New Vembu BDR Suite Release (version 5.2.0)

Earlier this month, April 2022, Vembu released version 5.2.0. This version has some great new features I thought I’d feature here. Restore to Microsoft Azure BDRSuite now allows restoring the VMware VMs, Hyper-V VMs, Windows Server & Workstation backups to Microsoft Azure. You can initiate the restore directly from your BDRSuite Backup server or Offsite DR Server. BDRSuite 360 Server…

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VMware Top 100 Influencers

Back in December, I was contacted by Noell Grier, with the VMware communities team, to join the VMware Influencer 100 Club Welcome and Kickoff Meeting! I was shocked to be included in this list. It’s been fun being part of this program! Thank you to Noell and VMware for the honor of being a part of this program! I’ve known…

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vExpert 2020

I’m honored to be awarded VMware vExpert again for 2020! I’ve been lucky to have been awarded the vExpert title every year since 2015. The vExpert title is awarded to those who give back to the Virtualization community. Are you active on social media on VMware topics? Do you blog? Do you present at VMUG Events or VMworld? These are…

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One of my favorite tools – Remote Desktop Manager by Devolutions

One of the tools I’ve been using for many years now is called Remote Desktop Manager by Devolutions.  Based on the name, you’d think it’s just another RDP tool, but it’s much MUCH more! There are 2 versions of the product.  There is a FREE version, which gives you limited functionality, and an ENTERPRISE version for full functionality.  There is…

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Migrating Roles & Privileges from an old vCenter to a new vCenter using PowerCLI

So we’re finally upgrading an old environment running vCenter 4.0 to a new vCenter running 5.5.  Instead of attempting an upgrade, we’re building new.  As it’s a new build, we had to find a way to migrate the roles & privileges to the new vCenter. I have done this in the past utilizing the “Cheap Disaster Recovery” scripts from Gabe’s…

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My First VMworld Experience

            So, VMworld US 2015 was my first time being able to experience VMworld first hand, and not by streaming keynotes and watching recorded sessions months later.  As a VMUG Leader, I’ve experienced VMUG Meetings and UserCons before (both as a leader and a member) but this was a whole different animal! First off, I…

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PowerCLI Script to list VMs not specifically set to Thick Eager Zeroed

First, I’ll start with a little back story. We recently deployed an EMC XTremIO All-Flash storage appliance.   The recommendation we got from EMC, for the best deduplication ratios, was to use the Thick-Eager Zeroed disk format.  No matter how many times I tell my coworkers to make sure to use this format when deploying VMs to the xTremIO LUNs, once…

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PowerCLI Script to change the DRS Slider

So, I have a cluster of hosts that makes up our QA Environment.  As with most QA environments, it’s tight on resources and very over-subscribed.  On a regular basis, I have to move our DRS Slider to be more aggressive, RUN DRS to refresh recommendations, and then move the slider back.  This allows DRS to rebalance the cluster.  Today, I…

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PowerCLI Script to migrate VMs from one vCenter to another

Hey everyone, this is another guest post from Ben Liebowitz, Matt’s brother. Before I get into the script, I’ll give you some background…  We are working on migrating VMs off of our vSphere 4.1 environment to our new vSphere 5.5 environment.  The 4.1 environment is using the Nexus 1000v Virtual Switch while the 5.5 environment is using a vDS switch.…

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More vSphere 4.1 Enhancements – Welcome Back PVSCSI Driver!

As I keep digging into documents and KB articles I keep finding more and more things to like about vSphere 4.1.  Today’s find has to do with the PVSCSI driver. With the release of vSphere 4.0, VMware added a new paravirtualized SCSI driver into the VMware Tools that provides better virtual disk performance than the standard LSI driver.  The PVSCSI…

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