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

OK Folks, here it is… the vSphere Platform 4.1 upgrade has been released. The upgrade contains new features as well as improvements in scalability. Here is a list of a few things to be noted:

• Memory Compression
• DRS Host Affinity
• Storage I/O Control
• Network I/O Control
• Performance Reporting
• Cloud Scale
• ESXi Active Directory Integration
• Expanded HCL

For more details and definitions on the new improvements please got the VMware site and check out the what’s new documentation.  Enjoy!

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.

Error: Network device needed by recovered virtual machine could not be found at recovery or test time

This issue is also impacts IBM N Series SRA. The error listed above is what you will experience if you protect virtual machines that are using distributed virtual switches and try to recovery them.  This issue will be fixed in the next patch, and the next release of SRM. You can talk to VMware GSS for a patch if you need one.  It will only be provided by request, and is available now.  I should mention that there is a small  cosmetic issue connected with this problem that is in vCenter Server, and it will only be fixed in Update 2 of vCenter Server, but will not stop a successful failover.