Disk space is rare. I only have about 1 TB of SSD storage in my lab and I don’t like to waste too much of it. My hosts use NFS to connect to my Synology NAS, and even if I use the VAAI-NAS plugin, I use thin-provisioned disks only. Thin-provisioned disks tend to grow over time. If you copy a 1 GB file into a VM and you delete this file immediately, you will find that the VMDK is increased by 1 GB.
VMware presented the vRealize Operations Manager 6.0 at the VMworld 2014 in Barcelona. In early december, vROps was available for download.
vROps 6.0 is the successor of VMwares IT Operations Management suite vCenter Operations Manager, or vCOps. VMware has aligned the naming scheme with other products, so this release is the first release under the new brand vRealize.
VMware has made some major improvements to this release. One of the biggest advantages is the ability to scale-out.
Part 1 of this series has covered a short overview over vRealize Operations Manager 6.0 and the initial deployment of the virtual appliance. Now it’s time to bring it to life.
Open a browser and enter the IP of your newly deployed vROps appliance. You will get this nice initial setup screen. “New Installation” is always a good start. Click “New Installation”.
Patrick Terlisten/ vcloudnine.de/ Creative Commons CC0
Within five little steps, the configuration of vROps will be done.
I wrote about what’s new in vROps 6 and about the deployment of the virtual appliance. I also described how to migrate the data from the old vCOps vApp. Part 3 covers the decommission of the old vApp.
Enter the IP or FQDN of your UI VM into the browser. Login as admin into the administration UI.
Patrick Terlisten/ vcloudnine.de/ Creative Commons CC0
Before the vApp can be removed, the vCOps needs to be unregistered from the vCenter.
Originally the VCP5-DCV Delta exam (VCP550D) was available until 30. November. I passed it on 22. November, about one week before the planned ending of availability. Yesterday, VMware announced the extended availability of the delta exam. You can find the announcement on the VMware Education and Certification Blog. The exam will be available through 10. March 2015. Previously requested authorizations are still valid.
This delta exam is focused on the differences between VMware vSphere 5.
When you want to go fast, go slow. Otherwise you will get into trouble… Today I tried to quickly deploy a VM from a template and customize this VM with a customization specification. The codeword is “quickly”. The fun started with this error message:
Patrick Terlisten/ vcloudnine.de/ Creative Commons CC0
Fortunately I asked the VMware Knowledge Base, which lead me to VMware KB2086930 (Deploying a template with customization fails with the error: Authenticity of the host’s SSL certificate is not verified).
It’s a common practice to replace self-signed certificates, that are used in several VMware products, with CA signed certificates. I did this in my lab for my vCenter Server Appliance and my VMware Update Manager. While I was working with vRealize Orchestrator I noticed, that it is also using self-signed certificates (what else?). For completeness, I decided to replace the self-signed certificates with CA signed.
My lab environment VMware vSphere 5.
The clock is ticking… Current VCP5-DCVs who need to recertify their VCP can do this until 30. November 2014 by passing the VCP5-DCV Delta exam (VCP550D). The exam can booked online via Pearson VUE and it’s delivered as an online exam. This means, that you don’t have to visit a Pearson VUE test center to take the exam. The costs for the exam are 90,- € plus taxes (in my case ~ 107 €).
While preparing for a VMware vSphere 5.5 update at a customer of mine, I stumbled over VMware KB2085618 (ESXi host cannot initiate vMotion or enable services and reports the error: Heap globalCartel-1 already at its maximum size.Cannot expand.). I checked the HP AMS version in the latest HP custom ESXi image and found out, that version hp-ams-esx-550.10.0.0-18.1198610 is included (source). Unfortunately the bug is not fixed in 10.0.0, but it’s fixed in 10.
This is not a brand new issue and it’s well discussed in the VMTN. After applying the ESXi 5.5.0 U2 patches from 15. October 2014, you may notice the following symptoms:
Some Citrix NetScaler VMs with e1000 vNICs loses network connectivity You can’t access the VM console after applying the patches VMware has released a couple of patches in October:
ESXi550-201410101-SG (esx-base) ESXi550-201410401-BG (esx-base) ESXi550-201410402-BG (misc-drivers) ESXi550-201410403-BG (sata-ahci) ESXi550-201410404-BG (xhci-xhci) ESXi550-201410405-BG (tools-light) ESXi550-201410406-BG (net-vmxnet3) More specifically, it’s the patch ESXi550-201410401-BG that is causing the problem.
