vEducate

Helm upgrade --reuse-values Fails with Nil Pointer Error After a Chart Version Bump

Fri, 10 Apr 2026 11:05:25 GMT

If you have been running a Helm chart for a while and using --reuse-values to carry your previous configuration forward on upgrades, you may have hit an error like the one below after bumping to a new chart version: Error: UPGRADE FAILED: template:…

Bridging Old Hypervisors to Cloud Native Platforms: What You’ll Learn at Cisco Live Amsterdam

Mon, 08 Dec 2025 11:00:51 GMT

Are you planning or already facing a migration from legacy hypervisors to modern, cloud native platforms? The toughest part usually isn’t compute or storage, it’s networking. If static IPs, subnet constraints, and complex topologies are slowing you down,…

How to Increase CPU & Memory Limits and Set Node Selector for Splunk Operator on Kubernetes

Tue, 04 Nov 2025 16:23:01 GMT

The Issue When deploying a Splunk instance using the Splunk Operator on Kubernetes, the default resource limits are set to 4 CPUs and 8GB of RAM. Users often want to increase these limits to better utilize available hardware resources. Additionally, users may…

Cilium Network Policies, from first principles to production

Tue, 07 Oct 2025 09:53:42 GMT

This post teaches the Cilium policy model with clear scenarios and annotated YAML. It matches the style of practical technical blogs, explanation first and code second, with links to the official docs where you will want deeper detail. [lwptoc] Why Cilium…

Fixing “Kubernetes configuration file is group-readable or world-readable” warnings

Wed, 03 Sep 2025 14:09:40 GMT

The Issue When using kubectl or oc you may see warnings that your Kubernetes configuration file is readable by group or by everyone. WARNING: Kubernetes configuration file is group-readable. This is insecure. Location: /home/user/cluster/admin-kubeconfig…

Zoom Error 5456000 - An unknown error occurred - Unable to Connect

Thu, 22 May 2025 09:42:39 GMT

The Issue I've been plagued with this issue on one single macos device for a while and I've not been sure as to why, I've tried uninstalling and reinstalling to no avail, and google wasn't much help. Ultimately the Zoom app itself couldn't connect to…

Safely Clean Up Orphaned First Class Disks (FCDs) in VMware vSphere with PowerCLI

Thu, 15 May 2025 14:39:24 GMT

vSphere Orphaned First Class Disk (FCD) Cleanup Script Orphaned First Class Disks (FCDs) in VMware vSphere environments are a surprisingly common and frustrating issue. These are virtual disks that exist on datastores but are no longer associated with any…

Learn KubeVirt: Deep Dive for VMware vSphere Admins

Mon, 28 Apr 2025 12:10:15 GMT

As a vSphere administrator, you've built your career on understanding infrastructure at a granular level, datastores, DRS clusters, vSwitches, and HA configurations. You’re used to managing VMs at scale. Now, you’re hearing about KubeVirt, and while it…

Kubernetes Finalizers: Deep Dive into PVC Deletion

Wed, 23 Apr 2025 15:58:07 GMT

This article builds upon an old post I wrote many years ago: Kubernetes PVC stuck in Terminating state. That post covered the symptoms and quick fixes. This one is for platform engineers and Kubernetes operators who want to understand why resources like PVCs…

Kubernetes Scheduling: nodeSelector vs nodeAffinity

Wed, 16 Apr 2025 09:37:54 GMT

When deploying workloads in Kubernetes, controlling where your pods land is crucial. Two primary mechanisms facilitate this: nodeSelector and nodeAffinity. While they might seem similar at first glance, they serve different purposes and offer varying degrees…

Highlight Kubernetes Labels in your Terminal with AWK

Tue, 15 Apr 2025 14:21:23 GMT

A quick tip and bit of code: if you're outputting a lot of Kubernetes metadata using the --show-labels command, it can feel like looking for a needle in a haystack. The snippet below colorizes key label outputs to make them stand out. The Code Snippet When…

vSphere CSI Driver Images unable from gcr.io - quick fix

Thu, 19 Sep 2024 14:03:21 GMT

The Issue Someone has deleted the Cloud-Provider-vSphere project in the gcr.io registry for container images. The default pull policy for the vSphere CSI when using VMware's manifests is set to always, meaning that if you reboot your cluster, it will not come…

So you want to work in Technical Marketing or other associated roles?

Tue, 20 Aug 2024 14:00:04 GMT

Does working in Tech Marketing appeal to you? Or another associated role, maybe DevRel, or a similar title? Are you looking for the next career ladder step, or do you already have your heart set on this goal? Yeah, I've been there, too, and as time passes,…

Understanding cilium_event_type when using Cilium & Hubble

Mon, 08 Jul 2024 10:38:09 GMT

The Issue In a platform that's deployed with Cilium, when using Hubble either to view the full JSON output or to configure which events are captured using the allowlist or denylist you may have seen a field called event_type which uses an integer. Below is an…

KubeVirt - Creating Data Volume fails - DataVolume.storage spec is missing accessMode and volumeMode

Mon, 24 Jun 2024 08:42:27 GMT

The Issue I had a freshly deployed Red Hat OpenShift cluster on which I had set up OpenShift Virtualization (KubeVirt). When I tried to create my first data volume so I could start creating VMs, nothing happened. The ISO file upload would fail. Running oc…

Cilium Hubble CLI - Configure Auto Completion

Wed, 10 Apr 2024 09:55:49 GMT

One of the little nits I have is when I use the terminal, and as I start typing a command if I press the Tab key, autocomplete doesn't work. It feels like it should be the default out of the box. You can configure the Hubble CLI for Cilium, but it's not…

Cilium Hubble CLI - Using a local configuration file

Tue, 09 Apr 2024 08:22:09 GMT

Did you know that the Cilium Hubble CLI supports using a configuration file? Below is an example command where Isovalent Enterprise for Cilium is deployed and Hubble RBAC is configured. Therefore, I must provide additional details such as the server location…

How to migrate from Red Hat OpenShiftSDN/OVN-Kubernetes to Cilium

Thu, 04 Jan 2024 10:10:08 GMT

Recently, I'm seeing more and more queries about migrating to Cilium within an existing Red Hat OpenShift cluster, due to Cilium's advanced networking capabilities, robust security features, and enhanced observability out-of-the-box. This increase of interest…

vSphere data loss bug returns - CBT issues in vSphere ESXI 8.0 update 2

Fri, 15 Dec 2023 13:56:24 GMT

The Issue I keep saying, there are no new ideas in technology, just re-hashes of old ones. That is also true for VMware and their data loss issues. The vSphere-based change block tracking (CBT) bug is back! I think I wrote 5 articles on this back in 2014/2015…

Grafana - unable to login "User already exists"

Thu, 14 Dec 2023 14:24:04 GMT

The Issue When trying to log into Grafana Web UI using an OIDC provider, in my case, Dex. The login would fail due to the error "User already exists", after some time. This happened for any users given access via the OIDC. The Cause This looks to happen due…

Google Analytics GA4 - Fix Thresholding Applied and get granular refferal source data

Mon, 07 Aug 2023 10:51:54 GMT

The Issue Moving over to the new Google Analytics GA4 from UA, has caused me a few issues, mainly I wasn't able to get granular source data from my referrals, which websites were users hitting my site from. Below is an example from my UA screen, I could see…

Script to uninstall and cleanup VMware Fusion

Mon, 31 Jul 2023 12:30:58 GMT

The VMware Fusion KB to remove the software makes reference to a number of areas you need to manually cleanup, so below a little script which closes the application, uninstalls the app and removes the files. Note: Uses sudo to elevate permissions for running…

Kubernetes Metric Server - cannot validate certificate because it doesn't contain any IP SANs

Thu, 27 Jul 2023 17:09:32 GMT

The Issue Whilst trying to install the Metric's server: kubectl apply -f https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/metrics-server/releases/latest/download/components.yaml so I could use kubectl top node for it's metrics on Node resource useage, I found the pods were…

Quick Tip: Supercharge Kubernetes Resource Retrieval with 'kubectl get -f'

Wed, 14 Jun 2023 10:46:47 GMT

Did you know you can use the -f argument with kubectl get? Yep me either. It's pretty handy actually, as it will provide the status for all your Kubernetes resources deployed using that file or even file from hyperlink! Below is a screenshot example using a…

Red Hat OpenShift - Sorry, your reply was invalid: IP expected to be in one of the machine networks

Thu, 30 Mar 2023 08:40:29 GMT

The Issue When running the command: openshift-install create cluster And you provide an API IP address which is not in the CIDR range 10.0.0.0/16, you recieve the below error. INFO Defaulting to only available network: VM Network X Sorry, your reply was…

How to delete Kubernetes namespaces or pods with a specific pattern or name

Thu, 16 Mar 2023 13:52:49 GMT

I had a need to delete a number of Namespaces all at once that were created as part of some automated platform testing. Each namespace had a common naming convention starting with "e2e", the below command will get all namespaces without the initial returned…

Collect VM Notes in (Aria) vRealize Operations: A Step-by-Step Guide

Wed, 01 Mar 2023 11:17:59 GMT

One of the most common questions I've come across in previous years is how do I get the VM notes held in vCenter into vRealize (Aria) Operations? Great news, in vRealize Operations 8.10 and later, you can now collect those properties for the virtual machines…

How to run the last command as Sudo in Linux

Wed, 15 Feb 2023 11:28:49 GMT

A quick post as I always forget this command, learn how to run the last command again as sudo, to elevate and bypass permissions denied error. ## First command fails with permissions issue dean@veducate # mv openshift-install /usr/local/bin/openshift-install…

How to Add vSphere Tags to vRealize Operations Alert Emails using a Custom Payload

Fri, 10 Feb 2023 18:22:14 GMT

Wondering how to add the vSphere Tag for a virtual machine to emails sent out for alerts? I recently came across this Reddit post, so decided to try out the Custom Payload feature from vRealize (Aria) Operations and want to share the steps I took to achieve…

VMware Aria Hub and AWS Setup: A Guide to Getting Started

Thu, 19 Jan 2023 17:17:35 GMT

In this blog post, I am going to take you through how to get started with VMware Aria Hub, and connect your first public cloud account, in this example, AWS. [lwptoc depth="4"] What is VMware Aria Hub? Before we dive into the technical pieces, what is VMware…

Tanzu Kubernetes Grid 1.6 - Management Cluster deployment failure - unable to patch the cluster object

Fri, 23 Dec 2022 16:15:39 GMT

The Issue When deploying a brand new Tanzu Kubernete Grid Management Cluster to a vSphere environment we kept hitting failures like the below. The deployment was very vanilla with the default settings, no extra metadata inputted into the build. !! [1223…

vRealize Operations - Where did my "Object Relationships" view go?

Thu, 22 Dec 2022 12:42:44 GMT

The Issue From vRealize Operations 8.6.2, it's been noticed that the "Object Relationships" page has disappeared from the navigation column/settings pages in the product UI. The Cause This page is being redesigned by the VMware team, and is hidden from view…

Configuring DNS Delegation from CloudFlare to Azure DNS

Wed, 07 Sep 2022 13:52:49 GMT

[lwptoc] A quick post, following on from my other post which covers DNS Delegation from CloudFlare to AWS Route53. In this walkthrough, we are going to cover the same setup, but for Microsoft Azure DNS. Create a Azure DNS Zone Starting in your Microsoft Azure…

How to Deploy a Tanzu Kubernetes Grid cluster using the Cilium CNI

Mon, 05 Sep 2022 14:52:27 GMT

[lwptoc] In this blog post I'm going to dive into how you can create a Tanzu Kubernetes Grid cluster and specify your own container network interface, for example, Cilium. Expanding on the installation, I'll also cover installing a load balancer service,…

vRSLCM - SaltStack Config upgrade fails - LCMUPGRADEVSSC10103

Fri, 02 Sep 2022 15:08:39 GMT

The Issue When upgrading to vRA SaltStack Config 8.9 using vRealize Suite LifeCycle Manager, I found I hit an issue stating that the upgrade failed as the VAMI version of the appliance was already at the build number to be expected. Below is a copy of the…

Creating a kubeconfig file for a Kubernetes Service Account

Thu, 01 Sep 2022 13:58:15 GMT

Recently I was working with a software integration that required a Kubernetes Kubeconfig file. I didn't want to provide my own kubeconfig file, and I also wanted to set the right permissions via a service account. Below is the code I put together for this,…

Tanzu Observability - Configuring vRealize Operations Cloud Integration

Wed, 31 Aug 2022 22:33:21 GMT

[lwptoc] In this blog post, I am going to cover the configuration and consumption of the Tanzu Observability integration with vRealize Operations Cloud. As this is blog post is released during VMware Explore, under the announcement of the VMware Aria brand…

Sending vRealize Operations Alerts to ElasticStack (ELK)

Mon, 22 Aug 2022 13:43:33 GMT

This blog post is thanks to an internal query, that I thought should be easy enough to complete, however my usage of an ELK environment is limited, so it was a good chance to dig in and learn something new. In this blog post, I'm going to detail the…

Deploying a Windows VM using vRealize Automation & configuring with SaltStack Config - Part 2

Fri, 12 Aug 2022 16:52:51 GMT

The first blog post of this two part series covered getting our vRealize Automation and SaltStack Config environments prepared, a Windows Server template prepared, and a testing a successful deployment that has the SaltStack minion installed. In this second…

Deploying a Windows VM using vRealize Automation & configuring with SaltStack Config - Part 1

Fri, 12 Aug 2022 16:52:24 GMT

In this two-part blog post series, I'm going to detail what I consider a basic customer use case when deploying new Windows Servers in their environment. Deploy a Windows Server Virtual Machine Add to the Active Directory Domain Install software Configure…

A debugging example of Salt Win-Repo issues

Fri, 05 Aug 2022 17:08:32 GMT

The Issue I was hitting issues when trying to use the Salt Win-Repo to install software. Below is a copy of my state file. ensure_malwarebytes_installed: pkg.installed: - pkgs: - malwarebytes It would fail with the below helpful error messages. But most…

vRealize Automation - Deploying a GKE Cluster with Code Stream, add to Tanzu Mission Control & Tanzu Service Mesh

Tue, 26 Jul 2022 15:24:25 GMT

This walk-through will detail the technical configurations for using vRA Code Stream to deploy Google Kubernetes Clusters (GKE), register them as: Kubernetes endpoints in vRA Cloud Assembly and Code Stream An attached in Tanzu Mission Control Onboard in Tanzu…

Interview with Daniel Bryant, Ambassador Labs - Kubernetes, PaaS, Err what's next?

Thu, 21 Jul 2022 22:47:30 GMT

I'm really excited to get this interview out of the door. I missed Daniel's session at KubeCon, "From Kubernetes to PaaS to … Err, What’s Next?". The room was packed, I wasn't able to sit in, so instead I watched it from the KubeCon live stream, sat on the…

VMware Cloud on AWS - Managed Tanzu Kubernetes Grid with Tanzu Mission Control

Tue, 05 Jul 2022 14:36:41 GMT

[lwptoc] In my previous blog post, I detailed a full end to end guide in deploying and configurating the managed Tanzu Kubernetes Service offering as part of VMware Cloud on AWS (VMC), finishing with some example application deployments and configurations. In…

CloudHealth - Configuring vRealize Operations cost visibility for your private datacenters

Fri, 01 Jul 2022 00:01:47 GMT

[lwptoc] In this blog post, we are going to synchronise our vRealize Operations costing information with CloudHealth, to provide the ability to have true multi-cloud cost reporting, that includes our on-premises VMware Datacenter. Configuring the CloudHeath…

Tanzu Kubernetes Grid - Upgrading a Management and Workload Cluster deployed to vSphere

Tue, 28 Jun 2022 17:27:47 GMT

[lwptoc] In this blog post, I am going to walk through how to upgrade both your Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Management and Workload clusters. I'll cover the Tanzu CLI options, as well as how you can leverage the features of Tanzu Mission Control for upgrades as…

vRealize Automation - Active Directory Integration - Configure LDAPS

Wed, 22 Jun 2022 08:43:11 GMT

In this blog post, I am going to cover the setup of the Active Directory integration with vRealize Automation using LDAPS. Cloud Assembly supports integration with Active Directory servers to provide out of the box creation of computer accounts in a specified…

Tanzu Mission Control - Upgrading attached Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Clusters fails with error "updates to immutable fields are not allowed"

Tue, 31 May 2022 09:19:14 GMT

The Issue When trying to upgrade an attached Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Cluster via Tanzu Mission Control (TMC), that is either created by a Tanzu Management Cluster, or via the Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Service (vSphere with Tanzu), the console gives you an error…

vRealize Operations - Costing Setup and Configuration Deep Dive

Mon, 16 May 2022 16:16:04 GMT

[lwptoc] In years gone by, costing of your technology platforms was covered in a product called vRealize Business for Cloud. Since the move to the 8.x code based, this product was EOL'd. The main functions where customers saw value, to provide costings for…

Tanzu Kubernetes Grid - Manual Certificate Renewal

Wed, 11 May 2022 10:29:44 GMT

The Issue Note: VMware has released a full in-depth KB Article that I'd advise you review along with this blog post. If you have any queries or concerns with the processes detailed, always open a support ticket! - How to rotate certificates in a Tanzu…

vRealize Automation - Property groups deep dive

Thu, 28 Apr 2022 23:37:07 GMT

[lwptoc] I had the pleasure of working with a customer who wanted to use property groups within vRealize Automation, to provide various configuration data to drive their deployments. They asked some queries about how to use property groups that went beyond…

VMware Cloud on AWS Deep Dive - Activating, Deploying and Using the managed Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Service

Thu, 14 Apr 2022 14:47:03 GMT

[lwptoc] In this blog post I'm going to deep dive into the end-to-end activation, deployment, and consuming of the managed Tanzu Services (Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Service > TKGS) within a VMware Cloud on AWS SDDC. I'll deploy a Tanzu Cluster inside a vSphere…

Openshift-install CLI Tool - Crash - Unable to decode instructions - Apple MacBook M1

Wed, 13 Apr 2022 15:14:33 GMT

The Issue When running the OpenShift-Install CLI tool on my Apple MacBook M1 to create an OpenShift Cluster I kept hitting the same error: assertion failed [inst.has.value()]: failed to decode instruction: 0x0 The Cause This is believed to be an issue created…

EKS - Kubectl - Unable to connect to the server - Exec plugin is configured to use API version client.authentication.k8s.io/v1alpha1

Wed, 06 Apr 2022 11:35:09 GMT

The Issue After moving my life over to a new Macbook and installing the latest AWS CLI tools including "aws-iam-authenticator" tool, I couldn't run commands against my EKS Clusters. I kept hitting the following issue; > kubectl get pods Unable to connect to…

Tanzu Service Mesh - Monitor Service Level Objectives and Configure Service Autoscaling

Thu, 31 Mar 2022 22:59:28 GMT

[lwptoc] Continuing from the First Look blog post, where we created a distributed application between different public cloud Kubernetes deployments and connected them via Tanzu Service Mesh. We will move onto some of the more advanced capabilities of Tanzu…

GKE - User cannot create resource - requires one of ["container.roles.create"] permission(s)

Thu, 31 Mar 2022 10:33:02 GMT

The Issue I stood up my first ever GKE cluster! Woo, go me! However when I was trying to setup Tanzu Service Mesh, I hit issues such as: Error from server (Forbidden): error when creating "operator-deployment.yaml": roles.rbac.authorization.k8s.io is…

Google Cloud - Invitation email not received - Project IAM role pending

Thu, 31 Mar 2022 10:22:09 GMT

The Issue For me, it started off with having some odd issues in a GKE cluster, where I didn't have permissions to do things at a cluster level. After some digging it pointed to the wrong IAM roles on the Google Cloud Project. When I investigated this, I found…

OpenShift 4.10 on VMware - Introducing the out-of-the-box vSphere CSI Driver installation

Mon, 28 Mar 2022 06:37:44 GMT

[lwptoc] OpenShift Container Platform defaults to using an in-tree (non-CSI) plug-in to provision vSphere storage. What's New? In OpenShift 4.9, the out-of-the-box installation of the vSphere CSI driver was tech preview. This has now moved to GA! This means…

vRealize Operations Management Pack Builder - Building your first management pack

Fri, 18 Mar 2022 16:02:01 GMT

[lwptoc] What is the Management Pack Builder? Well, it's exactly as the name suggests, a tool for building your own vRealize Operations Management Pack, to bring data into vROPs whereby there is no existing Management Pack today. How do I get access to it?…

Tanzu Observability - First look at monitoring OpenShift & VMware Cloud on AWS

Fri, 25 Feb 2022 16:23:45 GMT

[lwptoc] Recently, I was involved in some work to assist the VMware Tanzu Observability team to assist them in updating their deliverables for OpenShift. Now it's generally available, I found some time to test it out in my lab. For this blog post, I am going…

Configuring DNS Delegation from CloudFlare to AWS Route53

Thu, 17 Feb 2022 00:01:19 GMT

This blog post covers how to delegate DNS control from Cloudflare to AWS Route53. So that you can host records in Route53 for services deployed into AWS, that are resolvable publicly, despite your primary domain being held by another provider (Cloudflare). My…

Deploying vSphere with Tanzu Clusters using vRA and Cluster Plans

Wed, 09 Feb 2022 14:46:32 GMT

[lwptoc] In this blog post I am covering the vRealize Automation native feature that allows you to deploy Tanzu clusters via the Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Service of vCenter. If you have been following my posts in 2021, I wrote a blog and presented as part of…

Exploring the Git command line - A getting started guide

Mon, 07 Feb 2022 09:25:30 GMT

[lwptoc] What is Git? Git is distributed version control software. Version Control is the ability to save and track changes over time, without interfering with previous versions. As the software is distributed, it means all users can have a copy of an entire…

Tanzu Service Mesh - First look at deploy, configure and managing an app between clusters

Mon, 31 Jan 2022 16:51:19 GMT

I've finally found the time to dive into Tanzu Service Mesh (TSM), a product which has intrigued me greatly. In this blog post I cover setting up TSM, and configuring application connectivity between two clusters running in different public clouds. [lwptoc]…

Quick Fix - AWS Console - Current user or role does not have access to Kubernetes objects on this EKS Cluster

Tue, 25 Jan 2022 13:30:41 GMT

The Issue Once you've deployed an EKS cluster, and try to view this in the AWS Console, you are presenting the following message: Your current user or role does not have access to Kubernetes objects on this EKS Cluster The Cause This is because you need to…

OpenShift on VMware - Integrating with vSphere Storage, Networking and Monitoring.

Sun, 23 Jan 2022 17:20:55 GMT

[lwptoc min="2" depth="1" skipHeadingText="related"] I was honoured to be a guest on the "Ask an OpenShift Admin" webinar recently. Where I had the chance to talk about OpenShift on VMware, always a hot topic, and how we co-innovate and work together on…

Using vRealize Automation Cloud Template to execute a Code Stream Pipeline

Thu, 13 Jan 2022 22:22:50 GMT

Looking at the latest vRA Cloud Template Schema, I saw something interesting in the definitions. The ability to have a resource type of "codestream.execution". This allows you to execute a Code Stream pipeline from within a cloud template. Once deployed, a…

Using the new vSphere Kubernetes Driver Operator with Red Hat OpenShift via Operator Hub

Wed, 05 Jan 2022 10:36:03 GMT

[lwptoc] What is the vSphere Kubernetes Driver Operator (VDO)? This Kubernetes Operator has been designed and created as part of the VMware and IBM Joint Innovation Labs program. We also talked about this at VMworld 2021 in a joint session with IBM and Red…

Deleting AWS EKS Cluster Fails? Learn How to Fix "Cannot Evict Pod as it Violates Disruption Budget" Error

Wed, 22 Dec 2021 11:38:05 GMT

The Issue I had to remove a demo EKS Cluster where I had screwed up an install of a Service Mesh. Unfortunately, it was left in a rather terrible state to clean up, hence the need to just delete it. When I tried the usual eksctl delete command, including with…

Creating and hosting a Helm Chart package to install Pac-Man on Kubernetes

Tue, 14 Dec 2021 19:53:28 GMT

If you've have been following any of my blogs that relate to Kubernetes, I am sure that you will have seen the use of my demo application Pac-Man, designed to replicate a small production application with a front end UI service, DB back end service and load…

Deploying Nvidia GPU enabled Tanzu Kubernetes Clusters

Thu, 09 Dec 2021 23:01:04 GMT

In this blog post I'm going to detail how deploy and configure a Nvidia GPU enabled Tanzu Kubernetes Grid cluster in AWS. The method will be similar for Azure, for vSphere there are a number of additional steps to prepare the system. I'm going to essentially…

VMC vCenter email alerts not supported - Workaround with vRealize Log Insight Cloud

Thu, 09 Dec 2021 11:48:23 GMT

The Issue When configuring a VMware Cloud on AWS (VMC) SDDC vCenter, Administrators trying to use the vCenter Alerts email feature find they cannot complete the configuration, as the necessary options such as setting email server settings are greyed out.…

vRealize Operations - Monitoring Kubernetes with Prometheus and Telegraf

Tue, 16 Nov 2021 09:04:58 GMT

[lwptoc] In this post, I will cover how to deploy Prometheus and the Telegraf exporter and configure so that the data can be collected by vRealize Operations. Overview vRealize Operations Delivers intelligent operations management with application-to-storage…

Upgrading the vSphere CSI Driver (Storage Container Plugin) from v2.1.0 to latest

Mon, 15 Nov 2021 21:54:10 GMT

[lwptoc] In this post I'm just documenting the steps on how to upgrade the vSphere CSI Driver, especially if you must make a jump in versioning to the latest version. Upgrade from pre-v2.3.0 CSI Driver version to v2.3.0 You need to figure out what version of…

First Look - Setup Tanzu Build Services and rebuilding Pac-Man

Thu, 11 Nov 2021 00:44:56 GMT

[lwptoc] This blog post will detail how to setup Tanzu Build Services in a test environment, and then create a container image from a dockerfile, fixing several vulnerabilities compared to the current container image. What is Tanzu Build Service? Tanzu Build…

vRealize Log Insight - How to reset and unlock the local admin password

Tue, 09 Nov 2021 14:55:54 GMT

The Issue Yep, I forgot my password. So I followed the official documentation to reset my local admin password. SSH to your vRLI appliance (primary node if it's a cluster), as the root user Run this script which will output a new password…

Tanzu Kubernetes Grid - How to edit Node resources and Scale a Cluster Vertically With kubectl

Mon, 08 Nov 2021 14:55:46 GMT

In this blog post I am going to walk you through how to edit the Machine Resource configurations for nodes deployed by Tanzu Kubernetes Grid. [lwptoc] Example Issue - Disk Pressure In my environment, I found I needed to alter my node resources, as several…

Quick Tip - Kubernetes - Delete all evicted pods across all namespaces

Mon, 08 Nov 2021 11:15:57 GMT

I'm currently troubleshooting an issue with my Kubernetes clusters where pods keep getting evicted, and this is happening across namespaces as well. The issue now that I am faced with, is being able to keep ontop of the issues. When I run: kubectl get pods -A…

vSphere with Tanzu - Can I disable DRS?

Thu, 28 Oct 2021 21:02:45 GMT

[lwptoc] Can I disable DRS? No. Why can't I disable DRS when Workload Management is enabled? DRS is a mandatory feature for workload management, the WCP service relies on objects such as Resource Pools to operate. Update - 29th October The vSphere with Tanzu…

Using vRealize Log Insight Cloud to archive on-premise Log Insight Data

Thu, 28 Oct 2021 16:32:59 GMT

vRealize Log Insight 8.6 brings the ability to build a hybrid log management platform, utilizing the functionality of an on-premises deployment of vRLI and vRLI Cloud. [lwptoc] From the release notes, in this blog post we'll be looking at how to configure the…

Kasten K10 - Air gap installation using Harbor Image Registry

Tue, 26 Oct 2021 19:03:14 GMT

In this blog post, I will cover the steps for an air-gap installation for Kasten K10. For situations where your Kubernetes cluster doesn't have available internet access to pull down the container images directly from their online locations. Pre-requisites…

How to create vRO Dynamic Types for vRA Custom Resources

Mon, 11 Oct 2021 17:21:35 GMT

[lwptoc] This follow on blog post, diving into how we created the vRA integration with DMS comes from Katherine Skilling, who kindly offered to guest spot and provide the additional content regarding the work we have done internally. You can find her details…

Kubernetes Troubleshooting - Kubelet Unable to attach or mount volumes - timed out waiting for the condition

Thu, 30 Sep 2021 11:40:00 GMT

The Issue When I updated my Kasten application in my Kubernetes cluster, I found that one of the pods was stuck in "init" status. dean@dean [ ~ ] (⎈ |tkg-wld-01-admin@tkg-wld-01:default) # k get pods -n kasten-io -w NAME READY STATUS RESTARTS AGE…

vSphere with Tanzu - Creating cluster fails with "storage class is not valid"

Wed, 15 Sep 2021 10:29:51 GMT

The Issue When you have attached a vSphere Storage Policy to your vSphere Namespace, and tried to create a cluster using the Storage Policy Name, you find it will fail with an error such as: Error from server (storage class is not valid for control plane VM:…

Data Management for VMware Tanzu with vRealize Automation as Custom Resources

Tue, 14 Sep 2021 13:28:14 GMT

[lwptoc] In this blog post, we will cover the technical configuration to import the packages that myself and Katherine Skilling (Twitter, LinkedIn, Blog) have created. This work is to show the possibility of creating custom workflows to integrate other…

vRealize Automation 8.5 - Code Stream - Unexpected character ('\\' (code 92))

Thu, 02 Sep 2021 11:39:12 GMT

The Issue When running certain REST Tasks in Code Stream, the pipeline execution fails on this task with: Unexpected character ('\\' (code 92)): was expecting double-quote to start field name \n at [Source: (io.netty.buffer.ByteBufInputStream); line: X,…

MongoDB Container data loss issue - A Journey

Mon, 30 Aug 2021 09:39:10 GMT

[lwptoc] Over the past month or so I noticed an issue with my Pac-Man Kubernetes application, which I use for demonstrations as a basic app front-end that writes to a database back end, running in Kubernetes. When I restored my instances using Kasten, my…

vRealize Operations - Creating interactions between separate dashboards

Fri, 27 Aug 2021 13:09:28 GMT

Whilst reading some of the older vRealize Operations documentation, I stumbled on something I didn't think was possible. The ability to create interactions between separate dashboards. At first, I thought could not be correct? I don't remember seeing this…

Data Management For VMware Tanzu API Postman Collection

Thu, 12 Aug 2021 21:51:26 GMT

Whilst working with the "Data Management for VMware Tanzu" product, I decided to have a stab at working with the API as well. Using my favourite API tool, Postman, I created an easy-to-use collection. I’ve posted this here: VMware Code Sample Github…

Data Management for VMware Tanzu - Self-Service DBaaS

Wed, 11 Aug 2021 22:05:08 GMT

[lwptoc] In my first blog post, I covered the prerequisites and how to deploy the components for the Data Management for VMware Tanzu platform. In this blog post we will cover using this new infrastructure for Self-Service Database-as-a-Service deployment and…

Data Management for VMware Tanzu - Getting Started

Wed, 11 Aug 2021 22:04:45 GMT

[lwptoc] This blog post will cover deploying the infrastructure and components for Data Management for VMware Tanzu. My second blog post will cover using this infrastructure for Self-Service Database-as-a-Service. What is Data Management for VMware Tanzu?…

Configuring Kasten Multi-Cluster Manager across Tanzu and OpenShift

Fri, 06 Aug 2021 14:40:41 GMT

In this blog post I'm going to cover setting up the Multi-cluster support for Kasten when you've installed the software to multiple Kubernetes clusters. [lwptoc] One K10 cluster you have deployed will become the primary node. You will use this node and…

Terraform vSphere Provider - Error while creating vApp properties

Fri, 30 Jul 2021 21:58:54 GMT

The Issue When using Terraform to deploy a virtual machine OVA using Terraform, I kept hitting the below error: Error: error while creating vapp properties config unsupported vApp properties in vapp.properties: [vm.vmname vami.gateway.DMS_agent_VA…

vRealize Operations - Error: Failed to Test adapter instance - Finding Adapter Logs

Fri, 30 Jul 2021 17:21:48 GMT

The Issue I had installed the "VMware vRealize Operations Management Pack for Horizon 1.2" into my vROPs instance, and tried to connect my Horizon instance, instantly hitting the helpful error message of: Failed to Test adapter instance. Reason - Unknown…

Resolving VMC - Objects with non-compliant storage policies in SDDC

Tue, 27 Jul 2021 09:30:49 GMT

The Issue Overnight I received an email from the VMware Cloud Services platform regarding a VMC environment I am an administrator of. The opening paragraph was as below: Please be advised that you have VMs and or objects in your VMware Cloud on AWS SDDC that…

How to Escape Strings in Terraform with a Dollar Sign ($)

Wed, 14 Jul 2021 14:33:47 GMT

The Issue When using Terraform to perform an action, and the input is using a $, you can end up with an output such as the below. │ Error: Invalid character │ │ on main.tf line 104, in resource "vra_blueprint" "this": │ 104: network:…

Authenticate Docker to Harbor Image Registry with a Robot Account

Tue, 13 Jul 2021 22:47:11 GMT

Just a quick blog post on how to authenticate Docker to a Harbor Image Registry, using a Robot Account, which is good for programmatically access to push/pull images from your registry. Harbor introduced the capability for administrators to create system…

Tanzu Mission Control - Using custom policies to ensure Kasten protects a deployed application

Mon, 12 Jul 2021 17:51:19 GMT

The Issue A while ago I was chatting to Michael Cade, and we pondered the question "How do we ensure Kasten is protecting a newly deployed application in our Kubernetes environment". We chatted about how one of the best ways to make your Kasten protection…

Deploying OpenShift clusters (IPI) using vRA Code Stream

Wed, 30 Jun 2021 20:55:20 GMT

This walk-through will detail the technical configurations for using vRA Code Stream to deploy Red Hat OpenShift Clusters, register them as Kubernetes endpoints in vRA Cloud Assembly and Code Stream, and finally register the newly created cluster in Tanzu…

Passing JSON into vRA Code Stream CI Task - MalformedJsonException

Wed, 30 Jun 2021 16:43:08 GMT

The Issue Whilst working with a vRA Code Stream CI Task, I needed to build a YAML file in my container, which I would use to provide the values to my CLI Tool I was running. Within this YAML File, there is a section of JSON input (yep I know, it's a Red Hat…

Postman Collection for Tanzu Mission Control REST APIs

Fri, 25 Jun 2021 08:58:36 GMT

Whilst working with vRA to deploy various Kubernetes clusters and then register them with Tanzu Mission Control (TMC), I decided to use Postman (a great API Explorer tool) to catalogue my work and build out several use cases. I've posted this here: VMware…

VMUG Recording - Understanding Data Protection for your VMware Tanzu Container Workloads

Thu, 24 Jun 2021 14:27:01 GMT

As part of my virtual VMUG tour, I submitted a session to the VMUG call for papers covering the subject of Data Protection for Tanzu Kubernetes workloads. (Most of this will apply for any Kubernetes environments). This was picked up by Erik at the Belgium…

Recording - Kubernetes 101 - Getting started in the cloud native world

Fri, 18 Jun 2021 16:52:40 GMT

I had the pleasure of presenting this Kubernetes 101 session to the Veeam Community thanks to my work as part of their Veeam Vanguards program, and a special thank you to Michael Cade who co-presented with me! In this session we cover the following with…

Tanzu Mission Control - TKG Management support and provisioning new clusters

Tue, 01 Jun 2021 11:19:41 GMT

In this blog post, I am going to cover the new support for Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Management clusters on both VMware Cloud on AWS (VMC) and Azure VMware Solution (AVS). This functionality also allows the provisioning of new Tanzu Kubernetes workload clusters…

Walk through - Using vRA to deploy vSphere with Tanzu Namespaces & Guest Clusters

Thu, 20 May 2021 20:20:14 GMT

This walk through will detail the technical configurations for using vRA Code Stream to deploy vSphere with Tanzu supervisor namespaces and guest clusters. [lwptoc] Requirement For a recent customer proof-of-concept, we wanted to show the full automation…

vSphere with Tanzu - cidrBlocks intersects with the network range of the external ip pools

Thu, 20 May 2021 14:34:16 GMT

The Issue When deploying a vSphere with Tanzu guest cluster via the command line, I hit the following error: kubectl apply -f cluster.yaml Error from server (spec.settings.network.pods.cidrBlocks intersects with the network range of the external ip pools in…

Deploying Tanzu Kubernetes Grid to AWS fails with 'InstanceProvisionFailed'

Tue, 18 May 2021 10:33:34 GMT

The issue When deploying Tanzu Kubernetes Grid to AWS, the deployment was failing with the following output: unable to set up management cluster, : unable to wait for cluster and get the cluster kubeconfig: error waiting for cluster to be provisioned (this…

Using vRA to deploy Azure AKS Clusters and register with Tanzu Mission Control

Mon, 17 May 2021 15:40:05 GMT

This walk-through will detail the technical configurations for using vRA Code Stream to deploy AWS EKS Clusters, register them as Kubernetes endpoints in vRA Cloud Assembly and Code Stream, and finally register the newly created cluster in Tanzu Mission…

vRA Code Stream - Preserving files and artifacts created in a CI Task

Thu, 13 May 2021 15:36:51 GMT

Whilst creating a pipeline and using CI Tasks to run some CLI tools, I needed to save the outputted files from the container used for the CI Task so I could use them once the pipeline is completed. Code Stream has a feature for CI Tasks called "Preserve…

Using vRA to deploy AWS EKS Clusters and register with Tanzu Mission Control

Mon, 10 May 2021 22:39:52 GMT

Postman - Logging in results in losing my offline work

Mon, 10 May 2021 19:04:25 GMT

The Issue When working with Postman in an offline mode or not signed in, then choosing to sign in, you lose access to your Collections and Environments you have worked on previously. The Cause In later versions, Postman introduce the Scratchpad. This is an…

Getting the GitHub Verified commit badge when using Visual Code on Mac OS X

Wed, 05 May 2021 14:05:07 GMT

The Issue Recently I've started to use Visual Code as my editor on Mac OS X, and using it with my GitHub Repos. It's pretty cool! However I noticed that when I submit a commit via code, I do not see the verified badge. The Cause When I look at my global git…

VMware CMTY Podcast Appearance - Discussing Tanzu Mission Control and vROPs

Fri, 30 Apr 2021 08:49:36 GMT

Thanks to this blog post, I was delighted to be invited as a guest on the VMware CMTY Podcast (YouTube Page) hosted by Eric Nielsen and Matt Langguth. Originally I was going to discuss the out of the box vROPs dashboards such as finding out how long a VM has…

Ubuntu - apt-get update fails "The repository no longer has a Release file"

Thu, 29 Apr 2021 10:50:55 GMT

The Issue Running sudo apt-get update or sudo apt update fails with the following or similar errors: Hit:1 http://apt.postgresql.org/pub/repos/apt eoan-pgdg InRelease Ign:2 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu eoan InRelease Ign:3 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu…

Understanding the VMware Tanzu Kubernetes Terminology

Thu, 22 Apr 2021 13:29:56 GMT

It's not uncommon for me to see the question asking for an explanation of VMware Tanzu Kubernetes terminology and differences between similar named products. As per the below tweet. This is my blog post to address the Tanzu Kubernetes terminology and use.…

Tanzu Mission Control - Upgrading Kubernetes for a provisioned cluster

Wed, 14 Apr 2021 22:54:39 GMT

Now we understand how to deploy a Tanzu Kubernetes Cluster using Tanzu Mission Control, let's look at the next lifecycle step, how to upgrade the Kubernetes version of the cluster. Below are the other blog posts in the series. Tanzu Mission Control - Getting…

Tanzu Mission Control - Delete a provisioned cluster

Wed, 14 Apr 2021 22:30:43 GMT

In this blog post we are going to cover off how to delete a Tanzu Kubernetes Grid cluster that has been provisioned by Tanzu Mission Control. We will cover the following areas: [lwptoc] Below are the other blog posts in the series. Tanzu Mission Control -…

Tanzu Mission Control - Deploying TKG Clusters to AWS

Tue, 13 Apr 2021 21:56:47 GMT

This blog post will cover a technical walk-through on using Tanzu Mission Control to deploy Tanzu Kubernetes clusters to AWS. [lwptoc] The follow up blog posts in this series are: Tanzu Mission Control - Getting Started Tanzu Mission Control - Cluster…

Download Releases from Github using Curl and Wget

Mon, 12 Apr 2021 18:47:12 GMT

The issue I was trying to download a software release from GitHub using Curl and hitting an issue, the file wasn't large enough for a start, it was unusable and clearly not the file I expected. curl -O…

Using Docker to update and commit to a container image

Mon, 12 Apr 2021 11:20:43 GMT

I was helping a customer build some customized automation tasks using vRealize Automation Codestream. These tasks required the use of a container image with certain tools installed, usually we can include a CI task to download the tools into the container…

Kubestr - Open-Source Kubernetes Storage benchmarking tool

Wed, 07 Apr 2021 21:20:08 GMT

Kubernetes is a platform which is starting to lose the need for introduction in most settings. However, it still can be a complex beast to get to grips with, and getting your infrastructure components configured correctly is key to providing a successful…

vRealize Operations integration with Tanzu Mission Control for auto cluster discovery

Wed, 31 Mar 2021 22:45:12 GMT

A while ago I wrote about the vRealize Operations Kubernetes Management pack which works for all CNCF conformant Kubernetes platforms. One of the best features of this management pack is the Tanzu Mission Control (TMC) integration it offers with vRealize…

Deploying Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Workload Cluster to Microsoft Azure

Mon, 29 Mar 2021 10:32:54 GMT

[lwptoc] Following on from my previous blog post; Deploying Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Management Cluster to Microsoft Azure We will now continue and deploy our first Workload (Guest) Cluster into Azure for us by our developers to deploy their applications into.…

Deploying Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Management Cluster to Microsoft Azure

Mon, 29 Mar 2021 10:29:25 GMT

[lwptoc depth="5"] In this blog post, we will detail a full technical run through on how to deploy Tanzu Kubernetes Grid (TKG) into Microsoft Azure, This will be using the new Tanzu CLI (version 1.3) (Previously TKG CLI) released in March 2021, to deploy both…

VMUG Recording - Protecting your Tanzu Kubernetes Workload with Kasten by Veeam

Wed, 17 Mar 2021 15:52:47 GMT

Below is the recording from my London VMUG session with Michael Cade. Title: Protecting your Tanzu Kubernetes Workload with Kasten by Veeam Recorded: 4th February 2021 Abstract: This technical demo led session will take you through how to deploy Kasten in…

VCF - SDDC Manager - How to delete bundles

Mon, 08 Mar 2021 12:45:11 GMT

Just a quick blog post on deleting unnecessary or unneeded bundles from VCF - SDDC Manager. There is two parts to this. Getting your Bundle ID you want to delete from the API Deleting the Bundle using a script on the SDDC Manager appliance. In your SDDC…

How to backup and restore your container workloads using Kasten by Veeam

Tue, 02 Mar 2021 18:52:24 GMT

This blog posts covers using Kasten by Veeam to create backup policies for data protection, and how to restore your data. This blog post follows on from the two installation guides; Installing and configuring Kasten to protect container workloads on VMware…

Installing and configuring Kasten to protect container workloads on VMware Tanzu Kubernetes Grid

Tue, 02 Mar 2021 18:52:19 GMT

This blog post will take you through the full steps on installing and configuring Kasten, the container based enterprise backup software now owned by Veeam Software This deployment will be for VMware Tanzu Kubernetes Grid which is running on top of VMware…

How to install and configure Kasten to protect container workloads on Red Hat OpenShift and VMware vSphere

Tue, 02 Mar 2021 18:51:55 GMT

In this blog post I'm going to cover deploying and configuring Kasten, the container based enterprise backup software now owned by Veeam Software. This deployment will be inside my Red Hat OpenShift Environment which is running on top of VMware vSphere. I'll…

Check how long a VM is turned off in vSphere using vROPs

Tue, 02 Mar 2021 10:19:50 GMT

Just a quick answer from a query on Reddit /r/VMware Sub. You can do this in vROPs from the 8.x code and above. Click home on the vROPs interface Click on "Reclaim" from the navigation left hand pane Click the datacenter your interested in Click Powered off…

How to update Kasten to the latest version

Mon, 01 Mar 2021 17:54:10 GMT

This is probably one of the simplest blog posts I'll publish. To see if there is an available update for your Kasten install. In the dashboard click > Settings Click on Support See if there is a notification under the Cluster Information heading. Clicking the…

How to build a vROPs dashboard for tracking Total VMs deployed and Growth Trend

Wed, 24 Feb 2021 14:53:28 GMT

In this Blog post I am going to detail how I created a vROPs dashboard based on a customer's request. Can we track how many VMs have been created in the past week and track if the number increases or decreases in each cluster? If you want to just get the…

VMware Tanzu Mission Control – Using the Data Protection feature for backups and restores

Fri, 19 Feb 2021 16:29:04 GMT

In this blog post we will cover the following topics - Data Protection Overview - Create a AWS Data Protection Credential - Enable Data Protection on a Cluster - Running a backup manually or via an automatic schedule - Restoring your data The follow up blog…

Enabling Tanzu Mission Control Data Protection on Red Hat OpenShift

Thu, 18 Feb 2021 22:39:49 GMT

Just a quick blog on how to get the Data Protection feature of Tanzu Mission Control on Red Hat OpenShift. By default you will find that once the data protection feature is enabled, the pods for Restic component of Velero error. Enable the Data Protection…

Using Google Analytics to view your visitors exact referral page and landing page

Thu, 18 Feb 2021 22:34:51 GMT

Just a quick one as this was really annoying me and I have to click around to remember how to find the info each time. The Issue When viewing my page stats in JetPack on Wordpress, I can see referrals from forums such as from Veeam, but I've no idea why I'm…

How to configure Red Hat OpenShift to forward logs to VMware vRealize Log Insight Cloud

Fri, 15 Jan 2021 17:09:40 GMT

In this blog post we will cover how to configure Red Hat OpenShift to forward logs from the ClusterLogging instance to an external 3rd party system, in this case, VMware vRealize Log Insight Cloud. Architecture The Openshift Cluster Logging will have to be…

OpenShift - Cluster-Monitoring-Operator Pod Error - cannot verify user is non-root

Wed, 13 Jan 2021 13:57:32 GMT

The issue After building a brand new OpenShift 4.6.9 cluster, I noticed one of the pods was not running correctly oc get pods -n openshift-monitoring ..... NAME READY STATUS RESTARTS AGE cluster-monitoring-operator-f85f7bcb5-84jw5 1/2…

TAM Lab 079 - Using vRA Cloud to operate a Multi-Cloud Environment

Wed, 25 Nov 2020 22:37:29 GMT

Myself and Katherine Skilling (LinkedIn, Twitter) recorded a session for TAM Lab and VMUG Events. In the below session, we cover how to use vRealize Automation Cloud (or vRA 8.x for on-prem) to operate your Multi-Cloud environment. So what does this actually…

Deploying the VMware Appliance for Folding@Home using Terraform

Mon, 23 Nov 2020 17:46:38 GMT

To simplify the deployment of Folding@Home appliances to vSphere environments, I have wrote a set of Terraform configuration files (script). You will need two packages downloaded to your jump host. Git Terraform And either download locally the VMware…

How to delete vCenter Roles in VMC

Thu, 19 Nov 2020 18:10:35 GMT

The Issue Whilst testing in VMC a PowerCLI script to create some vCenter roles, I noticed in the UI, then I deleted them, they remained, even though I was using the CloudAdmin@vmc.local account. I also tried to delete them using PowerCLI and received the…

Interview with Nikola Pejkova - Technical Analyst & Community Manager @Veeam

Thu, 19 Nov 2020 10:00:01 GMT

For those of you who know or follow me, I'm delighted to be part of the Veeam Vanguard program, created to bring together some of the top individuals focused on technology and yes, the Veeam ecosystem to help guide Veeam with feedback and perspective. But to…

How to deploy the VMware Appliance for Folding@Home

Thu, 19 Nov 2020 01:06:14 GMT

[lwptoc] In this blog post we will go through the steps to deploy the VMware Appliance for Folding@Home to; vCenter Standalone ESXi host VMware Fusion/Workstation And also cover some basic troubleshooting. Getting started with the VMware Folding@Home…

How to specify your vSphere virtual machine resources when deploying Red Hat OpenShift

Wed, 18 Nov 2020 16:49:59 GMT

When deploying Red Hat OpenShift to VMware vSphere platform, there are two methods: User Provisioned Infrastructure (UPI) Installer Provisioned Infrastructure (IPI) There are several great blogs covering both options and deployment methods. In this blog, we…

Learn How to Add Characters to the Start & End of Lines in Notepad++

Mon, 09 Nov 2020 09:19:00 GMT

Are you tired of searching for ways to add characters to the start and end of lines in Notepad++? Look no further! I decided to write this blog post for it! To get started: Press Ctrl + H to bring up the Replace dialog box (or Ctrl + F and click the tab…

Red Hat OpenShift on VMware vSphere - How to Scale and Edit your cluster deployments

Tue, 03 Nov 2020 21:56:04 GMT

Working with Red Hat OpenShift on vSphere, I'm really starting to understand the main infrastructure components and how everything fits together. Next up was understanding how to control the cluster size after initial deployment. So, with Red Hat OpenShift,…

A guide to vSphere with Tanzu Kubernetes - Day 2 Operations for the VI Admin

Fri, 30 Oct 2020 12:00:38 GMT

[lwptoc] Intro This blog post is an accompaniment to the session "vSphere with Tanzu Kubernetes - Day 2 Operations for the VI Admin" created by myself and Simon Conyard, with special thanks to the VMware LiveFire Team for allowing us access to their lab…

vRealize Operations - What is the Guest|Page In/Out Rate Metric?

Mon, 26 Oct 2020 13:46:28 GMT

In vRealize Operations 6.3, we added the following Guest Metrics, some of which we require VMware Tools 10.3.X or higher to be present for us to pull the data. Guest|Active File Cache Memory (KB) Guest|Context Swap Rate per second Guest|Free Memory (KB)…

How to build vROPs dashboard for tracking VM Growth over X days

Sun, 25 Oct 2020 17:26:49 GMT

I came across an interesting query on Reddit regarding vRealize Operations Manager (vROPs), summarised the query; "Can I have a vROPs report/dashboard which shows me the storage usage by VMs over the past 3 days" The short answer is yes, and I produced the…

How to use FAHControl to manage multiple Folding@Home Client instances

Sat, 19 Sep 2020 14:02:45 GMT

This blog post will cover managing a number of Folding@Home Clients using FAHControl. If you are using the VMware F@H Fling, then this appliance will be configured for remote control on deployment. This blog is based on Folding@home deployed on Linux, but the…

How to generate self-signed certificates in AVI Networks for use with Windows Services

Sat, 19 Sep 2020 13:55:19 GMT

Note: AVI Networks is also referenced as NSX Advanced Load Balancer as the product is absorbed into the VMware Solutions The AVI Vantage controller has the ability to generate self-signed certificates for use with your services. As Self-Signed will not be…

vCenter patching failed to update the VAMI build "Got exception while trying to save metadata to a file: Unexpected content in /etc/issue file"

Sat, 19 Sep 2020 13:12:47 GMT

The issue After patching/upgrading your vCenter 6.7 appliance, the vCenter UI shows the latest build number, but in VAMI you see the older VAMI build number. To troubleshoot upgrade issues, you can look at the following file;…

How To Fix A PVC Stuck in Terminating Status in Kubernetes: Troubleshooting Guide

Sat, 19 Sep 2020 11:23:25 GMT

Having trouble deleting a persistent volume claim (PVC) stuck in "terminating" status in Kubernetes/Openshift? We've got the fix. Read on to learn how to patch the PVC to allow the final unmount and delete the PVC. The Issue Whilst working on a Kubernetes…

Dean's top 10 session picks for VMworld 2020

Sat, 19 Sep 2020 11:07:58 GMT

I thought I'd add to the deluge of posts of recommended VMworld Sessions. Here are my top ten picks! Remember VMworld is fully virtual and free this year. So what's stopping you from registering? The Sessions Finding my way - Who am I, and what can I offer? -…

Using the vSphere CSI Driver with OpenShift 4.x and VSAN File Services

Thu, 17 Sep 2020 22:03:18 GMT

You may have seen my blog post "How to Install and configure vSphere CSI Driver on OpenShift 4.x". Here I updated the vSphere CSI driver to work the additional security constraints that are baked into OpenShift 4.x. Since then, once of the things that has…

How to backup vRealize Automation 8.x using Veeam

Thu, 10 Sep 2020 13:05:57 GMT

In this blog post I am going to dissect backing up vRealize Automation 8.x using Veeam Backup and Replication. - Understanding the backup methods - Performing an online backup - Performing an offline backup Understanding the Backup Methods Reading the VMware…

Veeam - Script finished execution with unexpected exit code: 126

Fri, 28 Aug 2020 10:56:16 GMT

This Issue When using Veeam if you use Pre/Post freeze scripts for application aware processing, these scripts must reside on the VBR server, which uploads to the virtual machine you are protecting. I hit an issue when running a job that I received the error;…

How to Install and configure vSphere CSI Driver on OpenShift 4.x

Mon, 27 Jul 2020 11:34:38 GMT

Note2: December 2021 VMware released the Red Hat Certified Operator "vSphere Kubernetes Driver Operator", which is now the preferred and recommended way to install CPI and CSI in your OpenShift environment. - Using the new vSphere Kubernetes Driver Operator…

How to deploy OpenShift 4.3 on VMware vSphere with Static IP addresses using Terraform

Wed, 22 Jul 2020 15:28:26 GMT

Install OpenShift 4.x on vSphere 6.x/7.x The following procedure is intended to create VM's from an OVA template booting with static IP's when the DHCP server can not reserve the IP addresses. The Problem OCP requires that all DNS configurations be in place.…

Veeam Backup For Azure - Integrating with Veeam Backup and Replication

Mon, 29 Jun 2020 13:37:15 GMT

In this blog post we will cover the following topics; - Adding your Azure Repository to Veeam Backup and Replication - Viewing your protected data - What can you do with your data? - - Backup Copy to another repository - - File Level Recovery - - Veeam…

Veeam Backup for Azure - Configuring your first Backup Policy

Mon, 29 Jun 2020 13:31:22 GMT

In this blog post we will cover the following topics - How a backup policy works - Creating a Backup Policy - Viewing and Running a Backup Policy - - Looking at Session logs - Summary and next steps The follow up blog posts are; - Getting started with Veeam…

Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure - Restoring a Backup

Mon, 29 Jun 2020 13:30:53 GMT

In this blog post we will cover the following topics - Restoring a Backup - - Viewing protected data - - File Level Recovery - - - File Level Recovery Session Log - - Virtual Machine Disk Restore - - Full VM Restore The follow up blog posts are; - Getting…

Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure - Getting Started: Setting up the Infrastructure

Mon, 29 Jun 2020 13:29:52 GMT

In this blog post we will cover the following topics; - What is Veeam Backup for Azure - Getting Started - - Architecture - - Deploying from Azure Marketplace - - Logging on for the first time - - Connecting to your Microsoft Azure Subscriptions and Storage -…

Veeam Backup for Azure - Service Endpoint from virtual network to Microsoft.Storage doesn't exist

Mon, 22 Jun 2020 13:27:10 GMT

The Issue After deploying a new Veeam Backup for Azure setup via the Microsoft Azure Marketplace, I was going through the configuration and when deploying my worker instances, which are used for performing the backup of the virtual machines. I hit the…

Kubernetes command line: tips and tricks

Mon, 22 Jun 2020 11:11:12 GMT

In this blog post, I have collected together a number of tips, tricks and snippets I've learned along the away whilst learning Kubernetes. - Configure tab completion - Selecting all namespaces in commands - Restarting nodes - Setting default storage class -…

VMware Tanzu Mission Control - Getting started with your first cluster

Tue, 26 May 2020 08:59:44 GMT

In this blog post we will cover the following topics - What is Tanzu Mission Control? - So, this isn't just for VMware environments? - Getting Started Tanzu Mission Control - - TMC Resource Hierarchy - - Creating a Cluster Group - - Attaching a cluster to…

VMware Tanzu Mission Control - Workspaces and Policies

Tue, 26 May 2020 08:57:30 GMT

In this blog post we will cover the following topics - Tanzu Mission Control - - Workspaces - - - Creating a workspace - - - Creating a managed Namespace - - - Viewing a managed Namespace - - Policy Driven Cluster Management - - - Creating a Image Registry…

VMware Tanzu Mission Control - Cluster Inspections

Tue, 26 May 2020 08:57:22 GMT

In this blog post we will cover the following topics - Tanzu Mission Control - - Cluster Inspections Overview - - What Inspections are available - - Performing Inspections - - Viewing Inspections The follow up blog posts are; Tanzu Mission Control - Getting…

vRealize Operations - Monitoring OpenShift Container Platform environments

Sun, 24 May 2020 16:00:29 GMT

The latest release of vRealize Operations (the "manager" part of the product name has now been dropped), brings the ability to manage your Kubernetes environments from the vSphere infrastructure up. The Kubernetes integration in vRealize Operations 8.1;…

PowerCLI - Import-VApp Name or service not known

Sat, 23 May 2020 08:25:15 GMT

I kept running into the error whilst running PowerCLI on Ubuntu. After wracking my brains, I realised that the issue is DNS, my Ubuntu box couldn't resolve the FQDN for the ESXi host, which is a mandatory parameter for the Import-vApp command. Import-VApp…

vCenter 7.0 - Image based backup is still supported, but won't be in future versions

Sun, 10 May 2020 18:31:07 GMT

When vSphere 7.0 (and therefore vCenter 7.0) went GA, a number of customers were hit with a very important change; vCenter support for image based backups was no longer supported Since the GA, after customer feedback, the vCenter 7.0 release notes have been…

Veeam Backup for Azure - Unable to check required permissions.

Sat, 09 May 2020 14:48:28 GMT

The Issue When connecting my newly deployed instance of Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure, I keep hitting the same error message after authenticating my account with Microsoft. Error: Unable to check required permissions. This might be a problem in Microsoft…

vROPs Dashboard - Display port group with VLAN ID and map to virtual machines

Fri, 08 May 2020 14:59:51 GMT

My customer asked me how to display the VLAN ID for a virtual machine in vROPs. The short answer is, due to the VLAN ID only being available from the Distributed switch adapter, its not simple to display this in a single list view. So after some thinking…

London VMUG Recording - Horizon on VMC

Mon, 04 May 2020 10:14:39 GMT

I presented on the first ever virtual London VMUG event of which you can see the recording below, and it is accompanied by this blog post; Horizon on VMC: Considerations and constraints You can find the full YouTube playlist for the event here.…

Creating a redirection on your wordpress domain

Sun, 03 May 2020 14:26:44 GMT

The other day I was chatting to a friend, and we discussed they should setup a redirection on their WordPress site to take you to their youtube page. Something simple as; https://vEducate.co.uk/youtube >>> https://youtube.com/c/VMwareTAMLAB To create…

Joining VMware and the Folding@Home Project - FAQ

Sat, 04 Apr 2020 20:01:26 GMT

Since my first post about joining the VMware Team in the Folding@home (F@H) project, a lot has happened, we have created an easily to deploy and use OVA via our Flings website, which once deployed, will connect to the F@H project and start contributing…

Using FAHControl to monitor multiple Folding@Home Clients

Sat, 04 Apr 2020 19:49:05 GMT

This blog post will cover how to centrally manage multiple Folding@Home clients. Installing FAHControl Monitor Multiple instances of VMware Appliance for Folding@home Configuring Access to your Linux based clients or directly on the VMware F@H Appliance…

Migrating User and Password Objects between Active Directory Forests

Fri, 27 Mar 2020 09:55:23 GMT

As part of some internal lab work, I had to move the user objects with their passwords to a new forest. It was key to migrate the passwords to ensure that disruption to the users was minimized. To migrate the users, I used the Microsoft Active Direction…

Powershell snippet - text to secure string and output to XML file

Thu, 19 Mar 2020 13:23:41 GMT

Below is a quick Powershell command I use to convert passwords to secure strings and output to an XML file, I can encrypt that XML file locally on the machine where any scripts need to run from, and call it in another Powershell script. $secpasswd =…

vRSLCM - vRA fails to update from 8.0 to 8.0.1 - LCMVRAVACONFIG90030

Wed, 18 Mar 2020 19:57:31 GMT

When updating my vRealize Automation instance from 8.0 to 8.0.1, I ran into an issue; LCMVRAVACONFIG90030 Error Code: LCMVRAVACONFIG90030 vRA VA Upgrade Status Check failed. Upgrade prepare on vRA VA sc-dc1-vra001.simon.local failed with state error. To know…

Windows Server 2019 Evaluation - Activation fails

Wed, 18 Mar 2020 15:33:34 GMT

I had issues converting one of my evaluation installations of Windows Server 2019 to a fully licensed copy. I'd extended the evaluation a few times using "slgmr /rearm" a few times, but had finally decided I was going to move this setup into production. The…

Kubernetes basics - kubeadm token create --print-join-command

Tue, 17 Mar 2020 13:59:09 GMT

Recently I've been using the fantastic resources to start learning Kubernetes (it's the next big thing don't you know). The course I've been following; Kubernetes Essentials by Will Boyd When running the command below, I lost connectivity to my master, which…

Horizon on VMC - Considerations and setting up a lab environment

Mon, 16 Mar 2020 14:30:36 GMT

A few months back, I setup a Horizon Environment running in our VMC environment used for lab purposes. Since then, I've been asked by several people to go through the setup. So, I've also decided to create a blog post on the matter. This blog post will cover…

Introducing the VMware UK&I TAM Spotify playlist

Mon, 16 Mar 2020 12:39:13 GMT

As we find ourselves on reduced or zero travel thanks to the outbreak of COVID-19, we also find ourselves with reduced human interaction. Sometimes that can be a good thing (less chance to contract the virus in question), sometimes it cannot. Whilst chatting…

Join VMware & the Folding@Home project in the fight against COVID-19

Mon, 16 Mar 2020 00:48:59 GMT

I won't give a long written speech about the crisis we all face today. However I do encourage you to spend your spare CPU cycles from your devices, whether thats personal devices or home lab servers, or anything else you can run the software, to fight the…

Link-O-Rama - VMware Announcements - Tanzu, vSphere 7, Cloud Foundation 4.0 and More

Tue, 10 Mar 2020 13:35:52 GMT

Today VMware ran their announcement event “App Modernization in a multi-cloud world” event, which leads with their vSphere 7 flagship product and the native integration of Kubernetes (Project Pacific). Below I’ve summarised the available information as of…

Introducing VMware TAM Lab YouTube Channel

Tue, 25 Feb 2020 22:34:33 GMT

The VMware Technical Account Management team have been producing some internal videos for a while now, to show off what we see in the field or tackle common issues, or discuss new technology. Thanks to my earlier work creating a GUI with PowerShell, I was…

Building a Veeam Lab - Testing Scenarios

Thu, 06 Feb 2020 14:35:17 GMT

In my previous post, I looked at the architecture you may want to implement to test the various features of Veeam Backup and Replication, including features from v10. I thought it would be a good idea to break down the architecture into sections, and provide…

Building a Veeam Lab - a recommended architecture

Mon, 03 Feb 2020 15:47:47 GMT

This blog posts spawns from an interesting discussion between the Veeam Vanguard members on what components are needed to build an effective lab for testing out most of the Veeam features, especially with v10 around the corner. So, I've put together something…

Veeam VMCE 2020 - Beta course and exam

Sat, 01 Feb 2020 15:53:51 GMT

The last week of January for me, was spent taking some annual leave, and attending a special invite only edition of the Veeam VMCE 2020 course, at their offices in Bucharest. The 3-day course, or event (as I'll explain), was hosted by Rasmus Haslund and Bart…

vRSLCM - Replacing vRA key fails with "Failed to apply License key - LCMVRAVACONFIG590007"

Wed, 29 Jan 2020 06:13:45 GMT

The vRA evaluation license in my homelab had failed, and trying to log in, I was hitting a 402 error. When replacing the license using vRealize LifeCycle Manager, I received the below errors. This happens because the license key has already expired. Error…

vRealize LifeCycle Manager - New License - Exception while loading DLF

Tue, 28 Jan 2020 12:59:23 GMT

Adding a new license into vRLCM locker fails with; Exception while loading DLF. Check /var/log/vlcm for more detail Sorry I didn't take a screenshot of this in the UI. In the log file, you will see the error code; LCMLICENSINGCONFIG11005 Over all the logs are…

Nested VCF Lab - Error while creating NFS datastore

Sun, 19 Jan 2020 20:21:08 GMT

Whilst deploying my nested VCF environment for my home lab, I kept hitting the same issue over and over again, even when I rolled the environment back and redeployed it. Error while creating NFS Datastore for host XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX Looking into the debug log…

Naming Conventions and Standards for Systems and Devices

Thu, 16 Jan 2020 16:24:24 GMT

We all know how important it is to have a naming standard for our systems and devices that means something, rather than a number of Greek mythological names that ultimately mean nothing to most. A quick google of "Server naming conventions" will lead you to…

VeeamPN 2.1 - Configure static IP for Network Hub

Thu, 16 Jan 2020 00:21:55 GMT

Today I decided to deploy VeeamPN between two sites. This is a free VPN solution which is optimized for performance. Veeam produced this tool for their customers to be able to easily setup networking between their production site and DR site, so ensure…

Interview - Matthew Steiner - Cloud Technologist and Author

Mon, 13 Jan 2020 11:44:08 GMT

Matthew is currently working at VMware as a cloud management technologist, spending the majority of his time visiting customers and discussing their cloud journey. 2020 will mark a milestone, with it being his tenth year at VMware. Since personally joining…

Support Ticket Template - Helping you help your vendor support teams

Thu, 02 Jan 2020 14:47:12 GMT

Below is a support template I crafted with some members of our VMware GSS team, to help my customers reduce the typical back and forth information gathering to help them get to a resolution faster. Instead when logging a ticket, my customers can log all the…

Synology - Moving a package between volumes

Wed, 01 Jan 2020 21:35:33 GMT

I have a Synology 8-bay NAS used for home-lab purposes, but also doubles as local home storage as well. As part of upgrades, I was decommissioning a volume for a new one with higher capacity drives, however I had Plex installed on the volume to be…

How to Elevate to Root Access with WinSCP

Wed, 01 Jan 2020 21:07:04 GMT

I was using WinSCP to transfer logs from a VMware CloudBuilder appliance to troubleshoot a failed lab deployment, however the files wouldn't transfer as the user account to be used had to have root access. For this appliance, you need to elevate to root after…

VMware Horizon Blast - Failed to Connect to Connection Server

Tue, 31 Dec 2019 15:05:54 GMT

After deploying my latest horizon lab, I hit an issue where I could not hit the login page to authenticate for a Horizon desktop using BLAST, I would be greeted by the following message: Failed to Connect to Connection Server I pulled my hair out for a few…

VDI Cleanup script I use before sealing any golden image before deployment

Tue, 31 Dec 2019 14:47:58 GMT

Below is the VDI Cleanup script that I've been using over the years. I thought I'd post this after setting up a Horizon Lab environment. I shared it earlier in the year on Reddit, and had some good suggestions which I used to update the script. The script has…

vRealize Automation 8.0 - Wildcard SSL certificate support and deployment issues - LCMVRAVACONFIG590003

Thu, 31 Oct 2019 20:43:43 GMT

Ok, so I'm just going to call it out straight away, when using wildcard SSL certificates with vRealize Automation 8.0, read the release notes. I did not, and caused myself quite a few headaches with the deployment, which you can read about further in this…

vRSLCM 8.0 - vROPs 7.5 upgrade fails due to Admin password expiry

Wed, 30 Oct 2019 18:26:36 GMT

When the vRealize 8 products dropped, I was like a kid in a sweet shop, upgrading everything as quick as possible before my customers tried to, so I could encounter any issues first, but also the new features, so I could show them off. The issue During the…

vRSLCM 8.0 - Default Storage is too small

Wed, 30 Oct 2019 18:13:50 GMT

PSA: The default deployment of vRealize LifeCycle Manager 8 configuration has a storage disk which is too small for the most tasks. I found this issue after working with Ryan Johnson (https://twitter.com/tenthirtyam), who is working on the next VVD…

VMware LifeCycle Manager - Migration error "SSH is not enabled or invalid" - LCMMIGRATION15102

Sat, 19 Oct 2019 22:42:08 GMT

During my migration from vRSLCM 2.1 patch 2 to the latest version 8 release, I encountered the following error; Error Code: LCMMIGRATION15102 vRSLCM Migration Failed with SSH is not enabled or Root credential invalid. Please make sure SSH is enabled or…

VMware vRealize LifeCycle Manager 8 - Migration Process Screenshots

Sat, 19 Oct 2019 17:17:27 GMT

VMware vRealize LifeCycle Manager 8 released earlier this week, 17th October 2019. Note the official name and abbreviation, its a long one! vRSLCM (vRealize Suite LifeCycle Manager) You can find the supporting official documentation here; What's New Blog…

VMware Ports and Protocols - All in one place!

Tue, 27 Aug 2019 12:13:54 GMT

Getting hold of all the VMware products various ports and protocols has sometimes come across like pulling blood from a stone. However as announced yesterday at VMworld 2019, we have a new dedicated website just for this subject! https://ports.vmware.com/ At…

VMware Cloud Foundation - SDDC Manager License key is not valid

Thu, 15 Aug 2019 09:46:57 GMT

Quick blog post, there has been known issue in VMware Cloud Foundation 3.5, 3.7 & 3.8 that reports your SDDC manager license key as invalid as the below screenshot shows. This has been listed in the "known issues" section of the release notes for each…

PowerCLI with a GUI - Clone a machine, add DHCP Reservations, alter CPUID

Mon, 05 Aug 2019 15:07:18 GMT

In this blog post, I am going to break down a PowerShell code I have created (with help from some colleagues). The functions of this PowerShell code are; Present a GUI form to the end user Connect to a vCenter Select the virtual machine to be cloned Select…

vROPs - What is the "IsGreenForPlacement" Metric + Dashboard

Thu, 01 Aug 2019 15:42:24 GMT

A customer of mine queried the details of a metric available in vROPs "IsGreenForPlacement" You can find this by selecting a cluster in vROPs, go to All Metrics, and just search placement. And here is a screenshot of the Metric in a sparkline. The customer…

Using vROPs to track adoption - Such as VMware Tools upgrades

Wed, 31 Jul 2019 16:32:18 GMT

I had an interesting question from a customer recently; Can we track the adoption/upgrades of VMware tools to the latest version in a vROPs dashboard At first, I thought sure this is easy. But then looking at the various different default options, nothing…

Recipe: Grilled Mexican Chicken perfect for Tacos

Thu, 02 May 2019 10:36:25 GMT

Something completely different; I was taking to my customer about the most amazing Mexican chicken I make for Tacos. So I shared with him the recipe, thought I'd share it with you lot as well! This is my modified version that I think is better than the…

Notes from the field - Penetration tests

Mon, 22 Apr 2019 19:21:38 GMT

This blog post is by no means a comprehensive guide from an expert in the cyber security area. However my previous role meant I had the pleasure of reviewing a number of customer penetration tests and from this, pretty much all of them were all exploited in…

Interview - Ian Sanderson talks community and career growth

Mon, 25 Mar 2019 12:30:45 GMT

The last interview I wrote up was back in 2017, although I've made efforts to kick off a continuation of this series, I stalled. I recently went over some of the past interviews and its amazing how in 18 month or so, people's careers and focuses have changed,…

Virtually Speaking Podcast - Guest appearance - Ep 109 - Fire, Flood, Blood

Mon, 25 Mar 2019 08:19:59 GMT

I'm delighted to be a guest on the Virtually Speaking podcast, in their latest episode release "Fire, Flood, Blood". I'm lucky enough to have met the hosts of Virtually Speaking podcast in person. John Nicolson and Pete Fletcher are both great guys and…

vBrownbag Session - Upgrading from vSphere 5.5 to 6.x

Sun, 24 Mar 2019 13:59:14 GMT

VMworld 2018, I was lucky enough to get my name down on the list to present on the vBrownbag stage, a community driven source of brilliant knowledge articles, videos, and web meetings, for the community by the community. Read more about vBrownbag here In the…

vBrownBag Session - Microsoft Azure for vSphere Admins

Sat, 23 Mar 2019 17:53:25 GMT

At VMworld 2018 I was invited to speak on the vBrownbag platform, which is a great community focused and run resource. Below is my session "Microsoft Azure for vSphere Admins" You can find the presentation here - http://vexpert.me/azure…

Yet another "I've got a new job" blog post

Sun, 04 Nov 2018 11:56:54 GMT

So I think I seen someone say on Twitter its silly season as we enter the winter period with people announcing they are moving jobs etc. And given the number of tweets about new jobs and blog posts, I think they are correct. Well I won't drag this out. I'm…

This blog has been rebranded

Fri, 02 Nov 2018 09:32:47 GMT

Hi All, So after owning the vEducate.co.uk domain for a while, I've finally got around to re-branding the blog and even produced a basic logo. I'll retain educationalcentre.co.uk and redirect to the new domain, so that anyone who crops up on my older links…

Upgrading VMware vSphere 5.5 to vSphere 6.5 (VMUG Presentation)

Tue, 03 Apr 2018 09:56:14 GMT

Blog post born from a VMUG Presentation Mid Feb, one of the London VMUG leaders posted on twitter, looking for someone to present on the subject of "upgrading from vSphere 5.5 to vSphere 6.5". Anyone out there done/doing vSphere 5.5 to 6x upgrade? and willing…

VMworld Europe 2017 - Day 1

Wed, 13 Sep 2017 07:27:40 GMT

11,000 people (the most ever), have descended upon Barcelona this week for the annual European VMware conference. This year sees the event brought forward from October to September, and only a week or so after their flagship Las Vegas Event. #VMworld in…

First Look - Leveraging the Nimble Secondary Flash Array with Veeam - Setup guide

Mon, 26 Jun 2017 22:56:21 GMT

Following on with the setup guide of the Nimble Secondary Flash Array, I am going to go through the deployment options, and the settings needed for implementation with Veeam Backup and Replication. What will be covered in this blog post? Quick overview of the…

Setting up a Nimble Secondary Flash Array from scratch

Wed, 21 Jun 2017 23:06:11 GMT

Nimble Storage have released their newest addition in the line up, the SFA, or to give its full name, the Secondary Flash Array. And in this post, we are going to look at how to set one up from scratch. Taken from the following datasheet; The Nimble Secondary…

Now available - VMware vSphere 6.5 Host Resources Deep Dive

Tue, 20 Jun 2017 19:49:36 GMT

It's here!!! I am sure many of you have been following this technical book closely, the latest publication by Frank Denneman. And now its available to order!!!! There is already a fantastic opening statement wrote by Duncan Epping today as the book is…

Video Blogs I appeared on at #VeeamON

Tue, 23 May 2017 22:03:20 GMT

Whilst attending VeeamON conference in New Orleans I had the chance to speak on two different video logs, three recordings. Tim Smith - Tim's Tech Thoughts Dave Kawula MSDN - Channel9 page First up Ransomware Talk with fellow Veeam Vanguards - Covering the…

#VeeamON 2017 Announcements - Now the dust has settled

Mon, 22 May 2017 11:22:55 GMT

The dust settled as my aeroplane wheels landed at Heathrow on Saturday 20th May. VeeamON. So now its time to digest, and detail the information from the worlds premier availability conference, VeeamON. Veeam is now 10 years old! So its out with the old and in…

HP IMC 7.2 - won't backup config of Cisco Nexus 9K switch

Mon, 08 May 2017 15:11:15 GMT

Background I have a customer who is using HP Intelligent Management Center (IMC) to monitor their switching environment. Originally they were using all HP Switching, but have slowly moved away during a refresh cycle and now use Cisco Switching, a mix between…

Interview - Chris Wahl - Author, Blogger, IT Consultant

Mon, 01 May 2017 10:20:43 GMT

My fourth blog posts is with one of my favourite online personalities, Chris Wahl, a person whom I've followed the blog of for a long time. I won't add too much preface to this, and dive straight in. 1. So Chris, you've are known in the community for two main…

HPE Stealthily Buys Nimble Storage - Someone was bound to do it

Wed, 08 Mar 2017 00:31:37 GMT

Today heralds a shock to the IT industry, even though many kept asking "when will someone snap up Nimble Storage", I think we can say that HPE was not the company we expected to do it, especially after the purchase of Simplivity just a month and half ago.…

Interview - Dave Kawula - MVP, Consultant, Author

Tue, 31 Jan 2017 22:36:32 GMT

2017 is kicking off with my third interview blog post, this time focusing on Dave Kawula, MVP and author focusing on Microsoft Technologies. Let's kick off straight into the interview itself, Dave likes to type! Longest interview yet, but its a great read.…

Nimble Storage - The life of a failed disk

Wed, 18 Jan 2017 12:01:42 GMT

Today I found out a disk had failed in a production SAN. Oh no!!! But like previous experiences, this is different. And my support experience is pretty darn good. So I thought lets write this up. Because you always here about the terrible failures and pain in…

Interview - Matt Crape - Community Blogger & IT Manager

Mon, 16 Jan 2017 21:52:38 GMT

In the second interview, Matt Crape of 42u.ca a blog around everything IT, is the person answering the questions. I'd personally been following Matt after his website went live and had the fortune of spending some time with him in London as part of the Veeam…

Interview - Joe Baguley, VMware EMEA CTO

Sat, 24 Dec 2016 13:58:10 GMT

A while ago, I had the brilliant idea to interview people and peer from the IT industry, from different area's, such as end users/customers, resellers, and vendors. So to kick this off, I started by asking around those who I know in the community. First up is…

HP FlexFabric Switches - AirFlow direction is not prefered

Sat, 10 Dec 2016 06:16:43 GMT

Quick note, Installed some HP FlexFabric 5700 switches the other day and I was getting a red LED on the front, and a status message in the CLI HPE DEV/1/FAN_DIRECTION_NOT_PREFERRED: -Slot; Fan 1 airflow direction is not preferred on slow 1, please check it.…

Trend Deep Security - Agentless Deployment with NSX - Issues with Web Reputation Service

Mon, 12 Sep 2016 09:15:51 GMT

So I've just had the pleasure of deploying Trend Deep Security via the Agent-less method, utilizing the NSX free license which allows guest introspection, but no other features. Starting in NSX 6.2.3, the default license upon install will be NSX for vShield…

First look at Veeam 9.5 & Nimble Storage Integration – Part 2

Fri, 01 Jul 2016 19:42:44 GMT

This is a continuation piece regarding the integration of Nimble Storage to the Veeam Backup & Replication software in the upcoming release 9.5. Part 1 So what does the integration give us? The test environment Adding the Nimble Storage Array into Veeam…

First look at Veeam 9.5 & Nimble Storage Integration - Part 1

Fri, 01 Jul 2016 09:04:20 GMT

As a part of the Veeam Vanguard program, I have been given access to the beta version of Veeam 9.5. And in this blog post I will cover some of the integration components between Nimble Storage and Veeam, announced by Veeam back in April. If you have been…

What happens when a Nimble Storage disk drive fails?

Thu, 30 Jun 2016 19:19:34 GMT

I've worked with Nimble Storage devices for over 2 years now, they constantly amaze me, but one of the thing I've yet to see in the field is an actual failure. So the other morning at 3am, I received an email about a failed disk, so I thought I'd walk those…

Powershell - Get-ADuser and output the homedrives to CSV file

Mon, 27 Jun 2016 07:45:37 GMT

I had a customer with around 27 file servers used as locations for AD home drives. We needed to do some analysis on which users used which server, as things like DFS or a strategy of where to place users were not in place. So PowerShell to the rescue. A…

How to produce good documentation – Part 5 – Diagraming your (Veeam) Backups

Mon, 08 Feb 2016 14:48:45 GMT

So it's just been a little over a year since Part 4 of my how to document series was posted. I hoped to keep adding to the series, but at the same time, only do it when I felt I had relevant content to share. So this post is to show how I have documented some…

Finally, a OneDrive for Business client for Mac OS X, that works!

Sun, 07 Feb 2016 20:34:36 GMT

Great news, Microsoft have finally got their backsides into gear, and produced a working OneDrive for Business Client, for Mac OS X. That actually works! Two of the things that were keeping me from moving fully away from my windows machines were; OneDrive for…

Veeam v9 Backup and replication / ONE upgrade from v8

Tue, 26 Jan 2016 23:12:47 GMT

This is just a quick post showing the upgrade process of Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager Veeam Backup and Replication Veeam ONE I didn't hit any issues with the upgrades. It's always a good idea to reboot your servers before any update And plan for further…

PowerCLI - Setup Host networking and storage ready for ISCSI LUNs

Tue, 26 Jan 2016 22:29:39 GMT

So I am no scripting master, my PowerShell knowledge is still something I want to expand. During an install last week I had a number of hosts to setup from scratch, so I decided to do this via PowerCLI, as a lot of the tasks were repetitive. Setting up the…

Further ESXi 6.0 CBT bug info - Reset your CBT!!!

Tue, 01 Dec 2015 22:26:43 GMT

Following on from the recent (November 2015) ESXi 6.0 CBT bug, which has now been fixed in the latest released patch ESXi600-201511401-BG, some further information has come to light, provided by Anton Gostev, of Veeam. You can read the snippet of important…

[Quick Post] Sharing a generic Troubleshooting poster I found online #vDM30in30

Mon, 30 Nov 2015 13:50:09 GMT

I found this post on Reddit, where a user had created a generic troubleshooting poster. It's not aligned to any tech, but can be very useful, especially those getting started in IT. Source: Reddit post Regards Dean Follow @saintdle //

[Quick Post] Citrix Receiver - Clean uninstall tool - #vDM30in30

Thu, 26 Nov 2015 22:47:39 GMT

The issue On my work based Windows 8.1 VM, I was finding that Citrix Receiver would crash any time I opened an ICA file from a Web Interface/StoreFront website, this meant that any desktop or application would not work. I removed Citrix Receiver I upgraded…

Exam Experience - VMware VCP6-DT #vDM30in30

Thu, 26 Nov 2015 22:17:54 GMT

Today I took the VCP6-DT exam. It will be retired on 30th November 2015. And is replaced by the VCP6-DTM exam, as part of the VMware exam overhaul. So why take an expiring exam? Well VMware is kindly going to upgrade it to the VCP6-DTM anyway. I've spent a…

ESXi 6.0 CBT Issue KB 2136854 - Resolved #vDM30in30

Wed, 25 Nov 2015 22:09:33 GMT

I wrote about the latest CBT issue (November edition) a couple of days ago, and as promised by VMware a patch has been released. Original issue - KB 2136854 Patch to resolve the issue - ESXi600-201511001 (2137545) Note: Before applying this patch on HP…

My daily tool kit - IT gadgets and software - #vDM30in30

Fri, 20 Nov 2015 22:55:54 GMT

I have currently spent a lot of time visiting different customer sites and working with them to build up a picture of their environment and such. Usually with the aim to provide a design around architectural changes that we would recommend to move their…

HP 2920 Switch - Reboot issue on firmware ver 15.18.0006 #vDM30in30

Fri, 20 Nov 2015 21:45:22 GMT

Updated 25.11.15 Firmware WB.15.18.0007 resolves the issue, see below A colleague of mine found an issue with the latest HP 2920 switch firmware. If you create VLANs using the CLI Menu, the switch reboots and the configuration is not saved. We have reported…

Yet again, ESXi 6.0, CBT issues #vDM30in30

Tue, 17 Nov 2015 20:42:15 GMT

So here we are again, rounding the year off with yet another change block tracking warning. I've written posts previously on the CBT bugs found in 5.5 and below and those found when vSphere 6.0 was released into the wild. So whats the issue this time?…

Book Review - Citrix XenDesktop CookBook Third Edition - #vDM30in30

Tue, 17 Nov 2015 10:30:51 GMT

So my second book review has been one I've looked to write for a while. I had the chance to work with Citrix XenServer and XenDesktop in-depth as part of a virtualisation platform upgrade at a large educational establishment. Citrix is not my strong point,…

Book Review - Countdown to Zero Day #vDM30in30

Mon, 16 Nov 2015 19:57:26 GMT

After hearing about this book via twitter, and having an upcoming 8 hour flight plus holiday coming up, I decided to take a plunge into something a little different. Usually I'm more of a Stephen King fan or head buried into a technical book. Stuxnet was one…

Exam Experience - Cisco CCNP Datacenter - 642-998 Designing Cisco Data Center Unified Computing (DCUCD) - #vDM30in30

Fri, 13 Nov 2015 21:02:37 GMT

Evening, Sorry for the long title. There is two reasons as to why you would be taking this exam. The first is because you want to achieve the CCNP Datacenter title, or the second is because your company requires you to, so they can achieve the Unified…

Using Command Prompt to log off terminal / Remote User - #vDM30in30

Tue, 10 Nov 2015 14:47:36 GMT

A quick post. I had an issue the other day where I had to remotely administer a server on another site. When I logged in I was greeted by a white screen. I needed to boot off this account and then log back in as the same user. Unfortunately this was the only…

Citrix XenDesktop - Password Reset not working on Wyse Terminals

Mon, 21 Sep 2015 11:18:24 GMT

The Issue Users password has expired When logging onto a Wyse Client (in this case a C10LE or Dx0D running the latest firmware), you are told your password has expired. You are given the option to change your password, once you click OK, you are presented…

Guest appearance on the AdminAdmin Podcast

Tue, 18 Aug 2015 17:32:11 GMT

This is a little of a late post but back in June I was invited by the amigos over at AdminAdmin Podcast to chat about my favourite subject. Me! This was prompted after they mentioned my How to document posts, and I reached out to say thanks as it had…

Citrix StoreFront - Creating a Public SSL Certificate

Mon, 27 Jul 2015 22:32:17 GMT

The latest versions of Citrix receiver require that you use HTTPS for the server bound connections, otherwise you cannot connect. And the information on the Citrix website can be a bit thin when it comes to using a Public CA SSL Certificate. Here is the…

HP Virtual Connect - Upgrade from version 3.30 to 4.41

Mon, 27 Jul 2015 17:21:36 GMT

Hi, Only a quick post, but after my last bashing of HP virtual connect. I've had to endevour another upgrade for a different customer. This time with two HP chassis that are connected together. For this customer they are on version 3.30 and need to upgrade to…

And more blogs and sites I’ve been reading and sharing

Wed, 10 Jun 2015 21:39:58 GMT

A little bit of a longer one than usual, as I was part way through writing this the other month, then I got distracted with other blog posts. Hope you find some of these useful. Documentation EtherealMinds Eleven Rules of Design Documentation - This is one…

Last Minute VeeamON:Forum London plug!!!

Wed, 10 Jun 2015 20:38:15 GMT

Oops I forgot to post this last week as I was busy finishing off my Cisco UCS Blog posts, but still if you read this in time, maybe you're in the area and can nip down, or pull a sickie and get in, the event will be worth it!! Personally I was all booked up…

Deploy a Cisco UCS system – Part 4 – Upgrading the Firmware

Sun, 07 Jun 2015 23:19:54 GMT

Part 1 - Setting up Fabric Interconnect, and UCS Manager settings Part 2 - Configuring Connectivity & Setting up the policies and Service Profiles Part 3 - Deploying ESXi via KVM onto FlashFlex (SDCard) Part 4 - Upgrading the Firmware My previous posts in the…

Deploy a Cisco UCS system - Part 3 - from scratch for VMware ESXi

Sun, 07 Jun 2015 23:17:28 GMT

Deploy a Cisco UCS system - Part 2 - from scratch for VMware ESXi

Sun, 07 Jun 2015 23:14:18 GMT

Deploy a Cisco UCS system - Part 1 - from scratch for VMware ESXi

Sun, 07 Jun 2015 23:12:20 GMT

VCP5-DCV Exam Experience

Thu, 04 Jun 2015 17:48:47 GMT

I passed the VCP5-DCV exam at the start of the week. Why take it now? Having worked with VMware for many years, I've never actually taken a VCP exam, this was due to not realising many years ago you could sit an exam and the course was not mandatory. When I…

One year blogging

Mon, 11 May 2015 18:47:39 GMT

So my blog is now one year old!!! Unfortunately I didn't get any cake for myself. I bought the domain back Feburary 2014, and setup the WordPress blog official on 4th April 2014. Since then, its been a kick ass ride producing content, appearing as a guest…

vCenter 6.0 Client Application GUI bug - VM's showing Snapshots?

Mon, 11 May 2015 14:26:47 GMT

Today I've noticed that when using the vCenter C# client, each VM shows up as allowing for "Revert to current snapshot" and "Consolidation" however there is no open snapshot on the virtual machine. Above we can see clearly the options to "Revert ..." and…

ESXi 6.0 - More CBT woes

Mon, 11 May 2015 12:08:17 GMT

Post update 14th May 2015 VMware have released a hotfix KB2116126. Removed information regarding old CBT workaround for Veeam is incompatible _________________________________ So it's come to my attention that the new and mighty ESXi 6.0 has a CBT fault as…

Veeam Endpoint - Connect to a Backup Repository

Tue, 05 May 2015 21:13:47 GMT

I am going to quickly detail how to connect Veeam Endpoint to an existing Veeam Backup and Replication Server to use a backup repository. Covered is; Pre-Reqs Setup the permissions on your Backup Repository Setting up the Backup Job Integration into Veeam…

Veeam VMCE v8 Exam Experience

Tue, 05 May 2015 14:20:17 GMT

I've completed and passed the Veeam VMCE v8 exam, having done the v7 exam some time ago. The official deadline is 15th May, to upgrade from v7 exam to the v8 exam, miss this deadline and you need to take the full course within 90 days and pass the exam to…

Cisco UCS - Install ESXi 6.0

Mon, 20 Apr 2015 19:56:44 GMT

So I've just deployed a Cisco UCS B Series system, which is on the HCL as supported by VMware for ESXi 6.0 However there is no install media available as for previous ESXi versions. How to install ESXi 6.0 on Cisco UCS Quite simple actually, I installed the…

Deploying VCSA 6.0 fails with supplied system name is invalid

Tue, 14 Apr 2015 21:04:13 GMT

A nice and simple one, the supplied system name (which is the FQDN of the VCSA) is invalid. This is because when deploying a new VCSA from scratch, your DNS records should already be created, as the new ISO based installer for the appliance runs a number of…

Getting to grips with the Cisco UCS Emulator

Tue, 07 Apr 2015 20:48:10 GMT

Cisco have been distributing the UCS emulator for a while now, and thanks to some changes, I am now faced with having to deploy some of the systems, so today I deployed the emulator on VMware Fusion on my MBP. Downloading You can download the emulator in a…

MAC'ing the move (Windows to OS X)

Tue, 07 Apr 2015 20:07:33 GMT

Bad Pun I know, but I've made the move from my works laptop running Windows 8.1 over to my personal MacBook Pro. The apple machine is the last of the late 2011 model, and tbh I've hardly used it, so I purchased some RAM (4GB to 16GB) and an SSD (Samsung 850…

Password Reset on Cisco MDS 9100 Series Fibre Channel Switch

Fri, 27 Mar 2015 15:11:12 GMT

My most recent customer engagement, was to re-use some older hardware as vSphere disaster recovery. The kit includes a EMC Clariion SAN, and two Cisco MDS 9124 switches. The customer didn't setup these FC switches, and required a password reset. Which I was…

Using VMware Update Manager to automatically download Dell Drivers to ESXi

Mon, 16 Mar 2015 10:09:00 GMT

Last year I wrote about how to use VMware Update Manager to download HP Drivers for ESXi, Since then I've also found out you can add the following Dell repository into VMware Update manager; http://vmwaredepot.dell.com/index.xml Regards

Upgrade VCSA to VMware vCenter 6

Fri, 13 Mar 2015 00:26:11 GMT

So I jumped right in and upgraded my VCSA 5.5 to VCSA 6, you can find the official documentation and upgrade steps here. Pre-Reqs from VMware Verify that the clocks of all machines on the vSphere network are synchronized. See Synchronizing Clocks on the…

VMware Software Manager - a quick guide

Thu, 12 Mar 2015 22:37:06 GMT

Downloading a VMware Suite with the Push of a Button using VMware Software Manager One of VMware's announcements today alongside the release of VMware vSphere 6 and additional products to support vSphere 6, was VMware Software Manager. Here's the official…

Setting up LACP on Synology NAS and HP Switches

Mon, 02 Mar 2015 13:44:48 GMT

Here I am going through how to setup LACP port trunking for a Synology NAS device using HP Switching. 1. First off get your MAC Addresses of your Synology NAS interfaces you want to configure, these can be found in the DSM web login under Control Panel > Info…

More Blogs and sites I've been reading and sharing

Thu, 05 Feb 2015 04:07:23 GMT

My Firefox tabs have filled up again, some of these tabs have been open since the start of 2014!!! So time to share!!! First off, proud to announce that Cisco asked me to produce a blog post, and decided it was good enough to release into the wild on their…

Invited to speak at North West England VMUG - 25th February 2015

Sun, 01 Feb 2015 21:32:26 GMT

Great news, I've been invited to speak at the North West VMUG on the 25th February. And there is a raffle for a iPad Air 2 and nVidia K2 Graphics card. (That’s the selling points of why to come covered). The VMUGs are great, you usually get some free…

Patch Released - Major bug in VMware’s CBT function. KB2090639

Thu, 29 Jan 2015 11:09:35 GMT

VMware have finally released a patch to fix the Major CBT bug that causes your backups to be corrupted because the changed blocks are reported incorrectly. Within the release notes for the 5.5 latest patch, its kind of hidden away to the point that I missed…

DCPromo Fails - The directory service is missing mandatory configuration information

Thu, 29 Jan 2015 09:12:27 GMT

On a Server 2008 R2 machine, I had an issue demoting from being a Domain Controller, after moving the FSMO roles onto a new machine. This was after a second domain controller died. I am not sure of the previous history of where the FSMO roles were for this…

Revision notes from VMware Network Virtualization Fundamentals Course

Thu, 22 Jan 2015 21:42:46 GMT

VMware released a free course around Network Virtualization Fundamentals, which maps to the first steps on the ladder for all things NSX. It is also recommended by VMware to take the course before taking on the VCA-NV. I urge anyone looking into NSX to take…

Veeam Hidden Feature - Backup Validator

Wed, 14 Jan 2015 16:54:36 GMT

So the other day I was using the Veeam Backup Extractor Tool, located in the installation folder, when I noticed another .exe file that I hadn't paid attention to previously. Veeam.Backup.Validator.exe This a CLI based tool, and does exactly as the name…

Blog posts I've been reading and sharing recently

Sun, 11 Jan 2015 23:03:23 GMT

Since before the Christmas break, I've not had a great deal to write about, in terms of break fix, as I've been busy studying to pass my CCNP exams, and now I'm under way with taking on further exams. At the same time, I've also found some of my posts…

How to produce good documentation – Part 4 – Diagraming a network

Sat, 03 Jan 2015 16:47:35 GMT

Part 1 – The foundation of any IT infrastructure Part 2 – Rack and Server Diagrams Part 3 - Network IP’s & Interfaces Part 4 - Diagraming a network Part 5 - Diagraming your (Veeam) Backups So in my last post, I looked at how to record the logical information…

Predictions in the world of IT for 2015

Tue, 30 Dec 2014 00:26:07 GMT

Everyone is chiming in with their two cents, so here are mine. Software Defined Networking 2015 will be the year of software defined networking, which is exciting, but like the year of VDI (for the 5th???? time), will probably be forever coming, especially…

Cisco CCNP TSHOOT - Exam Experience

Sat, 27 Dec 2014 20:42:19 GMT

I did it, passed the TSHOOT exam, which means I'm now CCNP Certified. Woop!!! So the TSHOOT exam itself, 3 mutliple answer questions 1 Drag and Drop 15 support tickets to answer within a simulator In the simulator itself, on each ticket you are asked to…

Applying the TSHOOT methodology to everything

Tue, 23 Dec 2014 00:53:08 GMT

Last exam of the year The past few months I’ve forced my head into revision for the three CCNP exams, with two down, I have TSHOOT left to do, and I’m aiming to pass before Christmas Day. Which is a nice goal to have, but when I have to recertify next year,…

A look back on #vDM30in30 and blogging

Mon, 15 Dec 2014 23:39:37 GMT

So the #vDM30in30 challenge is over, which was started off by the guys from Virtual Design Master, and the challenge was to write 30 blog posts in 30 days. That's all. Why I took the challenge I took up the challenge, because it was that, a challenge, I…

Veeam v8 - Backup Fails - NFC storage connection is unavailable

Wed, 03 Dec 2014 09:45:14 GMT

I encountered this issue on a brand new Veeam installation the other day. When running a test backup job. "Error: NFC storage connection is unavailable, Storage: [stg-datastore-(Number),nfchost-host-(Number),conn:(ServerName)" When going opening up the job…

VMware NSX - Just an introduction

Sun, 30 Nov 2014 22:05:00 GMT

With my background in Networking and Virtualisation, VMware's NSX is something which interests me deeply, as such I've attended a handful of sessions online, and also at the UK VMUG where Chris Whal presented on the subject. Here's my own interpretation of…

Taking Exams? Know your learning style

Sun, 30 Nov 2014 19:59:08 GMT

I've noticed a lot of activity online about people taking exams before a particular deadline. VCP Delta Exam VCP-NV (No course requirement if you're a CCNA/CCNP) CCNP R+S Exam (Last 642 Series exams before 29th Jan 2015) And just exams in general, regardless…

Screen Capture Software of Choice - SnagIT

Sat, 29 Nov 2014 12:17:56 GMT

Everyone has their favourites, and mine is SnagIT. It's not free, but it has such a great interface, I can't face using anything else. I use it for capturing shots of the environment, as it is now, and after I've changed it, and then annotating them with…

Profwiz: Migrating users profiles to a new domain

Fri, 28 Nov 2014 15:00:16 GMT

So a colleague of mine introduced me to this great tool, ForensiT User Profile Wizard. We were migrating a customer from one domain to a new one, and there is a lot of data stored in the local profile of the users. So we needed a way to move this data into…

Veeam v8 - Active Directory Restore Wizard in action

Thu, 27 Nov 2014 05:25:20 GMT

So lets look at one of the best features brought to us in Veeam 8, Active Directory Restore Wizard. 1. Open up the restore, select application items, and then Microsoft Active Directory 2. Select your VM that you want to pull the data back from, and then your…

How to produce good documentation – Part 3 – Network IP's & Interfaces

Wed, 26 Nov 2014 23:50:52 GMT

The time is here, lets look at starting to document that network of yours. Part 1 – The foundation of any IT infrastructure Part 2 – Rack and Server Diagrams Part 3 - Network IP's & Interfaces Part 4 - Diagramming a network Part 5 - Diagraming your (Veeam)…

Accepted for Cisco Champion Program 2015

Tue, 25 Nov 2014 23:45:03 GMT

So tonight was a saved by the bell moment, brought with a little joy. I've been selected for the Cisco Champion Program 2015. So it means I have something to blog about, =D. The program was brought about last year for its first year, bringing together members…

VMware Horizon View - Connection Server Services dont load with Public SSL Cert

Mon, 24 Nov 2014 23:42:48 GMT

So my colleague rang me the other week with a bit of weird issue. After installing the VMware Horizon View Connection Server, the services do not start after installing Public SSL, and replacing the self-signed SSL. The environment Server 2012 R2 fully…

vCenter lost DVS configuration - Fixing the hosts

Sun, 23 Nov 2014 14:53:39 GMT

So I hit an interesting issue whilst performing a VMware upgrade from 4.0 to 5.5. There was a legacy issue left where vCenter had lost its knowledge/configuration of the DVS Setup. Im not entirely sure what happened or when, as it was an existing environment,…

Extending your Server 2003 Disk Partitions using Dell Extpart

Sat, 22 Nov 2014 11:13:07 GMT

So we all know that we should be migrating away from Server 2003 as its end of life June 2015. But until then we still need to manage it. So lets look at how to extend your hard drives into unpartitioned space using the Dell Extpart tool. Note: This is…

Installing VMware Horizon View Composer fails with Error 1920

Fri, 21 Nov 2014 23:12:49 GMT

The issue So today I was installing VMware Horizon View Composer on my Server 2012 R2 vCenter machine, where the SQL database is also local to this machine. And I came across the below error, "Error 1920, Service VMware Horizon View Composer (svid) failed to…

VMware Update Manager - Fixing vCenter Plugin Issues

Thu, 20 Nov 2014 22:01:07 GMT

VMware Update Manager is one of the most necessary tools in your environment, it's also built really well and can be customized to fit your environment. However there are times that the update manager plugin within vCenter Client can break. So lets look at a…

Back to the Future - Configure ESX 4.0 iSCSI Multipathing

Wed, 19 Nov 2014 23:06:18 GMT

So I'm in the middle of an upgrade of environment that has; 2 x Hosts on ESX 4.0 SAN using SAS connections to Hosts No resources available for failover and testing Limited network ports I'm installing; 3 x Hosts on ESXi 5.5 Nimble SAN - iSCSI So to move all…

Veeam ONE v8 - New Look, New Features

Tue, 18 Nov 2014 22:57:35 GMT

So I covered Veeam Backup and Replication v8 here. And now for the Veeam ONE Edition of the v8 update post. The Update Process Pretty simple, mount the ISO, follow the instructions for Veeam One install, which will detect and upgrade the existing environment.…

Veeam: High Level End user case study, from an engineer’s perspective

Mon, 17 Nov 2014 23:08:18 GMT

Sometimes we get so bogged down into the technical details, we forget that some people just want to know about a product and how it's used, not how to configure it and the advance settings. This blog post was first wrote for my employers blog by me, but I…

Setting iLO IP Address via ESXi CLI

Sun, 16 Nov 2014 17:16:44 GMT

HP iLO is a great tool to have, remote console access, unfortunately it is sometimes forgotten by engineers and technicians to be configured. Which is a pain when you then need remote access to the ESXi. So here is how to configure the HP iLO IP address using…

Using PowerCLI to create Virtual Machine Port Groups

Sat, 15 Nov 2014 17:16:11 GMT

So basically I had a host failure where all of the configure was lost, if I was more savvy with Powershell/PowerCLI, I would have been able to rebuild it all via scripts, but that clones the settings from a working host. But nevermind that is for a different…

Get-PowerShelling or Remove-JobRole

Fri, 14 Nov 2014 22:18:22 GMT

Coding, Scripting, Powershelling, etc etc, Dirty words in the mouth of Infrastructure guys across the globe. When I was in college taking on my computer course, I had two options, Hardware and Networking, or Web Design. I went with my interests and skillsets,…

What an employer is looking for in a Technical Role

Thu, 13 Nov 2014 15:29:44 GMT

So after an interesting North West VMUG event on 12th November, I've decided to write my own comments on the state of employment within IT. This is prompted by Neil Mills Talk at the above VMUG event, where he gave tips on super charging your CV, and the…

Looking back at a VMware VDI Deployment

Wed, 12 Nov 2014 22:39:31 GMT

My good friend Nathan Bryne wrote a good post about "Do I really need to do a Desktop Assessment?", which got me thinking. I worked at a college for around 3 years where we had a 1000 seat VMware View VDI deployment. I started working there just after the…

HP-AMS Driver causes ESXi memory leak

Tue, 11 Nov 2014 23:14:49 GMT

So basically I had a customer hit by a known HP-AMS driver issue (KB2085618), the symptons were as follows; Unable to vMotion a VM to another host, gives "operation timed out error" If power off VM, vMotion a machine to another host, and then power on, you…

Veeam upgrade to v8 - Enterprise Manager fails with Access Control List error

Mon, 10 Nov 2014 15:06:33 GMT

So the other day I blogged about the Veeam v8 upgrade, and as mentioned my Enterprise Manager didn't work, giving the error; The Access Control List is not in canonical form and therefore cannot be modified. So I logged a call with Veeam to get it fixed.…

Embracing Social Media in the IT world

Sun, 09 Nov 2014 11:46:09 GMT

So this domain name was purchased in April 2014, and the blog created at the same time. I used to teach CompTIA courses, and therefore my main idea, which I haven't forgotten about, is to create materials (E-books) which are affordable and accessible for…

Now bringing you CaaS – Confused-as-a-Service

Sat, 08 Nov 2014 16:23:21 GMT

Note: This blog post first appeared on my employers website, March 2014, wrote by myself. The past 12 months have seen an explosion of marketing Buzzwords, redefined technologies, and a bunch of Vendors endlessly dropping them into conversation like they are…

Veeam v8 is here - New Features and Upgrade Process

Fri, 07 Nov 2014 14:23:39 GMT

So Veeam's High Availability Suite is here!!!! Basically v8. So in this post we are looking at Features and the upgrade of the program, and using the program when updated. New Features Backup and Replication My favourite feature which doesn't seem to be in…

How to produce good documentation – Part 2 – Rack and Server Diagrams

Thu, 06 Nov 2014 08:46:45 GMT

Part 1 – The foundation of any IT infrastructure Part 2 - Rack and Server Diagrams Part 3 - Network IP's & Interfaces Part 4 - Diagraming a network Part 5 - Diagraming your (Veeam) Backups Oh no, diagrams! But, but, I'm not creative! So we covered the…

Cisco CCNP 624-813 Switch Exam Experience

Wed, 05 Nov 2014 19:06:00 GMT

So I took and passed my CCNP Switch Exam on Monday morning. 934 out of 1000. I've been meaning to do my CCNP for the past two and a half years, since I passed my CCNA, which doesn't expire until April 2015, but will be renewed now due to the pass on switch…

Cisco CCNP Training - Bootcamp Roundup

Tue, 04 Nov 2014 21:24:58 GMT

So this post is mainly a big round-up of the day by day posts I made of my CCNP bootcamp notes. Here is a list by topics covered each day to make it easier for you to jump into. There is no TSHOOT posts at the moment, as the idea of TSHOOT is covered in ROUTE…

Using VMware Update Manager to automatically download HP Drivers to ESXi

Tue, 04 Nov 2014 09:49:11 GMT

I stumbled across this little gem of a post yesterday, I tried to use the WordPress reblog feature, but it's not working, so thanks to Kalle who wrote it. So I'm going to blog it using screenshots from an environment I've set it up on. With HP, you need to…

Cisco CCNP Training Course – Day 8 – SWITCH

Wed, 29 Oct 2014 00:06:43 GMT

So day 8 essentially was the last day of the bootcamp, with Day 9 + 10 being left for TSHOOT, of which there is very little documented, as its....... troubleshooting a broken system. So Day 8, let's get to it. Here's whats covered; HSRP Continued.....…

Major bug in VMware's CBT function. KB2090639 (Causes data corruption for backups)

Mon, 27 Oct 2014 11:02:52 GMT

Updated 29.01.15 - Please see this new post for the patch fix So on twitter I found out that VMware CBT has a bit of a fault, the tweet linked me to reddit here. Basically CBT has a fault where if you are using CBT on a VMDK file thats <128GB, and then…

Cisco CCNP Training Course – Day 7 – SWITCH

Sun, 26 Oct 2014 22:29:45 GMT

Lets Jump straight in... Covered is MST Config Etherchannel Spanning-Tree BPDU Guard, Filter, Loop Guard, Root Guard, UDLD Uplink Fast, Backbone Fast HSRP MST Config (config)#spanning-tree mode mst (config)#spanning-tree mst configuration (config-mst)#name…

Veeam VMCE Course & Exam Experience

Mon, 20 Oct 2014 14:56:35 GMT

So I passed my VMCE exam the other week. Basically I sat the course and the exam due to working for a Veeam Gold partner, which requires that the partner has one certified person to keep the status. The Course Overall with the use of Veeam Certified Engineer…

VMware 5.1 vCenter Appliance - Call "EventHistoryCollector.SetLatestPageSize" for object "SessionID" on vCenter Server failed.

Mon, 20 Oct 2014 08:34:53 GMT

So I noticed an issue when using the vSphere Client to connect to the VMware vCenter Server Appliance was appearing every now and again. Call "EventHistoryCollector.SetLatestPageSize" for object "SessionID" on vCenter Server "ServerName" failed.…

Cisco CCNP Training Course – Day 6 - SWITCH

Sun, 19 Oct 2014 21:50:37 GMT

Ok so my Switch exam is booked, so time to get back on top of blogging my bootcamp notes, which is going to be a bit hard now I've left it a few weeks. So, to start, wiping a switches existing config erase startup config delete flash:vlan.dat VLANs 0 =…

#VMworld Day 3 & 4 - Final Notes

Sun, 19 Oct 2014 14:25:13 GMT

So I didnt get a change to write up Day 3 nor Day 4, but now I'm home, I can get into it as writing blog posts and uploading pictures from your iPad to wordpress is pretty horrific to be honest, I was getting ready to launch my said iPad towards the hang…

VMworld #VMworld - Day 2 - Keynote, Sessions on NSX, EUC and performance

Wed, 15 Oct 2014 07:58:46 GMT

So today was the first day of proper sessions and the keynote. This is my first year at VMworld, but you can tell there is something missing slightly, and probably that is a big announcement, we already know about NSX, and most people are waiting for vSphere…

#VMworld 2014 - Day 1

Tue, 14 Oct 2014 08:18:38 GMT

So day one is usually for two things, partner day, and Hands on Labs. Unfortunately the session I was most hoping to see at partner day was "delivering best in class's desktop virt. With horizon 6 and Cisco UCS", I missed due to it starting 20 mins after my…

Signing off to hit #VMworld & plus a republish of my last post

Sun, 12 Oct 2014 15:40:12 GMT

Afternoon, This is me signing off from producing technical posts for a week whilst I attend #VMworld Barcelona for the week. I am taking some technology with me, So if time permits, I will drop some blogs about my days there, and will do a summary when I get…

How to produce good documentation - Part 1 - The foundation of any IT infrastructure

Sat, 11 Oct 2014 10:24:14 GMT

Part 1 - The foundation of any IT infrastructure Part 2 – Rack and Server Diagrams Part 3 - Network IP’s & Interfaces Part 4 - Diagraming a network Part 5 - Diagraming your (Veeam) Backups Oh No, that word.... Documentation is like a dirty word in a…

VMworld Barcelona 2014 - Here I come

Thu, 09 Oct 2014 14:00:54 GMT

So I'm off to do my first year at VMware VMworld in Barcelona next week. Which means no posts from me for over a week. I'm looking forward to it, I actually am excited for the technical aspects, rather than the partying, but I'm happy to be going back to…

Using VMware and CDP information (HP and Cisco Switches)

Wed, 08 Oct 2014 20:37:31 GMT

So on of the most valuable networking features of VMware is setting up CDP information or LLDP (if using non cisco devices). We can see exactly which VMNIC is plugged into which port. ESXi can receive and display CDP information within the client or web…

Creating VPN tunnel between Cisco ASA and Watchguard XTM

Wed, 01 Oct 2014 18:46:46 GMT

Today was the second time I've done this in around a year, it's a little uncommon to be honest, which means googling advice on how to do it, is a bit thin. Todays walk through is also made even more different by the fact that at the branch site containing the…

VMware ESXi - Test Jumbo Packets using VMKping

Thu, 25 Sep 2014 11:34:33 GMT

So first off we need to setup Jumbo frames in a few places. ESXi host Switch the ESXi host and Storage is plugged into Storage device As per VMware ESXi 5.0 and above, you need to also setup iSCSI Port Binding. Ensuring its setup correctly On your host, you…

Microsoft Exchange - No DNS servers could be retrieved from network adapter

Mon, 22 Sep 2014 20:27:38 GMT

The other day whilst virtualising an Exchange 2010 server from Hyper-V to VMware we found that mail routing outbound stopped working. When looking in the event log we found; Error ID: 16025 No DNS servers could be retrieved from network adapter %1. Verify…

How to setup Veeam Direct SAN Backup over iSCSI - Unleash the Speed!

Thu, 18 Sep 2014 15:48:49 GMT

On twitter Rick Vanover posted this link, which intrigued me, giving your Veeam Server access to the VMware VMFS volumes for quicker backups. Sounds dangerous, or maybe it isn't! So I tried it, and I managed to cut my test backup times from 24 minutes to 12…

Cisco CCNP Training Course – Day 5 - ROUTE

Wed, 17 Sep 2014 22:53:11 GMT

Forgive me for taking a few days off from blogging about my training course. As you'll guess I've done the 2 week course. It was very good, The Knowledge Academy provided a fantastic trainer in Darron Smith. So onto my Day 5, its the big one in Route!! BGP!!!…

Nimble Storage - How to update an array

Tue, 16 Sep 2014 12:38:05 GMT

In keeping with the whole Nimble is really to use theme, updates are the same, lets take a look; 1. Open up your web portal to the Nimble Array, click on Administration and then Software. 2. Click the download button, select the update needed, and the…

Nimble Storage - How to configure a device in 4 steps (Using the GUI Tool)

Mon, 15 Sep 2014 18:30:26 GMT

So the last time I used a Nimble Device, I had to configure it (quite easily) using the CLI first due to connectivity constraints at the customers site. However here is how to configure a Nimble in 4 easy steps ready for production use. So unbox, rack and…

Cisco CCNP Training Course - Day 4 - ROUTE

Wed, 10 Sep 2014 22:31:57 GMT

Day 4 - Kind of, the course has mostly followed each of my post, however I have kind of mixed and match a few things so they flow better. Also i've found out how to truncate my posts on the homepage, so it says, click here to read more, or something to that…

Cisco CCNP Training Course – Day 3 - ROUTE

Sun, 07 Sep 2014 23:35:39 GMT

On to-day 3, most of you have probably noticed that I am posting these online a day behind when I actually take the class, which is helpful, as I spend the evening typing up my notes and building the topologies etc in Visio. It's a good way to re-cap stuff.…

Cisco CCNP Training Course – Day 2 - ROUTE

Wed, 03 Sep 2014 21:05:12 GMT

So lets dive into Day 2, One of the things I will also aim to do is re-create the topologies in Packet Tracer and upload the files for your use at some point in the future, here's what we covered today; EIGRP Cont... EIGRP Authentication EIGRP Summerization…

Cisco CCNP Training Course - Day 1 - ROUTE

Tue, 02 Sep 2014 21:00:42 GMT

Note: This is a dump from my notes of the day, I will write more posts on each subject for my training in the future and elaborate as I go on. Just a quick late night post. Due to the changing of the CCNP exams from 31st January, its spurred me on to do…

Nimble Storage - How to configure a device from scratch (Using the CLI)

Mon, 01 Sep 2014 22:22:18 GMT

The other day, I posted about how to setup a volume on a Nimble Storage device, so this post is a bit backwards, as now we look at setting up a device from scratch using the CLI first rather than the Nimble Discovery tool. Lets get started; 1. Rack your…

Nimble Storage - How to create a Volume

Fri, 22 Aug 2014 18:44:53 GMT

A quick friday post, I am upgrading the environment at my work place, and we are putting the fantastic Nimble Storage device as our SAN for the VMware environment. I've not personally installed one of these before until now, but have worked on them whilst in…

HP Chassis and Virtual Connect Firmware Upgrades - Don't bother

Wed, 13 Aug 2014 09:33:22 GMT

So last night was a busy one thanks to the HP Chassis and "fantastic" Virtual Connect system. Bare with this article, as its part what happens blah blah, and part, how to install firmware on Virtual Connect The environment So the environment consists of; HP…

Server 2012 R1/R2 Creating a Network Team and enable Jumbo Frames

Thu, 07 Aug 2014 14:32:09 GMT

Server 2012 now supports NIC teaming, previously you could use HP tools to achieve this in Server 2008 R2 and below, but officially it was never supported by Microsoft. Network teaming Setting up a NIC team in Server 2012 is really simple. You just need to…

Cisco ASA - Allow traffic between two same security level interfaces

Wed, 06 Aug 2014 09:26:52 GMT

This is just a quick one, A customer of mine has two companies running in the same building, using the same ISP connection, as such the Firewall is essentially the core of the network. I put in this network and although its not exactly best practise, its a…

VMware ESXi 5.5 u1 PSOD on HP ProLiant G7 PSOD

Sun, 20 Jul 2014 22:39:01 GMT

For the past few weeks I've been working with a customer to resolve an issue with a re-purposed host where it PSOD every week. Issue: We installed a new HP Gen8 server as a production host in their main site, installed with VMware ESX 5.5 u1, and then took…

Welcome to my lightbulb moment

Fri, 04 Apr 2014 22:08:22 GMT

Good Evening, This is the first step into the wide world of an idea which has been burning away at me for some time. I am a; IT Technician, Engineer, Teacher. I am a geek. Having spent as much time being educated as educating, as it is a never ending circle.…