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Notes on Upgrading the VMware vCenter Server Appliance 5.1 to 5.5
I’ve done a few upgrades of the VMware vCenter Server Appliance (vCSA) 5.1 now, to the GA release of 5.5 (build 1312297). Here are my observations: You need a second IP temporarily for the upgrade. The...
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Updates to My vCSA 5.1 to 5.5 Notes
I just updated my notes on upgrading the VMware vCenter Server Appliance from 5.1 to 5.5. I added a couple of things that have become issues: Remove all non-standard users from SSO before the upgrade....
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Store Logs Centrally
This is post #7 in my December 2013 series about Linux Virtual Machine Performance Tuning. For more, please see the tag “Linux VM Performance Tuning.” It is universally true that over time a...
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Disk Partition Alignment Is Still Important
This is post #9 in my December 2013 series about Linux Virtual Machine Performance Tuning. For more, please see the tag “Linux VM Performance Tuning.” I have written about this almost yearly (beginning...
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Zero Out Free Space
This is post #10 in my December 2013 series about Linux Virtual Machine Performance Tuning. For more, please see the tag “Linux VM Performance Tuning.” When we talked about the rationale behind storing...
View ArticleVMware vCenter Server Appliance 5.5.0 Has An Insecure NTP Server
Update: I have updated this article to reflect some new information provided by VMware. I have also published new notes and discussion as a separate blog post. On January 10, 2014 a vulnerability in...
View ArticleUpdate to VMware vCenter Server Appliance & NTP Issues
Earlier today I posted “VMware vCenter Server Appliance 5.5.0 Has An Insecure NTP Server.” One of the reasons I like VMware is that they’re responsive to customer issues. This situation is no...
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Upgrading to VMware vCenter Server Appliance 5.5 from Windows vCenter 5.1
My coworkers and I recently undertook the task of upgrading our vSphere 5.1 environment to version 5.5. While upgrades of these nature aren’t really newsworthy we did something of increasing interest...
View ArticleVMworld 2014 Session Voting Open
One of the most interesting things about VMworld is the public session voting, which is now open. Not many conferences allow attendees to have a say in what gets presented at the conference. If you’re...
View ArticleCentOS 7 Refusing VMware vSphere Guest OS Customizations
So I just spent two hours of my life trying to get my CentOS 7 VM template to deploy correctly with a vSphere customization specification. No matter what I did it would customize the VM, then...
View ArticleYou Cannot Use open-vm-tools to Customize VMs
Homer Simpson: Kids: there’s three ways to do things; the right way, the wrong way and the Max Power way! Bart: Isn’t that the wrong way? Homer Simpson: Yeah, but faster! My biggest pet peeve with open...
View ArticleWhy Use SD Cards For VMware ESXi?
I’ve had four interactions now regarding my post on replacing a failed SD card in one of my servers. They’ve ranged from inquisitive: @plankers why would you use an SD card in a server. I’m not a sys...
View ArticleLatest ESXi Turns Off Transparent Page Sharing, So Watch Your RAM
Transparent Page Sharing is a technology from VMware that essentially deduplicates memory. Instead of having 100 copies of the same memory segment it keeps just one, and returns the savings to the user...
View Article9 Things You’ll Love About vSphere 6.0
vSphere 6.0, finally. It’s been in beta for what seems like an eternity. Betas are like Fight Club, where the first rule of participation is that you may not talk about your participation. But today’s...
View ArticleWhen Should I Upgrade to VMware vSphere 6?
I’ve been asked a few times about when I’m planning to upgrade to VMware vSphere 6. Truth is, I don’t know. A Magic 8 Ball would say “reply hazy, try again.” Some people say that you should wait until...
View ArticleThree Thoughts on the Nutanix & StorageReview Situation
I’ve watched the recent dustup between VMware and Nutanix carefully. It’s very instructive to watch how companies war with each other in public, and as a potential customer in the hyperconverged market...
View ArticleUse Microsoft Excel For Your Text Manipulation Needs
I’m just going to lay it out there: sysadmins should use Microsoft Excel more. I probably will be labeled a traitor and a heathen for this post. It’s okay, I have years of practice having blasphemous...
View ArticleInstall the vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) Without Ephemeral Port Groups
Trying to install VMware vCenter in appliance/VCSA form straight to a new ESXi host? Having a problem where it isn’t listing any networks, and it’s telling you that “Non-ephemeral distributed virtual...
View ArticleSoftware is Always Broken
I’m sitting here watching my iPhone update to iOS 11.0.1. Apple says that there are just a couple of fixes: some security updates and a fix for the Exchange email problems. The update is sure taking a...
View ArticleAdvice On Downgrading Adobe Flash
VMware has a KB article out (linked below) about the Adobe Flash crashes that happen if you’re running the latest version of Flash (27.0.0.170). A lot of us were caught off guard recently when our PCs...
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