All posts tagged vSphere

Filtering and Auditing within vRealize Log Insight

The article below describes one of the ways to implement vRealize Log Insight into an environment where a (security departments) syslog server is already available and where this server ideally only receives filtered events and auditing information around changes to the filters. Let’s start of by saying that with the introduction of ESXi6, VMware makes […]

New-DeployRule : Cannot process argument transformation

While doing some vSphere 6 Auto Deploy development I found out that when using PowerCLI 6.3 R1 (latest release when writing this article) and using the New-DeployRule command you will receive an error message stating: New-DeployRule : Cannot process argument transformation on parameter ‘Item’. Unsupported version URI urn:rbd1/3.0

Datacenters vs Clusters within the vCenter Inventory

Recently I got involved in a discussion about “Creating multiple Datacenters with one Clusters rather than one Datacenter with multiple Clusters” First of all lets get the definitions of these objects summarized (as stated in the vSphere Datacenter Administration Guide) Clusters A collection of ESX/ESXi hosts and associated virtual machines intended to work together as […]

BIOS settings in a VMware ESX(i)/vSphere Environment

Over the last period I’ve noticed that a lot of customers aren’t aware of BIOS settings that can be changed as a best practice for VMware ESX(i)/vSphere environments. In this article I want to outline some of these best practices specifically based on HP Hardware, but feature-like options are available within other vendors as well. […]

Setting up vSphere ESXi 4.1 Scripted Installation

Scripted installation is  a new feature for ESXi which is introduced with the release of vSphere 4.1. In this article I’m describing the setup of my home lab in which I use this new feature. Please be advised that this article assumes some basic understanding of Windows and ESX and gives you some guidelines which you can […]

Microsoft Cluster Service support on vSphere (iSCSI)

Lately a customer asked me about Microsoft Cluster Service support on a vSphere iSCSI environment. The  VMware Documentation for vSphere and vSphere Update 1 states: Before you set up MSCS, review the list of functionality that is not supported for this release, and any requirements and recommendations that apply to your configuration. The following environments and […]

SCSI Bus Sharing on the VM Boot Disk SCSI Card

Lately I’ve been asked to review a PID (Project Initiation Document) for a new File Server project based on Linux/GFS v2 (General File System) hosted on VMware vSphere. I noticed that the PID was talking about a dynamic File Server that could (and even would) grow towards 100 TB storage space. That number immediately set […]

Testing Scenario's VMware / HP c-Class Infrastructure

Since my blog about Understanding HP Flex-10 Mappings with VMware ESX/vSphere is quite a big hit (seeing the page views per day) I decided to also write about the testing scenario’s which should all be walked through before taking a design as this into production. In my blog I stated: Last word of advice: while implementing […]

Creating easy to identify LeftHand Volumes on ESX/vSphere

Coming from mostly HP EVA environments I got used to identify a Volume/LUN by there LUN number which was a real unique identifier. I could always “talk” LUN number and be sure that it was understood and unique. So ever since I’ve been working with our LeftHand environment I disliked the way that every Volume/LUN is marked […]

VMotion and Exchange 2010, not supported

Just a short blog post about Microsoft Exchange 2010 in combination with VMware vMotion. We are running this combination hosted on vSphere platform and noticed that whenever we vMotion over a Exchange 2010 Mailbox server that is using DAG (Database Availability Group’s), the DAG will fail. 25-05-2011 Update for Exchange 2010 SP1: Thanks to Toti […]