vmware

vExpert 2017 - My 2 cents about the increasing number of vExperts

Last Wednesday, VMware has published a list with the vExperts for 2017. The wait is over, vExpert 2017 has been announced at https://t.co/lNE1KzAG3n. Thank you to everyone who applied. pic.twitter.com/N466wz1p29 — VMware vExpert (@vExpert) February 8, 2017 I’m on this list. I’m on this list for the fourth time, which makes me very happy and proud. I was surprised that I’m on this list. I have written only a few blog posts last year.

VMware EUC Access Point appliance - Name resolution not working after deployment

As part of a project, I had to deploy a VMware EUC Access Point appliance. Nothing fancy, because the awesome VMware Access Point Deployment Utility makes it easy to deploy. Unfortunately, the deployed Access Point appliance was not working as expected. When I tried to access my Horizon View infrastructure behind the Access Point appliance, I got a HTTP 504 error. The REST API interface was working. I was able to exclude invalid certificates, routing, or firewall policies.

VCP7-DTM certification beta exam experience

Nearly a month ago, a tweet caught my attention: New Blog Post: Discounted VCP7-DTM Beta Exam for a Limited Time https://t.co/IkwLTDdvO5 — VMware Learning (@VMwareEducation) October 4, 2016 These beta exams are a cost-effective way to achieve certifications. The last beta exam I took, was the VCP6-DCV beta. Because I already had the VCP6-DTM on my to-do list, the new VCP7-DTM beta exam was released just in the right moment.

Why I moved from NFS to vSAN... and why it went wrong

I wanted to retire my Synology DS414slim, and switch completely to vSAN. Okay, no big deal. Many folks use vSAN in their lab. But I’d like to explain why I moved to vSAN and why this move failed. I think some of my thoughts are also applicable for customer environments. So far, I used a Synology DS414slim with three Crucial M550 480 GB SSDs (RAID 5) as my main lab storage.

Replacing an expired lookup service SSL certificate on a vSphere PSC

A few days ago, I ran into a very nasty problem. Fortunately, it was in my lab. Some months ago, I replaced the certificates of my vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA), and I’ve chosen to use the VMware Certificate Authority (VMCA) as a subordinate of my AD-based enterprise CA. The VMCA was used as intermediate CA. The certificates were replaced using the vSphere 6.0 Certificate Manager (/usr/lib/vmware-vmca/bin/certificate-manager), and I followed the instructions of KB2112016 (Configuring VMware vSphere 6.

HPE 3PAR OS updates that fix VMware VAAI ATS Heartbeat issue

Customers that use HPE 3PAR StoreServs with 3PAR OS 3.2.1 or 3.2.2 and VMware ESXi 5.5 U2 or later, might notice one or more of the following symptoms: hosts lose connectivity to a VMFS5 datastore hosts disconnect from the vCenter VMs hang during I/O operations you see the messages like these in the vobd.log or vCenter Events tab Lost access to volume due to connectivity issues. Recovery attempt is in progress and the outcome will be reported shortly

Missing hardware status tab in the vSphere Client

I thought, everyone knows it, but I’m always being asked “Where’s the hardware status tab?” after an update from vSphere 5.x to 6. Many customers still use the vSphere Client (C # client), and steer clear of the vSphere Web Client. To be honest: Me too. I often use the C# client, especially if I do mass operations, or for a quick look at something. This is really nothing new, the answer is clear.

Monitoring hardware status with Python and vSphere API calls

Apparently it’s “how to monitor hardware status” week on vcloudnine.de. Some days ago, I wrote an article about using SNMP for hardware monitoring. You can also use the vSphere Web Client to get the status of the host hardware. A third way is through the vSphere API. I just want to share a short example how to use vSphere API calls and pyVmomi. pyVmomi is the Python SDK for the VMware vSphere API.

How to monitor ESXi host hardware with SNMP

The Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) is a protocol for monitoring and configuration of network-attached devices. SNMP exposes data in the form of variables and values. These variables can then be queried or set. A query retrieves the value of a variable, a set operation assigns a value to a variable. The variables are organized in a hierarchy and each variable is identified by an object identifiers (OID). The management information base (MIB ) describes this hierarchy.

First steps with Python and pyVmomi (vSphere SDK for Python)

In December 2013, VMware made an christmas gift to the community by releasing pyVmomi. pyVmomi is a SDK that allows you to manage VMware ESXi and vCenter using Python and the VMware vSphere API. Nearly 18 months are past since then and pyVmomi has developed over time. I’ve started to play around with Python, and I’ve written about the reasons in one of my last blog posts (Hey infrastructure guy, you should learn Python!