VMware 10 - Mike Tabor

VMware Workstation updated to 9.0.2

March 10, 2013 VMware

VMware is released a maintenance update for VMware Workstation to version 9.0.2. The update is available for free for all VMware Workstation 9.x customers.

Mostly just bug fixes and a few improvements, here are a few highlights:

Fedora 18 supported as a guest operating system
Windows 8 host permissions issues fixed
VMware Tool updated to support the latest Linux kernels
Improved general host resource management
OVF Tool has been updated to version 3.0.2
Virtual machine sharing improvements
Memory leak which impacted Windows hosts has been fixed

VCP5 Exam: Passed

November 7, 2012March 6, 2017 VMware

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This morning I took the VCP510 exam and passed it on my first go at it!

Overall I felt the exam was a nice challenge, while I can’t go into details of the exam, per the NDA. I will say I was surprised at the number of multiple answer questions and the VPC510 was certainly more “real-world” based and not so much memorizing config maximums.

That said, I’ll do as others have done and list what I used in my preparation for the VCP510 exam…

vSphere 5.1 and View 5.1 are finally compatible

October 26, 2012 VMware

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As mentioned before, I mentioned vSphere 5.1 currently not compatible with any VMware View version. As of yesterday, VMware has finally released a patch (ESXi510-201210001) to correct the incompatibility issues.

Alternatively you can also download an updated ESXi 5.0 ISO. To download the ISO:

Navigate to the vSphere Download Center.
Click View Download for the VMware ESXi 5.1.0 Installable for your version of ESXi.
On the Product Downloads tab, download VMware-VMvisor-Installer-201210001-838463.x86_64.iso.

KB 2035268

vSphere 5.1 currently not compatible with any VMware View version

September 13, 2012September 13, 2012 VMware

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Before you go updating your vSphere to the new 5.1 version that was just released, VMware had just released this alert yesterday (9/12) that vSphere 5.1 is currently NOT compatible with any version of VMware View.

vSphere 5.1 is in the process of being certified against VMware View. We recommend that you do not upgrade vSphere above the supported versions listed in the VMware View 5.1 Release Notes.

For further updates and more information on this alert, refer to KB article:
vSphere 5.1 is not compatible with any versions VMware View (2035268).

If you don’t use VMware View, and are ready to upgrade to vSphere 5.1 be sure to check out the Installing vCenter Server 5.1 best practices from VMware.

Improve Linux VM IO performance by disabling IO Scheduler

August 17, 2012March 6, 2017 VMware

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For a little while now we’ve been seeing RedHat Linux virtual machines performing poorly. Tasks would take considerably longer on the Linux VM’s then other Windows VM’s. After digging around I eventually found that RedHat has it’s own IO scheduler that runs in the background. On a physical box this wouldn’t be a big deal, but as a virtual machine everything is already being processed by VMware hypervisor. The fix, disable the IO Scheduler!

vSphere 5.1 Release Date leaked, maybe?

July 31, 2012August 1, 2012 VMware

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Looks like Sammy Bogaert over at Boerlowie’s Blog has possibly found the release date of vSphere 5.1… maybe?

I was about to download vSphere Update Manager PowerCLI 5.0.

I followed the main site and wanted to check the documentation first. So I clicked the Documentation button.

This lead me to the Docs of Update Manager PowerCLI 5.1! That’s right, 5.1! With a release date of 10 September 2012.

None of the links for 5.1 work, so no news on any new features…

Guess somebody at VMware was a bit too fast to update the website

Nice find Sammy, guess time will tell if the Sept. 10th date is the actual release date or not.

VMware vCenter 5.0 Update 1a released

July 13, 2012 VMware

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VMware vCenter 5.0 Update 1a has just been released and is the first major update since version 5.0.

The main improvements being:

vCenter Server 5.0 Update 1a introduces support for the following vCenter Databases
- Oracle 11g Enterprise Edition, Standard Edition, Standard ONE Edition Release 2 [11.2.0.3] – 64 bit
- Oracle 11g Enterprise Edition, Standard Edition, Standard ONE Edition Release 2 [11.2.0.3] – 32 bit
vCenter Server Appliance Database Support: The DB2 express embedded database provided with the vCenter Server Appliance has been replaced with VMware vPostgres database. This decreases the appliance footprint and reduces the time to deploy vCenter Server further.

VMware Workstation 8.0.4 released

June 14, 2012July 5, 2012 VMware

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VMware has just released it’s forth minor update for VMware Workstation 8, bringing it up to 8.0.4. The looks to contain mostly a few bug and security fixes.

General Issues

Linux guests running the Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later could not be pinged from the host via an IPv6 address.
On rare occasions, Linux guests would suddenly fail to Autofit or enter Unity.
Unity mode would exit if the title bar of an application contained certain non UTF-8 encoded extended ASCII characters.
On Windows hosts, the VMware Workstation user interface sometimes became unresponsive when minimized from full-screen mode if the suggestion balloon was being displayed.
On Windows hosts, the user interface sometimes became unresponsive if the application was rendered on an extended display that was abruptly disconnected.

My VMware View Windows 7 Optimization Guide

May 30, 2012July 6, 2012 VMware

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These are the few steps I do when creating a new "Golden" image. Luckily I don’t have to do these steps all the time as I’ll create the "Golden" image when there is a new upgrade such as when we went from View 4.6 to View 5.0.1. I like to have a new fresh machine using new virtual hardware from the start. You could certainly just upgrade the virtual hardware on the "Golden" image, I just prefer to start clean.

At any rate, here’s my list. Hopefully someone might find it somewhat useful and maybe even others can improve upon it.

Preparing a new virtual machine

Create New Virtual Machine – FILE > NEW > VIRTUAL MACHINE (CTRL+N)
Under Configuration select CUSTOM.
Select a Name, Folder, Host, Cluster, and Storage.
Under Guest Operating System select Windows and then Windows 7 32bit under the Version drop down.
Select which Network (VLAN) and under Adapter select VMXNET 3.
Configure disk size to 30GB THIN provisioned.

VMware Octopus wallpaper

May 15, 2012July 3, 2012 VMware

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Duncan over at Yellow Bricks was nice enough to share this VMware Octopus wallpaper. Of the VMware wallpaper I have this one is my favorite for some reason.