When you don’t use something for a while, you tend to forget how valuable it can be. Even from its very early iterations, ESXi has been able to display CDP information so you can quickly establish “what’s patched where “. Easy to get from the gui, but far more useful Continue Reading
PowerCLI
Back to basics – Hot add new disk to Linux VM
I recently showed this to a colleague who is new to Linux. It should be part of your minimum capabilities as an admin. Manipulating disks/volumes on a guest VM is a task we all have to do. In this post I’m going to detail how to add a new disk to Continue Reading
vSphere/ESXi: When good tasks go bad – Fix with ESXCLI via PowerCLI
Most of the time, tasks we start in vSphere just work. That’s why we love it. Queue ’em up, and move onto something else. Sometimes though, they go bad. They freeze, stick, die or just plain error out. This happened to me last week. After changing the scratch location for Continue Reading
ESXi/vSphere 5.5 U2: old NFS/vMotion issue reincarnated “remote host IP_Address failed with status Busy”
Uh oh, an old issue seems to have been reincarnated in vSphere 5.5 U2 which may cause vMotions of guests on NFS storage to fail with the error: remote host IP_Address failed with status Busy This issue was first evident some time ago where it affected V4.1 and was subsequently fixed Continue Reading
Heads up ! – EMC PowerPath/VE 5.9.1 & VMware ESXi 5.x potential disruption
It’s HEADS UP! time again, as usual courtesy of an EMC TA bulletin. ‘VMware ESXI hosts may become unresponsive after adding or removing LUNs when running PowerPath/VE 5.9.1’ This doesn’t sound like a particulalry fun way to start or end your day so read on if you want to avoid it; Continue Reading
VMware PowerCLI – Suppress vCenter Certificate warnings
A very quick post this one, but an annoying thing I often see left unchecked in environments, that is simple to fix in a minute. Yes, this is an old topic, but it’s still too evident today…. This should be in your “just do it” category. It’s the awful Certificate Continue Reading
PowerCLI – What went where ?
I had a nice little episode with a set of PSOD looping hosts in December which resulted in a lot of guests getting moved around automatically during attempted HA recoveries. This got me thinking about all the automation that goes on ‘behind the scenes’ as a result of DRS and HA. Continue Reading
Auto ESXi Host Configuration Backups with PowerCLI
Regularly throughout the year, I like to take PIT (Point in Time) backups of my ESXi host configurations. These form part of my Critical Config backups that I hope I’ll never have to use. But like any backup, these are merely another safety net as we strive to have more Continue Reading
PowerCLI – Break glass in case of emergency
Nothing like a bit of Hyperbole, but some days are better than others! One thing I have learned over the years is to always expect the unexpected. Yesterday’s ‘unexpected‘ was one of these; That’s cool, HA kicked in and the stranded guests began to Continue Reading
VAAI- Hear me now, believe me later
VAAI (vStorage API for Array Integration) was first introduced into vSphere in v4.1 with promises of deeper integration and control over supported storage Arrays. Each feature (or Primitve) was designed to help us gain benefits from our Arrays. Vendors who didn’t support VAAI were frowned upon and those delivering on Continue Reading