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Mike Tabor

ESXi

  • How to install VMware vCenter Log Insight

    June 27, 2014March 6, 2017 VMware
    0 Comments

    VMware vCenter Log Insight

    Log Insight is a real-time log management and analytics solution, and one of VMware’s newest product. Log Insight was recently updated to version 2.0 and available to download here.

    Below we’ll go through the steps to installing VMware Log Insight and you’ll soon see just how easy it is to get Log Insight up and running.

    Read More “How to install VMware vCenter Log Insight”

  • VMware vCenter Server 5.5 Update 1b released

    June 13, 2014 VMware
    0 Comments

    vCenter Server 5.5 Update 1b released

    VMware released vCenter Server 5.5 Update 1b today. The release does not bring any new features but instead patches a few bugs and possible security issues such as the heartbleed fix and most recent OpenSSL as mentioned in CVE-2014-0224. vCenter 5.5 Update 1b now includes the OpenSSL library which has been updated to versions openssl-0.9.8za, openssl-1.0.0m, and openssl-1.0.1h.

    Read More “VMware vCenter Server 5.5 Update 1b released”

  • Clone VMware ESXi USB boot drive to another USB flash drive

    April 21, 2014 VMware
    0 Comments

    A few days ago one of my hosts in my home lab was displaying an alarm message:

    Lost connectivity to the device

    Lost connectivity to the device mpx.vmhbaXX:XX:XX:XX backing the boot filesystem /vmfs/devices/disks/mpx.vmhbaXX:XX:XX:XX. As a result, host configuration changes will not be saved to persistent storage.

    The last part of the message (“persistent storage”) made me think it might have something to do with the USB drive due to the fact that a similar message appeared when setting up the home lab on the Intel NUC’s. After some research it appears my assumption was correct and that the USB flash drive I was using to boot from was indeed starting to fail.

    Read More “Clone VMware ESXi USB boot drive to another USB flash drive”

  • Upgrade VMware ESXi 5.5 U1 using command line

    March 14, 2014April 10, 2015 VMware
    0 Comments

    esxi 5.5 update1

    In case you missed it somehow, VMware released ESXi 5.5 Update 1 this week. In the last update I also used the command line to upgrade my Intel NUC hosts, which worked flawlessly. This time I’ve updated via command line as well and this is how.

    Read More “Upgrade VMware ESXi 5.5 U1 using command line”

  • vSphere 5.5 Update 1 has been released, includes VSAN.

    March 12, 2014 VMware
    1 Comment

    VMware vSphere 5.5 update 1

    VMware has officially released vSphere 5.5 U1 which includes a number of improvements, fixes, and most excitedly the production ready version of VSAN!

    What’s new

    • vCloud Hybrid Service vSphere Client Plug-in, is now available in vSphere Web Client.
    • vCenter Server is now supported on Windows Server 2012 R2.
    • A number of resolved issues

    Read More “vSphere 5.5 Update 1 has been released, includes VSAN.”

  • Upgrade ESXi host to ESXi 5.5 using VMware Update Manager 5.5

    January 10, 2014March 6, 2017 VMware
    2 Comments

    A while back I wrote about how to upgrade to ESXi 5.5 via command line which works great when you only have a few hosts as each host has to download the ISO from the web each time. This time I’ll show you step by step how to upgrade your ESXi 5.1 host to ESXi 5.5 using VMware Update Manager 5.5 (aka VUM).

    For this post I’m going to assume you have already upgraded your vCenter and VUM to versions 5.5 as well as the VUM plugin installed. So lets begin!

    Upgrade ESXi host to 5.5 using VMware Update Manager (VUM)

    1. Open the vSphere client and click on Update Manager
      VMware Update Manager icon

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  • Restore a VM using the {vm}-flat.vmdk file

    December 15, 2013January 13, 2015 VMware
    34 Comments

    missing vmdk file error

    A couple days ago I was asked the question “An admin deleted the vmdk file associated with a VM, there are no snapshots or backups of the VM . Can we restore this VM somehow?“. I believe in backups, I like to have my VM’s backed up so that I can depend on them for events just like this very issue. At first I was stumped, until the {vm-name}.flat.vmdk was mentioned. That’s when I remembered a method to recover a VM using the vm-flat.vmdk file that I had actually done 2-3 years ago.

    Read More “Restore a VM using the {vm}-flat.vmdk file”

  • How to install VisualEsxtop

    November 13, 2013November 18, 2013 Tools
    0 Comments

    If you haven’t already heard, VisualEsxtop is a Fling developed by a few VMware Engineers that provides a java based GUI to the every useful ESXTOP. As an added bonus provides a description of each counter, multiple windows, the ability to sort metrics, and even provide basic graphs. Oh and it’s FREE!

    Setup and install on Windows 7 is pretty easy as well:

    Visual ESXtop

    Read More “How to install VisualEsxtop”

  • Shrink a thin provisioned VMDK disk

    November 7, 2013November 3, 2013 VMware
    8 Comments

    When maintaining a Horizon View environment I like to keep my parent images as small as possible and over time a thin provision disk can start to grow on you if you don’t watch it – be it from downloading installers, updates, or even running disk defrag. While there isn’t a simple, one click button in the View Administrator Console there is a fairly easy manual method using vmfkstools.

    Before we can use “vmkfstools” to shrink the VMDK file we must zero out any unused space on the thin provisioned disk. A simple way of doing this is by using a free utility called SDelete from Sysinternals.

    Read More “Shrink a thin provisioned VMDK disk”

  • Setup Synology Syslog server for VMware ESXi

    October 14, 2013March 6, 2017 Home Lab
    1 Comment

    After performing my home lab upgrade, ESXi now runs from a USB stick and because of that vSphere would complain that the system logs where on non-persistent storage:

    ESXi syslog error

    If I wanted I could have ran the vCenter Server Appliance (vCSA) as it comes with it’s own syslog server, or I could have used something like KIWI or Splunk to be my syslog server. I instead went the route of my Synology NAS as it too has the ability to act as a syslog server and these are the steps I performed to setting it up.

    Read More “Setup Synology Syslog server for VMware ESXi”

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