Punching Clouds

To anyone who loves animals, and has a big heart, from my wife.

To all my friends,

This is an urgent plea for your help. While I was in the Dominican Republic last week, I rescued a tiny little puppy the size of my two hands from drowning (see pix below). We managed to get the puppy back to New York, where my dad had agreed to raise her (since I just adopted another dog just last week), but unfortunately the poor little thing has taken a turn for the worst. She is currently in critical condition, and is in an ER vet clinic getting tests. Only an hour ago she stopped breathing, and when the vet called my dad to tell him, little August started breathing again and lifted up her head. I am so sorry for asking for help, but Rolo and I are sort of hurting for $$ right now, after the wedding and all.

Here’s how the story goes:

It was last Friday, August 20th, my birthday and the day before my wedding. I decided to take a peaceful run on the beach to clear my head, and spend some time being introspective and reflective. I had ran about two miles, when a little dark object caught my eye along a stretch of rocky shore. As I got closer, I recognized immediately that it was a puppy, being swept out by the tide, and then struggling helplessly everytime it washed up. I ran over and lifted it immediately from the warm waters. She collapsed in my hands. I asked some men who were preparing to sail out on their boat if it was their “perro,” but the shook their heads and asked me in spanish if it was mine and if I wanted it.

I poured the water I had with me into my hand, and she refused because she thought it was salt water. Without a question in my mind, I turned around in my tracks and walked back as fast as I could to the hotel. I felt like I couldn’t go fast enough. I stopped a few times to cover her in the shade of my body because it was so hot. I said outloud, “It’s gonna be okay, August.” (naming her after my old dog April who we had named after the month we had rescued her).

Luckily, outside the hotel, I met two of my friends, one who took the shirt off her back so that I could sneak her into the resort (that did not allow pets). I called room service for milk, improvised my cutting a straw in half from a juice box in the mini bar, and began feeding her milk through the straw. To my relief, she lapped it up immediately.

To summarize the rest of the story, Rolo and I spent the rest of my birthday finding a vet to take August in and administer shots, as well as get the right paper work. On Tuesday, my dad and mom and Rawlinson’s mom took the dog back to NY, making a 2 hour stop in the Agriculture office in the airport. Last night, as I flew back to LA, my dad woke up to hear August whimpering in pain, and he rushed her to the vet at 3am. She is currently there undergoing treatment and tests.

The vet has told me that they have to do a battery of tests. The estimate is completely unaffordable for us at this time, so I am asking you all out of the kindnesses of your hearts to donate whatever you can to August’s treatment. People had asked Rolo and I what we needed or wanted for our wedding, since we didn’t register anywhere. For us, gifts and money are not important…it was having our friends be at the wedding, and receiving all the phone calls and well wishes on facebook that counted. Now, however, I am asking that if you would like to give us something…please give us whatever you can to help save this little dog. That’s all that matters to us right now. Please make any contributions to Rawlinson’s PayPal account: rawls27@msn.com. Seriously, anything will help: $1, $5, whatever….Please pass this along to anyone who you think would like to donate to this cause.

Here is the link to see August pics on Facebook

Thank you from the bottom of our hearts,

Mollie and Rawlinson

Alright here it is.. for all of you vSphere PowerCLI fans out there, VMware education has a new two day instructor led class based on vSphere automation with PowerCLI. Many of you in the community have had the pleasure of collaborating with some of the very active, and proficient PowerCLI experts like LucD, Duncan, and others, now you’ll have an opportunity to learn how to get down and dirty with the vSphere PowerCLI. The class will help you fine tune your know knowledge and skill on the vSphere PowerShell framework in order to improve efficiency, manageability, and flexibility in your vSphere environments.

The class introduces the use of PowerCLI, and procedures to automate vSphere 4 functions and tasks. With the constant and rapid growth of virtual datacenters it’s always a good idea to know and understand how to use the tools that can help improve the efficiency required to manage this type of demand as well as manageability, availability, and flexibility. The target audience is vSphere 4 platform systems administrators. system architects, and also IT managers. Having experience with Windows, Linux operating systems, as well as scripting experience with Windows PowerShell, VBScript, Perl, UNIX shell, Python, and any other language with variables and control structures will be helpful.

The objectives are to provide a scenario where attendee will understand how to use PowerCLI to automate server management, configuration and other task as listed below:

• Automate VMware ESX configurations
• Automate the provisioning  of virtual machines
• Automate changes to virtual machine configurations
• Automate cluster operations
• Automate reporting

The listed tasks are functions which take a great deal of management efforts that can now be simplified, and executed with more efficiency.

VMware vSphere: Automation with vSphere PowerCLI Course Outline

Introduction to vSphere PowerCLI

• Define the main vSphere PowerCLI object
• Define the main commandlets in vSphere PowerCLI
• Connect to vSphere infrastructure
• Get help for commandlets

Automating ESX Host Configurations

• Automate creating of virtual switches on ESX hosts
• Automate configuration of datastores on ESX hosts

Virtual Machine Provisioning, Configuration, and Protection

• Automate creation of virtual machines
• Change virtual machines settings programmatically
• Run vSphere PowerCLI scripts in virtual machines
• Automate virtual machine protection

Automating Cluster Operations

• Automate virtual machines storage migrations
• Automate VMware vMotion
• Create a VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler/VMware High Availability cluster
• Automate cluster configuration
• Automate resource pool creation and configuration

Automating Reporting

• Automating reporting about virtual machines
• Automating reporting about ESX Hosts
• Automating reporting about clusters

You’ll spend about 60% of the class in a hands-on lab environment learning how to do all of the listed tasks. The class will definably get you thinking about many more task that you would like to automate, and now you’ll have a base understanding to get you started. Shout outs to the lead instructor of the class, who’s been involved with the development and pushing PowerShell for as long as I can remember, Joe Christie, AKA ” Gandalf the Grey”.  For Schedules and availability checkout the forever active VMware Education site.

Recently I’ve been getting questions about upgrading the operating system on the server where vCenter server is installed. For the most part, I’ve gathered information from a group of folks who are somewhat confused and misled on this procedure. So far I’ve heard all types of misinformation on what’s needed and what steps are required. I want to particularly address one of those false statements, that you must create a new vCenter database when upgrading to a new version of windows.  I want to make it perfectly clear that you do not have to create a new database. 

Now let me help out a bit by clearing things up and providing some substance.  Upgrading the Windows operating system where vCenter server is installed from an older version of Windows OS (Windows Server 2003) to a newer version (Windows Server 2008, or Windows Server 2008 R2), doesn’t require a new vCenter Server database. regardless of what the reason may be for the upgrade (whether it’s based on going from a 32-bit to a 64-bit architecture of the OS or for an increase of management capacity for vCenter). The assumption is not accurate that in order to perform this type of upgrade a new database is required, or even going as far as to thinking that it may even be a best approach is incorrect as well.

The creation of a new vCenter database may be acceptable for environments that intend on getting a fresh start, but definitely not something larger environments consider when planning an upgrade of any sort. A new vCenter Server database is a new virtual infrastructure inventory. That means reconfiguration of the logical architecture, adding, and reconfiguring all of the settings of the virtual infrastructure like:

• Host
• Clusters
• Resource Pool
• Alarms
• Access Permissions
• and more

Upgrading the operating system on which vCenter server is installed is something that can be done without the need of creating a new database, and it can also be done in a couple of different ways. In order to upgrade the Windows operating system you should follow Microsoft’s recommendations, but when doing an in-place upgrade all services related to vCenter should be stopped before proceeding.

vCenter Server Services

Another approach to this upgrade would be to simply install vCenter Server in a newly provision system with the current and desired version of Windows. Now in order to do this effectively perform the following steps before installing vCenter Server:

• Stop vCenter related services in the Windows Services snap-in (services.msc) of the running server
• Create a new System DSN pointing the new server to the database location
• Import the SSL keys from the running server

SSL Keys Location

• Install vCenter Server on the newly provisioned system and DO NOT reinitialized the database
• Copy the SSL certificates to it’s default location on the new system

The vCenter Server SSL directory under Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2 is located under a hidden directory called ProgramData located in the root drive.

vCenter Server SSL directory under Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2

I hope this helps those of you looking into performing OS upgrades where the vCenter Server is involved. Let me know if there are any questions or issues. Windows Server 2008 R2 is not currently supported by VMware for vCenter 4.0, but Windows Server 2008 is officially supported. : )

Here is a topic that many VMware customers often ask about, “How do you I delete old data from the vCenter Server database”. It’s no secret the vCenter database grows on a day to day basis and overtime some of the stored information becomes outdated. That doesn’t mean the old information is useless, as it may need to be available for auditing purposes. The vCenter database is capable of reaching some significantly large sizes, depending on the size of the managed environments. That can have an impact on the performance of the vCenter Server. When the data stored in the database is no longer relevant to the state of the environment, removing the old data can do some good.  The procedure on how to properly remove data from the vCenter database was published by VMware in a KB article that is publicly accessible on the company’s site. The procedure is not something that any administrator could perform or should normally perform as not every virtualization administrator poses DBA skills. The KB article is intended for experience DBA’s, as it deals with working with a third party relational database management system and not a VMware oriented product. The awesome fact here is that VMware has put together a video of the procedure, which makes the procedure very easy to follow and execute by pretty much anyone with the the right access to the systems involved in the procedure, including virtualization administrators without DBA skills. The video is an excellent addition to the step by step KB article.

Watch the video listed below, and if you find it useful, subscribe to VMware KBTV channel on You Tube for many more KB based video. Enjoy!

Purging Old Data from vCenter Server Database Procedure

While working on a multi-site deployment of vCenter Site Recovery Manager 4, I came across an error that seems to be caused by the Storage Replication Adapter (SRA). I encountered this error while installing both the SRA and the vCenter 4 onto a HP that was running Windows Server 2008 32bit operating system.

The issue seems to arise when you launch the installation for this particular vendor’s SRA.  The application starts to install and then halts with an error that reads “The $PRODUCT_NAME$ is not supported on this platform.” as shown in the below screen shot.

SRA Error Message under Windows Server 2008

A note about the environment: The vCenter Server was also installed on that version of the operating system. If you’re operating in an environment that requires the use of the latest versions of Microsoft’s operating systems, such as Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server 2008 R2, and you’re attempting to configure SRM, then this problem will happen.

That message is problematic, since nearly all of the VMware vSphere applications are supported and compatible with the latest version of Windows.  When you get the message, you may be forced to use an older version of Windows Server, which would then require you to rebuild, re-install, and configure the vCenter server onto a new system.

After researching the issue, I came across a useful work around.  Cormac Hogan, one of VMware’s finest, provided this particularly helpful approach:  He instructed me to run the HP LeftHand SRA application in Windows Server 2003 SP1 comparability mode.  After doing so the SRA was installed successful.  To setup the HP LeftHand SRA to run in the Windows Server 2003 SP1 do the following:

• Right click on the application package
• Go to Properties
• Select the comparability tab
• Select the Run this program in comparability mode for, in the comparability mode window
• From the list of modes  choose (Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1)

Windows Server 2003 SP1 Comparability Mode

So, if you ever come across this issue, don’t rush to change or reinstall vCenter and SRM on an older version of Windows.  Instead, just follow the instructions mentioned above. Hopefully these issues will be addressed and resolved by the respective companies in the near future.  Keep me posted if you run into an other issues. Enjoy : )