Building custom PowerCli scripts to manager vmware environment

Now that you learned the basics of PowerCli you might be realized the power of this tool and the thousands of changes you can make on your environment with it.

But, if you want to accomplish some specific task and have no idea how to start it. Would not be nice to have Virtual Center telling you the scripts/command required to perform that change?

Well, it’s possible with Onyx.

Onyx is a standalone application that serves as a proxy between the vSphere Client and the vCenter Server. It monitors the network communication between them and translates it into an executable PowerShell code. Later, this code could be modified and saved into a reusable function or script.

Finally it arrived.

Yesterday the post office delivery my copy of Vmware Vsphere HA and DRS Technical deepdive book.




Want to know more about this book…check it here
Why don’t get your own ? I’m sure it worth every penny …buy in here

The history behind it is that a few weeks ago I joined Veeam on a webcast called 5 New ways to use Sure Backup (just click on the link to watch the replay).

At the end of the webcast there was a contest where the firsts correct answers would win this book. Guess what ?!?! I was one of them.

I’d like to thanks Rick Vanover not just by the book or even the opportunity to learn more about their tool, but also for showing care and doing constantly follow up’s to be sure the book has been delivery properly. It’s definitely something we don’t see a lot over there.
If you have a Twitter account (not my case) why not follow him on @RickVanover

Update Manager not downloading ESX 3.5 patches

Part of building a new system is to make sure the new one works, at least, as the old one.

When working on my new Update Manager I configured the download scheduler settings, notification, baselines, etc…

But one thing was not working fine…. There was any patches for ESX 3.5.
Despite the fact the download task just ends very quickly and with a successfully message, there was no patch for ESX 3.5 on my repository, but I do have patches for ESX 4.x.

Well, I started with the basics, checking firewall, internet access, NTFS privileges on the folders, database availability….everything was good.

So after hours of troubleshooting and searching the web I finally found vmware KB 1008308.

It means that if you don’t have an ESX 3.5 attached to your Virtual Center it would not download the patches for it. I assume it’s always true for ESX 4.x patches.
It should be an issue for the majority of fresh environments where no host will be attached until the system is made fully operational.

Then I just added one ESX 3.5 to my Virtual Center and run again the download task…this time the patches for ESX 3.5 were downloaded to my repository.

What just confuses me is that you have the option to select what patch we want to download.




But the true is regardless the option you choose on “Patch Download Settings” it will just download the patches for the systems you already have attached to your Virtual Center.

Weird, right…

Thin Provisioning Performance

I never know how to start a post : (
Let’s make it simple.

Hi !!!

I believe everybody on the VMware world is aware of Thin Provisioning, right…. It has been out there for a long time as one of the new features of vSphere.

What ?!? You did not have time to check it out. I know the felling.

Thin Provisioning in VMware’s word is: “VMware thin provisioning enables virtual machines to utilize storage space on an as-needed basis, further increasing utilization of storage for virtual environments. vCenter Server 4.0 enables alerts and provides alarms and reports that specifically track allocation and current usage of storage capacity to allow administrators to optimize the allocation of storage for virtual environments. Thin provisioning allows users to safely optimize available storage space by using over-allocation and to reduce the storage costs for virtual environments”



It has been introduced (officially) with vSphere 4.0. You can check all new vSphere 4.0 features in here.
But, if you are a smart guy, you are planning to jump directly to vSphere 4.1, which has a couple of new features…see here.

Ok, now that you understand Thin Provisioning you may be wondering, is there any performance impact or benefit ?!?

I don’t want to reinvent the wheel, so check it out VMware’s performance study of Thin Provisioning. There’s a bunch of good information in there, concepts, performance rates, etc.

Wanna a resume ? Performance results between thin and thick disks are similar.
But remember it’s a controlled environment, make your own tests and measure them.

There’s no single solution that fit’s all.