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

VMware ESXi CBT Bug – Your data may be at risk

Changed Block Tracking (CBT) is a great feature introduced in ESXi 4.0, that effectively brought incremental backup technology to our virtual machines. Third parties were able to leverage this so backups would only require the processing of blocks that have changed rather than all blocks. This saved inordinate amounts of time, Continue Reading

vSphere – “Another task is already in progress..” fix with esxcli

I recently had the ‘pleasure’ of an unresponsive vm that had basically turned into a ZOMBIE ! It could not be restarted, edited, snapshot’d and was of course, unresponsive from an OS perspective (No RDP, ping or comms just totally off the air) Any attempted operation from the vSphere client returned Continue Reading

PowerCLI for basic vCenter/ESXi config management

Many admins use Host Profiles, vCM, vCOPS and the like to ensure element compliance within their VI inventory.  While these can be fine solutions, many companies do not have the luxury of owning these products. In many cases the targeted use of powerCLI commands across your environment can help to Continue Reading