VSPHERE DESIGN WORKSHOP DIARY

Boche.net is giving a good diary type accounting as he goes through this class.

Day 1, Day 2, 

HP BLADE-SERIOUS KB OUT

VMware ESX/ESXi 4.1 host with Broadcom bnx2x (in-box driver version 1.54.1.v41.1-1vmw) experiences a loss of network connectivity and a purple diagnostic screen:

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1029368

We have not experienced this and we are using the 1.54 driver (it replaced the 1.48 driver when we did the vSphere 4.1 upgrade). 

I called VMware tech support today, and they will have a 1.6x driver out 2nd week of November which should address this and other issues.

Vmware tech I spoke to said use the 1.6 driver and not the older 1.48 driver.

We still have a open ticket because we are not getting any networking performance info in vCenter using the 1.54 driver.

VCAP4-DCA LAB TEST VIDEO TUTORIAL

Hi folks...sorry...but I have been swamped at work. 

VMware education has released this video showing how the test for VCAP4-DCA is performed using a LAB environment setting!

GETTING THIN DISK SMALL AGAIN

I was recently approached on can we shrink a Thin Disk after is gets expanded. Originally I didn't think this was possible. The scenario that was given was I have a thin disk, a large amount of data is copied which fills the disk and grows the this disk....then this data is deleted inside the guest vm.

I found this documented process to get the thin disk small again...but be aware very labor intensive and probably causes an I/O storm during the process.

http://www.virtualizationteam.com/virtualization-vmware/vsphere-virtualization-vmware/vmware-esx-4-reclaiming-thin-provisioned-disk-unused-space.html

VSPHERE 4.1 PASSWORD SECURITY ISSUE!!!!

I just learned from http://www.virtuallyghetto.com/2010/07/esxi-41-major-security-issue.html that apparently there is a bad security bug in password authentication. The bug checks for only the 1st 8 characters of a password, ouch! Learn more at the link above or see this KB 1024500 for workarounds.

VCLOUD DIRECTOR TRAINING VIDEOS

You should start exploring this new product with these excellent training videos.

http://www.hypervizor.com/2010/09/a-lot-of-videos-on-vmware-vcloud-director/

POWERCLI POSTER AND QUICK REF PDF

You should grad this resource!

http://blogs.vmware.com/files/powercli-poster.pdf

VSPHERE TEMPLATE PROBLEM WITH 4.1

A combination of datastore maintenance (I removed some datastores--one that actually had ISOs that might have been attached) and possibly vsphere 4.1...I noticed I was getting "Call "PropertyCollector.RetrieveContents" for object "propertyCollector" on vCenter Server"

See the link below. Removing the vm from inventory and adding it back fixed the issue. I have two templates though that so far this had not worked on.

http://snipurl.com/184uyd