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 (albeit temporarily) with ESXi 4.1 […]
GUI’s are generally cool, but when you need to get many of the same/similar tasks done, you can’t beat the speed and ease of using scripts and CLI based tools. I recently had a situation with a EMC VNX2 array where someone (or something) had caused all the LUNs in a RAID Group to become […]
Nothing groundbreaking here folks, but this is a quick and easy way to upgrade the drivers (in this case Network Intel & Broadcom) on your host(s) I’ve done this many times for various reasons: Misbehaving drivers after upgrades, Version control, “’cause I wanna'”. etc Login to your host with the ssh client of choice (putty […]
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 warning displayed in your Powershell […]
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. Also when you have multiple […]
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 resilient systems. With the calendar […]
The Recoverpoint GUI has improved a lot over time, and the current incarnation in the “Unisphere” framework is the best yet, by a long way. Some operations are still a bit painful, and I’ve found myself this week cooking up some RP-CLI + Powershell goodness to get details in a fast, concise manner. The task […]
“Enablers” in EMC parlance, are small installable files that unlock licensed features on your array. These include FAST, FAST cache, Mirrorview etc. To see which enablers are installed on your Array, you can use naviseccli : naviseccli -h arraysp ndu -list otherwise you can check from Unisphere on the Software tab under “System Properties”. Many […]
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 restart as expected. Not great, […]
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 it heralded. These Primitives can be […]