Eric Sloof

PowerShellASP is an ASP-like template language for Web Applications; templates contain a mixture of markup (HTML, XML or whatever you want to generate) and inline PowerShell code. At runtime, templates/pages are fully translated to PowerShell code and executed as a single unit inside a PowerShell pipeline, with the results sent to the client browser.

Justin Grote created this script out of a motivation of laziness. Since VM's proliferate so fast, most backup and disaster recovery solutions are a pain in the ass because you have to manually add and remove virtual machines to their backup processes. What if there was a way to automatically add and remove VM's to a backup solution simply because of where they are located in Virtualcenter? What if he had an automated DR solution to removable USB hard drives for my smaller clients that was FREE?

Hence this script. This script dynamically backs up all VM's in a particular Virtualcenter folder using VCB, and drops them out to a USB hard drive for disaster recovery purposes. If I don't want a VM backed up anymore, he simply takes it out of that folder.

Note that this also leverages the new networked method of VCB, so YOU DO NOT NEED A SAN AND DIRECT ACCESS TO THE LUNs.

The script is also flexible enough so that if you do have the SAN VCB configuration, you can do LAN-free backups with this method too.

Note that the query here is just an example. Any way you can return a list of VM's, you can give it to the backup-vm cmdlet.

Last week Carter Shanklin  over at the VI PowerShell blog published an article about managing storage paths with PowerShell. I must admit that I was impressed by it. Based on Carter‘s script I created a nice little demo showing all the info you can retrieve from your ESX servers.

get-VIServer -Server 192.168.178.200 -User root -Password vmware
$MyHost = get-vmhost esx35.ntpro.local
$HostView = Get-View $MyHost.ID
$HostView.Summary.Hardware.Vendor
$HostView.Runtime.InMaintenanceMode
$HostView.Hardware.MemorySize 

Name                 Port
----                 ----
192.168.178.200      443
Hewlett-Packard
False
1065287680

VMware Website-in-a-Box uses content syndication technology to provide an easy way for you to display accurate VMware product and solution content on your own website. With a simple addition to your current web pages, VMware product content will automatically publish. You will no longer will need to update those pages with each new product upgrade. The content will be managed by VMware and pushed to your site.
 

Current product pages include VMware Infrastructure 3, VMware Virtual Desktop Infrastructure, & VMware Lab Manager. Current languages include English, French, German, Italian and Spanish.

Download the Website-in-a-Box presentation.

VMware thanks everyone that submitted for the VMworld 2008 Call for Papers! They had an overwhelming response with over 875 submissions. This year submissions were reviewed and voted on by a content committee, consisting of almost 200 people including industry analysts, VMware customers, partners, and employees. Unfortunately because of limited space, VMware was only able to accept 25% of those submissions.

The decision process was difficult; many quality sessions had to be declined. They are exploring innovative ways to weave those speakers and their content into other areas of VMworld and VMorld.com. Stay tuned for other opportunities to participate.

A core mission for the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) Field Security Operations (FSO) is to secure Department of Defense (DoD) Computing systems. The processes and procedures outlined in this Security Technical Information Guide (STIG), when applied, will decrease the risk of unauthorized disclosure of sensitive information. Security is clearly still one of the biggest concerns for our DoD customers, for example, the war fighter.This STIG was developed to enhance the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of sensitive DoD Automated Information Systems (AIS).ESX Server infrastructures must provide secure, available, and reliable data for all customers. This document will assist sites in meeting the minimum requirements, standards, controls, and options that must be in place for ESX Server infrastructures.

Forbes Guthrie an IT Engineer/Architect who specializes in VMware, Windows & Linux Server technologies, got rid of the old clunky site and just moved his site over to its new home. This should allow him to add more useful services. Hopefully, it will let him post more frequently, bringing you more useful tips and real-world hands-on advice like the VI3 reference card.

This document addresses the security aspects of virtual machine technologies and VMware ESX Server 3.x implementations. While these topics cannot be completely separated from the standard security issues of operating a physical computer or basic issues of running the individual operating systems involved, this document‟s primary focus is on virtual machine security issues. For this reason, we do not cover all of the steps needed to harden the guest operating systems. The Center for Internet Security has multiple documents, which address guest operating system security recommendations. Recommendations are based on a variety of public sources and input from members of the Center for Internet Security (CIS).

PuTTY Connection Manager is a free PuTTY Client Add-on for Windows platforms which goal is to provide a solution for managing multiple PuTTY instances. This is one of the most important missing feature of PuTTY.

This evening I had the opportunity to take a peek at the upcoming version of ESX 3.5. The current version is VMware ESX 3.5 Update 1 Build: 82664 but the build I’m running in my lab is 94067.  I didn’t discover anything new. The only thing that’s different in the interface is the Health Status. This option was already available in ESX3I 3.5. I’m running ESX 3.5 on a HP530 so there isn’t much hardware to monitor. I also heard the rumour that the next release of Virtual Center (expected to be released at the end of July) will contain a supported SVMotion plug-in.