Within vSphere 5.1 a new feature called Tags has been introduced by VMware. Tags are an enhancement of Custom Attributes and enables users to categorize inventory objects. They are a great approach for organizing or reporting tasks. Tags can be associated to the following object types:
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
Are you currently studying for the VMware Certified Advanced Professional 5 - Datacenter Administration Certification and do not know where to start? Here you can… Read More »Studying for VCAP5-DCA? Consolidated Resources Page
This is a short list of myths, failures and issues I faced while working with VMware. I think that everyone working with virtualization should know these so i want to share my experiences:Read More »Top 10 VMware Myths, Failures and Issues
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
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
Are you looking for a free alternative for a Windows based Active Directory controller? The recently published version 4 allows Samba to be an Active Directory domain controller, participating fully in a Windows Active Directory Domain. This is a great replacement for a Windows based AD Controller if you want to use Active Directory features in your Lab.
With the new release of the Univention Corporate Server 3.1 (UCS) you can deploy your Samba 4 Controller in a few minutes. The quickest way is to use the preinstalled VMware Images.Read More »Free Active Directory for your VMware Lab using Samba 4 (UCS 3.1)
A few weeks ago VMware published a World Map showing all countries with VCDX certified individuals. The VCDX (VMware Certified Design Expert) is the highest level of VMware certification. This certification program is designed for highly-skilled professionals who demonstrated their expertise in VMware virtual infrastructure. I think the map is a great idea, but I was also interested in the amount of VCDX per country, so i gathered these information to create a map and some more interesting facts.Read More »VCDX Worldmap
With their new project called VMware Labs Project NEE VMware is on its way to revolutionize online learning. Project NEE (Next-Generation Education Environment) is a platform where you can perform live labs on real virtual machines running in the cloud. A few days ago VMware announced that the Public Beta is now open and i am really happy to be part of it.
What is Project NEE and how does it work?Read More »VMware Hands-on Labs Revolutionized Online Learning - Project NEE
I really like tables because you can visualize everythng better. If you know this blog I am sure that you already know my ESXi and ESX… Read More »vSphere Build Number Release History - PDF Format