Everything Virtual

Configuring FreeNAS 8.3 – iSCSI and NFS Storage for VMware vSphere

This post will guide you through the configuration of FreeNAS 8.3 for use on VMware vSphere.

It is assumed at this stage that only the installation has been completed, we still need to create and configure the storage.

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vCSA 5.1u1 Update in 7 Steps

In a recent post I showed you how to update your hosts from 5.1 to 5.1u1, whilst it was a nice and simple exercise you mustn’t forget that you also need to update your vCenter server (or in this case appliance).

Following the steps below you will now update your vCSA appliance from 5.1 to 5.1u1.

1. Take a snapshot of your vCSA VM, you want to do this in case you need to roll back the update for any reason.

2. Point your browser to https://<vcsa-ip-address>:5480 This will give you access to the vCSA administrator console.

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Upgrading SQL 2008 R2 Editions – Wizard and Command Line

During a recent Microsoft True-Up piece of work we were doing at work we discovered that 3 of our Microsoft SQL servers had been installed with the Developer edition of Microsoft SQL 2008 R2, this isn’t really an issue because we are licensed for the proper versions but to make life easier for us in the future we decided to upgrade the instances to the correct version now rather than run into this same issue again in the future.

Now there are a couple of ways of doing this but both methods require the installation media and the PID from the target version to hand.

In this guide I will be upgrading from SQL 2008 R2 Standard to Enterprise Edition.

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vForum London

So I had the pleasure of attending the VMware vForum event at Wembley Stadium yesterday. One of the surprise finds at the event was the Condusiv Technologies stand down in the Solutions Exchange.

Now I didn’t realise it but Condusiv Technologies are a company I have had experience of before, for those of you familiar with Diskeeper you will remember the name Executive Software, well at some point Executive Software rebranded themselves as Condusiv Technologies.

For the most part Condusiv were there demonstrating their new V-locity software, the benefits of which are said to be :-

Increase application performance by 50%
Reduce latency by 50% for faster file access
Eliminate bottlenecks without expensive hardware
True "set and forget" management

From what I saw of the demonstration I was very impressed with the potential of V-locity and I have asked Condusiv for an NFR license to do some home testing on my home lab, hopefully a license will be winging it’s way over to me soon so that I can run some tests on my various NAS devices here (both pre and post software install).

In was good catching up with old friends from various different companies (VMware, EMC\MTI, GlobalKnowledge) as well as catching up with some of my fellow #LonVMUG’ers and I was also glad to see at least one other person wearing his CloudCreds t-shirt with pride Smile

This was my first vForum event and I must say it was well presented with just the right amount of detail, the solutions exchange area was full of different vendors and the food\drink provided was top notch.

Over all I was impressed and will be attending next years event as well.

Thank you VMware.

vCenter Server 5.1 – Windows 2012 Now Supported

With the release last week of vSphere 5.1 Update 1 one of the things that was announced was the ability to install vCenter Server on Windows 2012, as my recent overhaul of the HomeLab included an upgrade to Windows 2012 across the environment I had to use the vCSA instead of 2012 because vCenter used a deprecated Service that was no longer available in Windows 2012.

Now that 5.1u1 is out and supports Windows 2012 I will be documenting the installation process using Windows 2012 as the base OS.

ESXi 5.1u1 Upgrade in 7 Steps

So with the release of ESXi 5.1 Update 1 last week it meant I needed to upgrade my home lab environment, using the following steps allowed me to do this really quickly and with little fuss.

1. Place the Host into Maintenance Mode and ensure that there are no running VM’s on the host.

2. Ensure you have SSH enabled

3. Make sure that the Outbound HTTP rule is enabled, either by using the console or via the command line later on (command line is esxcli network firewall ruleset set -e true -r httpClient )

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VMware Cloud Credibility

VMware have just launched the CloudCredibility website that gives you and your team the chance to prove how good you are by awarding points for every challenge\task you complete. It’s a fairly light hearted approach to showing off you and your Teams Cloud abilities from both a technical and non-technical stand point.

It has tasks covering social media, course attendance as well as hosting podcasts and writing books so there are lots of different things to suit everyone.

Have a look and join in the fun Smile