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How to evaluate vSphere Data Protection without DNS?
A fellow colleague of mine was looking to deploy the latest vSphere Data Protection Advanced (VDP[A]) 5.5 in his lab this past week to check out some of the new enhancements made to VDP and...
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Restoring VSAN VM Storage Policy without vCenter Part 2: Using vSphere API
Last week I demonstrated a manual method of recovering a VSAN VM Storage Policy when vCenter Server is no longer available by using a VSAN command-line utility found in the ESXi Shell called...
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SPBM (Storage Policy Based Management) MOB in vSphere 5.5
A handy little tool that was useful for me which might come in handy for others too while working on my VSAN VM Storage Policy recovery article is the SPBM (Storage Policy Based Management) MOB which...
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Did you know OVF supports a cool feature called Dynamic Disks?
A couple of weeks back I had the pleasure of meeting Anders Madsen who is the lead engineer for the very popular and useful tool called ovftool. While having a discussion on a variety of topics with...
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How to upgrade to the latest VSAN Beta Refresh of RVC on Windows?
A variety of new updates can be found in the latest VSAN Beta Refresh including a new RVC (Ruby vSphere Console) namespace called SPBM (Storage Policy Based Management) that allows users manage and...
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Deploy a truly dynamic OVF using Deployment Option based on the 4 Computes...
After learning about the Dynamic Disks feature in OVF, I decided to revisit OVF Deployment Options again and investigate whether it was possible to include all four computes (CPU, Memory, Storage and...
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How to properly clone a Nested ESXi VM?
I often hear from users that they would like to be able to just clone from an existing Nested ESXi VM that has already been configured and just create additional Nested ESXi VM instances from that. For...
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How do I find my SSO Server 5.5 Site name?
During an SSO (Single-Sign On) Server 5.5 installation, you may have noticed a new input parameter called Site Name that you must now specify. This new Site name is meant to help users identify a...
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Hybrid environment leveraging SSO Multi-Master Replication between vCenter...
In vSphere 5.5, the SSO (Single-Sign On) component has been completely re-designed to help simplify the management of your SSO Server(s). A built-in automatic multi-master replication architecture is...
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How to verify SSO Multi-Master Replication is properly configured & working?
I wrote an article yesterday demonstrating a hybrid configuration using the new SSO Multi-Master Replication in vSphere 5.5 between a vCenter Server for Windows & a VCSA (vCenter Server Appliance)....
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Why is there a "No access" vSphere Role?
vSphere's (vCenter Server & ESXi) authorization system includes several pre-canned Roles such as Read-Only, Administrator and Virtual Machine Administrator as an example. One of the roles that has...
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Early Xmas gift from VMware - pyVmomi (vSphere SDK for Python)
For vSphere customers and partners who use the Python programming/scripting language, Christmas may have just arrived early. I just found today, VMware has published an initial release of their vSphere...
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Automating vCAC (vCloud Automation Center) 6.0 Identity & Appliance...
vCloud Automation Center (vCAC) 6.0 was released a couple of weeks ago and I have been wanting to give it a spin in my lab, especially given the new architecture and distribution form factors (Virtual...
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Automating vCAC (vCloud Automation Center) 6.0 IaaS & SQL Server installation
Apparently I decided to take on my own challenge of trying to figure out how to automate the installation of the vCAC 6.0 Windows component called IaaS after finishing up my automating vCAC (vCloud...
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Automating vCloud Application Director (AppD) configuration
After publishing my two-part series on automating vCAC 6.0 installation and configuration here and here, I received an interesting inquiry on how to automate vCloud Application Director (AppD)...
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Automating VMware ITBM (IT Business Management) configuration
Over the years I have had the privilege to install the majority of VMware products in either my production environment when I was a customer or in my personal home lab for testing. While in the process...
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How to restart the ESXi management network via command-line?
A great question that was brought up on Twitter yesterday by Andreas Peetz who asked the following:Is there a way to restart the mgmt network in ESXi via a cmd line? You can do this from the DCUI, but...
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How to automate NTP configurations on the VCSA using the CLI
NTP configurations should be a mandatory setting for everyone, regardless of whether we are talking about VMware products or general infrastructure software. It is just as critical as having proper DNS...
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Quick Tip: How to quickly find the release & build number on VCSA
I have been spending quite a bit of time in the lab lately (researching, prototyping, breaking things, etc.) and one of the challenges I have is figuring out which environment I am actually logged...
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vSphere Web Client Plugin for Custom Attributes
I just learned about a very cool vSphere Web Client Plugin that was developed by a fellow vExpert, Patrick Haefner who shared this during the South Germany VMUG back in February of last year. The...
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Having some fun with the Marvel Comics API & vSphere SDK for Python
As a child of the 80's, I still remember waking up super early on a Saturday morning to watch some of my favorite cartoons including Transformers, GI Joe, Ninja Turtles and many of the Marvel cartoon...
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VMware VSAN APIs
For customers who are currently evaluating VMware VSAN, the vSphere Web Client is the primary interface for managing and configuring VSAN. However, these exact same VSAN operations can also be accessed...
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VMware VSX - One plugin download site to rule them all?
VMware PEX (Partner Exchange) took place this week in San Francisco and as you would expect there were many announcements both from VMware as well as from our partners regarding new updates and...
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vdq - A useful little VSAN utility
While re-building a couple of my Nested ESXi VMs for VSAN using some newer builds, I came across a nifty little VSAN utility called vdq which I assume stands for either VMware Disk Query or VSAN Disk...
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Why you should rename the default VSAN Datastore name
Something that I have noticed early on when working with VSAN is that the VSAN datastore name is automatically selected for you and will always default to vsanDatastore. This is not a bad thing as it...
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