PowerCLI, a set of PowerShell extensions for vSphere, is a great tool for automating VMware configuration and management tasks. It allows you to change a lot of ESXi host and vCenter settings. One powerful cmdlet is Get-EsxCli which allows you to run ESXCLI tasks from your PowerCLI console. ESXCLI is the main configuration command on an ESXi host. This post explains how to use the Get-EsxCli cmdlet.
When you want to test Android on your PC, Android-x86 might be your solution. Android-x86 is an open source project that has ported Android to x86 platform. This allows us to install Android in a Virtual Machine with VMware Workstation or ESXi. Driver support is very limited, so there are many problems around with Android VMs that cant access the network. This post shows how to install Android in VMware Workstation and how to solve Network Connectivity issues.
Read More »Solve Android x86 No Network Problems in VMware Workstation
VMware has just published a new App for Andorid and iOS: vSphere Mobile Watchlist. The App which has been announced at the last VMware Partner Exchange 2014 allows to monitor your virtual machines in your vSphere infrastructure remotely on your phone. I've tested the app on my HTC One to see how powerful it is.
Read More »vSphere Mobile Watchlist - VM Administration for Andorid and iOS
The open-source computer operating system ReactOS 0.3.16 has been released a few days ago. ReactOS is intended to be binary compatible with application software and device drivers made for Microsoft Windows 2000. The latest version is available as a prebuild VMware virtual machine. Unfortunately the developers published the vmdk and vmx directly, instead of an open virtualization format (ovf). This might cause some trouble when you try run it with an older version than ESXi 5.5 or VMware Worksation 10.
One of the most commonly problem in VMware migration projects is that the storage is undersized. When you want to size a new platform it is important to know the IO requirements. Unfortunately storage is often only sized for capacity, which is a great mistake. VMware offers tools you need to analyze and record workloads and replay them in the new platform. This post explains how to capture workloads with vscsiStats trace mode and replay them with I/O Analyzer.
The following error message appears when you try to delete or unmount a VMFS datastore:
The resource Datastore Name: * VMFS uuid: * is in use.
Cannot remove datastore 'Datastore Name: * VMFS uuid: *' because file system is busy. Correct the problem and retry the operation.
ESXi 5.5 has a new feature to store coredumps in a file residing on a datastore. It may sometimes create this file automatically and thus blocking datastores from being deleted. It also creates a vsantraces directory which blocks a datastore.
Read More »Cannot remove datastore * because file system is busy.
With January 2014 just passed, I thought today would be a good day to close out the year with a Top 10 list of the… Read More »Top 10 Posts of 2013
Enhanced vMotion Compatibility (EVC) simplifies vMotion compatibility across CPU generations. EVC automatically configures server CPUs with AMD-V Extended Migration technologies to be compatible with older servers. I've created a table with a quick overview about EVC Modes with their appropriate CPU Series and Codenames used by AMD to denote their CPUs.
Read More »AMD CPU EVC Matrix (VMware Enhanced vMotion Compatibility)
VMware has launched a new certification exam VCP550 which allows to take the exam based on vSphere 5.5. There is no new certification, you will still earn the VCP5-DCV certification as if you have passed the VCP510 exam based on vSphere 5.0/5.1. If you already own the VCP5-DCV there is no reason to take the exam.
The main topics of the new exam are 5.1 and 5.5 features like vSphere Data Protection (VDP), vCenter Operations Manager (vCOPS), vSphere Flash Read Cache (vFlash), Single Sign-on and the vSphere Webclient.
Short post on different connectivity states of a virtual machine and how to fix them.
Read More »VM grayed out as disconnected, inaccessible, orphaned or invalid