a benefit why would you not want to use it.

All of the technologies mentioned above are proven, are supported, and are worth checking out to determine if your environment (or business) will benefit from using them.

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vBrownBag VCAP5-DCA Objective 9

May 24, 2012 in vHersey, VMware

I presented on the VCAP5-DCA Objective 9 – Perform Advanced vSphere Installation and Configurations for the ProfessionalVMware.com vBrownBag on Wednesday, May 23, 2012. The objective covers VMware Image Builder and VMware Auto Deploy.

Below is the recording of the presentations, the slide deck from the presentation, and some Image Builder/Auto Deploy reference links.

There was a lot of information to cover but hopefully this provides a pretty good overview of Image Builder and Auto Deploy that folks studying for the VCAP5-DCA to build on.

Some Image Builder and Auto Deploy links:

 
The ProfessionalVMware.com page for the presentation can be found here: http://professionalvmware.com/2012/05/us-vbrownbag-follow-up-vcap-dca-objective-9-w-herseyc/

Congratulations to @kylemurley who won the copy of VMware vSphere 5 Administration Instant Reference based on his comments on the antique technologies I have in use at my home office. Your book is on the way.

Thanks to everyone that participated in the vBrownBag. I appreciate any constructive comments or feedback.

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Problem Installing VUM 5.0 Update 1 Plugin

April 16, 2012 in vHersey, VMware

This morning I was attempting to install the VMware vSphere Update Manager Extension using the vSphere Client Plug-in Manager on a 32-bit Windows 7 Professional workstation and I received this error “Setup cannot Continue. VMware vSphere Client is not found to be installed on this computer. VMware vSphere Update Manager Client 5.0 Update 1 can be installed only on machines where VMware vSphere Client is present.”

I searched the VMware KB but could not find any KB articles referencing the error. I ended up finding a fix by searching the VMware Communities in this thread. Looks like there has been an issue with this for a while now. Not sure why I have not run across the problem before now.

Start the Plug-in download and install from Plug-in Manager:

Once the installation starts cancel it. If you let it continue till it fails it will clean up the installation package from %TEMP%.

Find VMware-UMClient.exe in the %TEMP% directory and copy it to the root of the C drive. Then right click the VMware-UMClient.exe and choose to Run as Administrator.

Once the installer completes close and reopen the vSphere Client. Check the Plug-Manager to verify that the correct version of VUM is installed and enabled.

VMware Update Manager is now updated to the current version and enabled. All is well.

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VMware PowerCLI 5 Reference iPad/iPhone App

February 15, 2012 in iPad Apps, VMware

The more I use PowerCLI the more uses I find for it. Searching out configurations, setting options, migrating VMs, powering down VMs, deploying new VMs, and a long list of other handy things that can be accomplished with a single easy to write line of PowerCLI code. My copy of the VMware vSphere PowerCLI Reference: Automating vSphere Administration book gets a pretty regular workout but I don’t always have it with me.

I downloaded this free iPad/iPhone/iPod VMware PowerCLI 5.0 Reference app in the itunes store – vPowerCLI5 Reference App that was developed by theHyperAdvisor.com. The app provides an easy to use and searchable PowerCLI cmdlet reference on my iPhone.

App description: “This tool is to be used for referencing the VMware vSphere PowerCLI cmdlets. vSphere PowerCLI is a command-line and scripting tool built on Windows PowerShell, and is used for managing and automating vSphere.”

Not really digging the yellow background and blue/green text. Would be nice if there was a way to change that. Other than that a great free app. Get it here. The app is also available for the Andriod in the Andriod Market.

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