Eric Sloof

I’m delivering a VMware View training this week. When I reached the “Replicate Server” chapter we had to do a lab with the “Hercules virtual appliance”. The goal of the lab is building a multiple “Connection Server” environment and let the appliance do the load-balancing.  Although the “Hercules virtual appliance” is well documented and even has a VA page at the VMware website, I had a hard time to get it working. The virtual appliances available on http://istanbul.sourceforge.net/ either have a IDE disk or an old SCSI disk which isn’t compatible with ESX 3.5. I converted the “Hercules virtual appliance” to the Open Virtualization Format (OVF), and it’s available for download at the following address :

http://www.ntpro.nl/software/Hercules-SCSI-ESX3.zip

Here’s the way to set it up:

• Import the OVF virtual aplience.
• Power-on the Hercules VM.
• Open a console. Login as a user-ID of "root" with a password of "root".
• Enter the following command at the command line:
• pen 443 10.168.100.3:443 10.168.100.4:443

The format of the command is: pen <port-number> <first-server:port> <second-server:port>. There is a space between the first port number and the first server IP. There is a second space between the first server's 443 port and the second server's IP.

It runs on a Linux OS built from scratch to have a minimal footprint. It can run with just 32MB memory for normal usage and you can increase memory requirements for the appliance as you need. It also has a built in web server, SSH server, DHCP client. You can administer the machine remotely via SSH. It is setup for DHCP so the networking is setup automatically. A webserver is installed to both serve up this page and to help you test different configurations. The load balancing functionality is provided by the excellent open source project pen.
The amount of disk space used by it is 4.0 MB. The virtual disk will expand as needed and has a maximum size of 100 MB. This is the minimum size of a virtual disk that can be created in VMware Workstation.  The  compressed/zipped image of this appliance is 2.5 MB !

Mike has rented out his advertisement space and is living in wealth now. He doesn’t have to earn his money with writing book anymore, so he’s giving them away. :-) You can download the first chapter of Mike's SRM book at RTFM-Education.

"This book will teach how install and configure VMware's Site Recovery Manager product. It also covers in detail the failover and failback processes - and I will guide you through step-by-step through the setup of the product. This book is not filled with project management padding that typifies a lot of IT books. It's practical and technical, and assumes you are already pretty familiar with VMware's Virtual Infrastructure products including ESX 3.5 and VirtualCenter 2.5. In this book you will learn the strengths and weakness of the Site Recovery Manager product, and show you the common pitfalls and errors that can happen, and also more importantly why they happen, and how to fix them."

Update : Mike did it again, another Four Free Chapters from the Vi3Book are online.

In addition to the ESXi backup through VCB that was introduced with version 2.0, Veeam Backup 3.0 now supports ESXi backup without VCB. Veeam Backup is the only VMware backup solution that lets you backup and restore virtual machines running on all existing editions of ESXi, including ESXi free.

Did you ever wonder when a particular version of VMware ESX was launched? Well Harold Schoofs, my former colleague at the Kadaster in Apeldoorn has searched through history and created a time-line containing al launched ESX versions. The timeline ends at December 2008, maybe we can add a new version to this timeline next week.

Tripwire is proud to announce OpsCheck- a free tool to ensure vMotion operation. OpsCheck analyzes configurations of ESX servers and their VMs, many of which are often easily overlooked. If OpsCheck discovers any configuration discrepancies that affect VMotion, Tripwire's vMotion Troubleshooting Guidance provides tactical, specific recommendations for your environment, allowing you to immediately bring your system into a "VMotionable" state.

The new module supports the following platforms: Citrix XenServer, Microsoft Hyper-V, Parallels Virtuozzo Containers, Virtual Iron and VMware ESX. Here is what’s unique about the module:

It provides advanced modeling and side-by-side comparison for a broad set virtualization platforms. Unlike other solutions that focus only on servers and platforms, the module takes into account both technical and commercial dimensions of each solution:

• Hardware, Servers – new, redeployed and upgraded. 
• Storage arrays and HBAs since these components dramatically affect the TCO.
• Software licensing costs for virtualization platforms and management software.
• Services (e.g. training, consulting).

The module leverages a rich repository with servers, blade enclosures, storage arrays, HBAs and virtualization software maintained and constantly updated by Lanamark. Based on conversations with Lanamark's customers and partners, it became clear that calculating the number of servers required and balancing workloads across these servers is not enough. What is needed is the ability to design and compare end-to-end server virtualization solutions across virtualization platforms with hardware, software and service components.

If you’re seeking answers for your most difficult VMware related questions, you really should pay a visit to this year’s VMware community lounge. The following experts are at your service:

Duncan Epping, - VMware Senior Consultant and owner of Yellow-Bricks
Gabrie van Zanten, - Owner of gabesvirtualworld
Jason Boche, - VMTN Moderator, Minneapolis Area VMUG president, and owner of Boche.net
Alan Renouf, - Owner of Virtu-Al, Powershell Enthusiast
Steve Beaver, - Tripwire, VMTN Moderator, Published Author, and contributor to Virtual Black Hole
Scott Herold, - Quest, owner of VMGuru.com and accomplished Author
Thomas Bryant, - VizionCore and VMTN Moderator
Wil van Antwerpen, - Owner of vi-toolkit.com
Eric Sloof, - VMware trainer and owner of ntpro.nl
Tom Howarth, - VMTN Moderator and owner of PlanetVM

So don’t forget to put the following dates in your agenda: Tuesday 24th and Wednesday 25th  from 13.00 to 14.00.

This morning, Marco Tijbout, who's one of my VMware View training attendees brought me up-to-date about the release of the official, high quality icons and diagrams from VMware. You can create your VMware diagrams and presentation the best with these graphics. From the official branding team! The icons can be used by VMware Certified Professionals (VCP) and VMware Architects (VCDX) to develop high quality diagrams using brande collateral.

Scott Herold has finally gotten around to creating some videos of PowerGUI in action when managing a VMware infrastructure. This extends his primer on getting started with PowerShell and PowerGUI. He has created 5 new videos that are best viewed in the following order:

1. Establishing Connections to your VMware Infrastructure using the PowerGUI Console
2. Navigate your VMware Infrastructure using the PowerGUI Console
3. Execute Links and Actions in the PowerGUI Console
4. Create and Save Filters using the PowerGUI Console
5. Using the PowerGUI Script Editor

The VMworld Europe 2009 Vimeo Group provides a great way to swap your VMworld movies. This VMworld Vimeo Group is much the same as other Groups you can join online. Vimeo Groups are places where people of similar interests meet to exchange videos. At this Vimeo Group, you also can follow other VMworld Europe 2009 fanatics who are visiting Cannes.

http://vimeo.com/groups/vmworldeurope