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Gabrie (one of VMUG 2007 the attendees) downloaded the latest version of ESX 3.5 and VC 2.5 and has written an impressive report.

Today I went to the VMUG event in the Netherlands which was very good again. Especially the session about ESX 3.5 and VC 2.5 and a session by Eric Sloof about VDM2 beta. When I arrived home again, I found a very interesting posting on the many Virtualisation RSS feeds I browse through daily. There was the announcement of the download of ESX 3.5 and VC 2.5. Wow, I hadn't expected it so soon after the delay on december 4th. But I ofcourse had to have it, so I started downloading. After the download had finished I first upgraded my Virtual Center 2.0.2 to VC 2.5.

Gabrie worked all night ;-) and has switched over to Wordpress. He created a new weblog with tons of information about ESX 3.5 and VC 2.5. In his report you can find lots of screenshot’s and finding dealing with : Logon with the VI Client, Getting Started Wizard, Plugins, Hosts & Clusters, Hosts level and Performance graphs.

http://virtualgabe.wordpress.com/

Richard Garsthagen over at Run-Virtual created another nice tool. VMjuggler is an application Richard wrote to use during demonstrations. The program is quite simple, it connects to VirtualCenter 2.x and you can select a VM and 2 hosts. After selecting this you can start the VMjuggler and the VM will be moves every 10 seconds between the hosts. The VMjuggler has been added to the vm4all.com website.

FullArmor delivers on its promise of virtual machine provisioning and automation capabilities with the release of Workflow Studio version 1.1 beta 1.  So, what's new in version 1.1? Among the eleven new enhancement there is one interesting library in particular: the VMware Infrastructure Task Library. With this library you can completely provision and automate your VI3 infrastructure.  Create, start, stop, suspend, resume, move, delete, and modify VMs.

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Eric Sloof is interviewing John Troyer at the VMworld 2007

On VMware Connected, he is going to talk about the greater community of virtualization users and how they connect, both at the home base of communities.vmware.com and elsewhere on that series of pipes. John Troyer has been working on the communities team at VMware for about two years. He worked with internal and external bloggers, keeping the VMTN Blog on a slow steady drip, and is the de facto RSS guy on the web team. He’s also involved with projects like the Virtual Appliance Marketplace, and takes full responsibility for anything you don't like about it.

The eG Monitor for VMware infrastructures (the eG VM MonitorTM), part of the eG Enterprise Suite, is a comprehensive solution for monitoring and managing all aspects of virtual hosts and guests, whether the infrastructure is used to support server or desktop applications. Coupled with the ability of the eG Enterprise Suite to monitor over 80 applications, including Citrix, Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, SAP, and others, the eG VM Monitor – with its patent-pending In-N-Out MonitoringTM technology -- provides a comprehensive end-to-end solution for monitoring and managing the performance of virtual IT infrastructures.

vmSight, the leader in virtual network intelligence, offers the Basic Edition of its product suite FREE. Designed to complement your desktop virtualization initiatives, this set of systems management tools provides valuable new management capabilities with powerful reporting for exceptional visibility. Seeing is believing. Click here to register and download the FREE Basic Edition. For more information about vmSight's product suite, visit www.vmsight.com. What is virtual network intelligence? It's a new category of virtual system management tools that provides extensive reporting, analytics and alerts on all network activity within your virtual environment. And that means improved IT accounting, visibility for IT planning and information for IT compliance.IT administrators easily view and monitor activities by user, group, desktop, server, application and time of day to meter usage in the virtual environment. Reports support IT accounting to determine chargebacks and IT planning to optimize configuration. Monitor your access right policies in real-time and receive alerts when virtual network activities do not comply with those defined policies. Easily report on detailed user activity in the virtual environment to validate your virtual network security.

Falconstor created two slapstick movies (part 1 & II) about data protection and posted them on YouTube. Never lose valuable data again. FalconStor data protection solutions, including the new VMware-certified FalconStor CDP Virtual Appliance for VMware, ensure continuous availability and complete protection. No matter what IT issues you face, FalconStor will make it seem as if it never happened.

Server Sprawl and escalating IT costs have managers and system administrators scrambling to find ways to cut costs and reduce Total Cost of Ownership of their physical infrastructure. Combining software applications onto a single server, even if those applications are from the same software vendor, can be dangerous and problems hard to troubleshoot. Virtualization allows you to consolidate many servers onto a single physical server reducing hardware, electrical, cooling, and administrative costs. These virtual servers run completely independent of each other so if one crashes the other are not affected. Planning and implementing a server consolidation is a complex process. This book details the requirements for such a project, includes sample forms and templates, and delivers several physical to virtual migration strategies which will save both time and costs. Readers of this book will easily be able to plan and deploy VMware, Microsoft Virtual Server, and Xen.

Key Features:

• Create a virtual network to exchange information or provide a service to other virtual machines or computers.
• Use virtualization to support removable media such as CD or DVD optical disks.
• Reduce server costs, administration overhead, and complexity .

About the Author

David Rule Jr. (VMware VCP, VAC, MCP, Citrix CCEA, CCA) is a Senior Consultant for Choice Solutions LLC, an Overland Park, KS-based systems integrator that provides IT design, project management, and support for enterprise computing systems. Davids primary role is in developing virtualization strategies for Choice Solutions clients.

Product Details

Paperback: 500 pages
Publisher: Syngress (November 23, 2007)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1597492175
ISBN-13: 978-1597492171

All the ESX servers I’m managing will be moved to a data centre next month. Since I never bothered to configure the ILO board, I faced a potential problem. When the servers are at a location where I can’t sit down behind a real console I must use ILO instead. You can configure the ILO board when you reboot your server and press <F8> but then all your VM’s will be out of the air. The other way is installing hponcfg in the service console.
First you have to download three rpm files.

hponcfg-1.6.0-1.linux.rpm
hpasm-7.7.0-115.rhel3.i386.rpm
hprsm-7.7.0-99.rhel3.i386.rpm

Then copy those three files with WinSCP to the tmp folder of your server console.Logon to your service console and install the rpm files using the following command.

[root@esxhost tmp]# rpm -ihv hponcfg-1.6.0-1.linux.rpm hpasm-7.7.0-115.rhel3.i386.rpm hprsm-7.7.0-99.rhel3.i386.rpm

After that we have to activate hpasm and hprsm (cmasm2d will fail) .

# hpasm activate

# /opt/compaq/hprsm/hprsm activate

==============================================================================
NOTE: New cma.conf entries were added to the top of /opt/compaq/cma.conf
==============================================================================
Starting HP Lights-Out Drivers and Agents (hprsm):  cpqriisd cmasm2d cmarackd
   Starting cpqriisd:[  OK  ]
   Starting RIB agent (cmasm2d):[FAILED]
   Starting Rack agent (cmarackd):[  OK  ]

Create a test.xml file and copy it to your tmp folder.

<RIBCL VERSION="2.0">
<LOGIN USER_LOGIN="Administrator" PASSWORD="anytext">
  <USER_INFO MODE="write">
   <MOD_USER USER_LOGIN="Administrator">
    <PASSWORD value="vmware2007"/>
   </MOD_USER>
  </USER_INFO>
</LOGIN>
</RIBCL>

Execute the following command and your password is vmware2007.

[root@esxhost tmp]# hponcfg -f test.xmltest.xml
Firmware Revision = 1.22 Device type = iLO 2 Driver name = cpqci
Script succeeded

You can find additional XML files to configure other ILO options here.

Continue reading "How to reset the ILO password on your ESX server" »