Category: Virtualization
Do you have Cisco Switches? Are you using CDP?
In my office, we use Cisco gear for networking. Cisco has it’s own protocol called the Cisco Discovery Protocol (CDP). CDP allows you to identify information about the device you’re connected to. Be it from a server to see what port you’re plugged into on the switch, or from the device! There’s a program for Windows called CDP Monitor that…
Teach your co-workers to lock their PCs with the help of a harmless prank!
The goal of this is to teach your co-workers to be more security conscious and LOCK THEIR PC when they walk away from their desk. Locking your PC stops unauthorized people from accessing your PC, viewing a document that has sensitive data, AND playing a prank such as THIS! This is especially important when you have access to sensitive data,…
Is Your Flash Plugin Crashing with the vSphere Web Client?
I had this problem recently. No matter what browser I used, I couldn’t get past the login screen of the vSphere Web Client. My PC had upgraded to Flash Player 27.0.0.170 a few days ago. I attempted to uninstall this version and install a previous one with no success. But after doing some research, I found a KB Article from…
Using PowerCLI to Create a Local Scratch Partition
My company recently purchased some Dell Servers with ESXi installed to local SD cards. The issue we had was that the 8gb SD cards that came with the server and there wasn’t enough space on the cards for a scratch partition. We ordered the servers with a single 300gb HD in order to get the RAID controller, so we decided…
vDocumentation: Check Out These Scripts To Automate Your Documentation!
Now that VMworld 2017 US has come to a close, many of the sessions are already up on youtube to watch. One of the ones I watched yesterday was SER2077BU – Achieve Maximum vSphere Stability with PowerCLI Assisted Documentation. My friend, Ariel Sanchez Mora (@arielsanchezmor), and his friend, Edgar Sanchez (@EdmSanchez13), put together these scripts to automatically document your environment.…
PowerCLI script to forcibly delete a Datastore that is reported as in use.
Have you ever tried to delete a datastore and get an error saying the Datastore is in use? You browse the datastore and see nothing on it. The pre-checks when you unmount it all pass, yet you cannot delete it. We had this problem. VMware support directed us to delete the partition using the partedUtil command, but I didn’t like…
Updating Dell Firmware/BIOS en mass
We recently ran into an issue where we had to update the Firmware & Bios on a bunch of Dell servers. As these are VMware hosts, we couldn’t just run the Dell System Update Utility, as I would on a normal Windows host. My coworker, @bspagna, and I decided to look at doing this via the iDRAC. Prerequisites: Dell Repository…
PowerCLI Script to Check Host Over-commitment Percentage & Ratios
At my previous employer, we had a Dev/QA vSphere environment that was very over provisioned. The environment had lots of CPUReady issues with VMs having to wait for CPU time, which caused things to be slow, etc. We knew this but the application teams didn’t understand. I ended up writing a PowerCLI script to check the CPU overcommitment and sent…
Script to backup your vCenter DRS Rules
I was thinking yesterday, I have a script that I run on a monthly basis to backup my vDS configs… Shouldn’t I also have something that does the same for my DRS rules? So, I wrote a script that I can schedule to run on a weekly/monthly basis to backup my DRS rules. I have multiple vCenter servers, so I…
PowerCLI Script to create new vDS Portgroups
We deployed new hosts into one of our office locations. Because these hosts would have different number of uplinks as well as use a LAG group instead of normal dvUplinks, we decided to create a new vDS Switch. Then, we needed to re-create all the portgroups as well. I figured, instead of manually adding 15-20 portgroups, I’ll automate it. I…