As I´ve posted about earlier, you can update your ESXi hosts to a new release from the command line. Now that ESXi 5.5 has been released, the same procedure can be applied to upgrade once more.

Place the host in maintenance mode, then run the following command to do an online update to ESXi 5.5:

~ # esxcli software profile update -d https://hostupdate.vmware.com/software/VUM/PRODUCTION/main/vmw-depot-index.xml -p ESXi-5.5.0-1331820-standard

While this runs, monitor the log file to check upgrade process:

Read more →

Some times all it takes is one single tweet to set things in motion:

Just a year after losing Dad to cancer, Mom's has now spread from lung to other areas. Too soon for this shit.

— Gabriel Chapman (@Bacon_Is_King) September 12, 2013

This started a spiral of tweets, discussions and ideas being thrown around and has now resulted in Podcasting for Cancer.

The current goal is to raise $5000 USD by November 12th - Let´s absolutely crush that goal!

Read more →

As Eric Siebert has pointed out, the VMware vSphere release cycles are shortening.

While vSphere 5.1 could be seen as a bit rushed, especially in regards to SSO, when it was released, the shorter release cycles seem to work out pretty well.

This does make me think though; vSphere 5.5 is pretty much ready to be released to the general public, and the new VSAN component will be in a public beta at the same time.

Read more →

This coming tuesday the first ever Veeam Webinar held in Norwegian will be held by yours truly. Feel free to sign up now and listen to me speak for an hour or so.

Also, Veeam is continuing it´s support of the virtualization community and is yet again offering free 180-days Veeam Backup Management Suite v7 NFR licenses for VMware and Hyper-V.

Note that this offer is only available to anyone who is one of the following: VMware vExpert, VMware Certified Professional (VCP), Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP), Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS) and Most Valuable Professional (MVP)

Read more →

About a year and a half I go, I took the leap from running Microsoft Windows as my main operating system and switched into full “hipster mode”, i.e. switched to a Macbook Air and OS X.

Simply put, “the change” was not that hard and most everything has worked without problems, and for those things that still require Microsoft Windows, well, there is VMware Fusion for that.

While I´m admittedly still a novice OS X user, and not even close to mastering OS X, I´d like to share my current Slate setup.

Read more →

When doing manual host upgrades, either through the direct method or via a locally placed upgrade bundle, there is a distinct lack of progress information available after running the esxcli command.

Thankfully the ESXi host provides a running logfile of the upgrade process, which makes it much easier to keep track of what is going on and that the upgrade is indeed being performed.

The esxupdate.log is located in /var/log, and by issuing the following command in a terminal window you can have a rolling log showing you the upgrade status and progress:

Read more →

A fellow IT-professional, who works with the non-wired flavor of networking, contacted me with the following scenario:

A group of users, developers in this case, have VMware Workstation installed on their laptops. This makes it easy for them to manage, test and develop their applications in a closed environment without having to install a bunch of tools/services on their centrally managed laptop environment. An excellent use case for VMware Workstation if there ever was one.

Read more →

When configuring a new C7000 Blade Enclosure with a couple of FlexFabric 10Gb/24-port modules I ran into a rather annoying issue during setup.

HP Virtual Connect 3.70 introduced support for Direct-Attach setups of HP 3Par StoreServ 7000 storage systems, where you can eliminate the need for dedicated FC switches. For full details, have a look at Implementing HP Virtual Connect Direct-Attach Fibre Channel with HP 3PAR StoreServ Systems.

This is excellent for setups where all your hosts are HP Blades, and you have a Virtual Connect FlexFabric setup. After all, less components means less complexity, right?

Read more →

A lot of the scripted installation tools that VMware offers allows the usage of a central HTTP based repository for hosting the files. Today I stumbled over a little gem that might just help you create a “quick and dirty” HTTP based deployment scenario by running a simple command in your terminal. By default, this command works on any system that has Python installed on it, so OS X and Linux should be ready to go as is. As for you Windows users out there, well, your mileage will vary.

Read more →

Now that VMware ESXi 5.1 Update 1 has been released I decided to do a quick and dirty upgrade of my home installation. I refuse to call it a lab these days, since it´s one singular host and all it does it contain my home domain controller…

Anyway, the following procedure upgraded the host from 5.1b to 5.1U1, by downloading the upgrade directly from VMware and installing it. Make sure the host is in maintenance mode before attempting this procedure.

Read more →