Let me start off by stating that this is NOT supported…..

I wanted to attach a local drive to a VM, but wanted the ability to move this drive to a physical Windows server at a later time without the time consuming data migration or drive reformatting. Although there is no way to do this through the VIC, there is a way to do this in the console.

First we need to find the disk we want to use as an RDM. This is accomplished by running the following:

ls -al /vmfs/devices/disks/

In this example the disk I needed was vmhba0:1:0:0….. Take note of  the string starting with vml.

Now we need to create the placeholder vmdk we will attach to our vm. We do this with the following command:

vmkfstools -r /vmfs/devices/disks/vml.<String we retrieved above> /vmfs/volumes/<Existing DataStore>/<VM Path>/<NAME>.vmdk

Now the only thing we need to do is to add the existing disk to our VM. You will notice the summary shows the new disk as a “Mapped Raw LUN”

Fire up the VM and format the disk for whatever file system you require.

Enjoy

     Whether I am looking to test out a new capability or solution, or simply grabbing screenshots for documentation, I almost always turn to VMware Workstation in order to quickly and easily deploy a test environment in order to get this done. In this post I will show you how to deploy a test environment in VMware workstation. It is assumed that you are familiar with OS deployments and this will not be covered in this article.

Prepare Base OS VM

Open VMware Workstation and create a new Virtual Machine

I name the template with the OS type and “Template” as the suffix

Install the OS and configure this VM with any necessary customizations or base software.

Shutdown VM and create a snapshot.

Deploy VMs required to stand up test Environment

Create a Clone of the newly created and configured Base OS VM.

When asked for “Clone Source” choose “An existing snapshot” and select the snapshot created in the previous section.

For “Clone Type” choose “Linked Clone” this will allow you to deploy the new VM with limited disk space requirements.

Name the new VM

Click Finish and your new VM is created

Repeat this process for all VMs needed for your test environment. This will quickly deploy your test lab, with a minimum amount of disk space required. I will cover the use of “Teams” in a later article, but these steps can be used there as well.

Duncan Epping over at Yellow Bricks has posted a great article explaining the inner-workings of VMware DRS. Like he states in his article, I have never had to trouble shoot any DRS issues and have taken for granted that it just works. It is good to understand what is actually taking place under the hood.  Thanks Duncan!!

Paul Buckle over at xtravirt has created a very useful batch file for downloading all the VMware documentation. This makes a really handy offline reference library especially if you need the information at the speed of fast. You will need to register in order to download this, but it is worth the registration. Thanks Paul. You can find the download link here

I can watch this video over and over (I know.. I’m sick).. Who could of imagined that someone could create a music video about VMware virtualization. I guess they had to many late nights and redbull. My hat is off and Kudos to the creators.

Virtual Hardware Hotel!!!

     One of the common mistakes I see people make when dealing with ISA is not waiting enough time for the firewall to synchronize with the configuration database. Changes made in the client are modified in the database first, then the firewall polls this database for changes and synchronizes these with it’s local ADAM directory. This allows ISA to maintain it’s configuration without the need for access to the configuration database. By default, the firewall will poll for changes every 15 seconds. You can see this setting here:

As you can see, I changed mine to 5 seconds. I have done this while I was doing the initial configuration, but will change it to a higher value, once I have everything stable. You can verify that all ISA servers in the array have been synchronized by looking at the Monitoring->Configuration tab

As you make changes to ISA, you must wait until the status shows “Synced”, this will ensure that you are testing against the most recent changes committed to the database. This should save you some major headaches and possible hair loss. Good luck….

Mike Laverick has just announced that he has made his Administering VMware™ Site Recovery Manager™ 1.0 book available for free download!You can either download the high quality PDF in English or you can order the print edition for printing cost + shipping. Download or order yours now!

This book will teach you how to install and configure VMware’s SRM. It also covers in detail the failover and failback processes – and I will guide you step-by-step through the set up of the product. This book is not filled with project management padding that typifies a lot of IT books. It is practical and technical, and assumes you are already pretty familiar with VMware’s Virtual Vi3 products. In this book you will learn the strengths and weaknesses of Site Recovery Manager, and I will show you the common pitfalls and errors that can happen, and also more importantly why they happen, and how to fix them.

Last night I was changing my network configuration, moving ISA from a single-NIC to a back-firewall between my DMZ and my internal network. I made this change so wordpress wouldn’t see all the traffic as coming from my ISA IP. My concern was with comment spam, and it is always good to see the actual IP the visitors are coming from. (I know this can always be spoofed…)

As an added benefit I decided to configure ISA to allow VPN connections into my internal network. I didn’t really have a need for this, but I figured that since the technology supports it, and I have never had the opportunity to configure this aspect of ISA, I would play with it and see how it worked. It turns out it works pretty well. I fired up my iPhone and configured the native VPN client. In a matter of minutes I was on my internal network and able to browse some of the internal only web sites I have up and running. Although this was pretty cool, I was left with the thoughts of “What could I possibly do with this???”

It was a classic case of TLAR (Technology Looking for A Requirement). It was at this moment I remembered reading an article about a product from Wyse Technology called PocketCloud. I quickly installed the application and was up and logging into almost every server on my network. I thought I had woken up in a dream. The ability to quickly access my network and all the applications I support from anywhere I had cell service with no additional hardware other than my phone, definitely had to be something I had only seen while asleep…. PocketCloud was very intuitive and easy to navigate within my RDP sessions. I found the interface very easy to read and manage the entire desktop through the iPhone screen. I would recommend this product to anyone…. It is definitely worth the cost for anyone mobile and in IT. You can see screenshots below:

Enable VPN:	The Connections Screen:
Connection in Progress:	The integrated cursor.
Logging on to vCenter:	ESX Performance Graph:

Virtu-Al has developed a great powerCLI script that creates a daily report of your virtual infrastructure. This gives a quick and informative representation of how things are performing. You can run this as a sheduled task and get a quick look at how the day is going to be, before you get into the office. You can see his post here

P.S. The report even looks great on an iPhone

Forbes Guthrie over at vReference has provided some absolutely necessary documents for anyone working with/designing a virtual infrastructure.

• VI 3 Reference Card
• VI 4 Reference Card
• vSphere 4 Notes
• vSphere Connection Ports

Please give Forbes full credit as I am only placing these here for convenience.