VM Deployment in Nutanix Community Edition with MDT

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

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

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

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

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…