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Nov
7thFor Advanced Users : UBERAlign API / CLI / Powershell
From the beginning I knew some UBERAlign users would want to go into power user mode. The UBERAlign Console was designed to allow for easy use for the average Joe. But, there are people out there with the desire, guts, and ability to script and automate that want more. So this post will inform you on two other options for UBERAlign. 1. The CLI Each vAligner is a Ubuntu Linux VM. On the VM is a set of binary files that do all work. One is a startup file for initializing, one is a daemon for accepting new jobs via the REST API, and the final is the actual magic behind the scenes. From the beginning UBERAlign was designed to be run from the command line. In fact back months ago the vSpecialist actually got a copy of this to try out and help me test. So for those that do not want to use the Console here are some reasons and instructions on how to run alignment, reclaim, and alignment+reclaim jobs manually. Some of the reasons you may want to do this: Hate MS Windows – Since the console is a .Net WPF app some Mac users (@mcowger) have already asked how to skip using a Windows VM. VM size is too big – If the VM is more than 50% of the size of the datastore then a snapshot of it can potentially cause an out of space issue if it grows to full size (which and align [...]
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Nov
3rdStraighten up with a new UBER tool : Presenting UBERAlign
NOTICE: For more info on UBERAlign Advanced (API / CLI / Powershell) features also read the new post here: http://nickapedia.com/2011/11/07/for-advanced-users-uberalign-api-cli-powershell/ You know how in cartoons they show a small snowball rolling down a hill until it grows into a massive beast of a snow boulder? Well, that is kind of how my most recent UBER project has gone. I know it is a been a little while since I have released a tool for the community and I am hopefully making that up with my newest creation: UBERAlign. The idea of creating this came from the lack of a decent free alignment tool out there for VMware admins. Most every other one at there was either something you had to purchase or you had to be a customer of the vender to get access to it. And even after getting access these tools were either (in my opinion) limited in what they did, how they did it, or had become obsolete in a console-less vSphere 5 architecture. For those they don’t know, alignment with Virtual Machine disks on top of Storage Arrays has been a performance issue for a long time. I won’t go into long detail explaining the problem or the benefits to alignment. There are great posts by Duncan (http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2010/04/08/aligning-your-vms-virtual-harddisks/) and Kevin(http://www.blueshiftblog.com/?p=300) on what the issues are and some of the tools available. So my goal in creating UBERAlign was to once and for all create a free and powerful tool resolve this issue for everyone in the VMware [...]
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Mar
2ndMore PS Fun : Fix vCenter Startup w/ PowerShellMore to come on this, but I am working more hands-on lately in my role as a vSpecialist. As part of this I am going to make an effort to post every *shortcut* I come up with along the way. And I love shortcuts… So here is another PowerShell trick. As many of you have experienced. If you have a local SQL server installation (express or not) of vCenter you will sometimes have vCenter not start correctly on boot. This is do to a race condition between the SQL Server services and vCenter. If SQL doesn’t beat vCenter then vCenter will not start. The correct way to fix this is to setup the Dependencies with the vCenter VPXD service to wait till SQL has done its business first. There are actually several good articles out there on how to do this manually. I don’t like to anything manually, so here is a PowerShell script to auto-detect and configure vCenter startup for local SQL installs. It is setup to work with SQL server or SQL server express. I think I got all bases covered but you can easily customize as you like (or use on other services).
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Mar
1stPowerCLI and VAAI : Quick and dirty scriptHow can you enable or disable VAAI across all the ESX hosts in a cluster through a script? This question was tossed up on the vSpecialist email list this afternoon by our fearless leader. Having just played with this I thought I would share my quick and dirty PowerCLI code. This basically asks for your vCenter URL and then asks whether you want to disable or enable across all ESX hosts within that vCenter.
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Feb
16thVirtual Selection : Cloud Constructs for Rapid Prototyping/Testing
Check out that title. Pretty awesome way to sound smart, right? Well this blog post is another one of my long winded ones and concerns my recent 6 week side-project. So a little warning in advance: This is a long read and a minder-bender in spots. Have a hot or cool drink and some time before you start. I think you will enjoy the ending. The Idea I am a firm believer that virtualization and cloud computing are creating new paradigms to approach innovation, operation, and execution within information technology. I find myself inspired by ideas and concepts that would be impossible before the advent of virtualization as a common approach to logical abstraction of x86 compute, storage, and networking. In my feeble mind, I see endless possibilities not only in automation. I also see possibilities in creating intelligent systems; able to respond in way much more organic that we may have thought possible. It is from this belief that this new idea came to me. The lifecycle of applications and infrastructure has been both very a manual and managed process. Creation, changes, and death (decommissioning) are all things that can be automated; but require prerequisite knowledge to orchestrate correctly. You would specifically know the quantity, scope, and configuration of physical or virtual servers prior to building for an application. Likewise, configured settings and metadata for the application would have been tested and discovered through intense integration and regression cycles by development/quality teams beforehand. All of this would be wrapped [...]
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Jan
15thFistful of Cloud : Interactive Cloud Demo
This project start to finish was just over one week. I had a three day birthday weekend where I did the bulk of the work and then spent evenings till early AM finishing this up. And without a doubt this was the most fun to create. Really this blog post is a really a *video* blog post so without further ado I present:
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Disclaimer