VM Deployment in Nutanix Community Edition with MDT

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The Microsoft Deployment Toolkit is my preferred method for deploying Virtual Machines in the lab (everywhere, really) – There are no potential issues with cloning, software can be automatically installed, and a driver pool can be kept up to date. It also allows for offline servicing of the base image, so no waiting for 140+ Windows updates. One of my latest adventures has been using Nutanix Community Edition (NCE) to get a feel for how … Read more…

Creating a PowerShell Profile

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Inspired by this Hey, Scripting Guy! post, I decided it was time to figure out exactly what a PowerShell profile could do. If you’re like me, you open a PowerShell window, load a module, do some quick commands, come back a few hours later, load some more modules, and so on – all on the same PoSH window. First read the article, then create your own PowerShell profile as follows: [code language=”powershell”] New-Item -ItemType file … 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…

NetScaler Upgrade 10.5 to 11

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This post will cover upgrading the NetScaler code from 10.5 to 11 – more specifically, this covers upgrading from NetScaler 10.5 build 55.8007.e as discussed in my previous post here. The upgrade process is fairly straight forward – download the firmware from Citrix, then login to the web GUI under System, and select ‘Upgrade Wizard’. Note 1: If you are upgrading an HA pair, read this Citrix article first Note 2: If you are upgrading from NetScaler 10.1, … Read more…

NetScaler – One vServer Fits All

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The NetScaler ‘E’ – or enhancement – releases sometimes contain important or very useful features – when Citrix XenMobile was originally released, it required that the NetScaler use the latest ‘e’ release. One feature of particular interest in the latest e releases is the ability to use a vServer for both content switching AND Access Gateway. This may not be that valuable for some organizations, but if you don’t have many external IP addresses, this … Read more…

Goliath Performance Monitor: a Great EdgeSight Replacement

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A brief history of Citrix EdgeSight and Director Citrix EdgeSight 5.4 was released in 2011 with added support for XenApp 6.5 on Server 2008 R2 and SQL 2008 R2. EdgeSight has an overwhelming amount of detail about your XenApp 6.5 farm; it has alerting, tons of reports built on SQL Reporting services, a realtime dashboard, user and device troubleshooters…and then some. The staggering amount of data and tools available in EdgeSight were also one of … 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

North Florida Citrix User Group

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Attention all Citrix users, admins and engineers in the North Florida area! A Citrix User Group is starting up near you! We need to get the official MyCUGC page support, so head on over and register/join at www.mycugc.com – then go to the Group listing and request to join the North East Florida Group. Rather than create individual groups for a Jacksonville Group, Tallahassee Group, Gainesville Group and everywhere in between – why not consolidate … Read more…

NetScaler SSL Content Switch with SSL-Bridge

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Found an issue on NetScaler 10.5 build 54.9 which allows an SSL-Bridge vServer to be the target LB vServer of an SSL Content Switching vServer. If you leave this configured, it will crash the packet engine and the NetScaler will soft reboot. This is not a supported configuration, but it should also not let you make said configuration in the NetScaler – this is fixed in build 57.7 – if not an earlier build. The … Read more…