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VMware Licensing Considerations #1 - Perpetual vs. VSPP

Software licensing is one of the most confusing part within the IT industry. Since virtualization has become wildly popular things are getting worse. Some application software vendors require cpu socket based licensing, which is fair for physical hardware but inappropriate for software running inside virtual machines. With the latest changes VMware has really fair and understandable licensing models. Today i am going to compare the the two license models perpetual and VSPP (VMware Service Provider Program). To make the models comparable i will consider vSphere Enterprise Plus Licenses only, without any additional products, except VMware vCloud Director.
Read More »VMware Licensing Considerations #1 - Perpetual vs. VSPP

How to Setup Port Forwarding in VMware Workstation 9

This small walkthrough explains how to configure a port forwarding in VMware Workstation 9. The same procedure should also work for VMware Workstation 8, 7 and 6.

Why do you need port forwarding in VMware Workstation? The main purpose is to make virtual machines available on the network. You could simply use bridged networking, but sometimes NAT fits better to your requirements. If you want your virtual machine to be available no matter what network you are connected to or if you are limited in IP addresses you might have a valid use case for using NAT and thus port forwarding. Read More »How to Setup Port Forwarding in VMware Workstation 9

Migrate E1000 Adapter to vmxnet3 with Linux Virtual Machines

When you select Debian or Ubuntu as Operating System during the creation of virtual machines the wizard automatically selects E1000 as virtual network adapter. To get better network performance it is a best practice to change this to vmxnet3. But what if the virtual machine is already installed and running? The Adapter Type is grayed out, even when the virtual machine is powered off. How to change the Adapter Type later?Read More »Migrate E1000 Adapter to vmxnet3 with Linux Virtual Machines

VMware vCenter Server Appliance 5.1 (vCSA) Limitations

One of my favorite developments by VMware is the vCenter Server Virtual Appliance (vCSA) as I want to get rid of as much Windows Machines as possible in my environments. It also simplifies the administration because you do not to have to configure and patch another operating system. Unfortunately the vCSA is really rare in a production environment. In my opinion this is caused by the fact that the vCenter Server Appliance always has some limitations, which are often not completely understood.

Here are the limitations from the current version of VMware vCenter Server Appliance 5.1:Read More »VMware vCenter Server Appliance 5.1 (vCSA) Limitations

Nagios Check: VMware Virtual Machine Snapshot Age

As you might know it is a VMware best practice to keep snapshots for more than 24-72 hours. To monitor aged snapshots using Nagios i created a perl script that checks the whole vCenter for snapshots. The script throws a warning because i think this is still not a critical event. You can easily change the behavior by changing the exit code to 2.

I set the allowed age to 3 days, based on VMware  KB1025279. You can change the maximum allowed age to whatever you want by changing the subroutine check_age.

You can use this script as source for Nagios. There is also a multiple line output which allows you to see the virtual machine that caused the warning event.Read More »Nagios Check: VMware Virtual Machine Snapshot Age

Using SSH Public Key Authentication with vMA

If you are using the vSphere Management Assistant (vMA) on a daily bases you might want to simplify the login process. Public Key authentication is an authentication method that relies on a generated public/private keypair and enables the login without entering a password.

What do you need?

  • PuTTY (The well known SSH Client)
  • PuTTYgen (To genereate your SSH Key)
  • Pagent (The SSH authenticatien Agent, required for key authentication)

Read More »Using SSH Public Key Authentication with vMA