Mike Tabor

Fixing, This host currently has no management network redundancy

October 26, 2017February 18, 2018 VMware

I recently redid my VMware home lab environment and after enabling HA the warning message “This host currently has no management network redundancy” started displaying on each of my ESXi hosts.

This warning happens because in a HA cluster there is a requirement for the management network to have redundant NICs, but in my case I’m using Intel NUCs which only have a single NIC and since this is only a lab I don’t care to see the warning so lets disable it.

Be social! How to start a blog

October 24, 2017June 20, 2019 Other

0 Comments

This year marked my first year of going to VMworld and before I left I asked several people and the Twitter’s on advice and overwhelmingly the advice was wear comfortable shoes and to be social and talk with as many people as you can. I can’t tell you just how much those two pieces of advice are really worth.

While I was at VMworld several people told me being social has helped them immensely. From getting help when problems arise to landing their new dream job and everything in between. I even talked to a few people that was there but wasn’t really involved in the community and wanted to know how to get started.

For me blogging has been one of the better things I’ve done as it’s not only helped me learn new things, but also help teach others. It’s something I enjoy, thought don’t do as often as I like, and figured I’d start there – how to start a blog.

How to migrate a VMware virtual machine to AWS

October 9, 2017October 12, 2017 AWS

5 Comments

At work we’ve been toying with the idea of moving some of our VMware workload off to AWS and I’ve been tasked with migrating a couple VMware virtual machines to AWS as a proof of concept for the time being.

In this post I’ll show how I setup the AWS Connector and did the migration from VMware to AWS using the AWS Server Migration Service.

How to Add Login Banner to vSphere Web Client

September 4, 2017September 6, 2017 VMware

2 Comments

If you have the pleasure or meeting certain audits or security compliance then having a login banner message on your systems is a pretty common requirement. Sometime ago I detailed how to add a login banner message to ESXi hosts, below I’ll show how easy it is to do the same with your VMware vSphere web client or HTML5 client using vSphere 6.0 Update 2 or better.

How to install Backblaze on Synology NAS

August 24, 2017October 3, 2017 Synology

38 Comments

In case you’ve missed it, Crashplan announced yesterday that they are no longer offering a family backup plan but instead focusing on business plans. Immediately people started asking me on twitter for alternatives.

Well one option would be to upgrade to the more expensive Crashplan business plan or another option would be to check out Backblaze!

In this post I’ll be showing you just how easy it is to use Backblaze on your Synology Diskstation NAS – all with native Synology apps. No need to worry about upgrades breaking your backups or 3rd party solutions!

How to update VMware ESXi 6.5 to 6.5 Update 1

August 16, 2017August 15, 2017 VMware

4 Comments

With the release of VMware vCenter 6.5 Update 1 also comes VMware ESXi 6.5 Update 1 and just like vCenter there are a number of changes, updates, and fixes for ESXi as well in 6.5 Update 1 – you can see the release notes here.

Yesterday I made a post on how to upgrade VMware VCSA 6.5 to 6.5 Update 1. Below I’ll show you three ways to upgrade your ESXi hosts to 6.5 Update 1.

Update vCenter Server Appliance from 6.5 to 6.5 Update 1

August 15, 2017August 16, 2017 VMware

0 Comments

VMware just released VMware vCenter 6.5 Update 1 just last month, in case you’ve missed it check out the release notes as there are a lot of fixes, improvements and additions.

In this post we’ll see just how easy it is to update the VMware VCSA. Before you do any VMware update I’d highly recommend checking out the VMware Interoperability Matrices to check compatibility of other VMware products. Once you’ve done that, lets begin!

Backup and Restore VMware VCSA 6.5

August 9, 2017 VMware

0 Comments

With the release of vSphere 6.5, the VCSA has had a built-in and convenient way easily backup the configuration, inventory and even historical data right from the VAMI and directly into a TAR bundle. VMware has also made restoring the VCSA from a backup just as easy as well.

Below are quick and dirty steps to backing up and restoring your VMware VCSA!

VMware P2V Permission to perform this operation was denied fix

July 27, 2017 VMware

10 Comments

Just the other day we had a Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard physical server that needed to be P2V’ed, and after trying to use VMware Converter Standalone 6.1.1 we ran into the error message “Permission to perform this operation was denied” after entering the source machine details.

Even after trying to start VMware Converter as “Run as administrator” the error persisted. Below is the workaround we performed to quickly allow us to P2V the physical server.

How to create a virtual machine on a Synology NAS

June 25, 2017 Synology

25 Comments

A common request I’ve seen among Synology NAS owners, is the ability to run virtual machines directly from their NAS. Recently Synology released a beta version of their new Virtual Machine Manager package that allows users to do exactly that.

Below I’ll detail how to install, configure, and create a Windows 10 virtual machine on my Synology DS1815+.

Before getting started, your Synology NAS not only needs to be compatible but also needs to meet a couple requirements:

Have at least one Btrfs volume
4GB or more memory (now might be a great time to check out my Upgrade Synology DS1815+ to 16GB RAM post)
Running DSM 6.1.1 or better.

You’ll also want to have a couple ISO images downloaded and ready; Windows 10, Synology Guest Tools, and Windows Virtio Drivers.

With that, lets get started!