VMware

Home Lab: Migrating from ESX to Proxmox

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I recently converted my home lab virtualization environment from vSphere\ESX to Proxmox and documented some of the useful tools and commands I used to do so. A little history My lab environment has gone through MANY iterations, both in hypervisor and storage: https://blogs.serioustek.net/post/2016/04/25/homelab-a-few-weeks-with-xenserver-and-nutanix https://blogs.serioustek.net/post/2016/04/04/upgrades-lab-local-ssd-hypervisors https://blogs.serioustek.net/post/2015/07/16/backup-vmware-with-veeam-free-powershell-and-freenas https://blogs.serioustek.net/post/2014/07/01/backing-up-vmware-virtual-machines-on-freenas-aspx https://blogs.serioustek.net/post/2014/06/14/vmware-on-freenas-the-right-way-aspx https://blogs.serioustek.net/post/2013/09/07/starwind-san-v8-beta-initial-testing-aspx https://blogs.serioustek.net/post/2013/02/20/freenas-esx-and-nfs-synchronous-writes-and-the-zil-aspx Learning a variety of hypervisors was due mostly to my background in consulting and I’ve tried or used most of the major hypervisors available: HyperV, XenServer, … Read more…

Backup VMware with Veeam Free PowerShell and FreeNAS

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I use FreeNAS to store the virtual machines for my lab. I had previously used NFS as it allowed for really simple backups of VMs – take a snapshot, do a copy from the snapshot directory to a different dataset, remove the snapshot, done. NFS is nice because it allows you to view the filesystem directly from the storage server…NFS on FreeNAS\ZFS is not nice because it essentially requires flash for the intent log due to … Read more…

VMware vCenter Documentation Script Version 1.5

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This is a minor release. What’s new: vCenter permissions and non-standard roles (admin, read-only, etc are built in and thus won’t output) DRS rules and groups Note: the above features are available only in HTML, Word, and export output formats; text is not included and will not be for any minor upcoming features. A major overhaul of the script output functionality is planned for 2.0 and new features outputting in text will be deferred until then. … Read more…

VMware vCenter Documentation Script Version 1.4

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This is a minor release. What’s new: Fix for Word not closing when exporting to PDF (from Webster Framework) Several fixes for HTML general functions and HTML table functions Full output to HTML is now available Download the latest version here: CarlWebster.com My notes and the latest version is available here: http://blogs.serioustek.net/vcenter-documentation

VMware vCenter Documentation Script Version 1.3

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This is a minor release. What’s new: Support for VMware PowerCLI 6.0 (Note: I have not fully tested on vSphere 6 yet – this is just to support the new cmdlets) Beta performance graphs for Hosts and VMs Use the -Chart parameter to give this a try Requires .NET chart controls (http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=14422) – They are included in Windows8\2012 and .NET 4.0 I believe Temporarily saves .PNG images before importing them into the Word document   … Read more…

VMware vCenter Documentation Script Version 1.2

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Happy 2015!! With the new year comes a much requested feature for the VMware Inventory script: the ability to export the PowerCLI data running on a machine without MS Word, then import the data later with a machine that has MS Word, but no access to vCenter or PowerCLI! VCenter Inventory V1.2 So – how does it work? Two new parameters: -Export and -Import -Export runs on a machine with PS v3 and PowerCLI as before, … Read more…

VMware vCenter Documentation Script Version 1.1

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This release is a minor release, fixing a few issues and adding one additional set of information. Bug Fixes: Save as PDF not saving Help text in script not showing for Get-Help .\VMware_Inventory.ps1 -full Removed some extra parameters not used in this script Fixed calculation for CPU\Memory heatmap New Data: Added installed VCenter plugins As always, this and many other documentation scripts can be found on CarlWebster.com

VMware vCenter Documentation Script Version 1.0

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One of the last (and sometimes most painful) steps in most deployment or upgrade projects is the documentation step. Producing usable, accurate documentation can be difficult but it is one of the most important steps in every technology project – the larger the environment, the more important the documentation. VMware vSphere is one of the most powerful, efficient, secure and robust x86 server virtualization platforms available today. It allows the enterprise to consolidate server and … Read more…

ESX PSOD – Can’t Access TTY

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It’s not a good day when an ESX host goes down…thankfully HA brought the VMs back up on another host, but still. Then when the host doesn’t boot back up after…it gets worse. Turns out there was an issue with the storage controller for the local drives – had to load the foreign config and bring the array healthy again. That worked successfully – and ESX started to boot…then I was greeted with this screen: …stuck in busybox. … Read more…