ESXi – Removing a stubborn Nexus 1000v VIB

Happened upon an unusual error while wrestling a Nexus 1000v out of a ESXi 5.1 host. All seemed to progress well, the host was removed from the dvs without issue.  The next step was to remove the Cisco vem VIB from the host in preparation for upgrade. esxcli software vib Continue Reading

VMware ESXi – Get VM’s by VLAN ID with PowerCLI

Often when when working in large environments you’ll get interesting requests. These may be to assist in troubleshooting, auditing, reporting or any other reason. I was recently requested to provide a list of mac addresses for every VM with a vNIC in a specific vlan. I had a feeling this was going Continue Reading

EMC VNX – Self Help using “MyDocs”

I’m a big believer in “helping yourself”. By researching and actually doing things, we learn, grow and become more self-sufficient. I’ve blogged before about what I sometimes refer to as hidden gems, in particular MiTrend. There are other tools from EMC that are very useful. The first is My Documents Continue Reading

VMware ESXi,Nexus 1000v: Add New vDS Port-Group + error “spec.numPorts exceeds the limit..”

If you’re familiar with Cisco IOS and networking in general, creating a new PortGroup on a Nexus1000v is pretty straightforward. Here I’m going to add a new Port-Profile, of type ‘vmware port-group‘ called “VM_Prod_29” with VLAN ID “29 “. Login to the active VSM and first create the VLAN;

Then Continue Reading

VMware PowerCLI – What are you waiting for ?

I still talk to people who are reluctant to jump in and learn some basic scripting techniques. Usually their response is that it’s easy in the gui or “scripting is hard” or the “I’m not a developer so why bother ?”. Meh, make it happen. The facts is, learning some basic Continue Reading

VMware PowerCLI – What are you waiting for ?

I still talk to people who are reluctant to jump in and learn some basic scripting techniques. Usually their response is that it’s easy in the gui or “scripting is hard” or the “I’m not a developer so why bother ?”. Meh, make it happen. The facts is, learning some basic Continue Reading

ESXi – An oldie but a goodie – CDP info via PowerCLI and Host CLI

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

EMC VPLEX Metro: Cluster Witness Server Maintenance

Although it’s not mandatory, the Cluster Witness Server (CWS) in a  VPLEX Metro Cluster serves a very important purpose as the arbitrator between inter-cluster network partition failures and actual cluster/site failures. It’s a lightweight (<3GB) VMware vm deployed from an OVA that establishes itself in a 3 way VPN between Continue Reading

EMC RecoverPoint- Standalone VM Recovery

RecoverPoint is one of my favourite products. It’s unique, reliable and has helped me out of trouble on more than one occasion. Whilst most VM admins associate it with SRM and thus Site/LUN/Datastore recovery, it can also fill in an often overlooked gap in data protection. Pre and Post backup Continue Reading