The reward for effort when scripting is almost always worth it. Today I had the task of removing a particular AntiVirus product from a 36 host VDI cluster. Part of this requires the removal of NSX-Manager and all the groovy components it uses to do it’s thing, including a vSwitch Continue Reading
PowerCLI
CommVault and VMware – VSA Backup Filtering options
There’s always been a number of ways to apply filters to VM’s and disks. It could be done at the Backup-Set or Sub-client level. This is a little bit clunky and can lead to unnecessary VM’s being backed up. If you’re using a Capacity based licence, this is Continue Reading
ESXi 5.5 – Automating VMFS UNMAP w/ PowerCLI and PowerShell
With vSphere 6.5 recently released, a nice feature was the automated execution of the UNMAP command against thin provisioned datastores to reclaim space. This requires no user interaction, it’s fully automated for you and can free up significant amounts of space from your datastores. There’s some good information regarding the Continue Reading
VMware DRS rule manipulation using PowerCLI (EMC VPLEX use case) Part 1.
VPLEX is another of my favourite products, and for good reason. I currently run a Metro cluster underneath a VMware platform that has proven to be super reliable. One important design consideration for this is to ensure that VM’s are configured for site bias. Why ? Glad you asked. In 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
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
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