VMware Certificate PDF Download
A few days after VMware removed and unified all certification numbers (except VCDX) they made another long-awaited feature available. You are now able to download… Read More »VMware Certificate PDF Download
A few days after VMware removed and unified all certification numbers (except VCDX) they made another long-awaited feature available. You are now able to download… Read More »VMware Certificate PDF Download
A few weeks ago I've silently made vscsiStats Grapher available. Now i want to attract some attention to it. With vscsiStats Grapher you can visualize vscsiStats… Read More »vscsiStats Grapher released
Hewlett-Packard has just released a Generation 8 Microserver which is going to replace the well-known N36L/N40L/N54L Microservers. The new server has the same trendy design as the entire Gen8 series. The AMD Turion CPU has been replaced by an Intel Ivy Bride CPU which is way more powerful and the memory limit has been raised to 16GB. With that, the new server brings much more power to your VMware vSphere Homelab and allows you to run more virtual machines. In this post, I am going to compare both specs to point out what's new and better.
With the separation of the vCenter Service into 4 components in vSphere 5.1 (vCenter Single Sign On, vCenter Inventory Service, vCenter Server and vSphere Web Client) there is a possible issue that you could have mismatched services installed. When you install an update you have to install all components one after another without having a workflow to check that all have been updated. I have already written about the update process from 5.1 to 5.1u1 and their versions but this is not the only update available. Now I've created an overview of all possible vCenter 5.1 version numbers that can be identified in the Control Panel.
When you virtualize Linux Operating Systems with VMware you have 3 opportunities when it comes to the decision which VMware Tools to install. The well-known VMware Tools that come with the ESXi Hypervisor and can be installed from the vSphere Client, the VMware Operating System Specific Package (OSPs) and the open source project open-vm-tools. This post explains the differences between the variants and helps you to understand the advantages to choose the right package for your environment.
If you use Linux Guests inside VMware I encourage you to comment on what kind of VMware Tools you are using.
Read More »Choose and Install VMware Tools on Linux Guests (Original vs. OSPs vs. open-vm-tools)
About 6 months after the release of VMware vSphere 5.1 the first Update is available since this weekend. As you know, the vCenter Server has been split into 4 services: Single-Sign On, Inventory Service, vCenter Server and the vSphere Web Client. That makes the update process a little bit more more complex. Here is a small Walk-though how to Update to vSphere 5.1.0 U1
Read More »Howto Update vCenter Server from 5.1 to 5.1 Update 1
Intel uses a model named "Tick-Tock" to follow every microarchitectural change with a die shrink. This results in having two EVC baselines for every microarchitecture. I've created a small table with a quick overview about EVC Modes with their appropriate CPU Series and Codenames used by Intel to denote their CPUs. I've also included additional Codenames that may be used by Intel for special processors. The upcoming Haswell architecture is named, but not yet available or supported by VMware.
This post is updated regularly. [Last Update: April 2018]
Read More »Intel CPU EVC Matrix (VMware Enhanced vMotion Compatibility)
Since VMware introduced the vSphere Web Client there is a common question: Which vSphere client should I use? The answer simple: You need both!
There are many new features within vSphere 5.1 which are only available through the Web Client. But there are also many reasons to use the old C# Client: Some features and plugins are not implemented in the Web Client Client. There is no doubt that you need both clients to configure your vSphere 5.1 environment. But which client should you use for day-to-day work or for configuration tasks that are available in both clients?
This post has been updated to include vSphere 5.5 Features
Read More »vSphere Web Client vs. vSphere Client (C# Client)
With vSphere 5.1 a new component called Single-Sign-On (SSO) has been introduced. The new SSO service is mandatory since 5.1. There is no way around, you have to use it. The good thing about it is that it has various authentication options and can be deployed in an redundant fashion. Unfortunately it adds a lot of complexity to your configuration but if you understand all of it's components and functions, you won't miss it.
Read More »Howto: SSO - Simple AD Authentication with VMware 5.1
Be careful when updating you ESXi hosts from VMware vSphere 5.0 to 5.1. The following servers were supported in 5.0 but are no longer supported in 5.1:
Read More »Updating ESXi from 5.0 to 5.1 - Unsupported Hardware